"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the same foes, our professional advocates of "preparedness," our cheerful chemists, our scientific "intellectuals"—all our materialistic thinkers hard- shell and soft-shell,—took the position of Flaubert, just presented; reproached us bitterly for our slack, sentimental pacificism; and urged us with all speed to emulate the scientific spirit of our enemy. There is nothing more instructive in this correspondence than to observe how this last fond illusion falls away from Flaubert under the impact of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... next boom comes, it will be using, though presumably to greater advantage, labor and materials which, but for it, would have been employed for other purposes. Meanwhile the causes making for unemployment will be unaffected. Miscalculations will still be made, the building trades will still become slack in the winter, the casual methods of engaging dock laborers will still continue, trade cycles will still recur, while beneath them, and concealed by them, some industries will expand and others will decay. Thus, like the armies at Salonika, the new business would in effect ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... of great rivers. He came down through bare rocks, then through twisted mountain-pines, then through green and lovely valleys, and so into the plains of northern Italy. He saw the mountain torrents leap and flash, and grow always bigger and stronger. He saw them slack their speed and widen their beds in the upland valleys. He saw them grow sluggish, tawny with mud, ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... thing when he put his fut on the deck when we brought the Ludovico into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, 'Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don't keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch—'tis insanitary.' Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we'd had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin' foul o' the breakwater, to say nothin' of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... seemed to conclude that she must submit to the inevitable. During the first part of the morning she was sullen and contrary, merely allowing herself to be dragged along; but as the day wore on and her stomach felt empty and slack, she grew more subdued and began to walk quietly forward, eating as she went like any other goat,—only looking up once in a while when she heard the heavy cow ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... cauto, cautious *conocer, to know through the senses, to be acquainted with deuda, debt doloroso, painful endosar, to endorse ensenar, to teach, to show esperar, to expect, to hope, to wait estadisticas, statistics falta, want, absence of flojo, slack fundar, to found gratitud, gratitude *hacer mencion, to mention herida, wound, sting informar (de), to inform of, to acquaint with llevar chasco, to be disappointed, to be baffled *negar, to deny periodico, newspaper ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... the king, But cannot brook a night-grown mushroom, Such a one as my Lord of Cornwall is, Should bear us down of the nobility: And, when the commons and the nobles join, 'Tis not the king can buckler Gaveston; We'll pull him from the strongest hold he hath. My lords, if to perform this I be slack, Think me as base a groom as Gaveston. Lan. On that condition Lancaster will grant. War. And so will Pembroke and I. E. Mor. And I. Y. Mor. In this I count me highly gratified, And Mortimer ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... lassoed and broken by the 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 nose of ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... quite pleasing. Like all large, comfortable old whalers, she had a sort of motherly look:—broad in the beam, flush decks, and four chubby boats hanging at the breast. Her sails were furled loosely upon the yards, as if they had been worn long, and fitted easy; her shrouds swung negligently slack; and as for the "running rigging," it never worked hard as it does in some of your "dandy ships," jamming in the sheaves of blocks, like Chinese slippers, too small to be useful: on the contrary, the ropes ran glibly through, as if they had many a time ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... above them. We have been steadily adding to the burdens on industrial and commercial equipment; even more have we increased the stresses and the strains on human life. A devastating war is now suddenly taking up the slack, and the slow and painful task of making the world efficient must be hastened in order that society may bear the load. In these circumstances we need not apologize for making efficiency the main support of ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season. They are dispirited and lazy, and very ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... and there was no proof that he had received hers. Lucy began gradually to despond; for work became slack, and at times she only got enough to employ her half the day. Not to lose ground, however, she hired herself to the neighbouring farmers' wives to sew during her spare time, leaving Dame Damerel ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... European solution of using the unemployed to build up excessive armaments which eventually result in dictatorships and war. We encourage an American way—through an increase of national income which is the only way we can be sure will take up the slack. Much progress has been made; much remains to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... Powers, Terror of Heaven, though fallen; intend at home, While here shall be our home, what best may ease The present misery, and render Hell More tolerable; if there be cure or charm To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain Of this ill mansion: intermit no watch Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek Deliverance for us all. This enterprise None shall partake with me." Thus saying, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... evening, at this place, for the due consideration of this subject, such of the Assistants as may be here present in Boston, and to advise with them thereupon, when and where I shall hope to be favored with the presence and counsel of my friend, whose zeal is never slack in aught that may redound to the welfare of ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... brawny crew the current stem, And, slow advancing, struggle with the stream: But if they slack their hands, or cease to strive, Then down the flood ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... introduction. The transition from an abnormal and revolutionary period to the regular and orderly administration of affairs, has been as remarkable as the intervention of the great question which eclipsed every other till it compelled its own solution. Although this transition has given birth to an era of "slack-water politics," it has gradually brought the country face to face with new problems, some of which are quite as vital to the existence and welfare of the Republic as those which have taxed the statesmanship of the past. The tyranny of industrial domination, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... outside the bank had been voted too uncertain; [and the day was spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through the sand which has accumulated over it. By getting the cable tight on to the boat, and letting the swell pitch her about till it got slack, and then tightening again with blocks and pulleys, we managed to get out from the beach towards the ship at the rate of about twenty yards an hour. When they had got about 100 yards from shore, we ran round in the ELBA to try and help them, letting go the anchor ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... order from east to west. The Carillon Rapid is two miles long and has, or had, a fall of 10 feet the Chte Blondeau a quarter of a mile with a fall of 4 feet and the Longue Sault six miles and a fall of 46 feet. Between the Carillon and Chte Blondeau there is or was a slack water reach of three and a half miles, and between the latter and the foot of the Longue Sault a similar reach of one and a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... of the development of an offshore oil industry. Real GDP growth annually averaged 10% from 1978 to 1985. In 1986 Cameroon had one of the highest levels of income per capita in tropical Africa, with oil revenues picking up the slack as growth in other sectors softened. Because of the sharp drop in oil prices, however, the economy is now experiencing serious budgetary difficulties and balance-of-payments disequalibrium. Oil reserves ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... national efficiency, due partly to the debilitating heat of the new habitat, partly to its easier conditions of living, whether the intruders came as conquerors and appropriated the fat of the land, or as immigrant colonists who dropped into slack methods of agriculture, because rain and sun and soil made their reluctant labor scarcely necessary. Everywhere in the Tropics the enervating effects of heat, moisture, and abundance make not only the natives averse to steady ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; then a slip ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... been the slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary stuff ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... through this opening and oil the piston rod and cylinder packing. If not possible to block the valve properly, cover the ports and oil the cylinder through the indicator plug openings or relief plug holes. If not possible to do this, slack off the bolts on the front cylinder head, wedge the head open so oil can be introduced. In some cases it may be necessary to take the head off; that however, allows dust and grit to ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... a flood 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 there was I with my "Poomaynes?" ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... went to Rome, where they throw hundreds and thousands at each other in play, and call it a Comfit Battle or Battaglia di Confetti (that's real Italian). And he wanted to get up that sort of thing among the village people—but they were too beastly slack, so he chucked it. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... being determined to mortify his rival Parrah More by a superior display of hospitality, waited upon that parsonage, and exacted a promise from him to come down and partake of the dinner—a promise which the other was not slack in fulfilling. Phaddhy's heart was now on the point of taking its rest, when it occurred to him that there yet remained one circumstance in which he might utterly eclipse his rival, and that was to ask Captain ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... great fosse which encircles the town. A garden, full of sweet blooming flowers, is behind them; and the view backwards is cheerful and picturesque. There are generally five presses at work; which, for a provincial printing office, shews business to be far from slack. Mons. B. sells a great number of almanacks, and prints all the leading publications connected with the town. In fact, his title, as Imprimeur du Roi, supposes him to take the principal lead as a printer. This agreeable man has a brother who ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... It might have been June, yet we had but few days to Christmas. The noon ceiling was a frail blue, where gauze was suspended in motionless loops and folds. The track of the sun was incandescent silver. A few sailing vessels idled in the North Channel, their sails slack; but we could not see a steamer in what is one of the world's busiest fairways. We ran on a level keel, and there was no movement but the tremor of the engines. We should catch the tide at the Shipwash, and go up on it to Billingsgate and be home by midnight. How foolish it ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... the rope too much," answered the Navajo. "There will be places where you may have to do that. It will be safe to do so for Kitoni will take in all slack, but it will be better if ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Charing Cross railway station at one o'clock, but if anything should go wrong, send me a wire to the Club. Then we can do some shopping together, and have some fun also. Tell your mother that we shall be back in plenty of time for dinner. Make another tart, and I shall eat it. Things are slack at the office just now, and I could be spared for a ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... slack-jawed. He glanced furtively behind him at Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back with the muzzle of a gun. Lone, he observed, had another. He looked back at Al, whose eyes were ablaze with resentment. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... national But when 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 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 Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that's where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so desirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and inaccurate.... ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... man who'd just settled down in Tottingham and opened a shop there. Came from Biddeford, Maine, I believe, and thought he was pretty foxy. 'Well,' he says, 'there ain't any money in it for me at those figures, Colonel, but work's slack an' I'll take the contract.' You see, he thought he could charge a little more here an' there an' make something. But he didn't know the Colonel. Every time he'd talk about things costin' more than he'd thought the Colonel would flash that contract on him. When the houses was ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... who held the slack of the rope gathered up in his hands. "No, stop!" cried he, in a sharp whisper, checking Herrera, who was about to jump out, and drawing hastily back. "Hell and the devil! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... heedless pair of sportsmen slack! You never mark, though trout or jack, Or little foolish stickleback, Your baited snares may capture. What care has SHE for line and hook? She turns her back upon the brook, Upon her lover's eyes to look ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... find what they call vulgarisms think they may safely go on 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. It is, apart ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... very strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came back with ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... ended we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... believes—that Italy will come in. She also believes, from false information that she has gathered in this country, that under no circumstances will England fight. It isn't about that I came to you. We've become a slothful, slack, pleasure-loving people, but I still believe that when the time comes we shall fight. The only thing is that we shall be taken at a big disadvantage. We shall be open to a raid upon our fleet. Do you know that the entire ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a chair near the door, and smiling to himself at the evidences of slack business which the offices of Messrs. Rowden and Owlett presented. In about five minutes the boy returned, and gave ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... they are—spread out on my sheet! By Jove, little woman, you've treated me jolly well! And now I can pay you back a little. But perhaps you won't mind, dearest, if I don't write anything very long, for I expect I ought to take it easy—for a bit—I can't think why I should have felt so slack. I never knew anything about nerves before. But the doctor has been very nice and understanding—a real, decent fellow. He declares I shall be as fit as a fiddle, long before the three weeks ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Captain Jack rushed him th' Ramblin' Kid give a jump sideways, his rope went true, a quick run to the snubbin' post and he throwed him dead! The broncho hit his feet, give a squeal and come straight back! Th' Ramblin' Kid run once more, yankin' like blazes to get the slack! That time when he went down—well, before we realized it, th' Ramblin' Kid had him bridled and saddled and was safe ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... on, devising reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... advancing toward us at a brisk canter and the drum turned fast, taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though not satisfied with this rate of progress, several soldiers were running back and jumping up to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took care of the telephone was hard put to it to coil down the twin wires. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Meinertshagen the 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 form the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... behind him in the captive's place, Scarcely could see the outline of his face. I smiled, and laid my cheek against his back: "Loose thou my hands," I said. "This pace let slack. Forget we now that thou and I are foes. I like thee well, and wish to clasp thee close; I like the courage of thine eye and brow; I like thee better ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... his tall, lithe body slack, grim, serious lines in his lean face. He had thought of his conversation with Judge Graney concerning ambition—his ambition, the picture upon which his mind had dwelt many times. A little frame printing office in the West was not one of its ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... large breakage in one of the wholesale houses. This is caused by the dead weight of the packing-cases, to which every house in the trade is liable. In the fruit market, there is positively nothing doing; and the growers, who are every day becoming less, complain bitterly. Raspberries were very slack, at 2-1/2d. per pottle; but dry goods still brought their prices. We have heard of several severe smashes in currants, and the bakers, who, it is said, generally contrive to get a finger in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... 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 correspond. One eighth of an inch deviation from the perpendicular ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... the brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... plainly alarmed, more especially as the Sunakite broke out into one of his wild wails of denunciation, waving his hands like a prophet of wrath, and predicting famine, disease, pestilence, to these slack observers ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to Bungroopim—when it happened to be a slack day for you on the run, and when the married couple had levanted and I'd got an incompetent black-gin in the kitchen—or when the store wanted tidying and you and I had a good old spree ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... eleven o'clock. Tide was full at twelve. I was a pretty good candidate for the crazy house by this time. I'd listened till my ear-drums felt slack, like they needed reefing. And then at last I heard her ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about Louise. Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt. Women left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for something considered suddenly essential to their work. Some of the clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon. Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that strange, red-kerchief-topped ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... just as it were reached a climax, when, instead of the line breaking or Mark going over the side, the strong cord, which had been hissing here and there through the water, suddenly grew slack, and the tension was taken off Mark's muscles and mind to give place to ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... having any wish to conceal my name from you, I went round to your house before I called here and left my card on you. You'll find it there when you get back. I always like to be strict in the observance of the rules of civilised society. I particularly dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are inclined to drift. I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the rest in that respect. He ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... overflows underfoot now, but the cold had frozen them and the going was getting constantly better. The snow was thin and in places the sleds slewed sidewise and the dogs ran on slack traces across long stretches of bare glare ice. It was while negotiating such a place as this that Rock paid the price of his earlier carelessness. Doret's dry moose-skin soles had a sure grip, hence he never hesitated, but the lieutenant's moccasins ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... between Mr. Liversedge and his relative allowed Glazzard to keep silence, save when he exchanged a few words with his hostess or Miss Pope. He had a look of extreme weariness; his eyes were heavy and without expression, the lines of face slack, sullen; he seemed to maintain with difficulty his upright position at the table, and his eating was only pretence. At the close of the meal he bent towards Mrs. Liversedge, declared that he was suffering ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... bared for fiercer play, The left one held the rein in slack; In all the fury of the fray I sought the white man, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the knight on sable steed, That comes with thundering tread? Dark warrior, slack thy furious speed, Nor trample on the dead: A youthful chief before thee lies, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... face. This circle of light seemed to collect these things, to choose them, as though for the expression of some meaning. It felt for them as an artist feels for his composition and gave to them a symbolic value. The two hands were in the center of the glow—the long, pale, slack one, the small, desperate, clinging one. The conscious and the unconscious, life and death, humanity and God—all that is mysterious and tragic seemed to find expression ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... third man had the lariat of the pony hitched to the raised muscles of his back, and was dragged in this way several times round the ring; but the force not being sufficient to tear loose from the flesh, the pony was backed up, and a slack being thus taken on the lariat, the pony was urged swiftly forward, and the sudden jerk tore the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... proved possible. She had made out even 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 had gone to his dinner; she herself was busy ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... as his swollen eyes chanced to light on Gavin Brice. who was just following Milo from the launch to the float. And his discolored and unshaven jaw went slack. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... 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 ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... decorously the hardships of his present situation, and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been made up of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... improvin' the human race. Now look here, Mis' Carrington, let an old woman talk. I'm old and I got wrinkles in my face but there ain't none in my heart, and the only way to keep 'em out of your heart is just to fill it to bustin' with love. Keep the skin tight; don't let it git slack. Why, you'll find you been goin' without love and it's like eatin' without an appetite. It's fillin' your life with somethin' that don't satisfy. Even if you feel you ain't got the best man in the world, make the best of the one you got, and, just 'cause he's yourn, you'll believe ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... case with such unfortunates in small country towns where everybody knows everybody, he was made a common sport and jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was grown to the ripeness of manhood he was still looked upon as being—to use a quaint expression—"slack," or "not jest right." He was heavy, awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed, and enormously, prodigiously strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face, with lips heavy and loosely hanging, that gave him an air of stupidity, half droll, half pathetic. His little ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... had marched out and began to fight with the Persians, some of them continued the battle, namely those who had not been made partakers in the design, while others went over to the Persians; but the greater number were wilfully slack ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best land-drainage, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... bins that looked like huge beehives grew into shape. The homestead was good, as homesteads in the back townships went, but Festing knew the land was badly worked. Charnock had begun well, with money in the bank, but luck had been against him and he had got slack. Indeed this was Charnock's trouble; when a job got difficult, he did not ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though 'tis pity of the old name! Ha! what's this? 'Wedded against my will—no troth plight.' Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in-not properly born, till flood. He's a-going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... see as he'd be much the better off for that. A foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... closed. Archie waited a few moments, then went to the window and hauled in the slack. Presently the bag appeared over the edge of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the British who survived to desert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and better paid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemy to fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to make the British get slack. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... I myself happened to sit down for a long time, whilst waiting for a party who were getting their kit together, and I discovered how difficult it was to get up again and stretch one's legs. After this personal experience, whenever I saw any one else seated in slack and lazy mood, I tried to spur him on. The mere movement and effort to play the man caused warmth and moisture, whereas it was plain that sitting down and keeping quiet helped the blood to freeze and the toes to mortify, calamities which ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. It's like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii—eating, drinking and physical love-making. One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can't work together, in offices or anything, or scientific ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... to-day the most powerful stimulus in use. But thoughtful managers of industrial enterprise tell you, incredible as it may seem, that the worker's objection to applying himself to his task is not invariably overcome by anticipation of the wage return; he will slack or be perverse or throw over a job in the face of opportunities to earn as good a wage or a better one than he can get elsewhere. It is well known that workers joint unions in the face of opposition of employers and at the risk of ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... 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 back again. I have always found that when the battalion ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... China. The importance of this work cannot be measured by its bulk. Nor is it to be estimated by any census of countable immediate results. It is a kind of work, which, according as it is done, or left undone; or as it is done with slack and nerveless hand or with vim and vigor, will test the very character of our churches; will touch the conscience and well-being of the nation; and will, without a doubt, have vital and decisive connection with the future of that ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... the horse by suddenly leaning forward with her body, at the same time, for an instant, letting the rein slack and touching the neck with her bridle hand. She began to draw ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... and make merry all night by candle-light at the graves of their deceased kindred, whom they invite to partake.[28] It lasts three nights and the intermediate days; when, by command of the king, every house must new gravel the street before its door, and hang out candles all night. I was not slack in obeying this order, and I was informed that a poor man was put to death and his house shut up, for neglecting to comply with the order. On this occasion, the China captain furnished me with two very decent paper lanthorns. Being informed that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... of the dancers give themselves to the saxophone. Their feet keep a rendezvous with the umpah umps. Their thoughts dance on the slack wire of the clarinet. Their veins beat time to the whinny of the derby wreathed cornet. The fiddles and the drums are partners for their arms and their muscles. But their hearts embrace shyly the Mother Aphrodite. Their hearts listen ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... purification which appears to possess several substantial advantages. Chief among these are simplicity in construction and operation, economy in first cost and working and efficiency in action. This system is the invention of Messrs. Slack & Brownlow, of Canning Works, Upper Medlock Street, Manchester, and the apparatus adopted in carrying it out is here illustrated. It consists of an iron cylindrical tank having inside a series of plates arranged in a spiral direction around a fixed center, and sloping downward ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... the women, he was unabashed by externals. He demanded "tea" of his mother that very moment, "cos 'e 'adn't no time for dinner and 'is bloke 'ad sent 'im round to get a bit o' somethink now," at a slack hour. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... gives man a miraculous assurance that the world is something he can make. In creative moments men always draw upon "some secret spring of certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmers penetrate." But this is no slack philosophy, for the chance is denied by which we can lie back upon the perfection of some mechanical contrivance. Yet in the light of it government becomes alert to a process of continual creation, an unceasing invention of forms to meet ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... over the stern of the cutter when he re-ascended on the deck, he would have discovered Smallbones hanging on by the rudder chains; for had the fog not been so thick, Mr Vanslyperken would have perceived that at the time that he cut Smallbones adrift it was slack water, and the cutter was lying across the harbour. Smallbones was not, therefore, carried away by the tide, but being a very fair swimmer, had gained the rudder chains without difficulty; but at the time that Smallbones ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... again! 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 conflagration pale ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... replied the Major. "I have not seen him; 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 below. If I could have got ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... 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
... Scarcies bar, but the wind shifting to the S.E. and the ebb tide running strong, we were nearly driven out of sight of land; we were therefore obliged again to anchor, and wait the change of tide. Trusting to a sea breeze that had just set in, it being slack water, we again weighed: the serenity of the weather did not long continue, but soon increased to a brisk gale, accompanied by thunder, lightning and rain; we were driven with great impetuosity through the narrow ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... 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 ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... efforts they managed to rid themselves of their armour, and then held on with ease to the rope. They hauled the bucket to the surface and tied a knot in the slack of the rope, so that the bucket hung four feet below the level of the water. Putting their feet in this, they were able to stand with their heads above ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... us to go over and possess it. Dear brother, are you at Kadesh Barnea today, and afraid of the giants? God has given the land to us. The message of reproof comes to you with this solemn and important question, "How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers hath ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... around—there lay A group of warriors in the sun, Resting their limbs, as for that day Their ministry of death were done. Some gazing on the drowsy sea Lost in unconscious revery; And some who seemed but ill to brook That sluggish calm with many a look To the slack sail impatient cast, As loose it bagged around ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... pa, if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her system. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... we groan beneath the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Philadelphia, has republished The Ministry of the Beautiful, by HENRY JAMES SLACK, of the Middle Temple, London, consisting of a series of conversations on the principles of aesthetic culture. A vein of refined and pure sentiment pervades the volume; the style is often of exquisite ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the limb, his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one, steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments of granite shifted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... too. Well, she's asked me to go and visit her in Montreal in the slack time this next winter; and she's such a good boarder every summer, you know, Mr. Hutchins is quite set on me going. She's promised to take me to parties and concerts, and the big rink, and what not. Ah, Miss Sophia, you never thought I could come that sort of thing ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... How slack is the crop till my Nancy return! No duds in my pocket, no sea-coal to burn! [9] Methinks if I knew where the watchman wou'd tread, I wou'd follow, and lend him a punch o' the head. Fly swiftly, good watchman, bring hither my dear, And, blast me! I'll tip ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... 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 for a ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... 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 ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... once which served as a cushion against which the raging torrent of the highland tributaries spent itself without doing extraordinary damage in that immediate region. Bridges which might have been lost in a smaller flood like that of 1902 were actually standing in slack water by the time the mountain torrents appeared in force. These streams caused much destruction higher up in the mountains, but in the Central Basin their energy became potential—a gathering of forces to be loosed upon the lower valley. A discussion of the effects ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... pestered Them with prayers. I do not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... approvingly, "excellent. Almost too true to character, if that is possible; yes, positively too true. But I'm surprised to find you putting in all this psychology business." He pointed to the face, and with his extended finger followed the slack curves of the painted figure. "I thought you were one of the fellows who went in exclusively for balanced masses and ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... from 210 sail, with 36,000 men,' to 400 or 500 ships, and 80,000 soldiers and mariners; and yet Drake was not ready with his squadron. "The fault is not in him," said Howard, "but I pray God her Majesty do not repent her slack dealing. We must all lie together, for we shall be stirred very shortly with heave ho! I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she hath believed some so ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... niggard of thy liquor be, Let it go round thy table; People may freely drink, but not So long as they are able. Good customs they may be abused, Which makes rich men to slack us; This feast is to relieve the poor, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... looked about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging the shore with affection, and then say: 'The slack water ends here, abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too far from shore, and so dropped back ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... themselves against the shock. The spectators, running nearer, now perceived that the lariat was tied round each man's waist as well as wrapped over his pommel. Soldier Cap weathered the jolt, next plunged suddenly closer, and in the instant of the slack, unwound the rope from his saddle and leaped to the ground. In two leaps more he had Sombrero about the neck. They fell together, rolling and fighting, while Sombrero's horse reared and plowed the soil with them. Dragoons and Cossacks heaped themselves on all ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... 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 walking back saw them in the driving snow beneath the window. Their ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... banished, but set free From daily contact of the things I loathe? "Tried and convicted traitor!" Who says this? Who'll prove it, at his peril on my head? Banished? I thank you for't. It breaks my chain! I held some slack allegiance till this hour; But now my sword's my own. Smile on, my lords; I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocation, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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
... just above the canoes, and let down a rope which we tied to the outermost canoe. The rest of us, up to our armpits and barely able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half-submerged tree. Each canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, baled, and then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock before we were again ready to start, having been delayed by a rain- storm so heavy that we could ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... late.[10] George and I rode into Pontoise and "scrounged" for eggs and bread. These we took to a small and smelly cottage. The old woman of the cottage boiled our eggs and gave us coffee. It was a luxurious breakfast. I was looking forward to a slack lazy day in the sun, for we were told that we had for the moment outdistanced the gentle Germans. But my turn came round horribly soon, and I was sent off to Compiegne with a message for G.H.Q., and orders to find our particularly elusive ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson |
