"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sitting against the haystack; and his musings were, ever and anon, disturbed by his racking cough. He felt indisposed to move. As he brooded over the past, his mind became uneasy, he was conscious of a vague desire to make confession of the evil he had done. Did he feel that the sands of his life were almost sped? And ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... all diseased: all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heartsick agony, all fev'rous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... motionless. There he now lies where he was shot down in the dust and dirt, and his white beard and his rotting rags seem to raise a silent and eloquent protest to high Heaven against the devilish complots which are racking Peking. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... was that other gentleman?" said the Colonel, racking his brains. "The one who used to be so much in his house, and was ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against obstacles, ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... torment I knew not. To ask for another bed was out of the question, and to attempt to sleep on thorns—thorns! they would have been thought a luxury to this of lying enduring the pains of the doomed. After long endurance of the pain, and in racking my brains considering what was best to be done, the intolerable sensations began by degrees to subside and grow less and less; but the heat, although nearly insupportable, was more easily endured. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... clearly as that the characters belong to their helmets or shields, their war chariots or bamboo lances. Simple the task may seem in these days of public libraries and ready reference, yet it is a most nerve-racking business, this placing an embossed helm or set of greaves on the hero of a story, so that he may stand out a Roman, and when the labor is finished having him stare genially out at you, insistently proclaiming the masquerade, and seemingly ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... wheedled most of the jewellery out of me, but the wedding veil I mean to keep always, and a Point d'Alencon scarf and some handkerchiefs he has probably forgotten. I had forgotten them, too, but when I was racking my brain how to get the Selfridge dress, the remembrance tumbled down off ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... more ways than one. She was strangely privileged; time with its heavy hand seemed to have no power over her. She always appeared young, even in the eyes of the best judges of faded, bygone female beauty. Men, as a general rule, do not ask for anything more, and they are right in not racking their brain for the sake of being convinced that they are the dupes of external appearance. The last lover that the wonderful Binetti killed by excess of amorous enjoyment was a certain Mosciuski, a Pole, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... at Tunbridge than in reality there were, and she did not cease in her imagination, to dance over at Summer-hill all the country dances which she thought had been danced at Tunbridge. She could no longer support the racking torments which disturbed her mind, when relenting heaven, out of pity to her pains and sufferings, caused Lord Muskerry to repair to London, and kept him there two whole days: as soon as ever he had turned his back, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... position of his right leg, bringing into play the leverage of his hip. He twisted suddenly sideways, his neck slipping around in the encircling arm. His hand closed upon the back of a thick, perspiring neck. The next instant a figure catapulted over his back, bringing up with a bone-racking crash against a ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams; and an erotic poet of our times has composed night-hymns ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... they were pulling at the boat ropes. A jaguar pounced upon another man as he stooped to get water from a stream. An Indian arrow found the heart of another. The sun, fatigue, fevers, bruises, and the endless racking of limbs and brains, reduced the spirits and strength of the men. They became gaunt, hollow-eyed, tattered, unshorn, uncombed, unkempt, yet they toiled on, silent—save when they cursed and railed at fate—dogged, ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... because he had teased her, because she was angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she did now. It was not just simple grieved weeping. It was a tempest that shook her. Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts between racking sobs. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... trying it," called Nick, from the Wireless, which was being held in leash by the now cautious skipper. "Why, this racking fever of anxiety would just kill us if it had to keep up much longer, and that's right, fellows, even if George here ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... of what Kupfer had told him the evening before. It is true that his meditations, too, were of a fairly tranquil character. He fancied that this strange girl interested him from the psychological point of view, as something of the nature of a riddle, the solution of which was worth racking his brains over. 'Ran away with an actress living as a kept mistress,' he pondered, 'put herself under the protection of that princess, with whom she seems to have lived—and no love affairs'? It's incredible!... Kupfer talked of pride! But in the first place we know' (Aratov ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... It's a maddening, nerve racking pace they go. To keep up the gait there is an incessant battle for wealth, and the struggle wears and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... feels the need of its atonement. And now, upon the very edge of eternity and brink of doom, he proposes to make his own atonement, to be his own redeemer and save his own soul, by offering up to the eternal nemesis that was racking his conscience a few hours of finite suffering, instead of betaking himself to the infinite passion and agony of Calvary. This is a work; and, alas, a "dead work," as St. Paul so often denominates it. ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... but still confined to the nursery, and he had heard Susy unlock the house-door, and could not imagine why she had not come straight up to him. He now began to manifest his indignation in a series of racking howls, and Susy, shaken out of her trance, dropped her cloak ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... a man to drink off a half pint of liquor, and then put him by himself. I would not allow him companions to make merry with so as to make a pleasure of intoxication. I would then wait until next morning when he was sober, and leave him alone with a racking headache until the evening, when I would give him another dose, and so on, forcing him to get drunk until he hated the smell ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of them would have died had not the salt water made them very sick, while the hot stones restored their suspended circulation. Still, I would advise no one to depend on such remedies under similar circumstances. They got better; but still for many days were subject to racking pains, and remained weak and ill. While they were in this state, one morning, as Tom and I were at the top of the peak taking our usual survey of the horizon, in the hopes of a vessel appearing ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... into the lad's face while the surgeon began the painful work of extracting another shell fragment. This one being more deeply imbedded, the surgeon was obliged to make a selection of scalpel and tissue scissors and do some nerve-racking cutting. But the seaman, his hands tightly gripped on the edges of the operating table, which he had termed a cot, did not once cry out, though ice-cold sweat beaded his forehead ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... piercing whoop of triumph and leaned forward on his pony's neck. Twenty leaps farther and the spiteful crack of a rifle echoed from where the foreman was painfully supporting himself on his elbows. The pony swept on in a spurt of nerve-racking speed, but alone. By-and-by shrieked again and crashed heavily to the ground, where he rolled inertly and then lay still. Men like Buck are dangerous until their hearts ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... your venom'd stang, That shoots my tortur'd gums alang, An' thro' my lug gies mony a twang, Wi' gnawing vengeance, Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang, Like racking engines! ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... salvo of torpedoes whistling toward the Rebel fleet marking perhaps the opening shots of the main battle. We twisted back into Cth as one of the scanner men doubled over with agony, heaving his guts out into a disposal cone. I felt sorry for him. The tension, the racking agony of our motion, and the fact that he was probably in his first major battle had all combined to take him for the count. He grinned greenly at me and turned back to his ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... appeared with the courier from the prison. Count Marlanx was missing. He was on his way to the fortress, a crushed, furious, impotent old man. In his quarters he was to sit and wait for the blow that he knew could not be averted. In fear and despair, hiding his pain and his shame, he was racking his brain for means to lessen the force of that blow. He could withdraw the charges against Baldos, but he could not soften the words he had said and written of Beverly Calhoun. He was not troubling himself with fear because of the adventures in ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... And Nevyrazimov, racking his brain for a means of escape from his hopeless position, stared at the rough copy he had written. The letter was written to a man whom he feared and hated with his whole soul, and from whom he had for the last ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... officer, who had formerly lost a considerable sum by the escape of a prisoner, would not run any risk in an affair of such consequence, and our hero was obliged to submit to the tortures of his own presaging fears. After he had waited five hours in the most racking impatience, he saw the attorney enter with all the marks of hurry, fatigue, and consternation, and heard him exclaim, "Good God, have you seen ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... dark, instinctively, so she kept him a foil's length away. Yet she would have been glad had he spoken; she could have silenced him effectually then. It was rather nerve-racking to wait for this unwelcome declaration day by day. They had now lived in the Villa Ariadne for two weeks, a careless, thoughtless, happy-go-lucky family. The gossip might have looked askance at them; but ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... the hollow fraud, Sam looked on, very much interested and racking his brain to devise some means of gaining a further entrance to the house. From its outside appearance he knew he must be in one of the rear rooms, and if Chip was not behind the curtain he must be ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... experienced traveler like Curtis all Custom-houses were alike, dingy, nerve-racking, superfluous clogs on free movement. Taking his time, for he had none to embrace or greet with outstretched hand, he strolled quietly off the ship, collected his baggage, which was piled with other people's belongings ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... time after he had left with his head bowed and his face buried in his thin, trembling hands. A racking cough shook his frame occasionally, but he did not rise to mend the dying fire. The room grew chilly, and at last Collie rose and ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... thoroughly satisfactory culmination, I trust that things will again assume their normal appearance. For the past month or so Barbara has been most distraite; uncle has so evidently tried to be cheerful that the effort has been distressing; and you, little Lady Betty, have been racking your precious brains for a scheme to ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... chaplain did not recognize the lean, pale, anxious man, for the round-faced, rosy, overgrown boy of a year ago. His scholarship and critical knowledge were fairly above the mark, in spite of a racking headache; and his written sermon, together with all that was elicited from him, revealed, all unconsciously to himself, what treasures he had brought back from the deep waters which had so nearly closed ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... His hands were clever despite the dirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three-gram electroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure of electronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If only he wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking 'yeah'! ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... sob. "She isn't a bit well. She has a cold and such a racking cough. I'm keeping ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... Olive stood under the shelter of the porch, the children vainly hoping that it might clear up before nine o'clock—the hour the train left—and Olive racking her brain for something that would soothe their feelings. "We might ask mammy to let us go into the kitchen and make candy," she said. "The weather is too damp and sticky for molasses candy, but butter-scotch ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... became conscious of a cramped, stiff body, of a dull pain racking his head. He stretched out his limbs—and, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... was standing by me, so I looked up at him helplessly and told him that was one thing I never could remember. He said I would have to, and I said I couldn't. He pranced around for fifteen minutes, and I pretended to be racking my brain. ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... of splashing over miles of level road, drenched with water and buffeted by gusts of wind that faced us more and more, with the monotonous beat of hoofs ever in my ears, and the monotonous stride of the horse beneath me ever racking my tired muscles. Then we slackened pace in a road that wound in sharp descent through a gap in the hills, with the rush and roar of a torrent beneath and beside us, the wind sweeping with wild blasts ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... any more," cried poor Polly, swallowing very hard—"there, see, Joey dear," and she wiped off the last tear. "Now I'll help you dig some more worms," she said, racking her brains to think of something by which to make up ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... she was waiting for him to speak first. But he did not say a word about the thing that was tormenting them both. He silently disregarded her desire to confide in him, and to get him to confide in her. He spoke of the heat, and of how tired he was, and complained of a racking headache: and they sat ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... them through the thin, cheap walls. The crying of babies, the quarrels of a couple in the flat back of them, the wheeze of a rusty phonograph, and the thump-thump of a playerpiano, operated with every violation of the musical code, added to the nerve-racking din. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... aching heads, drinking unbelievable quantities of coffee, sitting up, many of them, all night, attending seminars or tutoring sessions, working for long hours in the library, finally taking the examination, only to start a new nerve-racking grind in preparation for ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... do not complain That God took him, Savyeli,' I said,—'but the insult They did him torments me, It's racking my heart. Why did vicious black ravens Alight on his body And tear it to pieces? Will neither our God 450 Nor our Tsar—Little Father— Arise ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... way of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. "Who first said, 'Let us fly and save our bacon;' and 'He would make three bites of a cherry;' and 'Appetite comes with eating;' and 'It is meat, drink, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... always remained in my own bed until I heard her heavy breathing, denoting that she slept, before I dared to leave my own room to go to my sisters. The desire of racking me off, as dear charming Mrs. Benson used to call it, might have seized her, and my absence would have ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... especially among young women and lads who are of a weakly melancholy temper, or who have suffered some great disappointment. They are fond of accusing themselves; of making little faults into great ones; of racking their memories to find themselves out in the wrong; of taking the darkest possible view of themselves, and of what is going to happen to them. They forget that Solomon, the wise, when he says, 'Be not over-much wicked; neither be thou foolish—why shouldst ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... sublime idea of the nature of man, to think with what composure and confidence a succession of persons of the greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable space, with what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oil, racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dust, in measuring the distance of Sirius and the other fixed stars, the velocity of light, and "the myriads of intelligent beings formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity," that people the numberless worlds ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... "that the man who found the letter had promised to write, the very next day, the first chapter of a serial story for a little literary club to which he belonged. At the time when he found this letter lying about the bookshop he was racking his brain for a theme for his opening chapter. A great idea struck him. He put the letter in his pocket and hurried ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... is a feeling of tiredness and languor, headache followed shortly by sneezing, cold symptoms, running at the eyes, dry throat, cough, much like an ordinary cold in the head, but with a persistent, hard racking cough. The eruption appears first in the sides of the mouth, in the inner surface of the cheeks, lips, gums and soft palate, in size from that of a pin-head to that of a split pea. It appears then about the eyes and then on the face, chest and extremities. It is first in ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... o' yours," he faintly said when he reached the fireside again, "is right nerve-racking. It's like one of them Jack-boxes ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... doubt it. Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you think practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches was racking you?" ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and neck-wear being spilled from their pullmans in San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also partly accounts for the unhappy predicament in which "Cricket" McGuire found himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot platform, torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to San Antonian ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that way passed Curtis Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman—may his shadow never measure ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... propitiously. She had not reckoned on making her initial appearance in Sanford High School alone. It had been planned that her mother should accompany her, but when Monday morning came, her beloved captain had awakened with a racking headache, which meant nothing less than lying in bed for a long, pain-filled day in ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... as he could through the dark deserted roads, and though his head was racking and he felt, as he put it, "like nothing on earth," he covered the five miles between Marlehouse and Redmarley in under half an hour. He went round to the side door and felt for the key, as he hoped to slip in without meeting any of the servants ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... asked, with an assumption of carelessness, as he poured out a wine-glassful. "It's a capital thing for the headache; and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking headache ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to snatch me from the storm Of racking transport, where the little streams Of love, revenge, and all the under passions, As waters are by sucking whirlpools drawn, Were quite devoured in the vast gulph of empire. Therefore, Pyracmon, as you boldly urged, Eurydice shall die, or be my bride. Alcander, summon to their master's aid My menial ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... at him, and seeing by his starved look how he was racking his jaded brain for some excuse to go with me, I honestly believe I was sorry for him. The chaplain was a thick-set, clean-shaven, politic little fellow whose "Good-mawning, brothah?" had the heavy sweetness of perfumed lard. We conversed fluently on spiritual matters and also on Ned Ferry. ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... a stick. The boy sitting beside him laughed. He was a short well—dressed black—haired boy with rings on his fingers who worked in the town poolroom, racking the pool balls. "I'd like to go where there are women with blood in them," ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... closed casks or tanks where it undergoes a secondary fermentation, much sediment settling at the bottom of the cask. To rid the new wine of this sediment, it must be drawn off into clean casks, an operation called "racking." The first racking usually takes place within a month or six weeks. A second racking is necessary at the end of the winter and a third is desirable in the summer ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... my dear people there—look at your dear people! What waifs and strays, until their ship comes home, which we know it never will! Our fathers forever racking their five wits in the pursuit of an idea! Our mothers forever racking theirs to save money and make both ends meet!... Why, Mr. Ibbetson, you are nearer to the rossignol than I am. Do you remember your father's voice? Shall I ever forget it! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... to experience one of her cyclonic shifts. Tears came raining down her face, her sobbing cleft with great racking gulps. Then she dropped to her knees beside her daughter, and, before Lilly could prevent, reached up to drag down her face against her ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... O'Connell for your smooth passage. I really dreaded the effects of sea-sickness for you, combined with that racking cough.... ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he decided that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... spreading chestnut-tree, with his arm round his Liza's waist, and her head resting affectionately on his manly bosom. Liza, too, had foreseen the separation into couples after dinner, and had been racking her brains to find a means of getting ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... He felt ill at ease in body and mind. The idea of the Wild Man of the West having actually saved his life, and he had not seen him, was a heavy disappointment, and the confused and conflicting accounts of those who had seen him, combined with the racking pains that shot through his own brain, rendered him incapable of forming or expressing any opinion on the subject ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... horses out of town, But there again! what an ungainly sight! A man lay on the road-side, weak and helpless, With trembling frame and feverish cramps. I shut mine eyes to so much racking pain, Still I could hear his groaning and his moaning. "Oh, Channa," said I to the charioteer: "Why does this happen? How deserves this man The wretchedness of his great agonies?" "How do I know?" said Channa, ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... founders of New Ireland close their report by expressing their hope that Europeans, panting after the sweets of Liberty and Independence will flock thither. "Here," say they, "are no griping and racking Landlords to oppress you; no avaricious Priests to extort from you the Tenth of all your increase and labors and whom you must pay for the liberty to come into the world, of being married, of having children and likewise of leaving the world. * * * Send ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... grave medical statement constantly broken into by a portrayal of the disastrous effects of over-fatigue upon character. It is as yet difficult to distinguish between the results of long hours and the results of overstrain. Certainly the constant sense of haste is one of the most nerve-racking and exhausting tests to which the human system can be subjected. Those girls in the sewing industry whose mothers thread needles for them far into the night that they may sew without a moment's interruption during the next day; those girls who insert eyelets into shoes, for ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and every member full of racking torture, without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him.... How dismal will it be, when you ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... a headstrong girl of nineteen, then. But let's not think it could go as far as that! There!" She threw a peach-stone over her shoulder and sprang up gaily. "Let's not talk of it; I THINK of it enough! It's time for you to give me a RACKING criticism on my ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... that moment. Even I, seeing the endless sweep of that sea of golden grass, forgot for the moment the dry crackling sound of it under wheel and foot, and the awful monotony of its endlessness which could be so nerve-racking. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... to divide his years between Nancy, Luneville, and Commercy; and once upon a time, in the third of these chateaux, the chef had a chere amie named Madeleine. There was to be a fete, and the lover of Madeleine was racking his tired brain to invent some new dainty for it. "I have thought of something which can make you famous," announced the young woman, who was a budding genius as a cook. "But, mon cher, it is my secret. Even to you I will not give it for ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sinning. Every line in the boy's fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange mood of longing for a son. As an end to this nerve-racking night, there was work to do—for the remainder of it, at least for a brief moment, he had a companion in his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... got its coat. It put the coat on. Hallen stared with his mouth open. The pins hadn't convinced him, but the utterly different voice coming from this girl's mouth had. Yet, waves of conflicting disbelief and conviction, horror and a racking doubt, chased themselves ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... adulterous generation, we will love young Cartwright, in spite of the suspicion that, addressed as the play is to Charles, and probably acted before his queen, the young rogue had been playing the courtier somewhat, and racking his brains for pretty sayings which would exhibit as a virtue that very uxoriousness of the poor king which at last cost him his head. The 'Royal Slave,' too, is a gallant play, right-hearted and lofty from ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... this argument. All the wounds in his heart were aching, and he could not bring his thoughts to majorities. He passed a night of nerve-racking strain. The jeopardy of election did not concern him. That night at the dinner party he had realized that he had a formidable rival in Fletcher, who had a place firmly fixed in the Winthrop household. Still, against odds, he had determined ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... jack-boots, with huge funnel tops; spurs, with enormous rowels, and a rapier of preposterous length. He wore his own hair, which was swart and woolly, like that of a negro; and had beard and moustaches to match. His hat was fiercely cocked; his gestures swaggering and insolent; and he was perpetually racking his brain to invent new ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... breaking; but lonesome and eerie Is the hour of my waking, afar from the glen.[50] Alas! that I ever came a wanderer hither, Where the tongue of the stranger is racking my brain! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Reinhardt, smitten with an admiration as unconcealed for the beautiful stranger. In the interval before the arrival of the later members of the quartet, he fluttered around her like an ungainly old moth, racking his scant English for complimentary speeches. These were received by Aunt Victoria with her best calm smile, and by Professor Saunders with open impatience. His equanimity was not restored by the fact that there chanced to be rather more general ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in upon the grief and anguish of Jeremiah. He turned away, sat down quietly at the foot of a tree and listened, with a fast-beating beating heart, to the sobs that were racking the very frame ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... For aught they showed there might have been a dozen eyes behind them leering in; the points of a dozen weapons pricking through; the muzzles of a dozen revolvers ready to bark death. Each second he expected them to open—to unmask. The suspense grew nerve-racking. And behind him the girl kept whispering, "What is it? Tell me." He felt her hands ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... already setting. The flowers, having just been watered, gave forth a damp, irritating fragrance. Indoors they began singing again, and in the distance the violin had the effect of a human voice. Kovrin, racking his brains to remember where he had read or heard the legend, turned slowly towards the park, and unconsciously went as far as the river. By a little path that ran along the steep bank, between the bare roots, he went down to the water, disturbed the peewits ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... far the most criminal of the two, having turned queen's evidence. This latter soon afterwards was brought on board the Minden, having been attacked with the fever, and never was there such an evidence of the racking of a bad conscience. In his ravings he shrieked for mercy, and then would blaspheme in the most awful manner. At one moment the spectre of his dead comrade would be invoked by him, requesting it to depart, or desiring those around him ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... emission the male organ is quickly withdrawn, to avoid emission of seminal fluid in the vagina. Many men and women feel this to be unromantic and nerve-racking, and otherwise objectionable. The method is quite commonly practised, but it is unreliable in multiple connections, and where the man has not complete control over himself. It leaves the woman at the mercy of the ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... grand follies in Angelique's estimation, which she was less capable of appreciating than even her maid; but flirtation and coquetry, skin-deep only, she could understand, and relished beyond all other enjoyments. It was just now like medicine to her racking thoughts to listen ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... ought to thank our chum here, Jack Rover, for bringing your car back to you, Mr. Bangs," remarked Gif. "If he hadn't jumped from his horse into the car the machine might be racking itself to pieces out on the prairie now. It was doing all sorts of stunts when he jumped aboard and ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... voice left. An unearthly guttural hiss alternately rattled and wheezed in his throat. He fumbled for the rifle, got it to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the discharge tore through his frame, racking it with a thousand agonies. The rifle had fallen across his knees, and an attempt to lift it to his shoulder failed. He knew he must be quick, and felt that he was fainting, so he pulled the trigger of the gun where it lay. This time it kicked off and overboard. But just before darkness rushed ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... First Army Corps under Sir Douglas Haig, an Irish and Scotch group of regiments, were the most successful of all. The bridge at Pont Arcy had been destroyed, but still one of its girders spanned the stream. It would have been tricky walking, even under ordinary circumstances, but nerve racking to attempt, when from every hill and wood and point of land, Maxims, machine guns and a steady rifle fire are concentrated on the man crossing that one girder. By the afternoon, the engineers attached to the First Army Corps had also established a pontoon bridge, and the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the coalition weakened. Loiseau spoke three unfortunate sentences. Each was racking his brains to find new examples and did not find any, when the Countess, possibly without premeditation, prompted by a vague desire to render homage to religion, questioned the elder of the two nuns about the most noteworthy deeds in the lives of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... dark dreary little room upstairs in a noisy tenement house. A pale, thin woman on a shabby lounge vainly trying to quiet a fretful child. The child is thin and pale, too, with a hard, racking cough. There is a small fire in the stove, a very small fire; coal is so high. The medicine stands on the shelf. "Medicine won't do much good," the doctor had said; ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... at the door in a kind of fury. "Something must be done for that girl. I have had a perfectly nerve-racking time. We must get her out of that house before they ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... uneasy glances backward, forward, and sideways, as if she were expecting some goblin shape to rise suddenly before her and claim her for its own. They were wretched, uneasy days which followed that visit to Frankfort—days of racking headache to Mrs. Worthington, and days of anxious thought to Hugh, who thus was led in a measure to forget the pain he would otherwise have felt at the memory ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... court flattered the great ones at inventing anagrams for them; and when the wit of the maker proved to be as barren as the letters of the name, they dropped or changed them, raving with the alphabet, and racking their wits. Among the manuscripts of the grave Sir Julius Caesar, one cannot but smile at a bundle emphatically endorsed "Trash." It is a collection of these court-anagrams; a remarkable evidence of that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to the next with the oakum and the caulking tool. The Professor had insisted on again taking the helm. He had been refreshed by the few moments' relaxation. Slowly he moved over to the tiller. Would he ever make it? The boys stopped their work, fascinated with the nerve-racking intensity of it. They knew the point had been passed. The Professor smiled, and held up his hand as a signal, and the boys rushed to him and actually cried, as he ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... lodged believed that she had gone to London, taking with her her six months old child, and had started to tramp the way on foot. The woman said that she doubted whether she could ever have got there. She was an utterly broken woman, with a constant racking cough, which was like to tear her to pieces, and before she set out her landlady had urged upon her that the idea of her starting to carry a heavy child to London was ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... house, and look up at the windows or door, not daring to knock for fear of disturbing her, but hoping to see one of the physicians or some one of the family, of whom to make inquiries. Oh, the nervousness of those days! the restless, weary nights we passed, till our fears and apprehensions became a racking torment, and we felt almost that we must die (sic) ourselves ourselves or be out of suspense; but when, on the evening of the tenth day after her illness, a messenger came with pallid face and almost wild look to say that ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... awake, alone in her shelter. She had given the excuse of a racking headache to keep Jerrold from coming to her. For that she had had to lie. But what was her whole existence but a lie? A lie told by her silence under Maisie's trust in her, by her acceptance of Maisie's ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. Heed the counsels of one whose sands of life are almost run and who, before she goes to the land of cats, would fain warn a youthful friend and, if possible, avert her from her own sad fate. This racking cough (ugh! ugh!) and this distressing cat-arrh, (snuff! snuff!) with which you see me afflicted were brought on by the hardships and exposure incident to the life of a barn-cat: midnight rambles, my dear (ugh!), in frost and snow; days when ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... ten miles' ride I was racking my brain for something to say when I should jump up to make my first sale. I had never sold a dollars' worth of goods of any kind at auction, and the only experience of a similar nature that I had ever had was the four ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... scream,-in the mating season, whenever it comes. It is loud, piercing, prolonged, and has the agonized voice qualities of a boy or a woman screaming from the pain of a surgical operation. To one who does not know the source or the cause, it is nerve-racking. When heard in a remote wilderness it must be truly fearsome. It says "Ow-w-w-w!" over and over. We have heard it a hundred times or more, and it easily carries a quarter ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... alas! I have taken wing from my station, and looked in through the miserable easement, and seen, not only what is disgusting to the senses,—which is a small matter,—but ignorance and disease, and fear, and guilt, and racking pain, and doubt, and death; and I have not been able to help saying, in pity, 'O for absolute solitude!—how much nature would be improved if the human race ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... should spout her cataracts of fire, Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall One day upon our heads; while we perhaps, Designing or exhorting glorious war, Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey Or racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains, There to converse with everlasting groans, Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved, Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse. War, therefore, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... rouse the faintest suspicion in this woman's intelligent mind would be fatal to all further procedure, and so he stood indifferent, while she lifted garment after garment and laid them carefully on the bed. He counted five coats and as many vests—and was racking his brains for some plausible excuse for a nearer inspection, when she stopped in the midst of her work, with ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... masked in the man turns around and grins, gibbering vulgar words to point his meaning, and casting dirt on his pretended decency. While racking the resources of allusive diction to veil and to suggest an immodest movement of his hero (Adonis being goaded beyond the bounds of boyish delicacy by lascivious sights), he suddenly subsides with a knavish ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... headache Nan Tok' was full of attention and concern. When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the wife heeded not, except to jeer. It is always the woman's part to fill and light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to the wedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page were ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regrets and racking fears. That this volume would be ravished away by creditors or plunderers was possible. Every hour might be that which decided my fate. The first impulse was to seek my dwelling and ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... arranged his ivory men. Jokai touched a metal pawn and shuddered violently. The metal board was wired. Thenceforth every move in the game he must play with the metal men would complete the circuit and send the biting needles through his frame. It was delicately gauged, a nerve-racking discomfort without definite pain, a thing to snap the dreadful tension of a man's ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... maladies which made them unfit for military service. The accident of being asked to distribute presents enabled me to see and talk with hundreds of them. It was a sweet and exhilarating yet rather nerve-racking experience. These young fellows, who had looked on death in its most horrible aspects, having had it for their duty to kill as many Germans as possible, and then to eat and sleep as if nothing had occurred—had they been degraded, brutalized, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... came the War, infesting the seas with unaccustomed and nerve-racking dangers. I must apologise for mentioning this, as everybody knows that we ought now to forget about the War as quickly as possible and get on with more important matters, but at the time it had a certain effect upon us all, not excluding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... enough to assure myself that no strange object was within sight, 'I have been too much of a rake lately; I am racking out my nerves,' said I, speaking aloud, with a view to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... thinking, and thinking again, sir," said Caesar. Then, drawing his chair nearer to Philip's, he added, in a half whisper, "I'm getting a bit of a skute into something, though. See yonder? They're calling his father a miser. The man's racking his tenants and starving his land. But I believe enough the young brass lagh (a weed) is choking ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... putting her hands to her racking head, and stamping her foot impatiently. "I would rather not hear. It is all so petty, so stupid, so mean. What have I or Carol Quinton to ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... Fullaway. "It will draw attention. There'll already be a few thousand amateur detectives looking out for the man who left the French maid dead in Eastbourne Terrace, and a few hundred amateur criminologists racking their brains for a plausible theory of the whole thing. Oh, yes, it's a good thing to arouse public interest, Allerdyke. All that's wanted now is a rousing reward. Have you thought ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... of generous sympathy for the oppressed, is nevertheless generally classed to-day as a colossal egoist. (Unjustly so, for no mere egoist would have toiled as he toiled for Greek emancipation, in the nerve-racking campaign ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... they won't need much holding," Joe went on, all the while racking his brain to recall the voice. He wanted to have the man speak again, that he ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... belied Arthur's description, and appeared a gentle lamb rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action. He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for the high-pitched dominance of his nature. He talked only when he had to, and then his speech was ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... you racking angers, you short-lived ennuis; Ah, think not you shall finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth. It shall march forth over-mastering, till all lie beneath me, It shall stand up, the soldier of ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... began on September 15th, was more nerve-racking for the lawyers than for the defendant. For the witnesses were elusive. The trial seemed to be regarded by the majority of those connected with it as a gracious act of Providence for the redistribution of some of the Marquis's wealth. Everybody, it seemed, was thrusting ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... father and the man she feared, whose world was it that night, if this is a real world, and not the shadow of a dream? Was it the colonel's gay world, or John's golden world, or Ward's harmonious world, or poor little Molly's world—all askew with miserable duties and racking heartaches, and grinning sneering fears, with the relentless image of the Larger Good always before her? Surely it was not all their worlds, for there is only one world. Then whose was it? God who made it and set it in the heavens in His great love and mercy only knows. Watts McHurdie once ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... and scowled, racking his brains, while the young lieutenant watched respectfully, waiting for Joe to have an inspiration. Had Joe known it, the lieutenant was deeply impressed by his attempt at concentration on the problem it had not been Major Holt's intention for Joe to consider. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... a little with our country landlords, who by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... this emphatic acceptance of the butler's suggestion without a thought as to its possible consequences. He was racking his brain in a frenzy of uncertainty as to how he should frame his words when he heard quite clearly a woman's footsteps on the parquet flooring, and caught Evelyn Forbes's voice saying to Tomlinson: "How fortunate! Mr. Theydon ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... his top-heavy lance in a somewhat wobbling manner at his adversary. It must soon be known to all the world of knighthood which was the grimmer champion! At middle distance and well to one side, stood Grand Marshal Valentine, racking his brains for the lines which should give the signal for the shock, but all in vain. Desperation gave him inspiration. "Let 'er go for your girls!" ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... recognized function is to cull and purvey news. And I had many friends engaged. A couple of miles back I found the 7th British Field Ambulance, to which my own chief, A.E. Knott, was attached. The sight here was far more nerve-racking than a battlefield. It was an open human shambles, with miserable men lying about, some waiting on tables to be operated on. Knott was about to help in amputating a leg. In the few words I had with him I learnt that Suffolk was killed. I think I am right when I say ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... retorted in a tempest of racking coughs that, whoever welcomed the Europeans here or there, it was no credit that the Lenape should be so forward to appropriate it! The white people were not the friends of the red man. They wanted the whole country. Finally ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... patient she had little to do but reflect on her position, and her thoughts brought her many a sigh, much heart-racking and anxiety. For herself she allowed little thought. Her mind was made up as to her future. Her love was to be snatched away while yet the first sweet glamour of it was upon her. Every hope, every little castle she had raised in her maiden thoughts, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... measles do not require any medicinal treatment, and generally get well without any prejudice to the general health; nevertheless, cases occur where intense ophthalmia, a violent and racking cough, and the phenomena which appertain to it; an intense irritation of the internal mucous membrane; diarrh[oe]a; dangerous prostration of strength; marked stupefaction and various nervous phenomena render the interference of art desirable. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... the sittings in that quiet room; for it grew more and more attractive to him, and while he painted the younger sister's changeful face he studied the beautiful nature of the elder and learned to love it. But no one guessed that secret for a long time; and Jessie was so busy racking her brain for a way to earn more money that she was as blind and deaf to much that went on before her as if she had ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... and even seriously racking his brain to find a direction for this single force four times multiplied, with which he did not doubt, as with the lever for which Archimedes sought, they should succeed in moving the world, when someone tapped gently at his door. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... simply flew through the water. It was splendid. We soon gained the shore, and it was with no little satisfaction we saw ourselves at home. Then we retired to our beds, Graham not to appear again until next day, for he had a racking headache. After lunch Ellen and I tried to tidy the sitting-room, which was strewn ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... are watching our coast. This little book may help considerably to enlighten the general public on the work of the branches of the Navy, and prove that the men engaged in this tedious, hazardous, and nerve-racking vigil are going about it with the same old valour befitting the traditions of the Royal Navy. They have fought the savage beasts like true sportsmen. They have rescued enemy sailors, clothed and fed them, without a sign of animus, knowing that victory will ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... of an old workman, offered to Jocquelet by Amedee, obtained only a grimace of displeasure from the actor. However, it ended by his being reconciled to the part, studying it, and, to use his own expression, "racking his brains over it," until one day he ran to Violette's, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... while on that blasted and corpse-like wreck two men fought, one in awful, cold, remorseless silence, the other with broken screams of insane fury that availed him nothing, Mrs. Goring murmured between racking sobs: ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... friends his cottage had partly lost its comfortless appearance, and himself, his wife, and children had been provided with sufficient food and clothing. Yet the stamp of death was on the poor patient's wasted features, and a racking cough tried him terribly at times. But his mind was quite clear, and he had begun to see his way to pardon and peace, though it was with but a trembling hand that his faith laid hold ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... racking her brain, the smudge of Oakland at her back, staring across the bay at the smudge of Ban Francisco. Yet the sun was good; the wind was good, as was the keen salt air in her nostrils; the blue sky, flecked with clouds, was good. All the natural world was right, and ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... dead lying on the battle-field of Auerstadt, rose up now an officer, severely injured in the head and arm. The sun, which had aroused him from the apathetic exhaustion into which he had sunk from loss of blood and hunger, now warmed his stiffened limbs, and allayed somewhat the racking pain in his wounded right arm, and the bleeding gash in his forehead. He tried to extricate himself from under the carcass of his horse, that pressed heavily on him, and felt delighted as he succeeded in loosing his foot from the stirrup, and drawing it from ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as we could muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much, as I felt sick and faint after my sufferings of the previous night, and had besides a racking headache. It was a curious meal. The gloom was so intense that we could scarcely see the way to cut our food and convey it to our mouths. Still we got on pretty well, till I happened to look behind me — my attention ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... The nerve-racking work was beginning to tell upon him. His orders condemned him to a forlorn hope, for the English Channel was known to be a death-trap for the under-sea blockaders. The sight of a trawler filled him with feelings akin to terror. The possibility, nay probability, ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... a long and oppressive illness, attended with racking pains, a dismal journey in a wearisome litter, the light hand of the woman Ayesha, so sad and so stately, smoothing my pillow or fanning my brows. I remember the evening on which my nurse drew the folds of the litter aside, and said, 'See Aleppo! ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... over; but that his enthusiasm beguiled him into remote and odd parts of the Barrier, that he became familiar with rare scenes (denied to all save submarine adventurers in tropical waters), that he was oft in peril of his life, and that he could pause in the midst of strenuous, nerve-racking work to watch the never-ceasing hostilities of the denizens of the sea, may not ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield |
