"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soon as it could be arranged so that I'd not be without personal transportation in Texas. Catherine remained in Wisconsin because she was too new at being a Mekstrom to know how to conduct herself so that the fact of her super-powerful body did not cause a lot of slack jaws and high suspicion. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... to whoop them and send them home and they would git another whooping. Some men wouldn't allow that; they said they would tend to their own slaves. So many men had to leave home to go to war times got slack. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... honour'd, happy soil retains Our royal hero's beauteous, dear remains; Who now sails off with winds nor wishes slack, To bring his sufferings' bright companion back. But e'er such transport can our sense employ, A bitter grief must poison half our joy; 1070 Nor can our coasts restored those blessings see Without a bribe to envious ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... resty knaves are over-run with ease, As plenty ever is the nurse of faction; If in good days, like these, the headstrong herd Grow madly wanton and repine, it is Because the reins of power are held too slack, And reverend authority of late Has worn a face ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... aids, battles, and leagues, Plausible to the world, to me worth naught. Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction else Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne! My time, I told thee (and that time for thee Were better farthest off), is not yet come. When that comes, think not thou to find me slack On my part aught endeavouring, or to need Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 400 Luggage of war there shewn me—argument Of human weakness rather than of strength. My brethren, as thou call'st them, those Ten Tribes, I must deliver, if ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... he was out of the King's jurisdiction. Now in regard of that matter it did seem to me that King Edward was full childish and unwise. Had his father been on the throne, no such thing had ever happed: he wist how to deal with traitors. But now, with so slack an hand did the King rule, that not only Sir Roger gat free of the Tower by bribing one of his keepers and drugging the rest, but twenty good days at the least were lost while he stale down to the coast and so won away. There was indeed a hue and cry, but it wrought nothing, and even that ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Serena," he cried. "If it was a mistake it's one that can be straightened out in two shakes of slack jib sheet. You stay here and rest easy. I'll be ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... trust their souls, fortunes, or bodies to his direction; because that power is neither fit to judge or teach those qualifications which are absolutely necessary to the several professions. Put the case that walking on the slack rope were the only talent required by act of parliament for making a man a bishop; no doubt, when a man had done his feat of activity in form, he might sit in the House of Lords, put on his robes and his rochet, go down to his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... fireman vanished into the darkness, and the blaze of the headlamp went out before he returned and the roar of the drivers sank. The rhythmic din grew slack, and became a jarring of detached sounds again, the snow no longer beat on the glasses as it had done, and, rocking less, the great locomotive rolled slowly down the incline until it stopped, and Grant, taking the lantern handed him, sprang down from the cab. Four other men ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... were in the habit of spending a great part of their wages and time in dissipation. By way of example to his workmen he laid aside some 12/-to 15/-a week for a considerable period, and when trade was occasionally slack with him, and he had no other occupation for them, he sent his horse and cart to Aston Furnaces for loads of "slag," gathering in this way by degrees a sufficient quantity of this strange building material for ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... against the follower each by an iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy, older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping new ones, the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... along with a Kvejtepig[3] in his hand, and thinking the matter over, he unexpectedly came upon a monstrous seal, which lay sunning itself right behind a rock on the strand, and was as much surprised to see the man as the man was to see the seal. But Elias was not slack; from the top of the rock on which he stood, he hurled the long heavy Kvejtepig right into the monster's back, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... it; and getting to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean work, finished work: feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far forth, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... stress or accent, and this or the syllable it falls on may be called the Stress of the foot and the other part, the one or two unaccented syllables, the Slack. Feet (and the rhythms made out of them) in which the stress comes first are called Falling Feet and Falling Rhythms, feet and rhythm in which the slack comes first are called Rising Feet and Rhythms, and if the stress is between two slacks ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... only done four days this last fortni't!' she wailed. Chippy's father was a dock-side labourer, and work had been very slack of late. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... all these things without ceasing to ply his paddle. His objective lay some six miles up-stream. But when he came at last to the upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slack water new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres of logs confined therein; also a squat motor tugboat and certain lesser craft moored to these timbers. A little back from the bank he could ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... it can only be said that he is still a bachelor, living with his cousin Ned, and that none of the neighbours expect to see a lady at Spoon Hall. In one winter, after the period of his misfortune, he became slack about his hunting, and there were rumours that he was carrying out that terrible threat of his as to the crusade which he would go to find a cure for his love. But his cousin took him in hand somewhat sharply, made him travel abroad during the summer, and brought him out the next season, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... was strange enough when he made that statement, and then to have the train slack up," spoke Nat. "I was beginning to believe that, maybe, after all, he had some ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... either of them could obtain a satisfactory mark, the beast sank from sight. He had broken the ice for some yards toward the place where the end of the line was fastened, and he now had plenty of slack. The boys waited expectantly for his reappearance, while Wash stood, open-mouthed and ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, shorten sail, take in sail; put on the drag, apply the brake; clip the wings; reduce the speed; slacken speed, slacken one's pace; lose ground. Adj. slow, slack; tardy; dilatory &c. (inactive) 683; gentle, easy; leisurely; deliberate, gradual; insensible, imperceptible; glacial, languid, sluggish, slow paced, tardigrade|!, snail-like; creeping &c. v.; reptatorial[obs3]. Adv. slowly &c. adj.; leisurely; piano, adagio; largo, larghetto; at half ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... picquets. They have everything to themselves excepting that the Frenchies are just alongside. The Frenchies watch us close, but we watch them closer, and there's always a way. Rounds are not kept up the whole night, for everything is slack now, and when they are finished the fun begins. The reliefs, lying on the ground, strip off everything so that they can crawl like snakes and that no one can get hold of them. They crawl in through holes, over walls, with never a match or ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... single bamboo. Accordingly, I put on a powerful strain, which was replied to by a sullen tug, a shake, and again my rod was pulled suddenly down to the water's edge. At length, after the roughest handling, I began to reel in slack line, as my unknown friend had doubled in upon me; and upon once more putting severe pressure upon him or her, as it might be, I perceived a great swirl in the water, about twenty yards from the rod. The tackle would bear anything, and I strained ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... your wisdom. For by speech wisdom shall be known, And instruction by the word of the tongue. Speak not against the truth, But be humble because of your own ignorance. Strive for the right even to death, And the Lord will fight for you. Be not boastful with your tongue, And slack and remiss ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... any villain in the story—for even Major Basil, the husband of the lady who next, and really, comforted the unfortunate Edward—even Major Basil was not a villain in this piece. He was a slack, loose, shiftless sort of fellow—but he did not do anything to Edward. Whilst they were in the same station in Burma he borrowed a good deal of money—though, really, since Major Basil had no particular vices, it was difficult to know why he wanted it. He collected—different ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... we have to tell, but of sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, and the ripples that curled around ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... brake, McGonnigle went on humorously, gesticulating spaciously while the slack of the lines swung ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... intertwined. And now the log fire, seeing the lack of better footlights, blazed up loyally to light for them this unusual stage. They did not hear the door open behind them, did not hear the click of high bootheels on the floor, as there came toward them an unbidden spectator, who had by some slack ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... silence his comrade commenced to struggle into his underclothes and "fatigue-slacks." Yorke snapped the line and reeled in the slack. "Stiff!" he kept ejaculating "stiff! Yes, by gad! and I can make a pretty good guess who that stiff is! . . . Burke'll have all the evidence he wants—now. You beat it, Reddy, as soon as you're fit and get him. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in a ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... fight. The firm is not rich because its business is done by tragedians and walking-gentlemen, but in spite of them. If the doctor fails to give his medicine, if the fighting grows too rough for the cripple, if business grows slack, or if some good business man with competent assistants starts a strong opposition—what happens? What must inevitably happen? Why, the sick man dies, the cripple gets the worst of it, and the theatrical firm of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... and her basket is small, She earns her own living by these, when at all. She's there with her baby in wind and in rain, In frost and in snow-fall, in weakness and pain. She trades and she trades, through the good times and slack— No home and no food, and no cloak to her back. She's kithless and kinless—one friend at the most, And that one is silent: the telegraph post! She asks for no alms, the poor Jewess, but still, Altho' she is wretched, forsaken and ill, She cries Sabbath candles ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... stood on the ground, I took hold of the rope and shook it. I am not generally nervous, but I was a little nervous then. I did not shake the grapnel loose. Then I let the rope go slack, for a foot or two, and gave it a big sweep to one side. To my great delight, over came the grapnel, nearly falling on our heads. I think I saw Maiden's Heart make a grab at it as it came over, but I am not sure. However, he poked his head over the ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... opened to us this glorious spiritual land, and tells 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
... to further study the array, for he whirled about as from the Atlantean army arose a deep, horrified shout. He stood paralyzed, his jaw slack. For there, waddling slowly forward, came the most fantastic huge creature imaginable. Unspeakably repellent and horrible, it stood on short legs thick as mature trees, to tower at least thirty-five feet above the ground at the fore-shoulders! An immense reptilian ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... invectives at her mother. The old mother retorted; the girl joined in. All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth, driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in their several dispositions. Some young hounds seem to enter on their work instinctively. From their first to their last appearance in the field they do no wrong. Others, equally good, will take no notice of anything; they will not stoop to any scent during the first season, and are still slack at entering even at the second; but are ultimately distinguished at the head of the pack; and such usually last some seasons longer than the more precocious of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... 'Oh, don't, Tommy,' they cried, the tears running down their cheeks. 'Please don't. We'll be good. Sure, Tommy, sure.' But I knew them well, and I scorched them on every tender spot. Nor did I slack away till they came down on their knees, begging and pleading with me to keep quiet. Then I shot a glance at Chief George; but he did not know whether to have at me or not, and passed it off ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... were attached. The men looked strange in her eyes at that distance. In the marvellously clear light she could see their features distinctly, and, when Courtenay shouted to a sailor to haul in the slack of the line, she caught a trumpet-like ring that recalled the scene in the saloon when he held back the mob of stewards. His athletic figure, silhouetted against the shimmering green of the water, was instinct ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... slack, but this situation obviously required some thinking over, so I lit a pipe, threw myself down on the ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... in the month of November, when the river was low and the current slack, albeit it raced by at five or ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... desolate sentiment in rum-and- water, Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack, his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound goes," will be at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr. Guppy adds with emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... reached the Severn at Gloucester, and the Irish Sea about the Mersey. Parties were not moved to their depths on either side, as men are by the question of existence, and the contending armies were generally small. Therefore, the struggle was slack and slow, and the Presbyterian sects became masters of the situation, and decided for the parliament. At first, through want of energy, great opportunities were lost. In Montrose Scotland produced a ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... make love over garden walls, you must have had a pretty slack time, even in Alexandretta," ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... he, 'I guess it's done.' 'Now,' says the captain, 'look here, pilot; here's a rope you hain't seed yet, I'll jist explain the use of it to you in case you want the loan of it. If this here frigate, manned with our free and enlightened citizens, gets aground, I'll give you a ride on the slack of that 'ere rope, right up to that yard by the neck, by Gum.' Well, it rub'd all the writin' out of his face, as quick as spittin' on a slate takes a sum out, you may depend. Now, they should rig up a crane ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... were in all her loving letters. Often and often when I have been slack in fucking a woman, and my prick not answering when called on, I had only to conjure up some of these scenes with my mother when my cock would spring to the stand instantly, to the immense satisfaction of my momentary fouteuse, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... placed across the narrowest part of the crevasse, where we could see that the edges were solid. Then by our combined efforts the sledge, which was dangling far below, was hoisted up as far as we could get it, and made fast to Hassel's sledge by the dogs' traces. Now we could slack off and let go: one sledge hung securely enough by the other. We could breathe a ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the identity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak of her in ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the time when 'neath the stairs the pages their heads raise! The term of "pure brightness" is the meetest time this thing to make! The vagrant silk it snaps, and slack, without tension it strays! The East wind don't begrudge because its farewell it ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... 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 led to know ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... halliards, Mason. Lay out there, Bert, and get in that slack sail. It's blowing a bit. Gee, see that bank ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... You can make them draw you along, so to speak. But you must hold them well in hand, as you would a dangerous team, you know,—coolly and alertly, firmly and patiently,—and never let the reins slack till you've driven ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... How much more so must they have been when, from the uncleanly habits of the Indians, they were the common receptacle of all kinds of filth, and were constantly stirred up to their very bottoms by the setting-poles of the navigators? The system of canalling is a system of slack-water navigation, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... blew victory was only possible when by constant trials the chance came of each being given good or fair handhold at once. Then came a shriek of wind and a blown-out lull and a wrinkle lapsed into a fold. We shouted "Now!" left hold of the jack-stay, and with feet outstretched grabbed slack canvas and hung on as another squall came singing like shrapnel across the peaks of the leaping sea. "Hold on now, hold on!" so sang all of us, and we cursed each other furiously. "Oh, oh, you miserable devil, hang on or it's lost again!" We cursed ourselves, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... good housewife who seldom left home for a day, and then one thing or another always went amiss. She was keenly conscious of this, and watching for a slack tide in things domestic, put off her visit to Sevenbergen from day to day, and one afternoon that it really could have been managed, Peter Buyskens' mule was out ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Meath, and Dr. Bale of Ossory. The latter writing of the former in 1553, excuses the corruption of his own reformed clergy, by stating that "they would at no hand obey; alleging for their vain and idle excuse, the lewd example of the Archbishop of Dublin, who was always slack in things pertaining to God's glory." He calls him "an epicurious archbishop, a brockish swine, and a dissembling proselyte," and accuses him in plain terms of "drunkenness and gluttony." Dr. Browne accuses Dr. Staples of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... had found his wharfage and was edging the Belle Julie up to it. The bow men paid out slack, and Griswold and the black, dropping from the swinging stage, trailed the end of the wet hawser up to the nearest mooring-ring. Though haste in making fast is the spring-line man's first duty, Griswold took ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... bows of the leading boat, glanced over his right shoulder and beheld his line of followers, all in perfect order, extend themselves and close the mouth of the Cove. Ahead of him—ahead but a few yards only—he heard the slack tide run faintly on the shingle. From the dark beach came no sound. Overhead quivered the expectant stars. He lifted his sword-arm, and from point to hilt ran a swift ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life. Not that I've been a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take out some girl ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... do your best to place this most exacting, but most necessary adjunct, just behind the centre of the foot of the bridge on the E side—the distance of about a good sixteenth of an inch behind the side next to the tail piece. When fitted, it must be neither slack nor tight, but between ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the ordinary kind, and full size, is soaked in a basin of cold water and carefully wrung out until it is merely damp. Prejudice against this treatment is often aroused by putting on the cloths wet, and in a slack, blundering way, so as to make the patient most uncomfortable. It is then folded and applied to the skin, as directed. While applying the first, a second towel may be in the water. It is then wrung out and applied, while the first is placed to soak afresh. In prolonged cooling, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... the butt had been freshly cross-cut," declared Thurston with an ominous glitter in his eyes. "I understand you are pretty slack just now. As a favor, would you hire your chopping gang to me for a few days? I'll tell you why I want ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... course S.S.E. for the 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 channel between the bar and the shore, and from the shallowness of the water, the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... is hot all may get spoiled before we can sell them; and the price is so low in these parts when the flocks are here that it is hard to lay by enough money to keep us and our families during the slack time. If the great cities Thebes and Memphis lay near to us, it would be different. They could consume all we could catch, and we should get better prices, but unless under very favorable circumstances there is no hope of the fowl keeping good during ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... a marvellous fashion That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of passion, To look such a lass on, Her patience distressing, The bestial a-chasing, In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... roar of anxious voices. The walls of the room were crumbling. Volumes of smoke were now pouring in underneath the door, and through the yawning fissures of the wall. Little tongues of flame were leaping out dangerously close to the spot where he must pass. He let fall the slack of the rope and leaned from the window to watch it anxiously. Then he commenced to descend, letting himself down hand over hand, always with one eye upon that length of rope that swung below. Suddenly, as he reached the second ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with all its fields set free, Naked and yellow from the harvest lies, By many a loft and busy granary, The hum and tumult of the thrashers rise; There the tanned farmers labor without slack, Till twilight deepens round the spouting mill, Feeding the loosened sheaves, or with fierce will, Pitching ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... is thinking of putting any Johnny Raw over my head, why, I shall resign. I began forrard, Mistress Prettybones, and worked my way aft, like a man. I was six months aboard a Garnsey lugger, hauling in the slack of the lee-sheet and coiling up rigging. From that I went a few trips in a fore-and-after, in the same trade, which, after all, was but a blind kind of sailing in the dark, where a man larns but little, excepting how to steer ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and they were at the fork in the way, and, leaving the trail to Cragg's, the girl pulled into the grass-grown, less-traveled trail to the south, which entered the timber at this point and began to climb with steady grade. Letting the reins fall slack, she turned to her mother with reassuring words. "There! Now we're safe. We won't meet anybody on this road except possibly a mover's outfit. We're in the forest again," ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... apt enough to learn much." He then asked me what my name was. I answered: "My name is Benvenuto." He replied: "And Benvenuto shall I be this day to you. Take flower-de-luces, stalk, blossom, root, together; then decoct them over a slack fire; and with the liquid bathe your eyes several times a day; you will most certainly be cured of that weakness; but see that you purge first, and then go forward with the lotion." The Pope gave me some kind words, and so ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... ascend precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and circumspection; but the most perilous part was when ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... take me back 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
... hold on this har day, Recowperate yer muscle; Let up a mite this day on toil, 'Taint made for holy bustle. Let them old sorrels jog along, With mighty slack-like traces; Half dreamin', es my sunbeams ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the death-grip still on the roomal, planted a knee between the victim's shoulder-blades, and jerked the head upward—still the spine did not snap; and slowly tightening the pressure of the cloth he smothered the man beneath his knee till he felt the muscles go slack and the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... every spring and summer and lived the wholesome life of the outdoors for three or four months! We could not have "slack times." ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... great conviction to their hearts, and both of them sought the Lord for forgiveness of their sins, and both entered into the grace of conversion. The joy of this experience made their Bible study still more delightful. They had not been strangers to grace, but they had become slack and lukewarm, and when the light of God began to shine more brightly they felt that they should make sure work of it, and so they began at the bottom round of the ladder. They were glad afterwards that they had done this, because it gave ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... lolls out. His arms are outstretched in the form of a cross: the hands open, the fingers separated. The right leg is straight. The left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and our eyes intent? Is every ounce that is in us bent On the uttermost pitch of accomplishment? Though it's long and long the day is. Ah! we know what it means if we fool or slack; —A rifle jammed—and one comes not back; And we never forget—it's for us they gave. And so we will slave, and slave, and slave, Lest the men at the front should rue it. Their all they gave, and their lives we'll save, If the hardest of work can do it;— Though ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... was the very top-notcher of them all, the finest flower of piracy. He didn't go pirating just during the summer months, when his other business was slack. And he would have died before he'd have been a wrecker. It was a profession, with him. And an inherited one, too. He was the third of the name. He started in as cabin boy on the ship of his grand-father,—old Black Pedro the First. The old man, the grand-father, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... well to exhibit the strong and weak points of either side. It was evident, for instance, that both Ranger and Yorke were men to be marked by the other side, and that Dangle, on the contrary, was playing slack. ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... with red eyes and a thousand queries as to whether that Yankee ruffian would pay any attention to the Sovereign law which he pretended to uphold; whether the Marshal would not be cast over the Arsenal wall by the slack of his raiment when he went to serve the writ. This was not the language, but the purport, of the lady's questions. Colonel Carvel had made but a light breakfast: he had had no dinner, and little rest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the north of San Francisco. He also explained that, the passage up being longer than usual, viz., eighteen days, the coal was short; that at the time the firemen were using some cut-up spars along with the slack of coal, and that this fuel had made more than usual steam, so that the ship must have glided along faster than reckoned. This proved to be the actual case, for, in fact, the steamship Lewis was wrecked April 9, 1853, on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to behold this beautiful child, and feel that she is only yours? Annabel, look on me, look on me only one moment! My frame is bowed, my hair is grey, my heart is withered; the principle of existence waxes faint and slack in this attenuated frame. I am no longer that Herbert on whom you once smiled, but a man stricken with many sorrows. The odious conviction of my life cannot long haunt you; yet a little while, and my memory will alone remain. Think ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... get at it. A case with a large lid, covered by the lashing, gives constant trouble; the whole lashing has to be undone for every little thing one wants out of the case. This is not always convenient; if one is tired and slack, it may sometimes happen that one will put off till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, especially when it is bitterly cold. The handier one's sledging outfit, the sooner one gets into the tent and to rest, and that is no small consideration ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... situations, is very probable; most of the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... come, my joker! Put your feet in the bight and hold on to the slack of the rope above your head and we'll hoist you up in regular man-of-war fashion. Now, my lads, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of all were those in the final stages of the disease, wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said. "I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... happiness to be found in it, though the oracles of God in all ages have testified from heaven how certain and possible it is, though many have found it in experience and left it on record to others, there is so slender belief of the reality and certainly of it, and so slack pursuit of it, as if we did not believe it at all. Truly, my beloved, there is a great mistake in this, and it is general too. All men apprehend other things more feasible and attainable than personal holiness and happiness in it, but truly, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... quick as a wink ol' Cast Steel knocked it up with his right hand, an' struck at Dick with his left. The bullet crashed through the ceiling, an' Dick grabbed Jabez' wrist at the same instant. Piker made a quick snap under the table, a gun went off, an' the bullet tore through the slack o' Dick's vest an' spinged into the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... that I never raised hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... existence as they best could. The ideas committed suicide without a second's consideration. He felt the great gurgling sea in which they were drowned heave and throb. Then came a fresh set, that poised better on the slack-rope of his understanding. By degrees, a buried dread in his brain threw off its shroud. The thought that there was something wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from the variations of trade, occasionally in this state. A manufacturer, finding a slack demand for his commodity, forbears to employ laborers in increasing a stock which he finds it difficult to dispose of; or if he goes on until all his capital is locked up in unsold goods, then at least he must of necessity pause until he can get paid for some of them. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the field. Besides, one must remember that in a matter like this we cannot fully depend on any force that we may gather. The archers and men-at-arms would be drawn largely from the same class as the better portion of these rioters, and would be slack in fighting against them. Certainly, those of the home counties could not be depended upon, and possibly even in the garrison of the Tower itself there may be many who cannot be trusted. The place, if well held, should stand out for months, but I am by no means sure that it will do so when the time ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... answered Todd. "I threw a steer with him yesterday and he held it while I made a tie. A steer can't get any slack rope on him. He ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... 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 out with the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... once see any one apply a bandage properly, and attend to these rules, there will not be any difficulty; but bear one thing in mind, without which you will never put on a bandage even decently; and that is, never to drag or pull at a bandage, but make the turns while it is slack, and you have your right forefinger placed upon the point where it is to be folded down. When a limb is properly bandaged, the folds should run in a line corresponding to the shin-bone. Use, to retain dressings, and for ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... tray and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed doing another one about as ill, than making this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... cleared, yet on the smoother road Their speed they slack not till they reach the house Of a poor drunken settler then abroad On his nocturnal revels, while the spouse Was left to mourn his oft-indulged carouse, And tremble for his safety from the cold. No sense of danger e'er could him arouse From his sad sunken ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the month he wrote: "For the last two or three days I have been rather slack in point of work; not being in the vein. To-day I had not written twenty lines before I rushed out (the weather being gorgeous) to bathe. And when I have done that, it is all up with me in the way of authorship until to-morrow. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... was brought in his fourth year, and his memories of Cornwall remained vivid to his dying day. "I recall Halsetown," he said, "as a village nestling between sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack from the mines, and with the Knill monument standing prominent as a landmark to the east. It was a wild and weird place, fascinating in its own peculiar beauty, and taking a more definite shape in my youthful imagination by reason ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... apt to be a slack morning, with not much work to do; but in intervals of idleness one could always be certain of finding something of interest to see or hear in Steve's office. Usually he would be in front of his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... himself, at the imminent risk of neck and limbs, had taken from the celebrated eyry in the neighborhood, called Gledscraig. As he was by no means satisfied with the attention which had been bestowed on his favourite bird, he was not slack in testifying his displeasure to the falconer's lad, whose duty it was to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him— Frail though and spent, and an hungered for restfulness Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind. THOMAS HARDY, The Dynasts, Act ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... least be left at rest, if not honored; and must not be torn in mutilation out of their tumuli, that the skins and bones of them may help to hold our living nonsense together; while languages called living, but which live only to slack themselves into slang, or bloat themselves into bombast, must one day have new grammars written for their license, and new ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... As when a woman with child in the ninth month bringeth forth her son, with two or three hours of her birth great pains compass her womb, which pains, when the child cometh forth, they slack ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... out in front of you and closes in behind, the closely-set confused mass of mountains altering in form as you view them from different angles, save one, Kangwe—a blunt cone, evidently the record of some great volcanic outburst; and the sandbanks show again wherever the current deflects and leaves slack water, their bright glistening colour giving a relief to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... violently in my face; the snake compressed its body still tighter, and I thought I should be suffocated on the spot, and laid myself down. The snake again rattled its tail and lashed my feet with it. Gradually, however, the creature relaxed its hold, its coils fell slack around me, and untwisting it and throwing it from me as far as I was able, I sank down and swooned upon ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... months we did the same old squad-drill every day, at the same time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to be unbearably "fed up." The sections became slack at drill because they were over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... for rain when A slack rope tightens. Smoke beats downward. Sun is red in the morning. There is a pale yellow ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... understanding. Powell let his jaw drop slack and open, and stiffened his body in imitation of the stupor the rodent drug victims had shown. Joan promptly followed his lead. The alertly watching guards relaxed their tense ...
— Devil Crystals of Arret • Hal K. Wells
... blistering our backs, till past noon, during which time we must have drifted nearly twenty miles up the river, which was as broad as the arm of a sea at the entrance; then the tide turned, and we drifted back again till it was dusk, when it was again slack water. All this while we kept a sharp look-out to see if we could perceive any Indians, but not one was to be seen. I now proposed that we should take our oars and pull out of the river, as if we had only gone up on a survey, for the brig had got under weigh, and ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... the proper thing about camp, having a dirty way of catching and tripping their wearers; but the rodeo outfit felt that it was on dress parade and was trying its best to look the cowboy part. Bill Lightfoot even had a red silk handkerchief draped about his neck, with the slack in front, like a German napkin; and his cartridge belt was slung so low that it threatened every moment to drop his huge Colt's revolver into the dirt—but who could ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... mighty slack for the great gland specialist, Stanley Fenwick. Is this all he can find for his pretty ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... cause. Look at the number of firms who have a reputation, whose very name command trade at good prices, year after year add to the turnover. What is the talisman? Look at their goods. There is perhaps nothing very striking in them, but they are invariably good, busy or slack they are made with care, packed with taste, and delivered neatly in a business-like fashion. Compare this to our makers of cheap stuff; to obtain orders they sell at unprofitable prices, often at a loss, and try to ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company
... if comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imported into the United States. A superior quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C., coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... with plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... which our fathers were familiar. At that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the noble science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet's head, or the Negro beat the Jew's nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... noticed him as soon as she entered, and her table was next to the one at which he sat with three others, who watched him while he talked, and said little. He was a fair youth, with a bland, rather vacant face, and a weak, slack mouth. Miss Gregory knew such faces among footmen and hairdressers, creatures fitted by their deficiencies to serve their betters. He had evidently been drinking a good deal; the table before him was sloppy and foul, and there was the glaze of intoxication in his eyes. But ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... lest, from indifference, they should not milk them fully; nor to the maids, lest they should fail in the same way for lack of finger-grip; with the result that in course of time the cows would "go azew"—that is, dry up. It was not the loss for the moment that made slack milking so serious, but that with the decline of demand there came decline, and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... who paid no attention to the woman. After a while the trio went to sleep, the man on the carriage bench, the woman and child on the floor. She was what is euphemistically called a "cook" in Tonking; just another name for an arrangement so often resulting from the lonely life of Europeans among a slack-fibred dependent alien population. It is the same thing that confronts the stray visitor to the isolated tea plantations of the Assam hills, where young English lads are set down by themselves, ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall |
