"Ruck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the fields. ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... figure, tawny and red, fought its way to the surface. A great tossing head, bloody past recognition, flung out from the ruck. One quick glance he shot from his ragged eyes at the little flying form in front; then with a roar like a waterfall plunged toward it, shaking off the bloody leeches ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... So long as "BERTA RUCK" will write for us such pretty books as Sweethearts Unmet (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), we need never feel ourselves dependent on America for our supply of sugary novels. This home-grown variety is just as sweet, and really, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... demanded with whip and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man's control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... It had never struck them that we should want to sleep in a place like De Aar. Disgusted, we tried the hotel. Here they loosed dogs on us and turned out the guard. Still more disgusted, we returned to our bedding, and sardined in with the ruck and ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... strolling slowly to the table-land. A few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but the ruck of people—women and children were hidden in the thicket. They had no desire to face the first anger of Jan Chinn ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the new cotton flannel, may, any of them, be used to make it. For the winter season it will be found to supply a great increase in warmth, and, to the invalid, a great comfort, as it fits closely, will not form creases, nor "ruck up," as the ordinary nightgown always does, to the discomfort ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the mess and ruck of common life that denned ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... out of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive confidence, his gaiety—to judge from his companions' laughter—infectious. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... what is known as the Timourid age—the age beloved above all others by discerning connoisseurs—and it is tempting to assign to this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr. Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398; yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. Rather, I ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... operation of gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash himself with his knife while attempting to operate on the tail of a skate. Either accident may be slight or it ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... in short, up to its own high and difficult standards. And along had come a ruck of stuff that was dark and dingy and old-fashioned; awkward articles with a vast dull expanse of mahogany, ending in clumsy claw feet; spindle-legged tables inlaid with white wood; old-fashioned mirrors in scarred gilt frames; awkward-looking highboys and the plainest ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... she slept, The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan: A stranger, mother-naked, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he did not feel hurt or unhappy. He was in his most philosophical mood when he reached his aerodrome. He had a cause for gratification in that she knew his name. Evidently, it was something to be a sergeant if by so being you stand out from the ruck of men. As to her name he had neither thought it opportune nor ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... Among them is one showing a shod hoof; but he knows that has not been made by his master's horse, the bar being larger and broader, with the claw more deeply indented. Besides, he sees not the pony's tracks—though they are or were there—and have been trodden out by the ruck of the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... quarter-pole Kay had worked her mount easily up through the ruck to contend with Peep-sight. The half-thoroughbred was three years old and his muscles had been hardened by many a wild scramble up and down the hills of El Palomar; he was game, he was willing, and for half a mile he was ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... there is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it accessible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... One survives by dint of its prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing of the sums ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... reach-me-down Nut with a dislocated neck, being made love to by six chorus-girls at once, that he condescended to take a look at me through the peephole. Then he ran up to me, gave my chin another hitch, pulled my neck another foot or two out of my collar, added a ruck or two to my sleeves, and said he liked the other side of my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... London in a lifetime. Rowley, as no doubt you've heard, has just accepted a slum parish in Shoreditch. Well, he wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself. You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic pilgrims. There'll be nothing but the thought of our Blessed Lord to keep you struggling on, only that, only ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Sir Edmund said, "Who has the right or the wrong o' this thing? Cromwell stands for the people's cause, Charles is crowned by the ancient laws; English meadows are sopping red, Englishmen striking each other dead,— Times are black as a raven's wing. Out of the ruck and the murk I see Only one thing! The King has trusted his banner to me, And I ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... will have passed through school without emerging in any way from the common ruck of ordinary boys. He will have left at a comparatively early age in order that his education may no longer be neglected, and will have betaken himself to the fostering care of one of the numerous establishments which exist ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... cleared to the gate but two—Donald, the big white horse, and my Jack. They stood solitary, one here, one there. I began to get interested, for I thought Jack was off his feed. In came the man with the bucket and all the ruck of curious horses at his tail. Right round he went to where Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, and the majestic Donald ate it, and the ruck of common horses followed the man. On he went to the second station, Jack's (J. in the plan), and poured out a feed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mystery. And I still incline to Percy's opinion. Olga is always wonderful to me. Her lips are such a soft and melting red, the red of perfect animal health. The very milkiness of her skin is an advertisement of that queenly and all-conquering vitality which lifts her so above the ordinary ruck of humanity. And her great ruminative eyes are as clear and ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... see a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are feats of about an equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl himself scarlet ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their enjoyment, and try in all ways to win their favor and cut you out, you have the sat isfaction at any rate of keeping them to yourself, though you lose the pleasures which arise from being sought after, and made much of for their sakes, and feeling raised above the ruck of your neighbors. On the other hand, if they are all like this, you might as well try to keep the sunshine and air to yourself. Universal human nature rises up against you; and besides, they will not stand it themselves. And, indeed, why should they? Women, to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to lift herself from the common ruck of the aristocracy by outshining the others in charities and in splendors. She soon grew weary of the everlasting appeals for money to send to Europe. She grew weary of writing checks and putting on costumes for bazaars, spectacles, parades, and carnivals. She found ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... against the side of a tree like a target, where it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts abound, being "more ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... o' this Injun fry-pan fust, old hoss! I could lick my own weight in wild-cats, but this ruck o' Injuns is jest ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... them, he gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of what ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and made him ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the blatant clamour, of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... was to come one way or the other—you couldn't put up much longer with such a puke-stocking as my precious brother-in-law. (That's one of the great points of Shakespeare, Davy, my lad—perhaps you haven't noticed it—you get such a ruck of bad names out of him for the asking! Puke-stocking is good—real good. If it wasn't made for a sanctimonious hypocrite of a Baptist like Purcell it ought to have been.) And "Spanish-pouch" too! Oh, I love "Spanish-pouch"! When I've called ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... that I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... in my power," she answered slowly. "Until he has fallen back again to the ruck. Until he has tasted a little of the misery from which at least he might have saved ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the recognized fact that these men were enemies, my heart throbbed, almost in pride, as I watched them pass. They were Americans, and magnificent fighting men. I had seen them, or their fellows, in the ruck and toil of battle, playing with death, smiling in the face of defeat. Now they were marching grimly forward to another clash of arms, through the blinding dust, heedless of all else but duty. This ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... corporation, Mr. Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a free ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... way back to the wagons, gasping and bloody. Some of the Tories crowding around us raised a white flag. The major, sorely wounded now and all but disabled, swore a great oath and rode rough-shod into the ruck of cowering militiamen to pull down the flag. Again the white token of surrender was raised, and again the major rode in to beat it down with his sword. At this Captain de Peyster put in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... excellent chances. He's head and shoulders above the ruck of black-and-white artists. He makes wonderfully good comics. He'll have no trouble getting into the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... not be much to say against him, seeing that it is nothing but the ordinary professorial or academic mind, and I suppose that the only difference between Freeman and the ruck of the professors was that he was more impulsive or articulate and had a greater ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the Deutsche Tageszeitung, and the Berliner Neueste Nachrichten are the property of Junker reactionists, or else, like the Lokal Anzeiger, the Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who "casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics, the prophet of a great, strong ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... and drink, merry-go-rounds and fiddlers, and an immense concourse of every condition of folk, black slaves and water-side Indians, squatters from the woods, farmers from all the valleys, and the scum and ruck of the plantations. I found some of my friends, and settled my business with them, but my eyes were always straying to the green awning where I knew that ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... for God, that it is reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very presence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more who would fain be so, and some who are. And from this comes the ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... we can go marching on in seven-league boots! There's a kingliness about you. Listen to the things I say to you unconsciously! I can't say the pretty, graceful, soft things we say to women! There's a kingliness, Marcella—not only about you, but about me too. We're not the common ruck. You're ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... instantly, and, I regret to say, was no more reconciled to our presence than he had been on the previous occasion; but he showed his displeasure in a different way. He rushed about in the trees, crying, "cuck-a-ruck, cuck-a-ruck," running out even to the tip of slender branches that seemed too slight to bear his weight. When his feelings entirely overcame him he flew away, and though we remained fifteen minutes, no one came ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... and fear went up from all the throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and yelling, "Aim ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had put a stamp on him, and distinguished him from the ordinary ruck of men—these and his undeniable ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... and had always loved her, since the days they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never a word had ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller's dreadful stamp; the lips were bloodless; the eyes were wide, lucent, something like ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... something more than the workman. He was on the way to perceive that, in certain insignificant things, such as imagination, reading, insight, and general faculty, not to mention conscience, generosity, and goodness of heart, Richard was out of sight before the ruck of gentlemen. He saw already that in some things, thought a good deal of at his college, Richard was more capable than himself. He found in him too what seemed to him a rare notion of art. In truth Richard's advance in this region was as yet but small, for he was guided only ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... soon rise to a higher level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... understood things better than he did himself. He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents. He had been a useful man,—and would still have remained so had he not been lifted a little too high. Had he been only one in the ruck on the Treasury Bench he would have been useful to the end; but special honour and special place had been assigned to him, and therefore he desired still bigger things. The Duke's mediocrity of talent and of energy and of general governing power had been so often mentioned of late in ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... had been spending the previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen. At last he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home overland minus his vessel. He afterwards joined the service of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... "It's very kind of you to come here—very. My daughter—" he hesitated. He finished the sentence by drawing up a chair and clearing its seat of the ruck of morning papers. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... those men come to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that carries them on to reaches of inward sanctification that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, and are incapable ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... peace of shocked Foundations flew Before his ribald questionings. He broke the Oracles in two, And bared the paltry wires and strings. He headed desert wanderings, He led his soul, his cause, his clan A little from the ruck of Things. 'Once on a ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... race. Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colours moved up with great ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... had had no love-affairs. Instinctively she had held herself aloof from the ruck of the young mountain-men, neither she nor they knew why, unless it was because she owned the valley land and so was what the mountain folk called rich. Most of them had tried to pay her court, but none of them, save Joe, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... "Mr. Ruck, sir," says I, "is the Tory solicitor, and Messrs. Hodge and Smithers the Liberals." I knew them very well, for the fact is, before Mary Smith came to live in our parts, I was rather partial to Miss Hodge, and her great ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he remembered well enough the solemnity with which she had always alluded to the fact, in the course of domestic discussions. Who the Stormonts were he could not recall that he had ever learned, but his mother had been very clear indeed about their superiority to the usual ruck of people. He would ask his sister whether she knew anything about them. In the meantime there was no denying that Stormont was a fine-sounding name. He reflected that it was his own middle name—and, on the instant, fancy ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for his sake—all hopes ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... restless death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... this long row of shops was crowded almost dangerously. Magnificent dray horses, with long hair on the fetlocks above their big heavy hoofs, bridling in conscious pride of silver-mounted harness and curled or braided manes, rose above the ruck as their ancestors, the warhorses, must have risen in medieval battle. The crowd parted before them and closed in behind them. Here and there, too, a horseman could be seen—with a little cleared space at his heels. Or a private calash picking ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... won't, my brave boy; that a novice could tell. You'll be left in the ruck at the end, my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... on his way, leaving Olive to ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... on my part. I acknowledged frankly that it was a presumption. I was a young doctor, with nothing to distinguish me from the ruck of young doctors. And she was—well, she was one of those rare and radiant beings to whom even monarchs bow, and the whole earth offers the incense of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams. In 1852 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers conducted in London and Lancashire a strike ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... grim and savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from the forecastle. Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them. I looked to see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval. On the contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... had his turn in the offices. His mind was a good one; his education both formal and informal, had trained it fairly well; yet he could not quite make good. Energetic, ambitious, keen young men, clambering upward from the ruck, gave him points at the game and then beat him. It was humiliating to the old man. He could not see the perfectly normal reason. These young men were striving keenly for what they had never had. Chuck was asked merely to add ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... academic and remote from existence, was now furiously lively, challenging and provocative. The people found in it, not the old placid escape from life, but a new stimulation to arduous and ardent living. And out of the ruck of authors, eager, exigent, and the tremendous clash of nations, new and old, there finally emerged a prose based not upon rhetorical reminiscences, but responsive minutely to the necessities of the national life. The oratorical platitudes of Castelar and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... of our finest and fastest merchantmen had hauled out from the main body, and under a heavy press of canvas was already hull-down in the south-eastern board, being evidently in possession of a prize-crew, while, in the thickest of the ruck, was a very large brigantine, under exceedingly short canvas, yet keeping pace with the slow-sailing merchantmen, first sheering alongside one and hugging her affectionately for a few minutes, and then turning her attention to another and doing likewise. But this was not all, for on the northern ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word of command, no shout of direction from either Farrell or Duval, yet we ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Benton and Cara, they raced also with the sense of fast-slipping hope and relentlessly marching doom. Outwardly Cara set a pace for vivacious and care-free enjoyment that left Mrs. Porter-Woodleigh, the "semi-professional light-hearted lady," as O'Barreton named her, "to trail along in the ruck." Alone with Benton, there was always the furrow between the brows and the distressed gaze upon the mystery beyond the sky-line, but Pagratide and Von Ritz were vigilant, to the end that their ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others. It was then that their real trials began, as the undisciplined ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... off at a gait that you can't improve on, but move along strong and well in hand to the quarter. Let out a notch there, but take it calm enough up to the half not to break, and hard enough not to fall back into the ruck. At the three-quarters you ought to be going fast enough to poke your nose out of the other fellow's dust, and running like the Limited in the stretch. Keep your eyes to the front all the time, and you won't ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the lover to his mistress; and it is almost impossible not to adore a young lady who is universally beloved, for the simple reason that this general affection is very rarely accorded to any but a loving nature. There is an instinct in these things. From all the ruck of Cheapside a vagrant dog will select the man who has most toleration for the canine species, and is most likely to give him shelter. A little child coming suddenly into a circle of strangers knows in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... before. To face them and look them down, to hear whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers; Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck of legal documents; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could, covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... confident sport ain't hardly got that bluff humg up before—"Inglegojang! inglegojang!" goes the church bell in alarm; the tavern's took fire an' burns plumb to the ground; drinks, chuck, bed, raiment, the whole bunch of tricks; an' thar's our wise sport out in the snow an' nothin' but a black ruck of smokin' ruins to remind him ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show's his ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... that shine wi' wail'd sense, and will as lang as the world wags. Gar your bairns get them by heart; let them have a place among your family-books, and may never a window-sole through the country be without them. On a spare hour, when the day is clear, behind a ruck, or on the green howm, draw the treasure frae your pouch, an' enjoy the pleasant companion. Ye happy herds, while your hirdsell are feeding on the flowery braes, you may eithly make yoursells master of the haleware. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Oliver started to explain pathetically. "Yes, I know it was my duty to call when they first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it—Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it. But it only shows a ruck in your left stocking." ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed necessary to ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... until he heard the rapids. Now he was towing it back. He planned to go just as far and as fast up stream as he could. The current, to him, had become the crowd. One can see the crowd as it brushes past, as one can never see it from the ruck.... Sometimes it came to him in a flash, that this new David Cairns was but another lie and pose—but this couldn't hold. It was a bit of deviltry that wouldn't stand scrutiny. There had been too much unfolding o' nights; too many gifts found upon the doorstep of his mind ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... ruck a few moments later, disheveled but triumphant. Hat under his arm and both hands heavily laden, he made a gingerly progress to the place of his tryst, a comparatively unpopulated corner near the door. And there she stood, her comely youth brought into ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... explore a whole lot more quickly by myself. The speed of a fleet, you know, is the speed of the slowest ship, and the speed of the teachers is affected the same way. They can't go any faster than the ruck of their scholars, and I can set a faster pace for myself than they set for ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Heaven?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the guidance of inspiration to ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... of Baden-Powell is that versatile officer's own sketch of a man with whom he soldiered on one of his campaigns: "He has all the qualifications that go to make an officer above the ruck of them. Endowed with all the dash, pluck, and attractive force that make a born leader of men, he is also steeped in common sense, is careful in arrangement of details, and possesses a temperament that can sing 'Wait till the clouds roll by' in ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... draws clear of the ruck, And the murmur swells to a roar, As the brave old colours that never were struck, Are seen with the lead once more. Though the feathery ferns and grasses wave O'er the sod where Lantern sleeps, Though the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... that same evening. I dropped in on him as he took his seat to dine solus at the Albion. The dining-room, I should tell you, was fairly full. Usual ruck of people: sort of too-English; English you see at tables-d'hote and nowhere else in the world, with an end-of-season preponderance of females who stay to look after the British chaplain a little longer than he needs, or to gratify some obscure puritan pride in seeing ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and also those nearly forty volumes by Henry St. George. For all the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. Dencombe's grievance was against ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck! But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward—then for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal. When at length he could no longer descry it, he put his horse ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... action. The horses disappear in the distance.—They are off,—not yet distinguishable, at least to me. A little waiting time, and they swim into our ken, but in what order of precedence it is as yet not easy to say. Here they come! Two horses have emerged from the ruck, and are sweeping, rushing, storming, towards us, almost side by side. One slides by the other, half a length, a length, a length and a half. Those are Archer's colors, and the beautiful bay Ormonde flashes by the line, winner of the Derby of 1886. "The Bard" has made a good fight for ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... shoulder, and clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his native Irish. They thundered up the straight, Billy crouching on Shannon's neck, very still. Then behind him the Mulgoa horse drew out from the ruck and came in chase. Nearer and nearer he came, while the shouts from the crowd grew louder. Up, up, till his nose was at Shannon's quarter—at his girth—at his shoulder, and the winning-post was very near. Then ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... midst of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who hound ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... two crouching, snarling animals, the raw, primeval passions of their hearts released, each seeing through a mist of red; a mist that had risen up to roll across a mighty land and plunge its noblest sons into a bloody ruck ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... hoarse with rejoicings, and there went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of corpses, with her face in her hands, crying—for she was a young girl, you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the mothers of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... terrible impotency. A failure! She must write herself down a failure! At her age, with her ambitions, with her artistic temperament and creative instincts, she was yet to be denied all coherent means of expression. She was to fall back amongst the ruck, a young woman of talent, content perhaps to earn a scanty living by painting Christmas cards, or teaching at a kindergarten. Her finger-nails dug into her flesh. It was the bitterest moment of her life. She flung herself back into the bare little room, cold, empty, comfortless. In a momentary ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... strip off his clothes, and to fold them along the floor of the grave. When he had apparently made all ready, he stooped down again and smoothed out a ruck, lest its discomfort should ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... of taps like—to settle it," deprecated the other. "Three fences from home I see I'd got the measure of 'em, and come away from the ruck with a rattle. Then ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... paddock—eh, what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... nowadays? One of the loveliest of the women of the Bible—my wife says so. She knows all about them. And the best painters in the world have shown her standing among the field of oats. By the Lord, sir, it's sheer blasphemy! and worse than that, it's making people—good, religious people, mind, not the ruck—it's making them ask why the blazes I gave you the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a change had taken place in the tableau of figures beside the carriage. The Hussars having reined back, had gathered in a ruck around their colonel, irresolute how to act. Equally unresolved he to order them. That cry, "Country and Liberty," had struck terror to his heart; and now seeing those it came from, recognising the three who rode foremost—as in the clear moonlight he could—the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... black eyes as if for inspiration, and helped himself to salad. 'It's this,' he said. 'Isn't it possible, isn't it even probable that being ill, and overstrung, moping a little over things more or less out of the common ruck, and sitting there in a kind of trance—isn't it possible that you may have very largely IMAGINED the change? Hypnotised yourself into believing it much worse—more profound, radical, acute—and simply absolutely ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... was not fit for galloping over lava and rough ground, and I asked the men where I should stay to be out of danger. The leader replied, "Oh, just keep close behind me!" I had thought of some safe view-point, not of galloping on an unshod horse with a ruck of half maddened cattle, but it was the safest plan, and there was no time to be lost, for as we rode slowly down, we sighted the herd dodging across the open to regain the shelter of the wood, and much ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... left with his huge sword, and cut down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of feathers ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... answered lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but enjoy life, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... so much for letting me try. It was perfectly glorious to feel her respond to every touch and thread her way through all that ruck." ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... we stalked out of the ordinary ruck of passengers and followed the lieutenant to the station restaurant. He plunged at once into conversation, talking the Dutch of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a bit hard to follow. He was ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... accursed music began again, and horn-rimmed Newland Sanders already had his arm about her waist. They disappeared into the ruck of dancers. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... anybody if I was you," was his parting salutation. "Leastways, not for a day or two. Let the ruck of 'em embark first at Liverpool. If it gets wind, some of them may be for turning crusty, because they are not favoured with ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... bending my head back across a dead body, until I felt the neck crack. Above me were naked legs and arms, a pandemonium of dancing figures, a horrible chorus of maddened yells. I caught a glimpse of Asa Hall flung high into the air, shot dead in mid-flight, the whirling body dropping into the ruck below. I saw the savage, whose fingers were twined in my hair, lift a gleaming tomahawk and circle it about his head; I stared into the hate of his eyes, and as it swept down—there was a glare of red and yellow flame between us, the thunder of an explosion; the roof above seemed to ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... a clamour of calls and acclaim The pair race away from the ruck: The horse to the last of it game— A marvel of muscle and pluck! But the foot of the Sappho is there, And Kingston's invincible strength; And the numbers go up in the air— The colt is the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... door at last. Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles. And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck— The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined "O sir, my eyes—I'm blind—I'm blind, I'm blind!" Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... a rasping voice, like a saw biting into a log. "Ker-r-ruck! ker-r-ruck!" sounded Reddy's rolling call. And they began to scold Jimmy Rabbit, until he put his paws over his ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and I am sorry," she said. "All that we need is a leader, and you might have been he. As it is, I suppose we shall muddle along somehow until some one comes out of the ruck strong enough to pull us together.... Come and see me in London, Lawrence. Who knows but that you may ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to do that sort of thing. We aren't going to join the ruck. We'll go about in holiday times all over the world. I want to see Fusiyama. I mean to swim in the South Seas. With you. We'll dodge the sharks. But all the same we shall have to have a house in London. We have to be ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... lifted now and then, he could see naked forms swaying, bending forward, plying their weapons. Somewhere in the midst of it, out in the ruck of hoof and horn, his friend was riding, forgetting all else but the excitement of the chase. What if accident had befallen either of them? Lewis could not ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... the Gare de Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies of the world. In hoc signo vinces! The message had come ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... You're one of them yourself—though maybe just so much above the ruck of them that I'm willing to waste words on you. Listen to me!" She springs to her feet and moves towards him. "I hate you and despise you every one. Oh, I could tear the eyes out of every man on this earth—and ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... escaped from the ruck by his extraordinary personal strength; once free from the confused mass, his speed, in which he surpassed all the barbarians, enabled him to easily avoid capture. But as he flew his heart was dead within him, for there was no hope of retrieving ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not this the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... fair to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down the alleyway and shout, 'Matcham' or 'Ponting' or 'Guttman,' ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the automobile its owner stopped talking and stared at the tall stranger with some apprehension. Then the big man beckoned unobtrusively to a policeman. It was evident that Farr was not of the same sort as the ruck of men from among whom he had just emerged, nevertheless he had come from among them. The lordly man in the car had observed him moving in the group, for Farr had loomed above the heads of the others; what he had been saying to the malcontents the big man ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... advancing against Ionians who would never stand their charge, and were defeated by the Milesians with a loss little short of three hundred men, the Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians, and driving before them the barbarians and the ruck of the army, without engaging the Milesians, who after the rout of the Argives retreated into the town upon seeing their comrades worsted, crowned their victory by grounding their arms under the very walls of Miletus. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... will throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later in the year, by which means you will partially obtain that quiet, without which, I freely ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... learning you have piled up of a ruck; The only name it went by in my feyther's time was muck. I knows not how the tool you call a nallysis may work, I turns it when it's rotten pretty handy ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... out into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by, little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the ruck, for the ninety and nine, who, after all, ought to find it impossible, not merely hard. But it's different for you and me, Jimmy Grierson, because we're not in the ruck. Of course you'll write, for it's in you, and you would be a fool to try anything else. You won't jump ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... white man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... battle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory—that the mass of them had behaved rather ill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... literati of China who live day by day almost from hand to mouth, eking out a scanty subsistence by writing scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation of some obscure ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... be afraid that he had emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty, and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there came a time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray |
