"Ruck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against his lack of the ordinary gentleman's upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you all, you ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... he stepped out of the cab that evening at the Gare de Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies of the world. In hoc signo vinces! The message ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... her eyes resting languidly on the face that so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out of the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too. Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of singular sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... shine wi' wail'd sense, and will as lang as the world wags. Gar your bairns get them by heart; let them have a place among your family-books, and may never a window-sole through the country be without them. On a spare hour, when the day is clear, behind a ruck, or on the green howm, draw the treasure frae your pouch, an' enjoy the pleasant companion. Ye happy herds, while your hirdsell are feeding on the flowery braes, you may eithly make yoursells master of the haleware. How usefou' will it prove to you (wha hae sae few opportunities of common ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... for letting me try. It was perfectly glorious to feel her respond to every touch and thread her way through all that ruck." ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... then, will have passed through school without emerging in any way from the common ruck of ordinary boys. He will have left at a comparatively early age in order that his education may no longer be neglected, and will have betaken himself to the fostering care of one of the numerous establishments which exist to prove that the private coach Codlin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... not the same talents. One survives by dint of its prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing of the sums which Canova got for his handicraft, took his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Bobby Summers came panting in with the ruck, after all was over; and the first use he made of his breath, after he had recovered it sufficiently to speak, was to abuse me in unmeasured terms for what he was pleased to term my "meanness," in leaving him to struggle up ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not this the ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... on them, guarding his head the while from the lances that were rained on him; and he lifted the guidon higher and higher, till, out of the ruck and the throng, the brazen bird caught afresh the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and Spectacles was kind to me, partly, perhaps, because I differed somewhat from the ordinary ruck of customers of the Skull and Spectacles. Had it been known that that crazy, villainous old alehouse contained such a pearl, I make no doubt that the favour of the place would have gone up, and its customers improved in outward seeming, if not in inward merits ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... her, since the days they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... that we should want to sleep in a place like De Aar. Disgusted, we tried the hotel. Here they loosed dogs on us and turned out the guard. Still more disgusted, we returned to our bedding, and sardined in with the ruck ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... love-affairs. Instinctively she had held herself aloof from the ruck of the young mountain-men, neither she nor they knew why, unless it was because she owned the valley land and so was what the mountain folk called rich. Most of them had tried to pay her court, but none of them, save Joe, had in the least attracted her, and she had let them ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... red, fought its way to the surface. A great tossing head, bloody past recognition, flung out from the ruck. One quick glance he shot from his ragged eyes at the little flying form in front; then with a roar like a waterfall plunged toward it, shaking off the bloody leeches as ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... very kind of you to come here—very. My daughter—" he hesitated. He finished the sentence by drawing up a chair and clearing its seat of the ruck ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... all those men come to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that carries them on to reaches of inward sanctification that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... an individuality that invites consideration from the ruck of commonplace men. Of mingled Irish, Scotch, and English blood, the first predominated, and the Celtic element in him was strong. A man of vigorous health, careless of gain, a wanderer, and by his own choice something of an outcast, he led ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... grasping, slipping, pursuing, and right in the midst of them, as quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, Dimsdale!" "Well collared, Dimsdale; well collared, indeed!" The ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to anybody if I was you," was his parting salutation. "Leastways, not for a day or two. Let the ruck of 'em embark first at Liverpool. If it gets wind, some of them may be for turning crusty, because they are not ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Charles Fort, near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... one day last week about ten in the morning, said his doctor told him to go out 'en the country for his health. He's stuck up and citified, and wears gloves, and takes his meals private in his room, and all that sort of ruck. They was saying in the saloon last night that they thought he was hiding from something, and Dad, just to try him, asks him last night if he was coming to see the fight. He looked sort of scared, and said he didn't want to see no fight. And then ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... better git out o' this Injun fry-pan fust, old hoss! I could lick my own weight in wild-cats, but this ruck o' Injuns is jest a ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... treaty of Arras, which left France almost at the discretion of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no farther than Bruges, where he entered into a private treaty with Philip; and it was not until January 14, ten weeks after he disembarked in France, and attended by a ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that he arrived in Paris and offered to present himself before Charles VII. The king sent word that he might come, if he would, with a small retinue, but not with his present following; and the duke, who was mightily on his high horse after all ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standpoint, the situation was not so bad. It was Haldane's personal conception of it which caused the difficulty. Probably it was his sense of fairness to her which made him accept matters quietly—as he did accept them. It was his comfort to-day, out of all the ruck of his artificial self-reproach, that Ida had never known—as he ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... to prison, and a fleering rabble surged to and fro about the streets of London in gala dress, boisterous, jovial, pitiless. From high to low by common consent the town made holiday. Above the common ruck, in windows hired for the occasion, the fashionable world, exuding patronage and perfume, sat waiting for the dreary procession to pass. In the windows opposite where I found standing room a party from the West End made much talk and laughter. In the group I recognized ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... like small game for Jack Drayton to be trailing along with the ruck—the ruck meaning Tony Criswold and the rest of that just-out-of-college crew—but I didn't need signed affidavits, after five minutes of club chatter, to know that he was pretty well tied to an avenue window at Cherry's after the show. The Ruinart, too, that kept spouting from the bucket beside ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took its place ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... and there were booths that sold food and drink, merry-go-rounds and fiddlers, and an immense concourse of every condition of folk, black slaves and water-side Indians, squatters from the woods, farmers from all the valleys, and the scum and ruck of the plantations. I found some of my friends, and settled my business with them, but my eyes were always straying to the green awning where I ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... he did not feel hurt or unhappy. He was in his most philosophical mood when he reached his aerodrome. He had a cause for gratification in that she knew his name. Evidently, it was something to be a sergeant if by so being you stand out from the ruck of men. As to her name he had neither thought it opportune nor ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... and Hughes and Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams. In 1852 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers conducted ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... us. We were all wet, dirty, and dishevelled, and looked sorry objects. One of the passengers, a tall, stout man, was somewhat handicapped by his nether garments slipping down and finally getting in a ruck round his ankles when he was climbing up the ladder on to the raider. A German sailor, to ease his passage, went down the ladder and relieved him of them altogether. He landed on the raider's deck minus this important part of his wardrobe, amid ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him on the road ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... breath, snuffing the candles. And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck— The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined "O sir, my eyes—I'm blind—I'm blind, I'm blind!" Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not blind; in time ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... he. "You've simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can't grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and waste and sin and misery of the present system. I don't blame you. You're a product of your environment. You can't help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more vital ideas ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... same as before. To face them and look them down, to hear whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers; Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck of legal documents; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could, covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping to new and strange hypocrisies, watching with anxious old eyes the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... might have the hap To get the bird which in the map Is call'd the Indian ruck! I'd give it him, and hope to be As rich as Guise or Livine, Or else I ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... which divides its time between rising to the position of sergeant and being reduced to the ranks, for causes which need not be specified. There is yet another, which knows its drill-book backwards, and can grasp the details of a tactical scheme as quickly as a seasoned officer, but remains in the ruck because it has not sufficient force of character to handle so much as a sentry-group. There are men, again, with initiative but no endurance, and others with endurance but no initiative. Lastly, there are men, and a great many of them, who appear to be quite ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... St. George. For all the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... sight o' learning you have piled up of a ruck; The only name it went by in my feyther's time was muck. I knows not how the tool you call a nallysis may work, I turns it when it's rotten pretty handy wi' ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... she found rather heavy. Those burdens, that tax was—you! Seeing nothing of all this, you have gone on digging your abysses (to use the hackneyed words of rhetoric) and covering them with flowers. You have mildly obeyed the law which rules the ruck of men; from which I desired to protect you. Dear fellow! only one thing was wanting to make you as dull as the bourgeois deceived by his wife, who is all astonishment or wrath, and that is that you should talk to me of your sacrifices, your love for Natalie, and chant that psalm: ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... the Pickwickians to draw the inn out from the ruck of the commonplace, and to spread its fame to all corners of the globe; and the fact that it once had royal patronage is nothing in comparison to the other fact that it was the headquarters of the Pickwickians on a certain memorable ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... I am sorry," she said. "All that we need is a leader, and you might have been he. As it is, I suppose we shall muddle along somehow until some one comes out of the ruck strong enough to pull us together.... Come and see me in London, Lawrence. Who knows but that you may be able to ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are feats of about an equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl himself scarlet and beat the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of what may ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... up before—"Inglegojang! inglegojang!" goes the church bell in alarm; the tavern's took fire an' burns plumb to the ground; drinks, chuck, bed, raiment, the whole bunch of tricks; an' thar's our wise sport out in the snow an' nothin' but a black ruck of smokin' ruins to remind him ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... men advancing against Ionians who would never stand their charge, and were defeated by the Milesians with a loss little short of three hundred men, the Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians, and driving before them the barbarians and the ruck of the army, without engaging the Milesians, who after the rout of the Argives retreated into the town upon seeing their comrades worsted, crowned their victory by grounding their arms under the very walls of Miletus. Thus, in this ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... alongside me, who was half wild with excitement already, "well picked up, sir; that's the bully boy. Stick to it, old pard, stick to it," and I saw with a beating heart that almost suffocated me, Boatman clear of the ruck, safe on the other side of the fence, and as in a dream I heard the people shouting, "Billy Craig's pony's down, and the Coyote," and I saw two horses wildly careering across the plain,—Billy Craig—I ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... between their sister and "the boys" of the family that nothing can fill up. Henceforth the latter are useful to get tickets for her, to carry her shawls, to drive her to Goodwood or to Lord's. In the mere fetching and carrying business they sink into the general ruck of cousins, grumbling only a little more than cousins usually do at the luck that dooms them to hew wood and draw water for the belle of the season. But in the pure equality of earlier days the buttercup shares half the games and ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... my power," she answered slowly. "Until he has fallen back again to the ruck. Until he has tasted a little of the misery from which at least he might have ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no fear of everybody doing anything of the kind. The ruck of men have no private judgment to claim the right of. They take whatever's given them in the way of morals by their pastors and masters. Only exceptional people have ideas of their own to carry out; and there are not enough exceptional people ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... who passed with his hat in his hand. He began to feel that he was in the midst of something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were unmoved. Perhaps they had only increased the disorder. Like the men passing in the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... nearest object, which happened to be Norah's shoulder, and clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his native Irish. They thundered up the straight, Billy crouching on Shannon's neck, very still. Then behind him the Mulgoa horse drew out from the ruck and came in chase. Nearer and nearer he came, while the shouts from the crowd grew louder. Up, up, till his nose was at Shannon's quarter—at his girth—at his shoulder, and the winning-post was very near. Then suddenly Billy lifted ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... lifted now and then, he could see naked forms swaying, bending forward, plying their weapons. Somewhere in the midst of it, out in the ruck of hoof and horn, his friend was riding, forgetting all else but the excitement of the chase. What if accident had befallen either of them? Lewis could not ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... and savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from the forecastle. Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them. I looked to see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval. On the contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a dog about ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... this long row of shops was crowded almost dangerously. Magnificent dray horses, with long hair on the fetlocks above their big heavy hoofs, bridling in conscious pride of silver-mounted harness and curled or braided manes, rose above the ruck as their ancestors, the warhorses, must have risen in medieval battle. The crowd parted before them and closed in behind them. Here and there, too, a horseman could be seen—with a little cleared space at his heels. Or a private calash picking its ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preeminence he enjoyed was ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games, with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and important things. He was like a specialist who having won a prominent position may now say that he will ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this complaining correspondence. Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch of the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the foundations of a fame which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... ranch I'd have collected up brandin' irons an' other truck for the round-up, an' a hundred miles through spring sweetness was a heap sight more temptin' to me; so I give in an' soon we was under way. "Where is the course laid out, Barbie?" I sez. "You know I won't see much of you back there in the ruck an' I want to know ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... is fame at last! It is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers into the society of the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics we've heard about, ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of feathers pointed him out to all as the finest capture to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... says so. She knows all about them. And the best painters in the world have shown her standing among the field of oats. By the Lord, sir, it's sheer blasphemy! and worse than that, it's making people—good, religious people, mind, not the ruck—it's making them ask why the blazes I gave you the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... In the first field or two there was a succession of gates, and there was not much to do in the way of jumping. Then the fox, keeping straight ahead, deviated from the line by which they had come, making for the brook by a more direct course. The ruck of the horsemen, understanding the matter very well, left the hounds, and went to the right, riding for the ford. The ford was of such a nature that but one horse could pass it at a time, and that one ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... ruck of the defenders of the Moon, a single Aircar, whose gleaming gray side was marked with queer crimson splashes, broke free ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... of the usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the Beaten But ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and short struggle between horse and rider; but Lionel's firm hand triumphed over the animal's temper for the time at least; and presently he was hurrying onward at a stretching gallop, which speedily carried him beyond the ruck of riders. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... rose and black draws clear of the ruck, And the murmur swells to a roar, As the brave old colours that never were struck, Are seen with the lead once more. Though the feathery ferns and grasses wave O'er the sod where Lantern sleeps, Though the turf ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... a whiskey bottle long enough to remark, casually, "I allus reckoned Kansas was purty close to hell," and said no more about it. Harlan was the proprietor and bartender of the Oasis and catered to the excessive and uncritical thirsts of the ruck of range society, and he had objected vigorously to the placing of the second sign in his place of business; but at the close of an incisive if inelegant reply from the marshal, the sign went up, and stayed up. Edwards' language and delivery were ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... them—one of the stragglers, I mean," he went on patiently. "And what did we do? What have we achieved? He—the great Napoleon—started upon us to emulate the Macedonian Alexander, with a ruck of nations at his back. We opposed empty spaces to French impetuosity, then we offered them an interminable battle so that their army went at last to sleep in its positions lying down on the heaps of its own dead. Then ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... started to explain pathetically. "Yes, I know it was my duty to call when they first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it—Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it. But it only shows a ruck in your left stocking." ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... a clamour of calls and acclaim The pair race away from the ruck: The horse to the last of it game— A marvel of muscle and pluck! But the foot of the Sappho is there, And Kingston's invincible strength; And the numbers go up in the air— The colt is the first by ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... here; und vhen dey gom to vind, I should zell mein goot dings und go und vetch zom move. You must go und vind die places everyvere all ofers, und dell me. I ken not, bood der are diamonds to be found. Now you shdop dat ruck a dongue of yours, und do not dalk zo motch like an old vool, und gom und hafe zom breakfast, or the old frau vill gom after ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Gled, and the ruck came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described how Whalley on Red Hat, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... change had taken place in the tableau of figures beside the carriage. The Hussars having reined back, had gathered in a ruck around their colonel, irresolute how to act. Equally unresolved he to order them. That cry, "Country and Liberty," had struck terror to his heart; and now seeing those it came from, recognising the three who rode foremost—as in the clear moonlight he could—the blood of the craven ran cold. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... began again, and horn-rimmed Newland Sanders already had his arm about her waist. They disappeared into the ruck of dancers. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Miss Skipwith, looking from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for his ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... people began to be afraid that he had emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty, and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there came a time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... strewn with bodies. Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they rush for ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... "BERTA RUCK" will write for us such pretty books as Sweethearts Unmet (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), we need never feel ourselves dependent on America for our supply of sugary novels. This home-grown variety is just as sweet, and really, I think, may be guaranteed not only ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... distinction we stalked out of the ordinary ruck of passengers and followed the lieutenant to the station restaurant. He plunged at once into conversation, talking the Dutch of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a bit hard to follow. He was unfit for active service, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... repeated with a note of bitterness. Could there be praise from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place in the ruck ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... known as the Timourid age—the age beloved above all others by discerning connoisseurs—and it is tempting to assign to this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr. Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398; yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. Rather, I incline to think that these are the work of an early contemporary ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, not nervous when he gets a child on his knee all by himself and tells her delightful stories,—but nervous as a boy on his first day at school when he finds himself being lionised in a drawing-room, or picked out of the ruck of guests for any particular notice. And so when he joined the 13th, behind the ebullient spirits was this innate bashfulness, which, added to the natural modesty of a gentleman, kept his animal spirits in a delightful simmer, and found favour for him in ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the Oxfordshire ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... impossible not to adore a young lady who is universally beloved, for the simple reason that this general affection is very rarely accorded to any but a loving nature. There is an instinct in these things. From all the ruck of Cheapside a vagrant dog will select the man who has most toleration for the canine species, and is most likely to give him shelter. A little child coming suddenly into a circle of strangers knows in which ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... son Horatio falls in love with a certain Julietta, who is immured by wicked arts in the "Convent of Grey Penitents," tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth. The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be: but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action on persons of genius, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... squirmed out of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive confidence, his gaiety—to ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... are generous, you will throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed necessary to remove ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan: A stranger, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they're necessary for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be himself and do as ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... to mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... complacency, as I imagined, at the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. "Mrs. Ruck—Miss Sophy Ruck," said ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... one upward swing of my body I was safely aboard, knife still in hand, peering eagerly forward. Through the gloom concealing the deck, I could perceive only dim figures, a riot of men, battling furiously hand to hand, yet out of the ruck loomed through the darkness in larger outline than the others—-Cochose, the negro. I leaped at the fellow, and struck with the keen knife, missing the heart, but plunging the blade deep into the flesh of the shoulder. The next instant I was in a bear's grip, the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... so, Mr. Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... and pictures the girl built up as she lay, half waking, half dreaming between her blankets. Pictures in which MacNair, misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him, and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid picture—the real picture—which she herself had seen with her own eyes ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... in a rasping voice, like a saw biting into a log. "Ker-r-ruck! ker-r-ruck!" sounded Reddy's rolling call. And they began to scold Jimmy Rabbit, until he put his paws over ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... among you by your class of gentlemen, while they deserved the name. But by depriving them of power you have deprived them of responsibility, which is the salt of privilege; and they are rotting before your eyes, crumbling away and dropping into the ruck. Whether the general level of your civilization is rising I do not pronounce. I do not even think the question of importance; for any rise must be almost imperceptible. The salient fact is that the pinnacles are disappearing; that soon there will be nothing left that seeks the stars. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show's his ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... ingenious. The minority in a party must yield to a majority, and he stood almost by himself. He would be a returned prodigal in the conservative household, for unlike Sir James Graham, he had never merged himself in the ordinary ruck of liberalism. A tory peer writes to assure him that there never was such a chance for the reunion of the party. Even the nobleman who had moved Mr. Gladstone's expulsion from the Carlton said that he supposed reunion ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... not marry without the consent in writing of the vast corporation, Mr. Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... beauty and power of this novel. But true as it is to life and place, full of deep interest and rare humor and vivid descriptions, there seemed to be risk of its passing unheeded in the crowd, and rush, and ruck of fiction.... Literature has been enriched with a wholesome, genial, and noble tale, the reading of which is a pleasure in ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... crushed with a sense of her own terrible impotency. A failure! She must write herself down a failure! At her age, with her ambitions, with her artistic temperament and creative instincts, she was yet to be denied all coherent means of expression. She was to fall back amongst the ruck, a young woman of talent, content perhaps to earn a scanty living by painting Christmas cards, or teaching at a kindergarten. Her finger-nails dug into her flesh. It was the bitterest moment of her life. She flung herself back into the bare little room, cold, empty, comfortless. In ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... off again. Almost immediately Acton secured near the centre. He dribbled through the ruck of his opponents until he saw Bourne upon him. With a smile of triumph upon his lips he gently rolled the leather to Chalmers, who was hungrily waiting for the pass out on the touch-line. Chalmers waltzed beautifully for the short run almost to the corner flag. He steadied ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... scanty subsistence by writing scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Jockey. You won't, my brave boy; that a novice could tell. You'll be left in the ruck at the end, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... concluded Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck! But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward—then for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal. When at length he could no longer ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... frequently urge me, it is impossible! My house is a basilica rather than a villa, owing to the crowds of visitors from Formiae. But (you'll say) do I really compare the AEmilian tribe to the crowd in a basilica?[232] Well, I say nothing about the common ruck—the rest of them don't bother me after ten o'clock: but C. Arrius is my next door neighbour, or rather, he almost lives in my house, and even declares that the reason for his not going to Rome is that he may spend whole days with me here philosophizing! And then, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... unfortunate fate of Lord Robert Cecil. He is regarded by his countrymen as unpractical. Men speak well of him, and confess willingly that he is vastly superior in character and intellect to the ruck of politicians, but nevertheless wind up their panegyrics with the regretful judgment that, alas, he is ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... that there is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it accessible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a presumption on my part. I acknowledged frankly that it was a presumption. I was a young doctor, with nothing to distinguish me from the ruck of young doctors. And she was—well, she was one of those rare and radiant beings to whom even monarchs bow, and the whole earth offers the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... armed, conspiring in a mantle, draining a brimming goblet, but never—at least within my recollection—taking a part of any individuality, or one that gave him a chance of singing or speaking a single line by himself. He had been one of the ruck when I had first seen him, and now, after at least twenty years, the ruck still claimed him for its own. I remember I had woven a sort of romance about him. There, I had thought to myself, is a man who, no doubt, began his stage career with high aspirations, and noble ambitions. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... cut you out, you have the sat isfaction at any rate of keeping them to yourself, though you lose the pleasures which arise from being sought after, and made much of for their sakes, and feeling raised above the ruck of your neighbors. On the other hand, if they are all like this, you might as well try to keep the sunshine and air to yourself. Universal human nature rises up against you; and besides, they will ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... from the ruck by his extraordinary personal strength; once free from the confused mass, his speed, in which he surpassed all the barbarians, enabled him to easily avoid capture. But as he flew his heart was dead within him, for there was no hope of retrieving ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... battered entrance in sudden panic, a powerful stream of cold water, shooting from unseen nozzle, broke up and demoralized the drunken barrier. Skilfully directed into the heart of the crowd at the door-way, then into the ruck and tumult within, it first cleared a passage, then, torrent-like, swept away into it, tumbling and swearing and cursing, but going, the last able-bodied invader of saloon sanctity, bestowing upon its foul ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Kingdom of Heaven?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the guidance ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... of his arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, or else condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, as though these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck of membership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivacious member was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness of manner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a ready ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... of warriors that had pressed so close about Stabber and the opposing orator seemed all in an instant to split asunder, and with trailing war bonnet and followed by only two or three of his braves, the former lashed his way westward and swept angrily out of the ruck and went circling away toward the crest, while, with loud acclamation, brandishing shield and lance and rifle in superb barbaric tableau, the warriors lined up in front of the victorious young leader who, sitting high in his stirrups, with one ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the rapids. Now he was towing it back. He planned to go just as far and as fast up stream as he could. The current, to him, had become the crowd. One can see the crowd as it brushes past, as one can never see it from the ruck.... Sometimes it came to him in a flash, that this new David Cairns was but another lie and pose—but this couldn't hold. It was a bit of deviltry that wouldn't stand scrutiny. There had been too much unfolding o' nights; too many gifts found upon the doorstep of his mind in ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the ruck and the roar of life He stepped aside to rest one day, And the flowers that grew along the way Lifted him out of the wearisome strife That had claimed his every waking thought For years ... and a miracle had ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very presence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... time had Edison passed from poverty to independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the deadening drudgery of the key. Best of all he was enterprising, one of the leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always looking; and, to use his own criticism of himself, he had "too ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... Fauntleroy kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who says: ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... there was not a sign. Amiable? Laura fancied that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened when he spoke to her. But the ruck of people? She doubted whether Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if they ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colours moved up with great celerity. Merritt, glancing over his shoulders, shook out the last wrap on the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan |
