"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of their ever ringing a valley about with armed warriors and starving to death the women and children within. Victims for the gods were struck down without warning, so that they might not suffer even the pangs of anticipation. The thumb-screw and rack of Christendom struck with horror those of my cannibal friends ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... or three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... his half hour Hassell was back again. "Not much to report," he said deprecatingly. "The envelope addressed to me was delivered just before eleven o'clock, and put in the H box of the letter rack. It was gone when I looked, of course, but who took it remains to be discovered. About thirty members had gone in and out. Practically everybody stops at the letter rack. I have a list of those who passed in and out as well as the doorkeeper ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... 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, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... small,—probably not nearly as large in proportion as the number of criminals and political prisoners who, in some countries of Europe, at about the same time, were subjected to the equally cruel torments of the rack and the wheel. These criminals and other prisoners were so tortured because they were regarded as the enemies of society. The motives which actuated the Iroquois were precisely the same. As has been before remarked, the mode in which their enemies carried on their warfare with them ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... would not call thee back, Dear Childhood, lest the sight of me, Thine old companion, on the rack Of Age, should ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... the ancient forms which inhabited the land or the seas, bringing them together, bone to his bone, till Leviathan and Behemoth stand before us in bodily presence and in their full proportions, and we almost tremble lest these dry bones should live again! Let them put nature to the rack, and torture her, in all her forms, to the betrayal of her inmost secrets and confidences. They need not forbear. The foundations of the round world have been laid so strong that ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... last. I went through passages. I found myself in a nondescript room where a courteous official seated at a desk held me on the rack for half an hour. I had to describe Carlotta: not in the imagery wherein only one could create an impression of her sweetness, but in the objective terms of the police report. What was she wearing? A hat, and jacket, a skirt, shoes; of course she wore ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the thing on your own responsibility, of course it's your privilege to pass it up to those who have the authority. In that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, Dick, for the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... and Noll left his seat and went groping his way along the dark, echoing hall, through the dimly-lighted dining-room to the library-door. Entering, he found his uncle still seated before the organ, but with his head bent forward upon the music-rack, and apparently lost in deep thought, for he did not look up till Noll stood beside him. Trafford made a faint ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... and to sanction his prodigalities to a certain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings too closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some steward will come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everything go to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of English ministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objects of statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to make the two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriotism. He founded, if we may use such ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... 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 bodily pain at all—but the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... had the same, if not more tender inclinations for him than ever, the latter of which he had long since ceased to hope, was sufficient to have overwhelmed even the most phlegmatic person with an excess of joy:—but then the dark expressions in both these letters put his brain on the rack.—The baron had seemed to refer to an explanation of what he darkly hinted at in the letter of Dorilaus, but that he found rather more obsolete: he could imagine nothing farther than that Dorilaus having resolved to make him his heir, as he remembered some people said before ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... 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 breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... uncertain evil. I really cannot discover either the use or the virtue of tormenting one's self by anticipation. I should think it quite as rational to case myself in a suit of mail, by way of security to my person, as to keep my mind perpetually on the rack of anticipating evil. I perfectly agree with that philosopher who says, if we confine ourselves to general reflections on the evils of life, that can have no effect in preparing us for them; and if we bring them home to us, that ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when all ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... for you," he said to Hamilton, "if I have to put every man, woman and child in this town on the rack. It lies, I think, between Miss Roussillon and the priest, although both insistently deny it. I've thought it over in every way, and I can't see how they can both be ignorant of where it is, or at least ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... cordial and hearty; Mr. Hamlin's somewhat restrained. But, at Brown's urgent request, he followed him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small room looking out upon the stable-yard. It was plainly furnished with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... 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^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... torture of being threatened to be tortured; secondly, the torture of being conveyed to the place of torture; thirdly, the torture of being, and bound for torture; fourthly, the torture of being hoisted on the torturing rack; and fifthly, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... unfaithful to the truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freer, till thou wake refresh'd, Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl [6] Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... but comprehendingly, for he hastily flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not in bottles. And it would shake the roots of them old poplars clean most down ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... put to tending mules instead. He had no more idea of caring for a mule than he had for performing a delicate operation on the brain and, as a consequence, when inspection day came around, the hip bones of the animals he had cared for could be used as a hat rack and the officer ordered them shot and buried. The cook's thrift again came to the front. "Grant, I'll tell ye what I'll do, if ye'll help me take the carcasses to an abattoir we'll sell them for forty ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... escape him. Between the various tortures to which he was subjected, while the officers were resting, he conversed quietly and in a modest manner. While they were lacerating him every now and then he raised his bloody head from the rack and said, "Ecce homo." Several times he thanked the judges for the nourishment he had received, and wrote his confessions with ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... was boiling busily when she had bathed and dressed. Each detail of her domestic schedule was given an extra care this morning. The stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed in its rack with a precision that spoke an unusual joy within the heart of ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... of all the men in the world. And this was the cause why the martyrs of Jesus did so slight both the promises of their adversaries, when they would have overcome them, with proffering the great things of this world unto them, and also their threatenings, when they told them they would rack them, hang them, burn them (Acts 20:24). None of these things could prevail upon them, or against them; because they did most really believe the Scriptures, and the things contained in them, as is clearly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Indeed so I am, but my joints have been so oft stretched on the rack that I cannot go far ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... actually more than two-thirds owner. This is a matter of cash and not of theory, for the tenants' rights are at this moment worth more than double the fee-simple of the land itself. What will the Gladstonian party who prate about Rack-rents say to this?" ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... do not know what I can commence for a business in the spring. My brain is constantly on the rack with the study, and I can't relieve myself of it. The future, taking its completion from the state of my health or mind, is alternately beaming in sunshine or over- shadowed with clouds; but mostly cloudy, as you may suppose. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... made a rush down stairs for the gun-rack. Only three were loaded. Catching up one of these, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... was sitting moodily by the fire and his wife's face was sternly set. They are not an emotional people in the dales, and her trouble was too deep for useless tears, but as she glanced about the room all she saw wakened poignant memories. The old china in the rack had been her mother's; she had brought it and the black oak meal-chest to Mireside thirty years since. The copper kettles and jelly-pan were wedding presents, and Tom, her son, who died in Australia, had sent the money to buy ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the testimony of free citizens voluntarily given; of slaves, wrung from them by torture; and of written documents. The best advocates, as for instance Cicero in his Milo, were not disposed, any more than we should be, to attach much weight to evidence obtained by the rack; but in estimating the other two sources they differed from us. We should give the preference to written documents; the Romans esteemed more highly the declarations of citizens. These offered a grander field for the display of ingenuity and misrepresentation; it is, therefore, in handling these ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... delighted," he answered: "thank you for persuading Miss Moore to stay over for another week." Mrs. Tremont smiled, she could smile if she were on the rack; but she assured herself that she was done with poverty-stricken beauties till Grace and Maud were married, at least. For years she had been planning a match ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... court at last, and came to the place of punishment. Many a piteous sight and sound was there—cracking of whips, shrieks of the burning, rack and gibbet and wheel; Chimera tearing, Cerberus devouring; all tortured together, kings and slaves, governors and paupers, rich and beggars, and all repenting their sins. A few of them, the lately dead, we recognized. These would turn ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... ROCK.—The party returned from this place on the 13th, late in the afternoon, bringing specimens of the native copper. They were nine hours in getting to the forks, and continued the rest of the day in getting to the rack, where they encamped. They had been four hours in descending what required nine in going up. The doctor brought several fine and large masses of the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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 might ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... that she attempted to do could distract her mind or dispel her loneliness. The book which she had taken up over and over again lay with its face down upon the table. The harpsichord was open, but the music on its rack was tossed and tumbled. Zulma was a good musician and passionately fond of her instrument, but could not abide it when her spirits were depressed. She used to declare that, even in her best moods, the simplest melody had for her a tinge of sadness, which, when she herself was sorrowful, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... of our social feeling; by our practical solidarity with our fellow-men. If we lived in the presence of hunger, loneliness, and oppression, in the same country with child labor, race contempt, the long day, rack rents, prostitution, just earnings withheld by power, the price of living raised to swell swollen profit—if we saw such things and remained ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... from one man or from a society of the people,—when men are disposed to persecute. Power is always right; weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic: whether exercised in throwing its opposers into a bastile; burning them at the stake; torturing them on a rack; beheading them with a guillotine; or taking them off, as at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, at a general sweep. Power is the same in Turkey as in America. When the will of man is raised above law, it is always tyranny and despotism, whether ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... the military situation. The supply-ships, upon which the British scheme of operations depended, had been forced to take flight when Suffren first approached, and of course could not come back now. "My mind is on the rack without a moment's rest since the departure of the fleet," wrote the commanding general on the 25th, "considering the character of M. de Suffren, and the infinite superiority on the part of the French now that we are ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... for even then the feeling Came o'er me, that thou never couldst be mine! And in the cloud of sadness, gently stealing Like a dim shadow o'er that brow of thine, I read my destiny. Oh! life can bring No darker doom—no wo that may inherit So much of bitterness—no rack to ring With deeper ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... themselves that the earthquakes, inundations and pestilences were attributable to it. To these incitements was added a desire to seize the property of the faithful confiscated by the law. Of this the early Christians unceasingly and bitterly complained. But the rack, the fire, wild beasts were unavailingly applied. Out of the very persecutions themselves advantages arose. Injustice and barbarity bound the pious but feeble communities ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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 impressive contrast to the demoralized ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... as saying, in 1631, "Treat the heads of the church, the judges, or me, as you treat those unhappy ones [accused of witchcraft], subject any of us to the same tortures, and you will discover that we are all sorcerers."[550] He quoted an inquisitor who boasted that if he could get the pope on the rack he would prove him a sorcerer.[551] In the thirteenth century "judges were well convinced of the failure of the procedure with its secret and subjective elements, but they could not in any ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... way he came, went out of the front door and through the garden to where the pony was made fast, and led him away in search of a stable. He found one behind the house, and filling the rack with hay, returned to the house and seated himself at a porch which was at the door which led to the back premises, for the keeper's house was large and commodious. Edward was in deep thought, when he was roused by the little girl, the daughter of the newly-appointed ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... because Thou gavest me life, and led to that which made That life for once delicious. O, great sir, The King's thy foe? Surrounded by his guards I would waylay him. Hast thou some fierce rival? I'll pluck his heart out. Yea! there is no peril I'd not confront, no rack I'll not endure, No great offence commit, to do thee service— So thou wilt spare me this, and spare thy ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... crimes Full heart-deep, and Heaven's judgments were not scant. Inquire still less, what signifies a church Of perfect inspiration and pure laws Who burns the first man with a brimstone-torch, And grinds the second, bone by bone, because The times, forsooth, are used to rack and scorch! What is a holy Church unless she awes The times down from their sins? Did Christ select Such amiable times to come and teach Love to, and mercy? The whole world were wrecked If every mere great man, who lives to reach A little leaf of popular respect, Attained ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... comprehend the anguish of my feelings. To be disjointed and torn piecemeal by the rack was a torment inexpressibly inferior to this. Nothing excites my wonder but that I did not expire before the cart had ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends are in half the cases, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... him and the shores bear part That reared him when the bright south world was black With fume of creeds more foul than hell's own rack, Still darkening more love's face with loveless art Since Paul, faith's fervent Antichrist, of heart Heroic, haled the world vehemently back From Christ's pure path on dire Jehovah's track, And said to dark Elisha's Lord, 'Thou art.' But one whose soul had put ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... still. In the shadow of a great bare rock he saw two staring eyes that shone like gleaming fires, now green, now red, and he knew that they were the eyes of a wolf. There was a low growl as of distant thunder. Then the moon's light shot through a rack of cloud, and he saw the form of the wolf standing out clear and black against the grey rock. He fixed an arrow to his bowstring; but at the sound of the creaking bow the wolf gave a sharp yelp and disappeared into ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... dark, narrow staircase, he opened a green baize door at the top, and ushered us into a tolerably large room, lighted by a sky-light, immediately under which stood the billiard-table. On one side was placed a rack, containing a formidable arrangement of cues, maces, etc., while at the farther end two small dials, with a brass hand in the centre for the purpose of marking the scores of the different players, were fixed against the wall. As we entered, two persons who were ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... little wistfully of the morning she had made this same trip dressed in one of Mrs. Gay's gowns. On her knees Mrs. Gay's canary, extinguished beneath the black silk cover to his cage, uttered from time to time a feeble pipe of inquiry, and on the rack above her head Mrs. Gay's tea basket rattled loudly in a sudden lurch of the train. Since the hour in which she had left the overseer's cottage and moved into the "big house" at Jordan's Journey, the appealing little lady had been the dominant influence in her ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... the Sacristy. But you should think no more about it. In any case, what the Minister proposed was impossible, therefore you must dismiss it from your mind. To ask a wife to reveal the secrets of her husband would be tyranny worse than the rack. Besides, it would be uncanonical, and your Holiness ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but then I should be, as tortured upon a rack for whole days together. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... Then she moved away from the table to the range. There was a toasting-fork on the rack, and she began to ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... constant terror of 'the Barbadoes,' to which all Cromwell's prisoners were subject, a Royalist in the Tower mentions, in a pencilled letter, that he had been threatened with torture; and that the Protector himself used the menace of the rack rests on the evidence of another prisoner's brother.—'Clarendon Papers,' ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... ordinary bachelor's rooms, and you will have the normal appearance of Jaffery's home. As I knew he did not want me to dust his books and pictures (such as they were) or to make order out of a chaos, of old newspapers, or to put his pipes in the rack or to remove spurs and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which reposed—most useful piece of furniture—in the middle of the hearth-rug, or to see to the comfortless electric radiator ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... continually tortured with the belief that his success in life had not equalled his merits. As AEnone entered, he was bending over a shield, and earnestly engaged in burnishing its brazen mouldings. At his side leaned a short sword, awaiting similar attention, and in a rack beside him were a number of weapons of different varieties and sizes, which had already submitted to his restorative skill, and now shone ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and thirst are two things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!—What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.—For you to drink,—said the torturer to the little woman.—She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The torturer knew better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Loony," he announced as he put his cue back in the rack. He spoke slowly and calmly. But Loony's quick gaze circled the room, promptly checking over every ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... their little son Kosanza, a boy of thirteen, curled up in his quilt between them. The light in the night-lamp was at its last flicker, but, peering through the gloom, he could just see the Prince's famous Muramasa sword lying on a sword-rack in the raised part of the room: so he crawled stealthily along until he could reach it, and stuck it in his girdle. Then, drawing near to Sanza, he bestrode his sleeping body, and, brandishing the sword made a thrust at his throat; but in his excitement his hand shook, so that he ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... dungeons of Naples. They had been spoken by the Inquisitors who came to Italy with one of the Spanish princes. Instantly he recalled the scene where first he had listened to them—the dungeon draped in black—the white-hot irons which had seared his flesh; the rack which had maimed his limbs, the masked men who ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... "Listen! 'If, by any wabbling of the rack, the pressure were to be suddenly relieved, the gas from one bag might be sucked into the other, with the result ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... a good mahogany table in the middle of the cabin. Behind him were a bunk, two chairs and a rack of small arms, containing half a dozen guns, four brace of pistols, and several swords. He had been reading a book, evidently one of the score or more which stood in a case on the right. Jeremy gasped, for he had never seen so many books in ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... side. Here a rope, which had been cut by the French fire, was hanging overboard, and, grasping this, they climbed up to a port-hole. The deck was deserted, all hands having rushed up to meet the attack of the French boarders. Without a moment's delay they snatched cutlasses from a rack and ran up the companion to the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... scarcely disappeared than Mumps came forth from behind a hall rack which stood close ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... in evidence and defense counsel did not thereafter move for its exclusion. Although compulsory processes of justice may be used to call the accused as a witness and to require him to testify, "compulsion by torture to extort a confession is a different matter. * * * The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand."[881] Again, in Chambers v. Florida[882] the Court, with no mention of the privilege against self-incrimination, proclaimed that due process is denied when convictions of murder are obtained in State courts by the use ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the black-robed fathers of the Holy Office were leisurely gentlemen, giving their victims plenty of time for anticipatory meditation, laying out their utensils quietly, inspecting the thumb-screw affectionately to make sure that it would work smoothly, discussing the rack and wheel with much tender forethought, as though torture were a sweet thing, to be reserved like a little girl's candy lamb, and only resorted to when the appetite has been duly whetted by contemplation. I never had the pleasure of knowing an inquisitor, and I can ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... cross, they die. We see two stakes of wood, the felon's shame, They see a halo round one matchless Name. To powers of earth, and hell, and torture blind, In death, for Him they love, they rapture find. They joy in agony,—our gain their loss, To die for Christ they count the world but dross: Our rack their crown, our pain their highest pleasure, And in the world's contempt they find their treasure. ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... leaf that had bedecked the trees was lying upon the ground, its brightness soiled and tarnished. The cloud rack hung above, a vault of gloom in which ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... ages of darkness, devil-worship, and polytheism (in its grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest against all. Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words embodied the central confession of Judaism, "O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord." Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more central truth, "God is love," had to all appearance ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... The farewell rack'd poor Lucy's heart, Nor pain'd her lover less; And Fido, when he saw them part, Seem'd full ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... some pigeon on the roof, giving food to its little one, or some coachman down in the street who is abusing his horse. Sometimes they even maliciously propose one of those alarming questions that put the minds of parents on the rack; all this to divert attention from the distressing topic. I fear that in the face of duty we are big children, and, when that is the theme, seek ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... Pain. 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); ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and coat on the rack in the hall and walked slowly into the living room. Dropping into his favorite chair, he shook his head ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... the side and tied his mount to an old horse-rack, and then walked up the wide front steps as if each lift were an event. He turned the handle of the big door without much hope that it would yield, but it opened willingly, and he stood inside. ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Again and again, with all solemnity, the Royalists had declared that were they to return as conquerors no stone of Paris should be left standing on another, and that the inhabitants should expire in the ashes of their homes on the rack ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... room: "Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom window commands a perfect view—the still grey lagune, the few seagulls flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently all the ruins are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... gale. Being fixed 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), ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... neighbouring houses. They are changed every twenty-four hours. He had rather a hard time of it last night with a company from the Faubourg St. Antoine. As a rule, however, he says they are decent, orderly men. They complain very much that their business is going to rack and ruin; when they are away from their shops, they say, impecunious patriots come in to purchase goods of their wives, and promise to call another day to pay for them. On Saturday night the butler reports 300 National Guards were drawn up before ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Polluted through their fall; And those once sacred mansions were now Mere emptiness and show. This made the angel call at reeds and thatch, Yet where the shepherds watch, And God's own lodging, though he could not lack, To be a common rack. No costly pride, no soft-clothed luxury In those thin cells could lie; Each stirring wind and storm blew through their cots, Which never harbored plots; Only content and love and humble joys Lived there without all noise; Perhaps some harmless cares for the next day Did in ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... spoke sharply. Days at the camp were always a trial to her. The crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing, groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. But at night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... in his Province, which he sent to the Speaker of the Long Parliament, with an urgent request that they might be returned to him, with authority to proceed against the parties named, as outlaws. In Leinster, 4,000 similar indictments were found in the course of two days by the free use of the rack with witnesses. Sir John Read, an officer of the King's Bedchamber, and Mr. Barnwall, of Kilbrue, a gentleman of threescore and six, were among those who underwent the torture. When these were the proceedings ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... under surface is plastered like the rest. With large blocks it is often necessary to paste into the jacket, on upper or both sides, boards, scantling or sticks of wood to secure additional rigidity. For should the block "rack," or become shattered inside, even though no fragments were lost, the specimen would be more ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... all the great, except one woman, the Queen of Navarre, who, having nothing but the title, had advanced to Niort in order to lend a hand to the afflicted and to affairs in general. This old man, worn down by fever, endured all these causes of anguish and many others that came to rack him more painfully than his grievous wound. As he was being borne along in a litter, Lestrange, an old nobleman, and one of his principal counsellors, travelling in similar fashion, and wounded likewise, had his own litter, where the road was broad, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and through the door. Men retire so from the presence of the great, for greatness is power and power is a menace. He knew that he could walk backward 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 mean time the snake's eyes burned with a more ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the rack, and at the first turn of the screw promised to confess everything. Then the lawyers put a number of questions to her, and Esmeralda answered "Yes" in every case. It was plain that her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... his mother left it. I could almost see the big rough hand go out to comfort the little fledgling in the dark. I choked still further, and turned hurriedly out on to the low, wide old porch that ran all the way across the back of the house and which apparently was bath-room, refrigerator, seed-rack as to its beams, and the general depositing-place of the farm; but not before I had remarked, hanging by his door, a grass basket I had woven for Sam to bring locust pods to the hollyhock family. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the great man's family life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to be a most ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... thought he must have stumbled; but before I could say anything, or even get to him, he called out, "All right, Nan! nurse will be there in a minute," adding impatiently to me: "What are you gaping at? Get on your hat—it's on the hat rack—and rush for Dr. Archard as fast as you can. Tell him father's very ill, and to come at ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... ornamental kind of hard fortune pursue you every day you rise, you desavin' villain, that would have me turn informer, bekase your brother-in-law, rack-rintin' Moore's stables and horses were burnt; and to crown all, make the innocent childre the means of hanging their own fathers or brothers, you rap of the divil! but I'd see you and all your breed in the flames o' hell ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... about Puttel's playing on the piano," said Maud, anxious to efface the memory of her momentary weakness. "Polly points to the right key with a little stick, and Puttel sits on the stool and pats each key as it 's touched, and it makes a tune. It 's so funny to see her, and Nick perches on the rack and sings as if ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... porter was cooking up my attack of insomnia I went out in the smoking-room to drown my sorrow, but I found such a bunch of sorrow killers out there ahead of me that I had to hold the comb and brush in my lap and sit up on the towel rack while I ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... in the spare room. Don't wake her," cautioned the mother, who, to prevent even a hat falling, had secured Martin's things and was putting them on the rack. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... told how the "Wynde hurled the Battayle"—Rowleian for a small boat—"agaynste an Heck." Heck in this and other passages was a puzzle. From the context it obviously meant "rock," but where did Chatterton get it? Mr. Skeat explains this. Heck is a provincial word signifying "rack," i.e., "hay-rack"; but Kersey misprinted it "rock," and Chatterton followed him. A typical instance of the kind of error that Chatterton was perpetually committing was his understanding the "Listed, bounded," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... commanded, "Come, then, and sit here upon this rock; and give to me an account of all that thou hast done since I left thee in the rose garden or I will split thy ears and stretch thy soul upon a torture rack ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Bonnet entered the house on her return from the Farm, she was conscious of some sort of scurrying just inside the sitting-room. She looked about wonderingly as she hung her hat and coat on the hall rack, but could see nothing unusual. The hat, hung insecurely, fell off its peg, and she turned from the sitting-room to pick it up. The next moment a pair of strong arms enveloped her and a deep pleasant voice was saying, "Merry Christmas, ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... person of my size could swallow it all." The executioner said not a word, but began taking off her cloak and all her other garments, until she was completely naked. He then led her up to the wall and made her sit on the rack of the ordinary question, two feet from the ground. There she was again asked to give the names of her accomplices, the composition of the poison and its antidote; but she made the same reply as to the doctor, only adding, "If you do not believe me, you ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that conflict, voice and breath spent, down he sank as in death. Dead weary he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains he felt in all his veins were little less than those which one feels that has endured the torture of the rack. But when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up, and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird had given him, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... at his lodgings announced the hour as close on five, and he mentally noted that the timepiece was inaccurate—three and a half minutes behind Greenwich. As usual, the hall was untenanted, with no servant to answer questions. He searched the dark recesses of a dirty letter-rack, on the chance that he might find a telegram from his wife waiting for him. Then he went gaily up the interminable staircase, making nothing now of its five flights, enjoying their steepness as productive of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendor on my brow; But out, alack! he was but one hour mine; The region cloud hath mask'd him from me ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... 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, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... inward guilt supprest, No quiet could I find; Thy wrath lay burning in my breast, And rack'd ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... affections of the cultivators, whom they never saw or wished to see; and they let out the village, or other subdivision of their estates, to second parties quite as little interested, who again let them out to others, so that the system of rack-renting went on over the whole area of the immense possession. This was a system 'more honoured in the breach than in the observance'; for, as the great landholders became involved in the ruin of their cultivators, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... time perished at the stake; they hung on gibbets; they agonized upon the rack; they died under the steel of the tormentor. It was the heroism of our fathers' day that swam the unknown seas; froze in the woods; starved with want and cold; fought battles with the red right hand. It is the sainthood and heroism of our ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Hignett laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, nothing. Nothing much. Nothing to signify. Only my heart's broken." He eyed with considerable malignity the bottle of water in the rack above his head, a harmless object provided by the White Star Company for clients who might desire to clean ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... goes through it. Constant and steady use of the faculties under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... had made excellent use of lessons learned in her few previous long journeys, took off her hat and gloves and placed them in a paper bag which Bob put in the rack ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... of his so doing. So he began and said, This night, as I was in my sleep I dreamed, and behold the heavens grew exceeding black; also it thundered and lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds rack at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven—they were all in flaming fire; also the heavens were in a burning flame. I heard then a voice saying, "Arise, ye dead, and come ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in, remained unacknowledged, and the enormous padlocks and bolts having been thoroughly fastened, Seoul was severed from the outer world till the following morning. Adjoining the gate stood the gatekeeper's house, and in front of the door of this, a rack with a few rusty and obsolete spears standing in a row, was left to take care of the town and its inhabitants, while the guardians, having finished the work of the day, retreated to the warm room inside to resume the game or gambling which the setting sun had ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... said this she lifted the old rifle out of the rack over the door and rubbed her hand over the barrel to get the sight clear. 'I am not going to tell you to go ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the old man warned his wife that he was going to shoot and not to be frightened. Then taking his old muzzle-loader, which was always kept ready, from among the lesser weapons which stood in the gun-rack, he poked the muzzle through the crack and fired it into the air. True he had thought there might be some one adrift. But even a prophet could not have imagined that what did happen could have done so. For the sound of the explosion had ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell |
