"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all wholesome contour and had given to his stomach, a chronic distention, but had depleted his frame and shrunken his limbs so that physically he was that common enough type of the hopeless alcoholic—a meagre rack of a man burdened amidships by an ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... wrong? No; it should be bitter: bitterness is strength—it is a tonic. Sweet, mild force following acute suffering you find nowhere; to talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a dangerous energy—deadly when confronted ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... produced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his hands trembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking at him for another second, he would have got up and knocked him down. But Krafft turned nonchalantly to the piano, where his attention was caught by a song that was standing on the rack. He chuckled, and set about making merciless fun of the music—the composer was an elderly singing-teacher, of local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't you ask if she ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... my Lord, to render up my trust, to resign my situation as the agent of your estates—I do so with pain, but the course of your lordship's life has left me no other alternative. I cannot rack and goad your tenants, nor injure your own property. I cannot paralyze industry, cramp honest exertion, or distress poverty still further, merely to supply necessities which are little less than criminal in yourself and ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... two seamen to be thrown overboard, Selak, the most courageous, entered the cabin, took a couple of muskets from the rack, and some powder and ball from the mate's berth, and returning to his followers, bade them bring the ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much interested in my misadventure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 21st of December, 1829. She is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant. During the first years of her existence she held her life by the feeblest tenure, being subject to severe fits, which seemed to rack her frame almost beyond the power of endurance. At the age of four years her bodily health seemed restored; but what a situation was hers! The darkness and silence of the tomb were around her. No mother's smile called forth her answering smile. No father's voice taught her to imitate ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... cords, then 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 ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... put it away until you make your appearance. I promise, too, that I will not read it in the meantime," and the widow received the remaining bosoms from Dennis with an extravagant show of gravity, which caused them both to laugh, in view of its absurd occasion, as she bestowed them in a music rack and turned to conduct him ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... potatoes of a uniform size. Parboil for 10 minutes, then put in a dripping-pan with the meat or on a rack in a baking-pan. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... shudders of the heart; Failure and crushing by flying weight to the ground, Claws and jaws, the stink of a lion's breath; Swimming, a white belly, a crescent of teeth, Agony, and a spirting shredded limb, And crimson blood staining the green water; And, horror of horrors, the slow grind on the rack, The breaking bones, the stretching and bursting skin, Perpetual fainting and waking to see above The down-thrust mocking faces of cruel men, With the power of mercy, who ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... 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
... forks of the road, their difficulties as ruts and rocks, their progress as a fertile valley. If they mobilize their dread-naughts they unsheath a sword. If their army surrenders they are thrown to earth. If they are oppressed they are on the rack ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Warden, "such is the freedom of the Christian conference to which Rome's priests so kindly invite us!—the gag—the rack—the axe—is the ratio ultima Romae. But know thou, mine ancient friend, that the character of thy former companion is not so changed by age, but that he still dares to endure for the cause of truth all that thy proud hierarchy shall ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... rose and taking a cue from the rack, bent over the board and practiced one or two favourite shots. "The only other subject I can talk about just at present is my own financial affairs," he said slowly, as he walked round ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... Directly the servant had set the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report relating to the present complication. The complication was of this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification that every rising functionary ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, as he stood in a ruby flood ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full, and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit reposed on the chronometer-case. There were two settees, and ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... stiffly at the carriage door while Ashton stowed his smaller traps on the rack. Presently ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave, When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frightened waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack; Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In triumph o'er his ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... and then Vane drew up a wicker chair to the fire for Evelyn and sat down opposite her. The room was low and shadowy, and partly paneled. Against one wall stood a black oak sideboard, with a plate-rack above it, and a great chest of the same material with ponderous hand-forged hinge-straps stood opposite it. A clock with an engraved metal dial and a six-foot case, polished to a wonderful luster by the hands of several generations, ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Rylton, after a swift, careless glance at her, goes towards the letter-rack and places a letter in it, then goes back to the library. As he reaches the door, however, he hears ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... reproduction, or rather the invention, of new tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are wells or pits dug under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works of his own infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is disagreeable to the Bonapartes, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... idea at one time that I had fallen into the power of the Inquisition, and been tortured by the head screw and the rack, because often a man in a black capucha flitted about me; but later I realized that my suffering was caused by becoming conscious of the world's motion—a terrible, ceaseless whirling, which, being once felt, could be ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... we are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... boyhood days had probably been a mass of crisp curls, but now shaggy tufts, matted and uneven, altogether a shockingly repulsive physiognomy, and yet an "honest Injin" in every respect and one who would always look on the happy side of life, but for twinges of neuralgia—"monda" he calls it—which rack his head and face with pain. I saw only the peaceful side of Mickie's nature, and therefore this chronicle will be unsensational as well as imperfect. There is a tradition that the Palm Island blacks are of a milder, less bellicose disposition, than those of the mainland ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... gentleman,' by some 'a thorough-bred Englishman,' by some 'a genuine John Bull;' but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day. He was in the commission of the peace, and could write his name almost legibly; but his greatest qualifications were, that he was more severe with poachers, was a better shot, a harder rider, had better horses, kept better dogs, could eat ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... whose card-rack or mantelpiece (I was going to say groans, but) laughingly rejoices in respectful well-worded invitations to luxuriously-appointed tables. I count not him, hapless wretch! as one who, singling out "a friend," drops in just at pudding-time, and ravens ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... his claw upon four Gitanos, and having nothing, as it appears, to accuse them of, except being Gitanos, put them to the torture, and made them accuse themselves, which they did; for, on the first appeal which was made to the rack, they confessed that they had murdered a female Gypsy in the forest of Las Gamas, and had there eaten her. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... and in their critical judgment was pronounced quite as good as the captain of the ship had bestowed upon them, but that neither of those specimens of spirit was to be compared to whiskey. "By dad," says Barny, "they may rack their brains a long time before they'll make out a purtier invintion than potteen,—that rum may do very well for thim that has the misforthin' not to know betther; but the whiskey is a more nathral sper't accordin' to my idays." In ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... The primal curse, the dominant tragedy of life. Who among you, dear friends, but has felt it? You men, slowly torn upon the rack of rheumatism; you women, with the hidden agony gnawing at your breast" (his roving regard was swift, like a hawk, to mark down the sudden, involuntary quiver of a faded slattern under one of the torches); "all you ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thought and high aims, who, in days when a man dared not say his soul was his own, veiled in mystic language, perfectly understood by each other, theological and philosophical truths, theories, and discoveries, which would have brought them to the stake or the rack, had they been produced openly. "Man was the subject of alchemy, and the object of the art was the perfection, or at least the improvement, of man." These were the real Hermetic Philosophers. After them came men who, not knowing the meaning of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... more solid and definite figures than these; yet none after that of Richard is more important to the scheme of Shakespeare. They are fitful, shifting, vaporous: their outlines change, withdraw, dissolve, and "leave not a rack behind." They, not Antony, are like the clouds of evening described in the most glorious of so many glorious passages put long afterwards by Shakespeare into the mouth of his latest Roman hero. They "cannot hold this visible shape" in which the poet at first presents them even ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... period of time but for a complete or perfect life- time;" [Footnote: Arist. Ethics. I. ii. 1101 a 14.—Translated by Welldon.] and he remarks, somewhat caustically, that those who say that a man on the rack would be happy if only he were good, intentionally or unintentionally are talking nonsense. That here, as elsewhere, Aristotle represents the common Greek view we have abundant testimony from other sources. Even ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... he'll turn up all right." The clerk turned to the key rack. "Here's the key to Room 317. Mr. Gordon must have left it here. Likely ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... went forward on his homeward course; he must see Dorothy without delay, for he would be upon the rack until the painful conference was over. The night was chill as New Year's nights have a right to be, and yet Mr. Harley was fain to mop his forehead as though it were the Dog days. As he neared his own door, his ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... tugged, trying to help Bobby lift the heavy umbrella rack. He was elated that he had thought of it, and not for worlds would he have admitted that it was exceedingly ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... "in real life" a bevy of shapely maidens in scant attire never goes tripping and singing blithely though the streets. If then we can establish that Plautus regarded his adapted dramas merely as a rack on which to hang witticisms, merely as a medium for laugh-provoking sallies and situations, we have at once Plautus as he pretended to be, and in large measure the answer to the original question: "What manner of drama ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... back again. Who is now the day-boys' house-master? Jackson once again—as if anything was Jackson's business! I handed the house back last term in a most flourishing condition. It has already gone to rack and ruin for the second time. To return to Varden. I have unearthed a put-up job. Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Orr are friends. Do you see? It all ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... just passed, Zarah was utterly unprepared for the effect of what was in fact an artless confession. It was not a groan nor a cry that she heard, but a sound that partook of the nature of both; a sound that the last turn of the rack could not have forced from the breast that uttered it now! It was the expression of an agony which few hearts have affections strong enough to feel, fewer still could have fortitude to sustain. No death-wail, no cry ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... a 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
... latter case the governor at each change of load turns the right and left hand screws to add or take away lap, as the load demands an earlier or later cut off; in other cases the governor moves a rack in mesh with a gear by which the valve sections are brought closer together or are separated. The difficulty with the case where the hand wheel is turned by hand is that the cut off is fixed where you leave it, and governing can only be at the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... Then wherefore shrink? The resolute wronged woman must go through with it. And when the last hour comes, nature itself is portentous of the virulent ill. In the wind's wake, the moon flies through a rack of night clouds. One after one the suppliants crave pardon for the distant dying lover, and last of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... knowledge acquired in early life sustains the professor, with added experience of every day, throughout the rest of his career, with how much more force will it apply to professions or pursuits, in which the mind is perpetually on the rack to produce novelties, and in which it is considered derogatory to a man to reproduce his own ideas, copy his own pictures, or multiply, after the same model, a variety ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... very well, 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 have thought that so young a lad ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... to bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... us on the rack!" was shouted on all sides; but he remained inexorable, promising only to call the council together when the right time should come and desiring that the president would proclaim from the balcony that Horapollo knew of a sacrifice which would cause the Nile at last to rise. As soon as the right ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not in betraying their liberty; but as to the multitude of those that are now under the Romans, who would not pity their condition? and who would not make haste to die, before he would suffer the same miseries with them? Some of them have been put upon the rack, and tortured with fire and whippings, and so died. Some have been half devoured by wild beasts, and yet have been reserved alive to be devoured by them a second time, in order to afford laughter and sport to our enemies; and such of those as are alive still are to be looked on as the most ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... to devastate Ireland unchecked. The capital that should have gone to enrich and develop the soil was squeezed out of it in rack-rents, largely absentee. The whole agricultural economy of the country was stricken with a sort of artificial anaemia. Then very late in the day you enact in shreds and fragments a programme of reform proposed half a century before by the leaders of the ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and then came Uncle John. One flight up they paused at a door marked "D", upon the panel of which was a rack bearing a card printed with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... phial from the rack, will you? I shall want only the merest trace of this. The rest can go ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Mealy's wobbly back, nor did he slap hard, nor kick hard, as he would have slapped and kicked on other days, before he descended from his throne to dwell with the beasts of the field on that fatal Friday. Pride kept Mealy on the rack. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... reality a sentient being of a very high order of intelligence. You may be quite certain that if you abuse your gun, even when you may imagine it to be far out of earshot, comfortably cleaned and put to roost on its rack, your gun will resent it. Why are most sportsmen so silent, so distraits at breakfast? Why do they dally with a scrap of fish, and linger over the consumption of a small kidney, and drink great draughts of tea ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... had a certain card; he led, and then that fool of a Padre Irene didn't play his card! Padre Irene was giving the game away! It was a devil of a way to play! His mother's son had not come here to rack his brains for ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... 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 beginning of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... criminal couplets, which so long disturbed the peace of the literary world in France, and of which Rousseau was generally supposed to be the writer; but of which on his death-bed he solemnly protested that he was guiltless. The coup-de-grace is given to the poet, stretched on this rack of invective, by just accusations on account of those infamous epigrams, which appear in some editions of that poet's works; a lesson for a poet, if poets would be lessoned, who indulge their imagination at the cost of their happiness, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of geum montanum, and ranunculus pyrenaeus. I noticed it only because new to me, nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower. Some days after, I found it alone, among the rack of the higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds, and, as I described it, piercing through an edge of avalanche, which in its retiring had left the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burned by recent fire; the plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... a cupboard in the corner of the room. It was a well-filled gun-rack, and he was passing the Winchesters out ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... righteousness to those who are exercised thereby. I never knew the treachery of ministers, and their dreadful hypocrisy and double dealing in the matters of God before that time, and I could never love them after that; for they made many a one to rack their conscience in taking that bond. I was brought out of the yard, Oct. 25th, with a guard of soldiers; when coming out, one Mr. White asked, if I would take the bond? I, smiling, said, No. He, in way of jeer, said, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... Marjorie borrowed her aunt's pen, took a sheet of foreign paper from the rack that stood on the table, and quite on the spur of the moment scribbled off the ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the plateau at last, but as I staggered towards the cave I tripped and fell heavily, crushing her beneath me. But I struggled up, and bearing her within the cave, laid her upon my bed and closing the door, barred it; then I reached my muskets from their rack and set them in readiness. This done, and finding my lady so still and silent, I came to view her where she lay and, peering in the dimness, uttered a great cry to see the pale oval of cheek horribly bedabbled with blood. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... house; for punishment of which that he be condemned to have his arms, legs, thighs and backbone broken, he alive, on a scaffold, which shall be erected for that purpose in the market place of this city, at noon, then on a rack, his face turned towards the sky, he be left to die. The said Jean Baptiste Goyer dit Belisle, being previously put to the torture ordinary and extraordinary, his dead body shall be carried by the executioners to the highway which lies between the house lately occupied ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Tonino, what horrid tortures did they inflict upon me in order to force from me a confession of the most damnable of all alliances! I remained firm. My hair turned white; my body withered up to a mummy; my feet and hands were paralysed. But there was still the terrible rack left—the cunningest invention of the foul fiend,—and it extorted from me a confession at which I shudder even now. I was to be burnt alive; but when the earthquake shook the foundations of the palaces and of the great prison, the door of the underground dungeon in which I lay confined sprang open ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... disconcerted his adversaries. It is not known what became of Pantaleon, whether he was executed or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death or had to purchase their pardon dearly. Sadyattes was stretched on a rack and torn with carding combs.* Glaucias, besieged in his fortress of Sidene, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the king demolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who should thereafter rebuild them. Pindarus, summoned ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... view of the hoist, Fig. 2 being a longitudinal section. It will be seen that this apparatus is of very simple construction, the motion of the piston being transmitted directly to the winding-drum shaft by means of a flexible steel rack. Referring to Fig. 2, F is a piston working in the cylinder, G; E is the flexible steel rack connected to the piston, F, and gearing with a toothed wheel, B, which is inclosed in a watertight casing having cover, D, for convenient ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... no more weaving, for the threads were broken and the time was short, but the rack and ruin were pitiful to see. So, from hidden places no man may guess, the Weaver summoned the Secret Spinners, bidding them lay a veil ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... talapitap on which the spirits are fed, and to prepare two sticks known as dakidak, one being a thin slender bamboo called bolo, the other a reed. These are split at one end, so they will rattle when struck on the ground, and thus call the attention of the spirit for whom food is placed on the rack. ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... house was like its neighbor, even to the "Rooms" sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a table. Mrs. Norton came ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... his visitor's face. "Nada!" cried Dan Anderson. "Me go back there and work on a salary for you? Me check my immortal soul on your hat-rack? Me live scared of my life, like all the rest of the slaves in that infernal system of living, that hell? If I should do that, I'd be giving you some license for the opinion of me you once expressed, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... table, a comfortable chair for the General. Behind the chair, a window. Facing it at the other end of the table, a plain wooden bench. At the side of the table, with its back to the door, a common chair, with a typewriter before it. Beside the door, which is opposite the end of the bench, a rack for caps and coats. There is ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... air the stallion felt, He whimpers gayly, as if still is Upon his sight his native Scheldt, Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt,— Their waving grass and silver lilies, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the fourth member of the party. The mule bearing the trail pack was in ludicrous contrast to his own aristocratic companions. His long head, with one entirely limp and flopping ear, was grotesquely ugly, the carcass beneath the pack a bone rack, all sharp angles and dusty hide. Looks, however, as his master could ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... bitterly hated him and wished him out of the way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive, and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered, or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,—to be subjected to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter invectives, and provoke ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... is held in the carrier of the press. A is the roll in the carrier. The die is placed on the table or bed B. The roll is held against the die with a pressure of many tons, obtained by compound leverage. By means of the wheel, E, and the connecting pinion and rack, the bed, carrying with it the die, is moved back and forth under the roll. This is called "rocking" and by it the soft steel of the roll is forced into the die and a reverse impression of the design is obtained. The roll is then hardened and, by a reversal of the process, impressions ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... hat-rack, and two waste-baskets filled with little things done up in newspaper, and a little table, and a paste-board box filled with hats, and two mirrors about as tall as David, and a maid's wash-stand, and a bundle of pictures tied up in ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... castles which had formerly belonged to our family. But how should I get thither?—how escape from my small native town?—how rid myself of the burden of my name and my birth? That was the question which put my brain night and day on the rack, and to which my intellect was unable to make a satisfactory reply. An accident, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly, so as to make it last the longer, with tobacco from his leaden jar; and then, having lighted it, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... been, called the same a horse. I wish to protest, in this record, against any such misnomer. The creature possessed no single equine element. Experience has satisfied me that horses stand on four legs; the horse in question stood upon three. Horses may either pace, trot, run, rack, or gallop; but mine made all the five movements at once. I think I may call his gait an eccentric stumble. That he had endurance I admit; for he survived perpetual beating; and his beauty might have been apparent to an anatomist, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of which flowed over from the Germany of Luther's way of thinking to mingle with the growing religious sects in Bohemia. This was not done without torture and bloodshed, so the Hrad[vs]any witnessed the sufferings, under the rack, of Augusta, the Bishop of the Unity of Bohemian Brethren, and the execution of several prominent citizens of Prague for defying royal authority in matters of conscience. Ferdinand, on the abdication of his father, succeeded him as Emperor, and ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... menace. He knew that he could walk backward without obstruction, and find the door without error. Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the meantime the snake's eyes burned with a more ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... room, and so after much perturbation, my brother and I hired a little apartment on Moreland street in Roxbury and moved into it joyously. With a few dollars in my pocket, I went so far as to buy a couple of pictures and a new book rack, the first property I had ever owned, and when, on that first night, with everything in place we looked around upon our "suite," we glowed with such exultant pride as only struggling youth can feel. After years of privation, I had, at last, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... anybody if it don't!" he agreed sympathetically, mentally going over his rack of tires, not quite sure that he had four in that size, but hoping that he had five and that he could persuade the man to invest. He surely needed rubber, thought Casey, as he scrutinized the two casings on the car. He stood aside while the man backed, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... instant she caught sight of him she shrieked and fainted, and the two men sprang at each other like tigers. Knives were drawn in a minute. Then Burnham fled through the hall, snatched a revolver from its rack, and fired the fatal shot. The surgeon from Fort Phoenix reached them early the next morning, a messenger having been despatched from Crocker's ranch before eleven at night, but all his skill could ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Anu, the completer of my mercies in E-KUR, award him a severe malady, a grievous illness, a painful wound, which cannot be healed, of which the physician knows not the origin, which cannot be soothed by the bandage; and rack him with palsy, until she has mastered his life; may she weaken his strength. May the great gods of heaven and earth, the Anunnaki, in their assembly, who look after the halls and the courts of this E-bar-ra (temple of Shamash at Sippara, where the stele was clearly set up), curse with ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... perspiration half blinded me, but one glance upward convinced me that I had sensed the captain's motive when I saw him rush from the side. He was standing on the poop, taking deliberate aim at me with a Winchester rifle that he had taken from the rack ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... world more," were in various prisons waiting their trials. Those who were suspected of being in Elizabeth's confidence were kept with their fate impending over them—to be tempted either with hopes of pardon, or by the rack, to betray their secrets.[259] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... down. "Yes, sir," answered Rock, "when I take my arms." "You must come without them," said Williams. "Oh, I must have my arms, sir," and as Rock stretched out his hand to seize his musket in the arm-rack, Williams shouted, "If you lay one finger on your musket I will cut you down," at the same time drawing his sabre. "Now, go down before me." Rock obeyed, was placed in irons, and within half an hour Clark, O'Brien, and nine other mutineers were embarked for York ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... rack all the next day. It was the last day I should be in England, and I had a nervous dread of being detained. If I should once more succeed in quitting the country undetected, it seemed as though I might hope to be in safety in Calvados. Of Calvados I knew even less ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... entrance of the port; but Heaven had them in its charge, and again they experienced its protecting care. The breeze sent by Our Lady of Utrera rose to a gale, then to a furious tempest; and the grateful Adelantado saw through rack and mist the ships of his enemy tossed wildly among the raging waters as they struggled to gain an offing. With exultation at his heart the skilful seaman read their danger, and saw them in his mind's eye dashed to utter wreck among the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know. That safe contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my keeping. You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will die ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... in turn a good shake or insisting upon a change of position, but at best the lull was temporary. Soon one of the sleepers would give a suppressed snort, to be immediately joined by one after another, until the unearthly chorus once more swelled to rack the quivering ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... believe he did," the clerk answered, for he knew Frank quite well. He looked in the letter rack, and found a slip the night clerk had left, directing that all mail for Mr. Hardman was to be sent to ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... direction of the farm had fallen entirely upon Betty's shoulders. Wilson, the overseer, was in the army, and Hosea had gradually risen to take his place. "We must keep things up," the girl had insisted, "don't let us go to rack and ruin—papa would have hated it so," and, with the negro's aid, she had struggled to keep up the common tenor ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... down and began searching in my bag for some food, when a distant and faint cry struck my ear. I listened; again I heard it. I knew too well what it was. The cry of a pack of wolves. Could they have gained scent of me and be following in my rack? The bare thought of such a thing made me start up, and again set forth at full speed. For what I knew to the contrary, I had both wolves and Indians following me. The wolves were gaining on me, that was certain. I could distinguish the yelps and barks through the still midnight. They might yet ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... on finding a weak spot at which to attack and already a delicate idea was maturing. In the rack above his companion's head was his suitcase, the handle projecting outward. Apparently it was unusually heavy for Barraclough had noticed with what a resonant whack it hit the carriage cushions when thrown ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... the rack at the back of the wagon, because he wished for quiet in which to write a poem to celebrate the occasion, and the others forgot all about him until they drew under the shade of a grove of trees for the noonday ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... hall—then flew back again, leaving the door closed, and standing still and breathless upon the hearth-rug, in the full light of the fire. Voices were heard in the hall, and the rattle of umbrellas in the rack. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... all the bones of my limbs were getting pulled out of their sockets. The weight of the body naturally tending to settle down would, I felt, every moment increase the suffering of this terrible torture, which was really a primitive form of the rack. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... Penny's room was lighted only by the rays of the sinking sun. Against the window Clint saw him in silhouette, his hair wildly ruffled, his violin under his chin, his bow scraping slowly back and forth as he leaned near-sightedly over the sheet of music spread on the rack before him. The strains that issued from the instrument were awful, but there was something fine in the player's absorption and obvious content, and what had started out as a laugh of amusement changed to a sympathetic smile as Clint tiptoed on to ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bewail'd her Virginity. Then we proceeded to the River, which is the South Branch of Rappahannock, about 50 Yards wide, and so rapid that the Ferry Boat is drawn over by a Chain, and therefore called the Rapidan. At night we drank prosperity to all the Colonel's Projects in a Bowl of Rack Punch, and then retired ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... No?" he said, with the slightest taint of bitterness. "Well, well, I have found, Esther, the worst reality is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through which we at first see it darkly—never—not even the rack. I suppose it will be so with death. And by that philosophy the slavery to which we are going must afterwhile become sweet. It pleases me even now to think what a favored man our master is. The fortune ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... turn, Make their own jealousies high-treason, And fix 'm whomsoe'er they please on? Cannot the learned counsel there Make laws in any shape appear? 330 Mould 'em as witches do their clay, When they make pictures to destroy And vex 'em into any form That fits their purpose to do harm? Rack 'em until they do confess, 335 Impeach of treason whom they please, And most perfidiously condemn Those that engag'd their lives for them? And yet do nothing in their own sense, But what they ought by oath and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... small, square room containing a letter rack, a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter. It was fitted up with letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head. The last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with one hand, and throwing a box ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... then to sink down again into the western sea, so gently that the line of shore and sea was indistinguishable. But above, the cloud-procession passed on, shattered by its contact with the mountain, and transfigured as it neared the setting sun into long upward streaming lines of rack, purple and primrose against a saffron sky, while Venus lingered low between cloud and sea, a spark of fire glittering through ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 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 incidents!—Heavens! what a life of ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... I met on the ship a New England minister, who looked upon and considered us from day to day. I used to sit in the stern, the miles stretching me as a rack stretches flesh and tendons. The minister regarded me as prostrated by the spider bite of that wicked Paris; out of which he learned I had come, by talking to ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... large contributions were called for before people knew whether it was likely any thing would be made of the debtor's effects or no, and oftentimes the creditor lost his whole debt, contribution-money and all; so that while the debtor was kept on the rack, as above, being held in suspense by the creditors, or by the commissioners, or both, he spent the creditor's effects, and subsisted at their expense, till, the estate being wasted, the loss fell heavy on every side, and generally most ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... in Sissy's voice that deceived her sister. In the perennial game of "bluff" these two played, each was alert to detect a weakness in the other; and Irene thought she had found one now. Ignoring her professor, she placed "In Sweet Dreams" on the rack before her, and gaily and loudly, and very ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... not be supposed 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 are to ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... already departed, Sire," returned Fouche. "He had an imperative engagement in the Netherlands. In his haste he left his crown hanging on the hat-rack ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... of a few weeks old, had reared her as her own and been tender to her, with the surprising precious tenderness of a reserved, apparently cold nature. Mrs. Comerford had gone to Italy and had never since returned. Perhaps she would never come now, although the place was kept from going to rack and ruin by James Clinch, the butler, and Mrs. Clinch, who had been cook and had married the butler after ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... She really fancied she had sympathised with Hester that dreadful night of Hope's accident: she had then actually believed that she was entering into her sister's feelings. It had been as much like it as seeing a picture of one on the rack is like being racked. But Hester had not had so much cause for misery, for she never had to believe Edward unworthy. Her pride had been wounded at finding that her peace was no longer in her own power; but she had not been trifled with—duped. Here again Margaret refused to believe. The ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... remains of a noble window, beneath which is a gate, which we found locked. Passing on we came to that part where the monks had lived, but which now served as a farmhouse; an open doorway exhibited to us an ancient gloomy hall, where was some curious old-fashioned furniture, particularly an ancient rack, in which stood a goodly range of pewter trenchers. A respectable dame kindly welcomed us and invited us to sit down. We entered into conversation with her, and asked her name, which she said was Evans. I spoke some Welsh to her, which pleased her. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... leave the nest carry, I presume, their hearts with them; not a few humans leave their hearts behind them—too often, alas! to be sent for afterward. The whole round of the world, many a cloud-rack on the ridge of it, and many a mist on the top of that, rises between them and the eyes and hearts which gave their very life that they might live. Some as they approach middle age, some only when they are old, wake up to ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... of La Mancha, there lived one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who keep a lance in the rack, an ancient target, a lean horse, and a greyhound for coursing. His family consisted of a housekeeper turned forty, a niece not twenty, and a man who could saddle a horse, handle the pruning-hook, and also serve in the house. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... settled, the fair clients fell off; the portfolios were returned with "thanks;" the drawings, so lately pronounced "perfect loves," and gazed upon as though worthy the creation of a Rubens, were now to be found doubled up in the card-rack, or transfixed by two or three pins on the cushion of a work-table; the three-cornered missives circulated in other channels; and the man of Taste found ample leisure once more to speak to a friend in the avenue, or fall quietly into the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... windows shine upon the black And hideous structure of the guillotine; Beside the haloed countenance of saints There hangs the multiple and knotted lash. The Christ of love, benign and beautiful, Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conceived And bigotry sustained. The prison cell, With blood-stained walls, where starving men went mad, Lies under ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... enough!" announced the stranger. "Cycled over directly I read your letter. Stars and stripes! You've got yourself into a jolly old mess! Hope they haven't tortured you yet! I suppose they still use the rack and the thumbscrew in this benighted country? Cheero! ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil |
