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Rack   Listen
noun
Rack  n.  Same as Arrack.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... appear. Some portraits, a fine old engraving, a map of the county, and some sprays of evergreen intermingled with red berries, take away all bareness from the walls, while in a corner near the door stands a rack, formed in part by the branching antlers of a stag, on which hang fur caps and collars, warm wraps and coats, all suggesting abundant means of robbing winter of its rigor. On hooks above the sliding-doors are suspended a modern ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... the flap was thrown open and the adjutant's office stood partially revealed. It was a big wall tent backed up against another of the same size and pattern. Half a dozen plain chairs, two rough board tables littered with books, papers and smoking tobacco, an oil stove and a cheap clothes rack on which were hanging raincoats, ponchos and a cape or two, comprised all the furniture. In a stout frame of unplaned wood, cased in their oilskins and tightly rolled, stood the colors of the famous regiment; and back of them, well within the second tent where ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... all ale And beer that is stale Rosa-solis and damnable hum, But we will rack In the praise of sack 'Gainst ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... the lusty fates were pulling at the screws of the rack. "Pull harder," cried the first fate; "the little old pot-bellied rascal—make him see it: make him see how he warned her against the symptoms, but not the disease that was festering ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... bid me fly? You who have betrayed me? You whom I trusted? You who vowed that not even the rack could extort one syllable from your lips? Base girl, is it thus that thou dost requite my love? Away! Go back to that court whose enticements have caused thee to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... pressed tea on Radowitz, who accepted it to please her, and then, schooled as she was in all the minor social arts, she had soon succeeded in establishing a sort of small talk among the three. Falloden, self-conscious, and on the rack, could not imagine why he stayed. But this languid boy had ministered to his dying father! And to what, and to whom, were the languor, the tragic physical change due? He stayed—in purgatory—looking out ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... impossible to anyone who knew him. And we have seen that Isaac Bawcombe was an exceptional man—physically a kind of Alexander Selkirk of the Wiltshire Downs. And he, moreover, had a dog to help him—one as superior in speed and strength to the ordinary sheep-dog as he himself was to the rack of his fellow-men. It was only after much questioning on my part that Caleb brought himself to tell me of these ancient adventures, and finally to give a detailed account of how his father came to take his first deer. It was in the depth of winter—bitterly cold, with ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... Villefranche. "You would scarce credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an old stocking full of gold pieces hid away ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to the surprise she was in, I easily seized her by the mane, and notwithstanding her resistance, led her into the stable, where I put a halter upon her head, and when I had tied her to the rack, reproaching her with her baseness, I chastised her with a whip till I was tired, and have punished her every day since in the manner which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... hopper—Cristofori's linguetta mobile—which, controlled by the springs i and l, effects the escape, or immediate drop, of the hammer from the strings after the blow has been struck, although the key is still kept down by the finger. The hopper is centered at h. M is a rack or comb on the beam, s, where, h, the butt, n, of the hammer, o, is centered. In a state of rest the hammer is supported by a cross or fork of silk thread, p. On the depression of the key, c, the tail, q, of the second lever, e, draws away the damper, r, from the strings, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... a French regiment mentions that a horse belonging to his company, being from age unable to eat his hay or grind his oats, was fed for two months by two horses on his right and left, who ate with him. These two horses, drawing the hay out of the rack, chewed it, and then put it before the old horse, and did the same with the oats, which he was ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... "large, fine-looking officer, wearing a full beard and a rebel uniform, trimmed with the usual amount of gold braid;" but something far more interesting than the visit of any man, however famous, began to absorb the attention of our imprisoned hero at this time. He had never ceased to rack his brain with schemes looking to his escape. A life of captivity was indescribably wearisome to him. He not only taxed his own ingenuity in the effort to discover some feasible plan, but eagerly entered into the schemes of others. The result, however, so far as he ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... motive, has resolved to kill himself; when once the resolution is taken, he has nothing to fear. He may then go and take the King of Prussia by the nose, at the head of his army. He cannot fear the rack, who is resolved to kill himself. When Eustace Budgel[673] was walking down to the Thames, determined to drown himself, he might, if he pleased, without any apprehension of danger, have turned aside, and first set ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... the banker," said I, "are two. The first and the smaller is that all he has got to attend to is not to deal wrongly, which is a very small matter to an habitual player; and all the time the punter has to rack his brains on the chances of one card or another coming out. The other advantage is one of time. The banker draws his card at least a second before the punter, and this again ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Mary, that in a Passage of an Author quoted by Monsieur Bayle [8] it is said the Price of Wood was raised in England, by reason of the Executions that were made in Smithfield. These Disputants convince their Adversaries with a Sorites, [9] commonly called a Pile of Faggots. The Rack is also a kind of Syllogism which has been used with good Effect, and has made Multitudes of Converts. Men were formerly disputed out of their Doubts, reconciled to Truth by Force of Reason, and won over to Opinions by the Candour, Sense and Ingenuity of those who had the Right ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... to accuse himself, is only to call upon him to commit perjury, and has therefore been always accounted irrational and wicked: in those countries where it is practised, the confession is extorted by the rack, which indeed is so necessary on such occasions, that I should not wonder to hear the promoters of this clause openly declaring for the expediency ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... want to keep me on the rack for seven hours more?" thought Skinner on his way back to his cage. "Why could n't ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... and yet there was some change which, as she perceived it, began gradually to bring the great change home to her. There was the empty chair, first relic in importance and saddest in significance. There were his pipes neatly arranged on a little fretwork rack which hung where bell handles are usually put beside the fireplace. She remembered having seen him replace one of them the last time she was there, and now she went over and touched its cold stem, and her heart swelled. The stand of ferns and flowers which he had arranged with such infinite pains ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... we can try them. If you will make them understand that I don't at all want the place, and that it will go to rack and ruin because there is no one to live there, I am sure they ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... still her ruling passion. And though strange misgivings annoyed and perplexed her, though her respect for Dennis daily increased, and at times a sudden pity and softness made her little hands hesitate before giving an additional wrench to the rack of uncertainty upon which she kept him; still, she would not for the world have abandoned her purpose, and such compunctions were as yet but the little back ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... Secretary and I dined at Brigadier Britton's, but I left them at six, upon an appointment with some sober company of men and ladies, to drink punch at Sir Andrew Fountaine's. We were not very merry; and I don't love rack punch, I love it better with brandy; are you of my opinion? Why then, twelvepenny weather; sirrahs, why don't you play at shuttlecock? I have thought of it a hundred times; faith, Presto will come over after Christmas, and will play with Stella before the cold weather is gone. Do you read the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... picked a large plastine container filled with a white, crystalline powder. Then he selected a couple of bottles filled with a clear, faintly yellow liquid, and took a hypodermic gun from the rack. He ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... to Walter, and was obliged to stand up on the hay rack to do so, as the young man would not let go the rope that held ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose

... Maroney was observed to post a letter while in Memphis. Roch managed to see the address as it lay on the rack in the hotel, and found it directed to Mrs. M. Cox, Jenkintown, Montgomery County, Penn. When I arrived in Philadelphia, I concluded it would be a good plan to find out who Mrs. M. Cox was, and accordingly detailed Mr. Fox to procure the information. "His orders ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... those I love, Shall pass from life, or, sadder yet, shall fall From virtue? Strife with foes, or bitterer strife With friends, or shame and general scorn of men— Which who can bear?—or the fierce rack of pain, Lie they within my path? Or shall the years Push me, with soft and inoffensive pace, Into the stilly twilight of my age? Or do the portals of another life Even now, while I am glorying in my strength, Impend around me? Oh! ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young fellow is some ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... we might as well take off our hats and stay awhile," agreed Laura, following suit. "Say, girls," she added, as she stuck her hat up in the rack above her head, "I just thought of ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... swung round. They call it a "Pullman" which is a good name for a car, only it's the engine that pulls the man and the car, too, really. Then we got all comfortable, with another nice colored man who showed his teeth at us, and put our bags up on a rack, and Aunty May gave me some sweet chocolate and a magazine with pictures in it, and Aunty Edith said. "I wish we didn't have to change at Trenton,"—and—then—I ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull

... The mists were clearing somewhat from his mind. He was in a room, yes, the queerest little cubby-hole he had ever seen. There was a lamp in a rack against the wall, and the lamp remained stationary and upright while the wall behind ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... side, and the candle burning a hole in the bubbly horn. Slowly recovering his wits, he strove to rise, as the deadly peril was borne in upon him. But instead of rising, he fell back again with a curse, and then a long-drawn groan; for pain (like the thrills of a man on the rack) had got hold of him and meant to keep him. His right arm was snapped at the elbow, and his left leg just above the knee, and the jar of his spine made him feel as if his core had been split out of him. He had no fat, like Shargeloes, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... man, the hardened strap-suspender, Who with a first-class ticket, there and back, Finds a precarious seat upon the tender, A rocky berth upon the baggage-rack. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... Judy brightly. "Shall I make you some toast, Hilda? This in the toast-rack is so soft ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... dozen others, to furnish materials for scenes of voluptuousness and of blood that would have outdone even the present naturalistes. From these alcoves of "Les Dames Galantes," and from the torture chambers (M. Zola would not have spared us one starting sinew of brave La Mole on the rack) you turned, as Scott would have turned, without a thought of their profitable literary uses. You had other metal to work on: you gave us that superstitious and tragical true love of La Mole's, that devotion—how tender and how pure!—of Bussy for the Dame de Montsoreau. You gave us the valour of ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... slighter pains incidental to the human frame on the brow of a third. He was very much displeased with them, and told them, that in future the earth should produce bad fruits; that sickness should lay them on beds of leaves, and pains rack their bones; that their lives should be lives of fatigue and danger, and their deaths, deaths of doubt and agony—penalties which have attached to his descendants to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... daughter said, catching another musket out of the same rack from which Pierre had gotten the matchlock and passing it over to Rand. He grasped the heavy piece, approving of the easy, instinctive way in which the girl had handled it. "Look on the barrel," she told him. "On top, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... he used to employ Cherea in such bloody matters, and those that required the torture, because he thought he would do it the more barbarously, in order to avoid that imputation of effeminacy which he had laid upon him. But Quintilia, when she was brought to the rack, trod upon the foot of one of her associates, and let him know that he might be of good courage, and not be afraid of the consequence of her tortures, for that she would bear them with magnanimity. Cherea tortured this woman after a cruel manner; unwillingly indeed, but because he could not ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... in the race or flume, the flow should be protected from leaves and other trash by means of a rack. This rack is best made of 1/4 or 1/2-inch battens from 1-1/2 to 3 inches in width, bolted together on their flat faces and separated a distance equal to the thickness of the battens by means of iron washers. This rack will accumulate leaves and trash, varying with the time of ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... and talking, and trying to keep up his spirits; but the other, who was my friend, and Aikane—Hope, was the most dreadful object I had ever seen in my life: his eyes sunken and dead, his cheeks fallen in against his teeth, his hands looking like claws; a dreadful cough, which seemed to rack his whole shattered system, a hollow whispering voice, and an entire inability to move himself. There he lay, upon a mat, on the ground, which was the only floor of the oven, with no medicine, no comforts, and no one to care for, or help him, but ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... a glance at the gun-rack. The rifle was gone. The patent-clasp which held the weapon in place had been wrenched free. Her eyes traveled to the empty provision-locker, which stood open. Close by it lay a small monkey-wrench with which some one had ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... pneumonia are in vain against Scotsmen who can write. (I once could.) You cannot imagine probably how near me this common calamity brings you. Ce que j'ai tousse dans ma vie! How often and how long have I been on the rack at night and learned to appreciate that noble passage in the Psalms when somebody or other is said to be more set on something than they "who dig for hid treasures—yea, than those who long for the morning"—for all the world, as you have been racked and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a disk from the rack and adjusted it in the machine and pressed the lever, but nothing moved; no ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... is intricate, deep, unpassable, that leads to that satisfaction you desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... said the doctor, and he took a bright glass measure from where it hung by its foot in a little rack, safe from falling by the rolling of the vessel; "I was just going to test these spirits, and I thought I should like ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... their meat from the cook-shop. Four hundred pounds a year lies there a waiting for me. I've been at them often to let me them premises. But they says no, we have got no horder from the court to let. Which the court would rather see 'em go to rack an' ruin for nothing, than let 'em to an honest woman as would pay the rent punctual, and make her penny out of 'em, and nobody none the worse. And to sell them, the price is two thousand pounds, and if I had it I'd give it this minit. But ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... the lower part of that one-time Dark Continent is one of the most prosperous regions in the world, where the home currency is at a premium instead of a discount; where the high cost of living remains a stranger and where you get little suggestion of the commercial rack and ruin that are disturbing the rest of the universe. While the war-ravaged nations and their neighbors are feeling their dubious way towards economic reconstruction, the Union of South Africa is on the wave of a striking expansion. It affords an ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... several packages, and wish to put any of them in the rack over your head, you will be less likely to forget them, if you put all together, than you will if you keep a part ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... house was not large it had, like all houses on Floral Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and metal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above the set bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... reach, and vainly burn; Must suff'ring man, impatient, seek to scale Forbidden steeps, where sharper pangs prevail? Alas for him who chafes at soothing ease, And cries for fever'd joys and pains to please: They please a moment, but the pleasure flies, And the rack'd soul, a prey to passion, dies. Away, false lures! and let my spirit roam O'er sweet Arcadia, and the rural home; Let my sad heart with no new sorrow bleed, But rest content in Morven's mossy mead. Wild thoughts and vain ambitions circle near, Whilst I, at peace, the abbey chimings hear. Loud shakes ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... Fraser, pondering, and walked away with his eyes on the ground. He called in at the office as he passed it; the staff had gone, but the letter-rack which stood on the dusty, littered mantel-piece was empty, and he went into the ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... might have poured forth their myriads of holy warriors, for whom death should have no terrors, since life had no comfort or delight. But experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage; the fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the stake, would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. The pusillanimous temper of the Egyptians could only hope for a change of masters; the arms of Chosroes depopulated the land, yet under his reign the Jacobites enjoyed a short and precarious respite. The victory ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... to the junction without a stop. Meg took off her best hat and placed it carefully in the rack. She leaned her bewildered head against the cushions and closed her eyes. She would drift with the tide just a few ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... one side of the clean hearth, whilst over the chimney-piece hung a portrait of General Wolfe, with an engraving of the siege of Quebec. A series of four silver medals, enclosed in red morocco cases, having the surface of each protected by a glass cover, hung from a liliputian rack made of mahogany, at once bearing testimony to the enterprise and gallantry of the owner, as well as to the manly pride with which he took such especial pains to preserve these proud rewards of his courage, and the ability with which he must have discharged his duty as a soldier. On the ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... was made by Mrs. Alexander Baumgard, of New York City, and showed an automatic advertising figure actuated by an electric motor. The figure was that of a woman standing before a rack on which were a number of signs. The figure stooped, picked up one of the signs, raised it, turned a quarter way around in order to display it to the best advantage, and replaced the sign. The next movement took up the next sign, and so on. The mechanism ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... heart—when it was Sarah's. Shirley thought her sister was merely "cranky" when she pushed her out of the swing and Rosemary decided to let Sarah severely alone when that small girl hurled her music from the piano rack and began a violent performance of "chop sticks." ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence

... born of habit impelled him to slam down the roll-top cover of his desk before he rushed from the room and down the hall. He snatched his soft hat from a rack as he reached with his other hand for the heavy latch of the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... respectable man he is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential man: how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the prosaic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... a plate-rack well filled with serviceable chinaware, and which formed the upper part of a dresser or plain deal sideboard. Above the rack, and near the ceiling, were the words, "One step ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... because she loves him. You can invent all the theories you want, and you can write tons of poetry about it, and when you get through you'll be just where you started. You can find a reason for pretty near everything a woman does, though you may have to rack your brains like the devil to do it, but you can't explain why she falls in love with this man and not with that. Perhaps you recall Longfellows's lines: 'The men that women marry, and why they marry them, will always be a marvel and a mystery to the world.' Personally, I'm a bit of ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour

... to take the risk. Isabel will not be contented with you and me. She'll want other hats on the rack besides the prehistoric relic we keep there as a ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... full and dark—a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple, as monarch in his state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... madam, must be less irksome than that which I quitted: to write by rule, to compose by necessity, to make the understanding, nature's first gift, subservient to interest, that meanest offspring of art!—when weary, listless, spiritless, to rack the head for invention, the memory for images, and the fancy for ornament and illusion; and when the mind is wholly occupied by its own affections and affairs, to call forth all its faculties for foreign subjects, uninteresting discussions, or fictitious ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... The lamp burned behind a wooden amphora rack and the interior of the stone chamber was not dark. The voice in the inner chamber was still and the human-eyed beast in the corner was now only a small hairy roll. In the silence she would have been dismayed, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... separate themselves by the dictate of God, from their brethren, to do so, is that which this text knows nothing of. Sometimes many may be together, apart from others; but why Mr. K., to serve his purpose, should rack and strain this text to justify his woman's meeting, I see no reason at all. My reason against him is, for that the look here upon him whom we have pierced, which is to be the cause of this mourning, is to be by an immediate revelation of the Holy Ghost, who doth not use ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... as, the turn comin' trey-nine, she picks a stack of bloos off the trey an' puts it in the check rack, 'you talks of wedlock as though that sacriment's a brace. Plenty of folks has beat the game. Thar's Tutt ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... for a while. But the armor-bearer was glad for himself and for her words. For he said to himself: "At least it shall not be said that she has been fed with ingratitude." He also began to rack his brains for something more of the same nature to tell her; and after ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... tint of the natural adobe. On the floor were a black bearskin from Makon and a brilliant Navajo that Suma-theek had given him. The walls were hung with Indian baskets and pottery, with photographs of the Green Mountain and the Makon, with guns and canteens and a great rack of pipes. This was the first home that Jim had had since he had left the brownstone front and he was very proud of it. He had inherited his predecessor's housekeeper, who ruled ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... Ronald," he said, shaking his head sadly; "but when they get you to London they will find means to make you open your mouth. They have done away with the thumb screws and the rack, but there are other ways of making a prisoner speak, and it would be far better for you to make a clean breast of it at once. Janet is grieving for you as if you were her own son, and I cannot myself attend to my business. Who would ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... waiting, and he got into it, put the cheese on the rack in a corner, and the coffin next to it, assured himself that he had not mislaid his return ticket, and sat down under his baggage. It was the slackest time of day, and, as the train started at Longshaw, there were very few passengers. He had ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... fresh chew of long, green tobacco, and rosined his bow. He glided off into "Hop light ladies, your cake's all dough," and then I heard the watch dog's honest bark. I heard the guinea's merry "pot-rack." I heard a cock crow. I heard the din of happy voices in the "big house" and the sizz and songs of boiling kettles in the kitchen. It was an old time quilting—the May-day of the glorious ginger cake and cider era of the American Republic; and the needle was ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... household, with its unreconstructed member, now moved forward on the lines laid down. Punctually at a quarter to six P. M. my cousin appeared at the front door, hung his hat on the rack, and passed into the sitting-room, sometimes humming in the hall a bar or two of The Bonny Blue Flag that bears a Single Star, to the infinite distaste of Mrs. Wesley, who was usually at that moment giving the finishing touches to the dinner-table. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... remarks of them: [134] "Great or small they are absolutely unfitted by their natural instincts to be landlords. Shrewdest of traders, most business-like in the matter of bargains, they are unable to take a broad view of the duties of landlord or to see that rack-renting will not ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... a nickle every time he took his castor oil manfully came to his mind as he sat and gazed out the window. When asked what he did with the nickles, the Spartan youth had replied: "Buy more castor oil with it." Joe wearily dragged one of his stock ledgers from the rack and ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... man clamoured at the doors of her chamber for admittance. High and low were equally in danger. Even the royal family were at the mercy of the Holy Office. Spies might be found in any household, and both men and women disappeared to answer "inquiries" made with torture of the rack, without knowing their accusers. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... guileless laugh Of children with their nusses, The loud uneducated chaff Of clerks on omnibuses. Against all minor things that rack A nicely-balanced mind, I'll back The noisy chaff And ill-bred laugh ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... I am old and grey, My bones are rack'd with pain, And time speeds fast away— But why should I complain? There are joys in life's young morn That dwell not with the old. Like the flowers the wind hath torn, From the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand, At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide, Though functionally here on humanity's side, The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal physician Attending the rack o' ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... as to where she had been, evaded any direct answer. If questioned more closely, she would show a rising spirit and a decision of manner that had the effect to silence and at the same time to trouble Mrs. Dinneford, whose mind was continually on the rack. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... up the receiver, and seized a railway time-table from the rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... jovial swain may rack his brain, And tax his fancy's might; To quiz is vain, for 'tis most plain That what ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... snow breaking down towards the east, upon which she went back into the stable, shut the door, and told her sister of it. In less than three minutes they heard the roof break over their heads, and also a part of the ceiling. The sister advised to get into the rack and manger, which they did. The ass was tied to the manger, but got loose by kicking and struggling, and threw down the little vessel, which they found, and afterwards used to hold the melted snow, which served ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... coarse plaster; the partition dividing it into two rooms was of pine, unpainted. In one corner near Rutton's trunk, a bed-hammock swung from a beam. The few chairs were plain and rude. There were two deal tables, a plate-rack nailed to the partition, and a wall-seat in the chimney-corner. On the centre table, aside from the lamp, were a couple of books, some out-of-date magazines, and a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... Nott had satisfied himself of Renshaw's departure, he coolly bolted the door at the head of the companion-way, thus cutting off any communication with the lower deck. Taking a long rifle from the rack above his berth, he carefully examined the hammer and cap, and then cautiously let himself down through the forehatch to the deck below. After a deliberate survey of the still intact fastenings of the hatch over the forehold, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... to ruminate. Most likely they would have fallen asleep if we had not been there to keep an eye on them, for prolonged subjection to too much fear is soporific, so that tortured poor wretches sleep on the tightened rack. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... very joy, she stood gazing at it. The little head and small face, the tiny hands, filled her soul with awe and tenderness. Very timidly she touched the soft cheek with the tip of her finger—the warm, soft cheek—and the baby stirred a little. Then Joan, hanging the lantern to the rack above the manger, knelt down by its side to watch the quiet slumber of the ...
— The Christmas Child • Hesba Stretton

... contrary, he was assidious only to attain as much money as might put him on the road of debauchery, and then stupidly gave himself up to squandering it in the gratification of his lusts, until indigence brought to rack his inventions again, and his second attempt proving abortive, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... letter rack over the mantel-piece, selected three letters from it, and handed them ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... best bedroom; one, at the opposite end of the opposite wall, leading to the scullery and washhouse; and the house door, with its latch, heavy lock, and clumsy wooden bar, in the front wall, between the window in its middle and the corner next the bedroom door. Between the door and the window a rack of pegs suggests to the deductive observer that the men of the house are all away, as there are no hats or coats on them. On the other side of the window the clock hangs on a nail, with its white wooden dial, black iron weights, ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw

... everything is covered with this fine dust so thick that it is not possible to tell the color of a table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather images of the famous blue ware stand under the old lady's portrait, and everything is going to rack and ruin. Meantime we wandered around, planning how it could be made over into use when the revolution comes. Get rid of the idea that China has had a revolution and is a republic; that point is just where we have ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... fix upon the lack: Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly. We see the things we do not yearn to see Around us: and what see we glancing back? Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack, Hopes that were never ours yet seemed to be, For which we steered on life's salt stormy sea Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack. If thus to look behind is all in vain, And all in vain to look to left or right, Why face we not our future once again, Launching with hardier hearts across ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... gently, and with a smile of singular but melancholy sweetness: "have you earned the right to ask me these questions? The clays of torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I can defy persecution, pardon me if I do ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Sundown straggled out to the corral and stood watching the saddle-stock of the Concho pull hay from the long feed-rack and munch lazily. Suddenly he jerked up his hand and jumped round. The men, loafing in front of the bunk-house, laughed. Chance, the great wolf-dog, was critically ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... a pen that had slipped from a rack on his desk. "He is not an acquaintance of mine," he said. "I only know him as a friend of ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... poison'd man turns livid black, Drugg'd with a cup of deadly hellebore, That sets his horrid features all at rack,— So seem'd these words into the ear to pour Of ghastly Saturn, answering with a roar Of mortal pain and spite and utmost rage, Wherewith his grisly arm he raised once more, And bade the cluster'd sinews all engage, As if at one fell stroke to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... go, but Reg is puzzled to find out what the business is, for all Hal does is to call for drinks, take a sheet of paper from the rack, and scribble a few words, put it in an ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... in the sea, and the wind wailed drearilie; Let the bells in yonder monastery toll, For the night rack nestles dark round the body stiff and stark, And unshriven to ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... not neglect a whole or part of those matters, both important as well as unimportant, connected with the inner and outer quarters? Would I not at present have to worry my own mind, instead of leaving things to others? Why, I'd daily have to rack my brain and go and ask them to give me whatever I might need! Of those girls, who've come to my quarters and those who've gone, there only remains this single one. She's, besides other respects, somewhat older in years, and has as well a slight conception of my ways of doing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... extinguishment, extirpation, Nirvana, obliteration. V. not exist &c. 1; have no existence &c. 1; be null and void; cease to exist &c. 1; pass away, perish; be extinct, become extinct &c. adj.; die out; disappear &c. 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c. 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c. 756; destroy &c. 162; take away; remove &c. (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent[obs3], nonexistent ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... did not notice that from the opposite end of the platform a youth of about his own age was also making for the compartment in question. The first intimation he had of his presence was when the latter, arriving first at the door by a short head, hurled a bag on to the rack, and sank gracefully into the identical corner seat which Harrison had long regarded as his own personal property. And to make matters worse, there was no other vacant seat in the compartment. Harrison was about to protest, when the guard ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... was simply a long shed built against the south side of the barn. The front and the ends were boarded up to a height of eight feet from the ground. At that height strong cedar cross poles were laid, six inches apart, so as to form a kind of rack, on which the freshly mown grass could ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... apparatus for the time of setting. While setting, the soundness pats are stored in galvanized-iron pans having about 1 in. of water in the bottom, and covered with dampened felt or burlap. The pats rest on a rack slightly above the water and ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson

... when you have any, wipe it once a month, and keep it on a rack. If you want to ripen it, a damp cellar will bring it forward. When a whole cheese is cut, the larger quantity should be spread with butter inside, and the outside wiped to preserve it. To keep those in daily use moist, let a clean cloth be wrung out from cold water, and wrapt round them ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... would Parnassus new-manure; Ringers of verse that all-in-chime, And toll the changes upon every rime. A mercer now by th' yard does measure ore An ode, which was but by the foot before; Deals you an ell of epigram, and swears It is the strongest and the finest wears. No wonder, if a drawer verses rack, If 'tis not his, 't may be the spir't of sack; Whilst the fair bar-maid stroaks the muses teat, For milk to make the posset up compleat. Arise, thou rev'rend shade, great Johnson, rise! Break through thy marble ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... show that modern industrialism is going to rack and ruin. Maybe it is. But pessimism is more a matter of temperament than statistics. An optimist can assemble a most cheerful array of figures to show that everything is on the up. Temperament again. Industry is what ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... father directly the wedding breakfast was over. She looked the very image of sorrow and despair. She did not tell me where she was going. I don't believe she even knew herself. There, that's all that I have got to tell you, even if you had the power to put me on the rack, as you used to have in the bad old times!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown, once more folding her arms and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... saw that ravenous look of his I almost died for fear he'd make a rush at me— Lord, how he did scare me, how he kept grinding his teeth! In he came and tugged down the meat, rack and all—grabbed a knife and lopped the choice bits off three necks of pork—and smashed every pot and tureen that didn't ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... through his means. We shook hands, and he hoped all would go right with me, he said; but nothing ever went right with me after. I took little note ever after of worldly matters: all belonging to me went to rack and ruin. The hand of God was upon me: I could not help myself, nor settle mind or body to any thing. I heard them say sometimes I was a little touched in my head: however that might be I cannot say. But at the last I found it was as good ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... an open song-book on the rack in front of her. The others gathered close about, leaning ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And, when sunset may ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... already taken measures towards his conveyance to the British lines? Should she delay until he should be able to walk, there would be two words about the matter. Meanwhile, he must wait for developments. It was useless to rack his brain with conjectures. His sense of present comfort gradually resumed sway, and he placed his head again on the sofa pillow and ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point. In anything which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; while it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing little sensibility, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... approximation in crushing it. This can be managed by an ingenious arrangement, which leaves the movable blade under the control only of the operator's thumb till the stone is found, and yet, by touching a spring, gives him the advantage either of a fine screw or of a rack and pinion movement for crushing ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... she gave him a feeling that she was strangely near and soft and warm. He had felt it on the moor. It was actually as if she wanted to be quieting to him—almost as if she had realised that he had been stretched upon a mental rack with maddening tumult all around him. It was part of her pretty thought of him in the matter of the waiting chair and he felt ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... endure patiently year after year. I would be like the poor, weak women they shut up in the Inquisition and who suffered on to the end only through remorseless compulsion, because the walls were too thick for escape, and the tormentor's hands and the rack were irresistible. My soul would succumb as well as my body. This would seem wild, wicked talk to Mr. Eltinge; it would seem weak and irrational to any man. But I'm only Ida Mayhew, and such is my nature. I've been made all the more incapable of patient self-sacrifice by self-indulgence ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... believed things which we do not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now. Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls "civil and religious liberty." Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the "Papishes." He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet the absurdity of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson, stand firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr. Mallet, I see also," Christina added, "has something serious ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... 'em too haivy, so He lef 'em dese silk clo'es whar I done tol' you 'bout, an' dese han's whar you kin see fer yo'se'fs is human, an' I reckon bofe dem things putt 'em in min' er w'at dey useter be an' rack 'em 'umble. Uver sence den de moleses bin gwine 'long un'need de groun', 'cordin ter de jedgmen' er de Lawd, an' diggin' an' scratchin' der way thu de worl', in trial an' tribilashun, wid dem po' li'l human han'ses. An' dat orter ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita's admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps'-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore they ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... might be quoted. Hymns and songs to the Virgin exhibit the same characteristics of form. The few Provencal words which became English are interesting;[38] colander or cullender (now a vegetable strainer; Prov. colador), funnel, puncheon, rack, spigot, league, noose are directly derived from Provencal and not through Northern French and are words connected with shipping and the wine trade, the port for which ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... doubt was cast on Medenham's good faith; he pocketed half a dozen letters for Cynthia, and one, unstamped, bearing the crest of the Mitre, for Mrs. Devar. By the merest chance he caught sight of a note, addressed "Viscount Medenham," stuck in a rack among some telegrams. The handwriting was his father's. But how secure it without arousing quite reasonable suspicion? He ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... been resorted to; but now, in accordance with the repeated solicitations of the Pope, King Edward gave orders that the imprisoned Templars should be subjected to the rack in order that they might be forced to give evidence of their guilt. Even then there seems to have been reluctance to resort to this cruel and shameful treatment, and a series of delays occurred, so that nothing was done till the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... mainsail reefed to the cross. Whatever wind may blow, there is always shelter within the Sutors; and she was soon riding at anchor in the roadstead; but she had entered the bay alone; and when day broke, and for a brief interval the driving snow-rack cleared up towards the east, no second sail appeared in the offing. "Poor Miller!" exclaimed the master of the smack; "if he does not enter the Firth ere an hour, he will never enter it at all. Good sound vessel, and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... theatrical exhibitions to be forbid on pain of death, Drury-Lane play-house was soon after converted into a barrack for soldiers, which it has continued to be ever since. Sheridan was arrested, and, it was imagined, would have suffered the rack, if he had not escaped from his guard by a stratagem, and gone over to Ireland in a balloon with which his friend Fox furnished him. Immediately on his arrival in Ireland, he put himself at the head of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... think that the first was sent out by mistake and that the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it—in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—an ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... itself, which has a small iron staple set in it; thirdly, a long line, one end of which is to be attached to the staple in the shot, when the shot is thrown; and, fourthly, a rack of a peculiar construction to serve as a reel for winding the line upon. This rack consists of a small square frame, having rows of pegs inserted along the ends and sides of it. The line is wound upon these pegs in such a manner, that as the shot is projected through the air, drawing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... and is, easier than amid the complication of our higher civilization. A bad man is a distinct entity, against whom you know more or less what steps to take. A tyrant, an oppressor, a bad landlord, a man who lets miserable tenements at a rack-rent (to come down to particulars), and exposes his wretched tenants to all those abominations of which we have heard so much—well! he is more or less a satisfactory opponent. There he is, and there is nothing to be said for him—down with him! and let there be an end of his wickedness. ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... machine is designed with the purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I mean; but a thought came into my head then: what if it be a bad plan after all? You may laugh at my idea, perhaps—but I could not help its occurring to me all the same. Now with the rack and tortures and so on—you suffer terrible pain of course; but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no doubt you have plenty of that) until you die. But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... gun rack, made of pieces of flat wood, of a rectangular form, with notches in the upright sides for holding guns and bows. It ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... gentleman to open the door for her—how handsome and bright and alert she looked, as she smiled her acknowledgment! The old gentleman looked back once or twice—even old fogeys have eyes for a pretty woman—but Mrs. Blake was too busy arranging her parcels in the rack to notice the impression ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... a fairy godmother," she said aloud, as her eye took in a carved book-rack filled with books, and wandered to the pretty tea-table where a tall chocolate pot seemed to proclaim that nothing so harmful as tea should be taken by the girls who ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick

... found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil? Doubtless there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses of the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used, according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, "as charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen, of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with a long burst of laughter. "Every day, when I come from him, M. le Comte says to me: 'Well! how is your comrade Gilbert?' And isn't it very natural? Don't we eat at the same rack? Are we not, both of us, in the service of the same master? And don't ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... 1st, A refrigerator which is provided with movable racks, H, within cooling chambers which are arranged beneath an ice chamber, B, constructed with inclined walls, a a a, a drip pan, D, and an ice-supporting rack, c, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various



Words linked to "Rack" :   strain, cut of meat, barbeque, wing, rack up, pluck, plume, hayrack, excruciate, piloting, work, plate rack, hurt, soak, cut, prehend, navigation, wheel, bomb rack, magazine rack, torment, pipe rack, fleece, dress rack, pain, off-the-rack, torturing, spit, single-foot, coatrack, overcharge, fly, gait, framework, luggage rack, sail, demolition, put to work, destruction, stretch, instrument of torture, wrack, seize, anguish, tie rack, roof rack, rack and pinion, wring, rack of lamb, tripod, rack rent, work on, support, draw, torture, pace



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