"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... just a ditch Between the shuttered houses, and so narrow The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath Brushing the yellow walls on either hand, And shutting out the strip of burning blue: And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth, And duck beneath the snaky, squirming neck, Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads, That seemed to wriggle every way at once, As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard! But I was ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... he'd call. "Now! Hard alee! Leggo that jib sheet—you, Ferdie. Slack it off. Now trim in on the other side. Flatter. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... were being poled along the creek, which was here and there overarched by the spreading boughs of the trees, and soon after they were out in the main stream, with the blacks rowing steadily in water which seemed to be very slack; the little settlement was seen as a bright spot for a few minutes, and then disappeared behind the trees, which began upon the left bank, and became once more a great green wall to ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the identity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... however, thought Garnache. The cloak twisted about his left arm gave him some advantage, and he used it to the full. He flicked the slack of it in the face of one, and followed it up by stabbing the fellow in the stomach before he could recover guard, whilst with another wave of that cloak he enmeshed the sword that shot readily into the opening he ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... as follows: Mix ingredients with water into stiff dough; knead well, mould, place in bread tins, and bake in slack oven for from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 hours (or weigh off dough into 1/2 lb. pieces, mould into flat loaves, place on flat tin, cut across diagonally with sharp knife and ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... better feel it at once, and then, when you knows what the taste of it is, you'll take care how you're slack in stays." So saying, he administered three or four hearty cuts on the back and shoulders of our hero, who had been sufficiently drilled into the manners and customs of a man-of-war, to know the value of the proverb, "The ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from the center of the boat, consists of a 5 ply rubber belt 36 in. wide; running over iron drums at each end and intermediate iron friction rollers at 3 foot centers. Ratchet and pinion on each side of conveyer ladder give means for taking up the slack of the belt and adjusting the drums to maintain ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... could be drawn upon for any great emergency at Louisbourg. Between thirteen and fourteen hundred men were got under arms for the siege of 1745. Those who lived in Louisbourg had the advantage of a little slack discipline and a little slack drill. Those in the country had some practice in the handling of firearms. But, taken all round, it would be an exaggeration to call them even ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... really? That was plucky of you, because I know you hate it so. I do wish something would happen. I hate going into father's room and having to tell him that things are rather slack. You know the doctor says he will soon be able to go down to the mills himself, and then he'll know the truth,' said Sarah, who, it will be observed, had quite changed in her feelings towards ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... If we do not fix the hook into the fish's mouth at the instant that he seizes the fly, he will very soon find that what he thought was a nice fat bug or juicy caterpillar is nothing but a bit of wool and some feathers with a sting in its tail, and he will spit it out before we can recover our slack line. ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... 840 Like the soil'd tissue of white violets Left, freshly gather'd, on their native bank, By romping children, whom their nurses call From the hot fields at noon: his head droop'd low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay— 845 White, with eyes clos'd; only when heavy gasps, Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame, Convuls'd him back to life, he open'd them, And fix'd them feebly on his father's face: Till ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... secured by means of four strong copper bolts. The taper of blow-off cocks is an important element in their construction; as, if the taper be too great, the plugs will have a continual tendency to rise, which, if the packing be slack, will enable grit to get between the faces, while, if the taper be too little, the plug will be liable to jam, and a few times grinding will sink it so far through the shell that the waterways will no longer ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... opportunity. Then suddenly he vanished. They looked after him. They could see nothing but the rope slipping past their feet, inch by inch. Sometimes it was stationary, sometimes it was drawn taut. The first great wave that came flung a yard or so of slack amongst them. Then, after the roar of its breaking had died away, they saw the rope suddenly tighten, and pass rapidly out, and the excitement ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by the country people, who were partial to their old master, and irritated against his successor. In the Baron's own words, 'The matter did not coincide with the feelings of the commons of Bradwardine, Mr. Waverley; and the tenants were slack and repugnant in payment of their mails and duties; and when my kinsman came to the village wi' the new factor, Mr. James Howie, to lift the rents, some wanchancy person—I suspect John Heatherblutter, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... air; but quick as a wink ol' Cast Steel knocked it up with his right hand, an' struck at Dick with his left. The bullet crashed through the ceiling, an' Dick grabbed Jabez' wrist at the same instant. Piker made a quick snap under the table, a gun went off, an' the bullet tore through the slack o' Dick's vest an' spinged ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Irish Sea about the Mersey. Parties were not moved to their depths on either side, as men are by the question of existence, and the contending armies were generally small. Therefore, the struggle was slack and slow, and the Presbyterian sects became masters of the situation, and decided for the parliament. At first, through want of energy, great opportunities were lost. In Montrose Scotland produced a soldier of genius; but in England the Ironsides prevailed by their organisation ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the peak of a hood against the wall, and the long train of a woman's gown upon the floor, and then, between the loops of the hood, the edge of Mrs. Tailleur's white face, dim, but discernible. She sat sideways, leaning against the wall, in the slack, childlike attitude ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... was soon applied, for he drew the rope in slowly, till the slack was all gathered in, tightened it more and more, and the loop glided off the projection ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... read something of Drew's blazing anger in his face, for the Mexican's mouth went a little slack and his hand came up in an involuntary gesture as if to ward ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... unemployed were as a rule unwilling to do the work their Celestial rivals engaged in, that of truck farming, fruit raising, manual household labor, wood cutting and the like. A heavy weight settled on the city; business grew slack; the army of the unemployed, of ruined speculators and moneyless newcomers grew steadily greater, and for an era San Francisco saw its ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... thy faith so faint, Thy spirit so slack and slaw? Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud, Then thy might begun to thaw; Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip, Ye had wan him frae 'mang us a'. Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, That made thee faint and fa'; Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, The longer it burns ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Lemuel's two girls, I said I wouldn't want it told out of the family, but they wuz extravagant and slack, and their houses didn't look much like Tirzah Ann's and Maggie's house. But we hadn't ort to expect many such housekeepers as our children wuz. And we talked about the Thousand Islands and she promised ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... ceased, like to a woman worn by eld. For lapsing aeons change the nature of The whole wide world, and all things needs must take One status after other, nor aught persists Forever like itself. All things depart; Nature she changeth all, compelleth all To transformation. Lo, this moulders down, A-slack with weary eld, and that, again, Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt. In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change The nature of the whole wide world, and earth Taketh one status after other. And what She bore of old, she now can bear no longer, And what ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... confidentially, when he and Mark went for a walk on the afternoon of his arrival. "He wants spiking up. They get very slack and selfish, these country clergy. Time he gave up Meade Cantorum. He's been here nearly ten years. Too long, nine years too long. Hasn't been to his duties since Easter. Scandalous, you know. I asked him, as soon as I'd explained to the cook about the turbot, when he went last, and he was bored. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... demands not lukewarm, selfish, slack souls, but hearts more finely tempered than steel, wills purer and harder ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... himself with a putty-knife and put on a white jacket, regarded himself as a fully qualified painter. The others did not perhaps object to him trying to better his condition, but his wages—fivepence an hour—were twopence an hour less than the standard rate, and the result was that in slack times often a better workman was 'stood off' when Sawkins was kept on. Moreover, he was generally regarded as a sneak who carried tales to the foreman and the 'Bloke'. Every new hand who was taken on was usually warned by his new mates 'not to let ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to sink pits for getting of ten yards thick, and are of little use in an inland country, unless it might be made use of by making iron therewith; sixthly, these colliers must cast these coals and slack out of their ways, which, becoming moist, heat naturally, and kindle in the middle of these great heaps, often sets the coal works on fire and flaming out of the pits, and continue burning like AEtna in Sicily or ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... attorney and his companion, "and I'll bring Tom to you in a minute. He's having a lush with some of his pals; though I thought we were going to have a mill, for Jack Perkins, who is to be hanged o' Monday, roused out his slack jaw at him for some quarrel about a gal, and Tom don't bear such like easily. Howsumdever, they made it up and clubbed a gallon. Stay, I'll get you a candle end;" and leaving them in the dark, not much, if the truth must be told, to the satisfaction ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... when A slack rope tightens. Smoke beats downward. Sun is red in the morning. There is a pale ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her bewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Chandu, a distance of ten days' journey.[NOTE 5] The clerk at each of the posts notes the time of each courier's arrival and departure; and there are often other officers whose business it is to make monthly visitations of all the posts, and to punish those runners who have been slack in their work.[NOTE 6]) The Emperor exempts these men from all tribute, and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces—rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that counts—the phonograph instead ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... King so roughly, and which subsequent surveying operations enabled us to account for, from great irregularity in the bottom, changing almost at once from 40 to 17 fathoms. We waited, having no wish to experience the full effect of the current, for slack water, and thus passed round it quietly enough; we anchored in a small bight, South 20 degrees West 1 1/2 miles from Point Swan, in seven fathoms, which, as we rightly conjectured, would leave us in ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... to accuse Dickens of bad grammar. The truth is that his grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in construction than Thackeray's, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is slack. Lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens "might not always be parsed," but that we loved him for his, etc., etc. Dickens's page is to be parsed as strictly as any man's. ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... sez he, 'Is ut like?' sez I, 'But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service.' Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and twice essay to speak. Twice I stop, choked. How can I put into words the insult I have received? How can I reveal to him the slack levity, the careless looseness, with which I have kept the ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... national; But wen I jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Technique and a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing and impatience of method will always be pardoned in an illustrator, if ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... great Satan—here's a rival name With all thy vices and but half thy shame! Quick to the letter of the precept, quick To the example of the elder Nick; With as great talent as was e'er applied To fool a teacher and to fog a guide; With slack allegiance and boundless greed, To paunch the profit of a traitor deed, He aims to make thy glory all his own, And crowd his ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the ranchman's "slack season"; but Roosevelt found, nevertheless, that there was work to be done even at that time of year to test a man's fiber. Activities, which in the ordinary Eastern winter would have been merely the casual incidents of the day's work, took on some of the character of Arctic exploration ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... scarcely three weeks past: That on his landing he had been dismissed, And now was travelling towards his native home. 425 This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. 430 Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... several instances in which young girls have begun street solicitation through sheer imitation. A young Polish woman found herself in dire straits after the death of her mother. Her only friends in America had moved to New York, she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and as it was the slack season of the miserable sweat-shop sewing she had been doing, she was unable to find work. One evening when she was quite desperate with hunger, she stopped several men upon the street, as she had ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... in the rain, under the dark-grey November sky, in the dark, strong inviolable square! The wonderful hawk-head of the old palace. The physical, self-conscious adolescent, Michelangelo's David, shrinking and exposing himself, with his white, slack limbs! Florence, passionate, fearless Florence had spoken herself out.—Aaron was fascinated by the Piazza della Signoria. He never went into the town, nor returned from it to his lodging, without contriving to pass through the square. And he never passed through it ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... fear, until the dust caked in the nostrils and the breath sobbed in the body, around and away many a mile until they came to their own land again. And all the time Winnenap' carried those buzzard's eggs in the slack of his single buckskin garment! Young Shoshones are like young quail, knowing without teaching about feeding and hiding, and learning what civilized children never learn, to be still and to keep on being still, at the first hint of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the midday meal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and international politics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our young people attach any great importance ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... weather to-night," said he; "but our work will be done before it comes, I hope. Up with the helm now, Henry, and slack off the sheets; it is dark enough to allow us to creep in without being observed. Manton will of course be in the only harbour in the island; we must therefore go round to the other side and take the risk of running on ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the fish in gently, then suddenly gave it plenty of slack line. These tactics were repeated, while Dave and Greg ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh of ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... could observe living answers to those questions (before the evidence disappeared). The answers are: we could be amazingly healthy, and, if we wish to enjoy excellent health we can afford to cut ourselves surprisingly little slack. ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... olives and orange-trees of Hippo, Augustin must have seen happy days pass by, as at Thagaste. The rule he had given the convent, which he himself obeyed like any one else, was neither too slack nor too strict—in a word, such as it should be for men who have lived in the culture of letters and works of the mind. There was no affectation of excessive austerity. Augustin and his monks wore very simple clothes and shoes, but suitable ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... all of them musical. There were swift actions, too: a Kanaka crawled out upon the bowsprit to make taut a slack stay, while two others with pulley-blocks swarmed aloft. Occasionally the canvas snapped as the wind veered slightly. The sea was no longer rolling brass; it was bluer than anything he had ever seen. Every so often a wall of water, thin and jade-coloured, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... accompanied the creation of life peers. Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike what it ought to be, that most people will not believe it is what it ought to be. The attendance ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... beastly when a friend marries,—and I grant he's rather young,—but I should say it's the best thing for him. A decent woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She'll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always find him a little effeminate. And, really,"—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell's conceit, "and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... to a wagon, if he be wild or vicious, keep the lariat the same as I have described until you get him hitched up, then slack it gently, as nearly all mules will buck or jump stiff-legged as soon as you ease up the lariat; and be careful not to pull the rope too tight when first put on, as by so doing you might split the mule's mouth. ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... me the bonny black, Gae saddle sune, and mak' him ready, For I will down the Gatehope-slack, An' a' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... might have been right." But these were after-reflections when it was too late. I do not wonder at my poor father's senses being dazzled, for, as he said to me, "You see, Jack, after being used to see nothing but Point women, all so slack in stays and their rigging out of order, to fall aboard of a craft like your mother, so trim and neat, ropes all taut, stays well set up, white hammock-cloths spread every day in the week, and when under way, with ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... same return journey, he occupied the seat on the right, immediately behind that of the driver. The sky was covered, the atmosphere close. The horses, grey ones, showed a thick yellowish lather where the collar rubbed their necks and the traces their flanks. They were slack and heavy, and the omnibus hugged the curb. Within it was empty, and on the top boasted but three passengers besides Iglesias himself. It followed that, carrying insufficiency of ballast, the great red-painted vehicle lumbered, and jerked, and swayed uneasily; while the lighter ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... or wrapped around a cleat. The cleat, which was whittled out of a stick of wood, was made in the form indicated in Fig. 171. A short length of rope was strung through a pulley block and tied with some slack to the upper end and to the center of the gaff. This rope is called a "bridle," and to the pulley block on this "bridle" a rope was attached called the "peak halyard." The peak halyard was passed ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... from the cage that it was a charming golden day: a patch of hazy autumn sunlight lay across the sanded floor and also, higher up, quickened into brightness a row of ruddy bottled syrups. Work was slack and the place in general empty; the town, as they said in the cage, had not waked up, and the feeling of the day likened itself to something than in happier conditions she would have thought of romantically as Saint Martin's summer. The counter-clerk ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... is willing, in her extreme poverty, to labour, instead of sinking into vice and idleness, shows her to possess both virtue and integrity of character, and these we should be willing to encourage, even at some sacrifice. Work is slack now, as you are aware, and there is but little doubt that she had been to many places seeking employment before she came to you. It may be—and this is a very probable suggestion—that she did not come to you for work until ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... take his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... held the best gun of Jimmie Time; in the other—there seemed to be a well-gripped connection with the slack of a buckskin shirt—writhed the alleged real doughnuts of a possibly Peruvian character. The captor looked aloft and remained vocal, waving the gun, waving Jimmie Time, playing them together as cymbals, never loosening them. It was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... yards long, made of fine black silk, with a small mesh, are used in some parts of the country for taking kingfishers. These nets are stretched across a small watercourse or the arch of a bridge in such a manner that, a little "slack" being allowed, the bird is taken to a certainty in attempting to pass. So fatal is this net when skilfully set, that I know one man who adds several pounds to his income in the course of a year by ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... interests. Bill rode a good many miles that day, always beside a wire fence; and occasionally he would stop, dismount, and busy himself in some small repair, where a fence-post had sagged down, or the wire become twisted or slack. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke by stroke, the foliage and the flowers fell beneath his hands as he passed. The singing gradually ceased, the swings fell slack and the frolic changed into an anxious waiting, as before thunder. One and all stood in terror and dismay staring at that giant approaching. The blue of the sky darkened and the angels vanished, like lamps that were blown out. The flowers were faded and the whole plain lay mown flat, like a stricken ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... land!" I cried, as each hillock and plain, Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again, "Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honours we paid you erewhile? Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rash Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack! ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... cleared, yet on the smoother road Their speed they slack not till they reach the house Of a poor drunken settler then abroad On his nocturnal revels, while the spouse Was left to mourn his oft-indulged carouse, And tremble for his safety from the cold. No sense of danger e'er could him arouse From ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... ther's mostly slack time till harvest. I thought, mebbe, we could jest haul that lumber from Beacon Crossing. And cut the logs. Parker give me the 'permit.' Seems to me we ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... at the rope and the bear rose to her hind feet to ease the strain on her neck. Instantly they pulled in the slack. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... favour shall make them. For the more I modify my style to suit your taste, the more I shall please you.[64] I see that you hear me gladly. From this moment it lies with you to furl or spread my sails, that they hang not slack and drooping nor be ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... He drew down the slack of the bell cord, pulled it twice firmly and listened. Two freezing pipes from the engine answered; they sounded cold. A stop was made and Glover, followed by the trainmen, went outside. Gertrude ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... should use him as we do a hot horse. When he first frets and pulls, keep a stiff rein and hold him in if you can; but if he grows mad and furious, slack your hand, clap your heels to him, and let him go. Give him his belly full of it. Away goes the beast like a fury over hedge and ditch, till he runs himself off his mettle; perhaps bogs himself, and then he grows quiet of course.... ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the whole village, if you will; I am about to give you men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are lost men; yourself especially—you shall die. I have had enough of you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You shall die—you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... recovered their property. Naturally they felt remarkably grateful to Melky Rubinstein for his astuteness in circumventing Yada at what might have been the last moment. And one day, at that portion of it when business was slack and everybody was feeling comfortable after dinner, Melky called on Mrs. Goldmark and became confidentially closeted with her in a little parlour behind her establishment which she kept sacred to herself. Mrs. Goldmark, ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... Langton's and the boy's history—how the reformation of the profligate might be dated to begin from that time—how he gradually sever'd the guilty ties that had so long gall'd him—how he enjoy'd his own home again—how the friendship of Charles and himself grew not slack with time—and how, when in the course of seasons he became head of a family of his own, he would shudder at the remembrance of his early ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... qualities are incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness of our capacity, To aspire is our privilege, and a privilege which we are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our present capacity. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... worked hard at first, and his ability, his shrewdness, confounded us, as it had confounded Silas Upham. Then, he began to slack, as boys put it. Small duties were ill done or not done at all. But we liked him, were, indeed, charmed by him. As Ajax remarked, Fascination does not trot in ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... brothers but lately, their father, Major Barry, who had been a staunch old royalist, having died. There were acres of tobacco, and whole fields of locust for the manufacture of metheglin, and apple orchards from which cider enough to slack the thirst of the colony was made. But the brothers were far from content with such home-made liquors for their own drinking, but imported from England and the Netherlands and Spain great stores of ale ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... action. I threw myself upon the floor of my cell close by the wall, in a strained and distorted posture, as though I were dead after a struggle or convulsions. When he should stoop over me I had but to grasp his throat with one hand and strike him a terrific blow with the slack of my chain, which I gripped firmly in my right hand ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unfortunately had had too much their own way under the slack though fitful reign of William the Testy; and though upon the accession of Peter Stuyvesant they had felt, with the instinctive perception which mobs as well as cattle possess, that the reins of government had passed into stronger hands, yet could they ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... almost intolerably galling. Still he had sense enough to realize that the remedy open to him was a somewhat hazardous one, because, while it would be easy to walk out of the construction camp, industrial activity just then was unusually slack in the Mountain Province. Besides, he was willing to admit that there were excuses for Cassidy, and there was a certain quiet tenacity in him. He was also aware that the man with little money has generally a good deal to bear, for Weston was one who could learn ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... without entering into the details, we may sum up his general argument by saying, in the words of another,[41] that, according to his theory, "dulse and hen-ware became, through a very wonderful metamorphosis, cabbage and spinach; that kelp-weed and tangle bourgeoned into oaks and willows; and that slack, rope-weed, and green-raw, shot up into mangel-wurzel, rye-grass, and clover." So much for the FLORA; and now for the Fauna, and the transition from the one to the other. His views are thus exhibited by Sir David ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an officer pushed ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... whole household as well. Mullins, in his later years, had been a dependent about Trinity College, and constant association with books and students had given him a taste for knowledge denied his daughter. Tom had left home when a girl. In the long winter nights during the slack season, after the stalls were bedded and the horses were fed and watered and locked up for the night, the old man would draw up his chair to the big kerosene lamp on the table, and tell the boys stories—they listening with wide-open ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the middle of the afternoon, trade at the small restaurant was slack, and Richard found both the old sailor and his ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... not one white man on board who said a word on my behalf. I hung in that manner from between ten and eleven o'clock at night till about one in the morning; when, finding my cruel abuser fast asleep, I begged some of his slaves to slack the rope that was round my body, that my feet might rest on something. This they did at the risk of being cruelly used by their master, who beat some of them severely at first for not tying me when he commanded them. Whilst ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the bows of the leading boat, glanced over his right shoulder and beheld his line of followers, all in perfect order, extend themselves and close the mouth of the Cove. Ahead of him—ahead but a few yards only—he heard the slack tide run faintly on the shingle. From the dark beach came no sound. Overhead quivered the expectant stars. He lifted his sword-arm, and from point to hilt ran a swift ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at a small gas stove. It was the hour in the middle of the morning at which he was accustomed to be waked with the information that his coffee and eggs were ready. The forenoon being what he called his slack time he found the earlier part of it most profitably ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... is remembered that these figures apply only to the well-organised trades unions, which, as a rule, comprise the best and most highly-skilled workers in the several trades, who are less likely than others to be thrown out in a "slack time," that the building and season trades are not included in the estimate, and that women's industries, notoriously more irregular than men's, are altogether ignored, it will be evident that these statistics very inadequately ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... in summer—so there are exceptions to the rule; but, except those who provide certain requisites for eating and drinking which are in continual demand, there are few workmen in Paris or elsewhere in France, who have not every year quite enough slack time to perplex them. They can ill afford the interference of any small crisis in the shape of a strike, or large crisis in the shape of a ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of leaving the "New York" an old catamaran had been thrown on the "Merrimac's" deck, as a possible aid to the crew in extremity. This float lay on the roof of the midship house, a rope fastening it to the taffrail, with enough slack to let it float loose after the ship had sunk. It was a fortunate thought for the crew, as it afforded them a temporary refuge in place of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... Prussian Ambassador there, [Seckendorf (Forster, iii. 7).] and to Keppel, Dutch Official gentleman who was once Ambassador at Berlin. Prussian Ambassador applies, and again applies, in the highest quarters; but we fear they are slack. Dumoulin discovers that the man was certainly here; Keppel readily admits, He had Keith to dinner a few days ago: but where Keith now is, Keppel cannot ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... directed to another negro, who lay on the beach rolling and foaming at the mouth, apparently in a fit. "What's the matter with that fellow?" said I to the same negro who continued close to me, notwithstanding Swinburne's stick. "Eh! call him Sam Slack, massa. He ab um tic tic fit." And such was apparently the case. "Stop, me cure him;" and he snatched the stick out of Swinburne's hand, and running up to the man, who continued to roll on the beach, commenced ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... such a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water—his head high and his ears forward—Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... fashion That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of passion, To look such a lass on, Her patience distressing, The bestial a-chasing, In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... aboot your exploit wi' the Loch Sloy pairty. Man! did I no' think ye had come by boat," he whispered over a tendered ale-glass. "It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad hae backed ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, and they're no' slack at a tulzie." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... morning, the Vindictive groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt to ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... forge until ten o'clock. Then he called at Swale's. He fancied the lawyer was "a bit offish," but he promised him the money that night, and with this promise Bill had to be content. Business had long been slack; his forge was cold when he got back, and he had no heart to rekindle it. Frightened and miserable, he was standing in the door tying on his leather apron, when he saw Dolly coming as fast as she ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... thing, you see, don't dovetail. Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the rope. As for the piano—well, you know as well as I do that an armless man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular intelligence when you talk about 'sweet ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... lost over two hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the weather foresheet, then, and haul aft the leeward. Slack out the mizzen sheet a little, Jack. That's it; now she's ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... resembling a mushroom in shape, come to within a few feet of the surface of the water. Through these passages, the tide, especially the ebb, rushes with great velocity—six or seven knots at least—and vessels when leaving the lagoon, generally waited till slack water, or the first of the flood, when with the usual strong south-east trades, they could stem the current and avoid the dangerous "mushrooms." But no shipmaster would ever attempt either of these passages, except in the morning, when the sun was astern, and he could, from aloft, con the ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... happiness to be found in it, though the oracles of God in all ages have testified from heaven how certain and possible it is, though many have found it in experience and left it on record to others, there is so slender belief of the reality and certainly of it, and so slack pursuit of it, as if we did not believe it at all. Truly, my beloved, there is a great mistake in this, and it is general too. All men apprehend other things more feasible and attainable than personal holiness and happiness in it, but truly, I conceive there ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... flung to Van der Kemp, who deftly caught it and held on tight. Another was flung to Moses, who also caught it and held on—slack. At the same moment, Nigel saw a large block with a hook attached ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ever hear of any one being thankless before he could speak?— hoi! mother, you've tied it too tight. Slack it a little." ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... slack week we took the opportunity to see a certain amount of Antwerp, and to call on many officials and the many friends who did so much to make our work there a success and our stay a pleasure. To one ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... "Kind of slack, aren't you?" inquired Peter, his deep-set blue eyes twinkling with humor. "I've eaten two hours back. This lying a-bed is mighty bad for your ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... busy, for the old mare died, and Boy had to bring up the little creature by hand. She didn't mind that, for the summer is the slack season in the jumping world. Moreover, trouble taken for helpless young things was never anything but a delight to her. And fortune favoured her. For the Queen of Sheba, one of her nanny-goats, had lost her kids, and the milk was therefore ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... world of Graduation night, yet there was a new maturity in his eyes and the set of his jaw that Lydia liked without really observing it. Old Lizzie watched the two as they climbed the slope to the woods. Billy strode along with the slack, irregular gait of the farmer. Lydia sprang over the ground ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... slack day with him," she said rather gravely. "I assure you he works harder than most clergymen, and is very conscientious and painstaking. He is not at all strong, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... A slack time is always one of fear, never of confidence. And no policies should be adopted in such an atmosphere. For the man who can afford to take the long view these are great days. He can take up what others cannot carry. Better still he can prepare ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... as a flowering weed which can spring so strongly and so fibrously from slack. And yet such a weed can bleed milk. If Stella Schump was about fourteen pounds too plump, too red of cheek, and too blandly blue of eye, there was the very milk of human kindness in her morning punching up of her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... grumble about, sir; but I must say that it has been more slack than it was. We have all done our best, but we have missed you terribly; and the men don't seem to take quite as much pains with their drill as they used to do, when you were in command. However, that will be all right now that you have come ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... man, "what you doin' thah! That fellow's makin' notes of all your slack; keep your tongue! aftah awhile you'll tell the nombah of the foces! Don't you ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Plataeans; who also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... stretch, the spindles increase their speed until the twisting is completed and the carriage starts on its return trip. This reverses the spindles, and the thread which has been wound upon them is unwound, the slack being taken up by one guide wire (D) while the other guides the thread to the winding point, and winds it up in the opposite direction on the cone-shaped cops on the spindles. The rollers do not feed out more roving as the carriage returns. Hence, there ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... advanced we all began to think of going home, making sure that peace would soon be concluded. And never did more welcome message come anywhere than that which brought us intelligence of the armistice, and the firing, which had grown more and more slack lately, ceased altogether. Of course the army did not desire peace because they had any distaste for fighting; so far from it, I believe the only more welcome intelligence would have been news of a campaign in the field, but they were most heartily weary of sieges, and the prospect ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... While giving my attention to this particular study, I was greatly impressed by the extreme importance of maintaining an erect spine, holding the chin down, inward and backward, and keeping the shoulders back and the chest expanded. I found, however, like many others who become "slack" in bodily posture, that a considerable effort was required to maintain a proper position at all times. I therefore began a series of special exercises intended really to force myself to assume a properly ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... since, sir, Sorter quiet and queer; Him and me goes together, He's what they call cashier. Style, that 'ere, for a boot-black,— Made the fellers laugh; Jack and me had to take it, But we don't mind no chaff. Trouble!—not much, you bet, boss! Sometimes, when biz is slack, I don't know how I'd manage If 't wa'n't for little Jack. You jest once orter hear him: He says we needn't care How rough luck is down here, sir, If some day we git up there. All done now,—how's that, sir? Shines like a pair of ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... of Greeks broke upon us, growing deeper with every moment. Above the pandemonium my companions were howling hoarsely and imploringly for the interpreter, while clutching their trembling victim by the slack of his labor-stained shirt lest he escape un-enrolled. The interpreter, in accordance with a well-known law of physics and the limitations of human nature, could not be in sixteen places at once. I crowded close, caught his words, memorized the few questions, and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... inspiration of His, which tells your heart to alleviate the unseen woes which will never come into painful contact with your sensibilities, to bestow pleasures in which you yourself have no immediate share. It will tell your hearts especially in the case of this very Hospital for Consumption not to be slack in giving, because so much of what you will give—it is painful to recollect how much—will be spent, not in prevention, not even in cure, but in mere alleviation, mere increased bodily ease, mere savoury food, even mere passing amusements for wearied minds. Be it so. If ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a low voice, pointing across the narrow stream to a slack eddy where a huge crocodile drifted like a log awash. "My! I ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... 16:38 As when a woman with child in the ninth month bringeth forth her son, with two or three hours of her birth great pains compass her womb, which pains, when the child cometh forth, they slack ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... in his arms, but the woman shook herself free. "I sha'n't faint—no—I sha'n't faint," she gasped, "the cellar—look—look—" She ran forward and raised the head of the dead man. When the officers saw the dangling slack wire disappearing through a hole in the floor they grasped the situation. "The passage outside!" cried Deborah, directing operations; "the trap-door," she ran to it, "fast bolted below, and ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... of Chicago go home from their work at evening—drifting they go in droves, hurrying along. It is a startling thing to look closely at them. The people have bad mouths. Their mouths are slack and the jaws do not hang right. The mouths are like the shoes they wear. The shoes have become run down at the corners from too much pounding on the hard pavements and the mouths have become crooked from too ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack water again, when we weighed and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a week and go flyin' out and whoopin' around me stock, and scarin' 'em to death, pertendin' I'm mighty interested in ridin' range. If you got a lady's goat, you want to keep it. 'Course, later on, I can kind o' slack up. Then I'm goin' to learn her to read American, and she can read that piece in the paper about me. I reckon that'll kind of cinch up the idea that her husband sure is the real thing. But I got to have them cows till ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... doctrines upon which the throne of your kingdom is based. But we come as cotton planters, to supply your looms with cotton, that British commerce may not be abridged, and England, the great civilizer of the world, may not be forced to slack her pace in the performance of her mission. This is our character and position; and your honor will at once see that it is your duty, and the interest of your Government, to treat us as gentlemen and your most faithful allies." The judge at once admits the justice of their plea, rebukes the police, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... but I have heard of the raft, and there is no question as to its safety. We reached the mouth of the creek without discovering a trace of it. Then we went down the river as far as the Elbow, where we waited in the slack-water to hail up-bound steamboats. The first had seen nothing of the raft; but the second, one of the 'Diamond Jo' boats, reported that they had seen such a raft—one with three shanties on it—at daybreak, in the 'Slant Crossing,' ten miles ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... four years ago, Against those Panama projectors. The law seemed slack, inquiry slow; How I denounced them, the Directors, Including him—in some vague fashion; But then—BONHOMME ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... a paid attendant and in such a manner that Adams one morning lifted him from his bed by the slack of his silk pajamas and all but drowned him in his ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... lips were open, his bony jaw slack. "Well, I'll be damned. Do you know who you're talking to, ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... up; he went out by the tunnel. It would take more than a monkey to go up three hundred feet on a slack rope, or thirty feet either, for the matter ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... tide passed, and then the ship began to swing idly as the slack came. Then with the turn of tide came little flaws of wind, and we hoisted the sail, and Kenulf hove the anchor short. Yet we heard no more sounds from the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the sound of the lone sentry's tread As he tramps from the rock to the fountain, And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed, Far away in the cot on the mountain. His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, For their ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in his pursuit of heraldry and genealogy that were irksome to her, and so she herself is responsible for his dependence on his secretary, which, when once the daughter recognizes it, threatens annihilation of what little pleasure she has in her life. Her husband is a dreamy sort of man, slack-fibred and pottering, who goes about waving the banner of the ideal and refusing to work. The fifth character of the play is the butler, Horan. All are clearly characterized, but if the dialogue is less stiff than that of the earlier ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of Fort Selkirk, the Yukon was found to be 565 yards wide; about two-thirds being ten feet deep, with a current of about four and three-quarter miles per hour; the remaining third was more than half taken up by a bar, and the current between it and the south shore was very slack. ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... the elder explained, "Mr. Blackett is too big a man, and too easy-going to attend to his business as he should. But I suppose he's rich enough and can afford to be a trifle slack." ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... huge hand seized the slack of Thomas's shorts and the boy was heaved up to the muscular shoulder. The two faces were now on the same level and twinkling gray blue eyes were ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... spurt and we shall be in the slack. If you get tired, tell me," and they struck out vigorously on a shoreward slant in the ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom:— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 'correctness.' Walsh, who was a sublime old blockhead, suggested to Pope that 'correctness' was the only tight-rope upon which a fresh literary performer in England could henceforth dance with any advantage of novelty; all other tight-ropes and slack-ropes of every description having been preoccupied by elder funambulists. Both Walsh and Pope forgot ever once to ask themselves what it was that they meant by 'correctness;' an idea that, in its application to France, Akenside afterwards sternly ridiculed. Neither ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the Jew. Now Souchey was well enough inclined to take a part in such a scheme— provided it did not in any way make him a party with the Zamenoys in things general against the Balatkas. It was his duty as a Christian— though he himself was rather slack in the performance of his own religious duties—to put a stop to this horrible marriage if he could do so; but it behoved him to be true to his master and mistress, and especially true to them in opposition to the ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... what resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not loved for itself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; and it submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon as that energy grew slack—when the religion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the world was at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind; there was no loveliness ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that he give meat in time; give it, I say, and not sell it; meat, I say, and not poison. For the one doth intoxicate and slay the eater, the other feedeth and nourisheth him. Finally, let him not slack and defer the doing of his office, but let him do his duty when time is, and need requireth it. This is also to be looked for, that he be one whom God hath called and put in office, and not one that cometh uncalled, unsent for; not one that of himself presumeth to take ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... managers of Covent Garden have lately entered. His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory says, 'I defy him to extort that d——d muffin face of his into madness.' I was very sorry to see him in the character of the 'Elephant on the slack rope;' for, when I last saw him, I was in raptures with his performance. But then I was sixteen—an age to which all London condescended to subside. After all, much better judges have admired, and may again; but I venture to 'prognosticate a prophecy' (see the Courier) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... nephew—a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk, for although he was forward with his ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the prison. In spite of the disapproval of Elizabeth and other Germans, I struck off the chains, feeling that he very probably had good excuse for his offence. But the Germans never failed to point out what a dangerous man he was. Once indeed he was slack and casual, so I promptly ordered him to be "kibokoed," and thereafter I could find no fault in his work and behaviour. Possessed of three wives, for he was passing rich on sixteen rupees a month, he asked ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... the other hand, was rather a disappointment. Not that he was any way slack, and failed to sell his goods—'twas he, indeed, sold most—but he did not get enough for them. "You don't put in enough patter ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety without seduction. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... speaking volubly and violently.] Now, look here, sir, I'm a busy woman—as busy and as hard-working a woman as any in London. Because you see things a bit slack Ascot week, it doesn't follow that my books, and a hundred little matters, don't want attending to. [Sitting at the desk and opening and closing the books noisily.] And I'm certainly not going to have gentlemen, whoever they may be, marching into my place, and taking possession of ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... with thieves and the like, much more than the detective police do. I don't know what their pay was, but I have no doubt their principal complements were got under the rose. It was a very slack institution, and its head-quarters were The Brown Bear, in Bow Street, a public-house of more than doubtful reputation, opposite the police-office; and either the house which is now the theatrical costume maker's, or the next door ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... turn about the horn!" he shouted. "Hang to the end yo'se'f!" He sent the line jerking back, whistling as it streaked across the girl's shoulders. She clutched for it, with plenty of slack, snubbed it about the saddle horn, clung to the end, made a bight of it about ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... go to Mr. Kenyon's—who had a little to forgive in my slack justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind self—and I went, also, to Moxon's—who said something about my number's going off 'rather ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, above all, more spirit in it. Clerk will, I ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the 'chevalier's' only daughter, a slack-wire artist; the other, Signor Scarmelli, a trapeze performer, who is the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... for such seagoing people as had crossed her palm. The crew of a certain brig came to see her on the day before sailing, and she reproached one of the lads for keeping bad company. "Avast, there, granny," interrupted another, who took the chiding to himself. "None of your slack, or I'll put a stopper on your gab." The old woman sprang erect. Levelling her skinny finger at the man, she screamed, "Moon cursers! You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a brig to these sands and left ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... ice being slack for a short distance, we shifted the Hecla half a mile to the northward, into a less insecure berth. I then walked to a broad valley facing the sea near us, where a considerable stream discharged itself, and where, in passing in the ships, a large fish had ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry |
