"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been out to sea to lift his lobster-pots and he had been waiting at the entrance of Clam River for the tide to make the water deep enough for him to come up. On days when the tide was not so low he could come up all right, even at "slack water." But this time the channel was not deep enough for his motor-boat ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... take the slack so fast. Hard a port. Now kick your stern over. That's the stuff. Pay ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... people whose lack of conscience is back of all manner of crimes, from murder down to careless, slack work; whose cruelty, lust, and selfishness operate unhampered by restraint. On the other hand there are others whose hypertrophied conscience works in one of two directions. If they are zealots, convinced of the righteousness ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it, came to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... away?'—'Don't tell,' sez he, 'Is ut like?' sez I, 'But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service.' Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... shows, perhaps, more humanity. The men let their muscles sag a bit. They talk, laugh, sing if they are happy. They lie about in every attitude of complete relaxation. But at the word they fall in again. They take up the slack, as it were, and move on again in that remarkable pas de flexion that is so oddly tireless. It is a difference of method; probably the best thing for men who are Gallic, temperamental. A more lethargic army is better governed ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... through the lock and the mules picked up the slack of the towrope again at Louise's vigorous suggestion. Inside the hold Sammy and Dot both wondered about the stopping of the boat. Dot was awakened ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... found two letters from Milly. One was a long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been bound an' gagged an' dragged away from her home by three men, an' she named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was taken to the little town where I found trace of her two years after. But she didn't send the letter from that town. There she was penned in. 'Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the scene, was not runnin' any risks ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... Christian's eyes always upon him, with a strange look of helpless distress, discomposing enough to the angry aggressor. "Like a beaten dog!" he said to himself, rallying contempt to withstand compunction. Observation set him wondering on Christian's exhausted condition. The heavy labouring breath and the slack inert fall of the limbs told surely of unusual and prolonged exertion. And then why had close upon two hours' absence been followed by ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... limp, and then, as my grasp loosened, staggered back from a blow of his knee and saw him leap for the lagoon. But I (being greatly minded to make an end of him and for good reasons) set after him hot-foot and so came running hard behind him to the reef; here, the way being difficult, I must needs slack my pace, but he, surer footed, ran fleetly enough until he was gotten well-nigh to the middle of the reef, there for a moment he paused and, looking back on me where I held on in pursuit, I saw his dark face darker for a great splash of blood; suddenly he raised one hand aloft, shaking ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... overtures which came to him, after 1856, from eminent historians. When they were old men, he and Ranke, whom, in hot youth, there was much to part, lived on terms of mutual goodwill. Doellinger had pronounced the theology of the Deutsche Reformation slack and trivial, and Ranke at one moment was offended by what he took for an attack on the popes, his patrimony. In 1865, after a visit to Munich, he allowed that in religion there was no dispute between them, that he had no fault to find with the Church as Doellinger understood ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... gradually, there seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh of relief as ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... the record of sentences passed, not the presentation of human characters in all their fulness and colour; and the consequence is that even now and so soon, in spite of all their rhetorical brilliance, their hold on men has grown slack. Contrast the dim depths into which his essay on Johnson is receding, with the vitality as of a fine dramatic creation which exists in Mr. Carlyle's essay on the same man. Mr. Carlyle knows as well as Macaulay ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... life," and in this inmost intimacy with Nature felt myself grow strong, as Antaeus by contact with the mother earth. Thus roused from my long torpor into the most intense activity,—for all activity is slack in comparison with that of thought,—I became dissatisfied with the facility of my present surroundings. I was anxious to pit myself against the world of Paris. I wanted opposition, contradiction, in order to vanquish them, and absorb their force into the glory of my triumph. Moreover, my studies ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... subject waxed hot in the Assembly, it was moved and carried that that body should adjourn for a few weeks, in order that members might consult their constituents and sound the public feeling. During this recess it may be conceived that neither side was slack in its efforts. Franklin for his share contributed a pamphlet, entitled "Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of our Public Affairs." "Mischievous and distressing," he said, as the frequent disputes ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... reckoning. He wears rubbers if the day is at all moist, and next to ear muffs, galoshes on an able bodied man goad me to fury. If the Lord made you a man, be a man and not a molly-coddle. Soup without meat, bread without salt, pie-crust without a filling, slack-baked dough, all these are prototypes of the man without endurance or sufficient stamina to stand getting his delicate feet dashed with dew, or his shell-like ears nipped ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... forward, and turning round to seize it exposed the white under side of his body to a blow from Bill's harpoon, driven home with right good will. The men on deck who held the line hauled away on the slack, while others stood by with bowlines in their hands ready to slip them over the ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... Long was he contemned, While the bairns of the Geats naught told him for good, Nor him on the mead-bench worthy of mickle The lord of the war-hosts would be a-making. Weened they strongly that he were but slack then, An atheling unkeen; then came about change To the fame-happy man for every foul harm. Bade then the earls' burg in to be bringing, 2190 The king battle-famed, the leaving of Hrethel, All geared with ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... make his appearance was the bear, who took a long and steady draught; then came the deer, the opossum, and such others of the family as are noted for their comfortable case. The moose and bison were slack in their cups, and the partridge, always lean in flesh, looked on till the supply was nearly gone. There was not a drop left by the time the hare and the martin appeared on the shore of the lake, and they are, in consequence, the slenderest ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... loved for itself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; and it submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon as that energy grew slack—when the religion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the world was at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind; there was ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a slack day with him," she said rather gravely. "I assure you he works harder than most clergymen, and is very conscientious and painstaking. He is not at all strong, but he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mysterious country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work because he was a carpenter, but at every carpenter's shop where he applied he was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stone sawer; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... grey horse goes by at a dash. From other shops, the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters—cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. Dirty fellows, who ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... after conformity to Jesus Christ, and the righteousness of his kingdom, that this treasure of grace may abound? Alas, we are poor mean Christians, because we are negligent! For "the hand of the diligent maketh rich," Prov. x. 4. But we become poor in grace, because we deal with a slack hand. Is there any great thing that is attainable without much pains and sweating? ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... lifted up his grey curling locks, and bore them out horizontally from his fur cap, "and it's a devil of a gale, sure enough.—It may last a month of Sundays for all I know.—Up with the helm, Tom.—Ease off the main sheet, handsomely, my lad—not too much.—Now, take in the slack, afore she jibes;" and the master ducked under the main boom and took his station on the other side of the deck. "Steady as you go now.—Newton, take the helm.—D'ye see that bluff? keep her right for it. Tom, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... somewhat hazardous passage from one ship to the other. The "Thisbe" had but slight way on her; the hawser was consequently somewhat slack, and the weight of the people on it brought it down into the water. The lieutenant and several of the men clung on, but the midshipman was by some means or other washed off. Unable to swim, he cried out loudly for help, but no one could afford it, till Ronald let ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... administration of affairs, has been as remarkable as the intervention of the great question which eclipsed every other till it compelled its own solution. Although this transition has given birth to an era of "slack-water politics," it has gradually brought the country face to face with new problems, some of which are quite as vital to the existence and welfare of the Republic as those which have taxed the statesmanship ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... moved outdoors 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
... some of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... as soon as he sees 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 ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... these evenings. I have not been to Walham Green." Though he had all but persuaded himself that he cared not at all, one way or the other, this message did Warburton good. Midway in the week, business being slack, he granted himself a half holiday, and went to Ashtead, merely in friendliness to Ralph Pomfret—so he said ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... continues for the home trade, and occasionally a small advance upon the last July rates is paid on such sorts suitable for that branch, but there is almost no demand for export, the consumption of the article in foreign countries being this year unusually slack. The shipments to Russia, since the opening of the season, amount to only 2,209 chests, against 3,439 chests during the same time last year. A public sale was held yesterday, in Liverpool, of about 400 chests of East India, and 120 serons of Caracas. Of the former about 100 chests ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... in. She also believes, from false information that she has gathered in this country, that under no circumstances will England fight. It isn't about that I came to you. We've become a slothful, slack, pleasure-loving people, but I still believe that when the time comes we shall fight. The only thing is that we shall be taken at a big disadvantage. We shall be open to a raid upon our fleet. Do you know that the entire German navy is ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... That is right; now the sail is over. Slack out—slack out all it will go; the wind is nearly dead aft. Ease off the jib-sheet, Jack. That is it. Now she ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... taking a round turn about the tiller with the slack end of the dingy's painter. Delicate furrows for a moment cut their way here and there over the glassy surface, and then with a roar the black squall was upon us, keeling our craft almost upon her beam-ends. The water seemed torn from its bed, flung by some unseen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and rainy, when he was called up to take his turn at the bow. The boat was leaving one of those long reaches of slack-water which abound in the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. He tumbled out of bed in a hurry, but half awake, and, taking his stand on the narrow platform below the bow-deck, he began uncoiling a rope to steady the boat through a lock it ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... going to Kimberley with cattle and forage on the afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd, and the stagnation of everything except dust at Modder being complete, I jumped on the twenty-ninth truck as the engine was taking up the slack of the couplings and was immediately jerked forward on the newly-mended road to the north. I had nothing with me except what I stood in and a waterproof; but as the journey of twenty-four miles occupied four hours, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... together and shared all their little discoveries and interests. Bill rode a good many miles that day, always beside a wire fence; and occasionally he would stop, dismount, and busy himself in some small repair, where a fence-post had sagged down, or the wire become twisted or slack. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... love that he bore for the beautiful dumb brutes grew an understanding that in time became almost uncanny. All the jockeys and hostlers said there was magic in the lad's hands. He could ride anything on hoofs with a slack rein; and the worst biter in the stable would take a bridle from him as it were ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... spring, is saved by fall plowing, besides incorporating the manure more thoroughly with the soil, as well as freezing out and destroying the eggs of worms and insects which infest it. Thrown up deeply and roughly with the plow or spade, the frosts act mechanically upon the soil, and slack and pulverise it so thoroughly that a heavy raking in early spring, is all that becomes necessary to put it in the finest condition for seeds, and make it perhaps the very best and most productive of all garden soils whatever. A light sandy ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... conceive the first duty of government is to protect the economic welfare of all the people in all sections and in all groups. I said in my message opening the last session of the Congress that if private enterprise did not provide jobs this spring, government would take up the slack—that I would not let the people down. We have all learned the lesson that government cannot afford to wait until it has lost the power ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... apply that to our own personal life and work, and to the growth of Christianity in the world, and let us not be staggered because either are so slow. 'The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' How long will that day be of which a thousand years are but as the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... generation, I don't know what to think. Some say the devil loose 'for a season.' I say if he ain't loose, he tied mighty slack." ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... served pretty 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
... Moors, Arabians, Ethiops black, Of the left wing that held the utmost marge, Spread forth their troops, and purposed at the back And side their heedless foes to assail and charge: Slingers and archers were not slow nor slack To shoot and cast, when with his battle large Rinaldo came, whose fury, haste and ire, Seemed earthquake, thunder, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... very exacting, had to be done single-handed, kept him to his post. Besides, he was a good scholar and eked out a small income by preparing a few pupils for public school. An occasional mid-week visit to Normanstand in the slack time of school work on the Doctor's part, and now and again a drive by Norman over to the rectory, returning the next day, had been for a good many years the measure of their meeting. Then An Wolf's ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... one hundred and fifty elephants and camels, and two hundred and fifty Frenchmen working his artillery. Against 'em we had about five hundred in all, only half of 'em Europeans. What could so few do against so many? Our officers were all brave enough, but they've had a slack time, and few of 'em are fit for the work. Ensign Picard, sure, did wonders, and Lieutenant Smyth defended the north battery with exceeding skill; but we had not men enough to hold our positions, and step by step we were ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... very slender one, was thrown up, and Bob, gathering in the slack, and noticing that it led from somewhere ahead of the schooner, bowsed it well taut and securely belayed it. He knew at ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... of our five vessels (a Sloop and a Schooner) made an attempt upon the shipping up the River. The night was too dark, the wind too slack for the attempt. The Schooner which was intended for one of the Ships had got by before she discovered them; but as Providence would have it, she run athwart a bomb-catch which she quickly burned. The Sloop by the light ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the order from M. Albert with a pleasant bow. Then he went to his inner office and consulted with his partner, Mr. Vassall, as to the best course to adopt. Both the gentlemen were desirous of doing business, for business had been very slack lately: neither wished to refuse a possible customer, or to offend Mr. Pettitt, the manager of the North-Western, who had recommended them to the Prince. But that foreign title and the vulgar little French ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... day, amid the masts and shrouds, They hung above the wave; The sky o'erhead was dark with clouds, And dark beneath, their grave. The water leaped against its prey, Breaking with heavy crash, And when some slack'ning hands gave way, They fell with dull, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... to enter said joints, which should be scraped out for an inch in depth, and afterward refilled. Mortar protected in the same way, or even unprotected, is often used for the purpose, but it is not equal to the paint and sand. Mortar a few days old (to allow refractory particles of lime to slack), mixed with blacksmith's cinders and molasses, is much used for this purpose, and ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... In the slack time between the seasons, Isak smooths down some new tree-trunks he has thrown; to be used for something or other, no doubt. Also he digs out a number of useful stones and gets them down to the house; as soon as there are stones enough, he builds a wall of them. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... gloss like ivory, and will not rub off. Take of clean unslacked lime 5 or 6 quarts, slack with hot water in a tub, cover to keep in the steam; when ready, pass it through a fine sieve, and add 1/4 lb. of whiting, 1 lb. of good sugar pulverized, and 3 pints of rice flour, first made into a thin paste; boil this mixture well, then dissolve 1 lb. of clean glue ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... wheels revolve with speed, Yet faster still we urge our steed, And scarcely slack the reins to feed Or ease its breath, The journey seems but short indeed, When ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... fire &c. (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... will be inexorably enforced against the individual transgressor. God is not slack concerning his promises. He is free from all human weakness. His mind is not limited, like that of man, to be more affected by partial suffering than by that universal disorder and ruin which must inevitably result from the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... like dat. Dat a long way from the frontier. Tree years Sam work dar in plantation. Den he sold again to a man who hab boats on de riber at New Orleans. Dar Sam work discharging de ships and working de barges. Dar he come to learn for sure which de British flag. De times were slack, and my massa hire me out to be waiter in a saloon. Dat place dey hab dinners, and after dinner dey gamble. Dat war a bad place, mos' ebery night quarrels, and sometimes de pistols drawn, and de bullets flying about. Sam 'top dar six months; de place near de riber, and de captains ob de ships ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... their ancestors to the more restricted pursuits which their great law-giver had prepared for them amid cornfields, vineyards, and plantations of olives. "And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... continued the hostess, addressing a little girl of twelve years old, who had by this time appeared, "tak the gentleman's horse to the stable, and slack his girths, and tak aff the bridle, and shake down a lock o' hay before him, till the dragoons come back.—Come this way, sir," she continued; "ye'll find my house clean, though it's ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a handsome man, a man thought well of. You have great provisions upon your cart. This man has nothing but the unwashed shirt which hangs on his slack back. It will not become you to march handcuffed with his like, going between two policemen ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the square was an assemblage of everything in the world; theatres, wild beasts, lusus naturoe, mountebanks, buffoons, dancers on the slack wire, fighting and swearing, pocket-picking and stealing, music and dancing, and hubbub and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the bank had been voted too uncertain; [and the day was spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through the sand which has accumulated over it. By getting the cable tight on to the boat, and letting the swell pitch her about till it got slack, and then tightening again with blocks and pulleys, we managed to get out from the beach towards the ship at the rate of about twenty yards an hour. When they had got about 100 yards from shore, we ran round in the ELBA to try and help them, letting go the anchor in the shallowest possible water, ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cakes, especially large ones. If not pretty quick, the batter will not rise; and if too quick, put some white paper over the cake to prevent its being burnt. If not long enough lighted to have a body of heat, or it is become slack, the cake will be heavy. To know when it is soaked, take a broad-bladed knife that is very bright, and thrust it into the centre; draw it out instantly, and if the paste in any degree adheres, return the cake to the oven, and close it up. If ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... 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, perhaps a ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... interrupted by the report of one of our bow-chasers: I sprang on deck. We had got the chase within range of our guns, and we were not likely to let them remain inactive. Still she stood on; not a trace nor a sheet did she slack; and as our gunnery was not first-rate it must be owned, we could not as yet hope to do her ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... quick; You were not once so slack.—As I was saying, Not a young thing among ye, but observed me Above the mistress. Who but I was sought to In all your dangers, all your little difficulties, Your girlish scrapes? I was the scape-goat still, To fetch you off; kept all your ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... causes than these might endanger the peace was shown about the same time at certain Tennessee mines where prevailed the bad system of farming out convicts to compete with citizen-miners. Business being slack, deserving workmen were put on short time. Resenting this, miners at Tracy City, Inman, and Oliver Springs summarily removed convicts from the mines, several of these escaping. At Coal Creek the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... he put his fut on the deck when we brought the Ludovico into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, 'Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don't keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch—'tis insanitary.' Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we'd had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin' foul o' the breakwater, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... requires a brisk oven, but not too hot, or it would blacken the crust; on the other hand, if the oven be too slack, the paste will be soddened, and will not rise, nor will it have any colour. Tart-tins, cake-moulds, dishes for baked puddings, pattypans, &c., should all be buttered before the article intended to be baked is put ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... let her down easy-like. I can put on me spurs and chaps onct or twict a week and go flyin' out and whoopin' around me stock, and scarin' 'em to death, pertendin' I'm mighty interested in ridin' range. If you got a lady's goat, you want to keep it. 'Course, later on, I can kind o' slack up. Then I'm goin' to learn her to read American, and she can read that piece in the paper about me. I reckon that'll kind of cinch up the idea that her husband sure is the real thing. But I got to have them cows till she can ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... it must be admitted, one weakness, that of undue leniency toward slack, dilatory, and opinionated subordinates. This was, however, only in part Lee's personal fault. Mainly it was the military counterpart of the rope-of-sand infirmity inherent in a Confederacy which in every possible way deified the individual State and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... loosed the steed; his slack hand fell—upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look—then turned from that sad place: His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold in martial strain,— His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... from eight to twelve years of age, on all-fours, with a dog belt and chain. The passages being neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two thick with mud. In Mr. Barnes' pit these poor boys have to drag the barrows with one hundred weight of coal or slack sixty times a day sixty yards, and the empty barrows back, without once straightening their backs, unless they chose to stand under the shaft, and run the risk of having their heads broken by a falling coal."—Report on Mines, 1842, p. 71. "In Shropshire ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost helpless when confronted ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... your bow and spear. I'm not kicking at that. I am not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an adventurer on the instalment plan. I don't tag after our consul when he comes around, expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o' this by the slack of my pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian Territory and shot up his surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that she's any sort of weapon, but I take her for an illustration), he'd be strung up quicker'n a snowflake 'ud melt in hell. No ambassador of ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... that the officer of the deck may know how to receive the people that are coming aboard. It would make him awful mad if you gave such an answer that he would extend wardroom honors to a steerage officer. Now, stand by to slack ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... purpose to make them conspicuous; and this was a great puzzle to naturalists, because the long coarse gray or greenish hair was evidently like tree-moss and therefore protective. But an old writer, Baron von Slack, in his Voyage to Surinam (1810), had already explained the matter. He says: "The colour and even the shape of the hair are much like withered moss, and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but particularly when it has that orange-coloured ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... too—that, when one side led by thirty points, the match stopped. This prevented those massacres which do so much towards crushing all the football out of the members of the beaten team; and it kept the winning team from getting slack, by urging them on to score their thirty points before half-time. There were some houses—notoriously slack—which would go for a couple of seasons without ever playing the second ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... sliding down between banks of bright green grass, and fuss over the mossy rocks that lie in their beds. Deer lift heads often to listen and look and sniff the breeze between mouthfuls of the tender twigs they love. Shambling, slack-jointed bears move shuffling through the thickets, like the deer, lifting suspicious noses to test frequently the wind, lest some enemy steal ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... water and sewage purification which appears to possess several substantial advantages. Chief among these are simplicity in construction and operation, economy in first cost and working and efficiency in action. This system is the invention of Messrs. Slack & Brownlow, of Canning Works, Upper Medlock Street, Manchester, and the apparatus adopted in carrying it out is here illustrated. It consists of an iron cylindrical tank having inside a series of plates arranged in a spiral direction around ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... now gone if Cooper, who had already recovered his feet, had not immediately cut the sheet with his knife; there was no time to slack it; and, even as it was, the lower part of the sail was drenched, and the boat full of water. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Bertram triumphantly, "but lo' thou, when our Lord Himself did heal one that had leprosy, what quoth He? 'Show thyself to the priest,' saith He: not, 'I am the true Priest, and therefore thou mayest slack to show thee to yon other priest, which is ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods towards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences which ought to be performed respectively to their divinities—as is evidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres, against idle ploughmen ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sense of the term, what embraced; signif. of do., as now used —in opposition to some grammarians, BROWN confines the term to speech and writing —loose explanations of the word by certain slack thinkers; WEBST. notion of —SHERID. idea of; KIRKH. wild and contradictory teachings concerning —Language, PROPRIETY of, in what consists; IMPROPRIETY of, what embraces —PRECISION of, in what consists; Precepts concerning its opposites —Language, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... as I said, were very slack about it, and did not seem to care much about trying the rescue. They said there wasn't any deadly peril, and we should have to make one before we could rescue the old gentleman from it, but Oswald didn't see ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... Mr. Ford employed a number of hands, and some of them he observed 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 the erection of a convenient and comfortable residence. The walls being necessarily ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence? Arise! he said, even in what appeared most fatal hours of darkness. The slack limbs moved; the body rose and fell. The cost of the effort was the breaking out of innumerable wounds, old and new; the gain was the display of the miracle that Italy lived. She tasted her own blood, and herself knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a thin film of ice was to be seen along the edges of the slack water. Heavy, black frosts whitened the shadows and nipped the unaccustomed fingers early in the day. The sun was swinging to the south, lengthening the night hours. Whitefish ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... the press the burden of accomplishing whatever representative government, industrial organization, and diplomacy have failed to accomplish. Acting upon everybody for thirty minutes in twenty-four hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that. It has at great moral cost to itself, encouraged a democracy, still bound to its original premises, to expect newspapers to supply spontaneously for every organ ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... had died greatly, as a Chief should. The rafts were now traveling inland at a fair rate, on the last half-hour of the flood; and, as the estuary narrowed rapidly above their starting-place, he hoped to be able, during the slack of tide, to work the clumsy rafts well over towards the northern shore before getting caught in the full strength of the ebb. As he studied out this problem, and urged the warriors to their utmost effort on the heavy and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... one man from another except by his voice. The old man took the wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat, and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a schooner ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the midday meal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and international politics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our young people attach any great importance to the flitting suggestions ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... worked hard at first, and his ability, his shrewdness, confounded us, as it had confounded Silas Upham. Then, he began to slack, as boys put it. Small duties were ill done or not done at all. But we liked him, were, indeed, charmed by him. As Ajax remarked, Fascination does not trot in the same ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment was like a miser's bag stretched to bursting ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is common to all children. It is only recently that ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... Tom Spooner 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 ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best land-drainage, solid building, correct ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... would suit me better than a night ashore," said I with truth, for I had had enough of the drink, the slack language, and the rough sea life, and looked forward to the land with a pleasant hurry ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... clash between rival corporations. The high-strung gaiety, the drinking, the overtranking, the relaxation of mores. Even a Rank Private had it made. Admiring civilians to buy drinks and hang on your every word, and more important still, sensuous-eyed women, their faces slack in thinly suppressed passion. It was a recognized phenomenon, even Max Mainz knew—this desire on the part of women Telly fans to date a man, and then watch him ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... or young hawk, which he 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 have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... never achieve this task of ours. For he himself has understanding in counsel and wisdom, and the people no longer show us favour in all things. Nay come, before he assembles all the Achaeans to the gathering; for methinks that he will in nowise be slack, but will be exceeding wroth, and will stand up and speak out among them all, and tell how we plotted against him sheer destruction but did not overtake him. Then will they not approve us, when they hear these evil ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... Lady, we be all traitors unto God, and are all under the condemnation of His holy law. Shall the traitor arraign the Judge? And unto the repenting traitor, God's hand falleth not in punishment, but only in loving discipline and fatherly training. You slack not, I count, to give Honor her physic, though she cry that it is bitter and loathsome; nor will God set aside His physic for your Ladyship's crying. Yet, dear my Lady, this is not because He loveth to see you weep, but only because He would heal you of the deadly plague of your sins. Our Lord's ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... breakage in one of the wholesale houses. This is caused by the dead weight of the packing-cases, to which every house in the trade is liable. In the fruit market, there is positively nothing doing; and the growers, who are every day becoming less, complain bitterly. Raspberries were very slack, at 2-1/2d. per pottle; but dry goods still brought their prices. We have heard of several severe smashes in currants, and the bakers, who, it is said, generally contrive to get a finger in the pie, are among ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... house for sleep begin to grien, Their joints to slack frae industry a while; The leaden god fa's heavy on their een, And hafflins steeks them frae their daily toil; The cruizy too can only blink and bleer, The restit ingle's done the maist it dow; Tackman and cottar eke to bed maun steer, Upo' the cod ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... taking up the slack of this belt by mounting the spindle of the outer coned drum in bearings adjustable along a circular path struck from the axis of the lower feed roller as a center, thus insuring a uniform engagement between the teeth of the small pinion and those of the spur wheel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... teach you, if you like to bring your work to me, for half-an-hour on Saturdays; I'm generally slack the first half-hour after I have given your ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was the most natural thing in the world ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... consequence. In 1834 I was large for my age, and the construction of canals was the rage in Ohio. A canal was projected to connect with the great Ohio Canal at Carroll (eight miles above Lancaster), down the valley of the Hock Hocking to Athens (forty-four miles), and thence to the Ohio River by slack water. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... slack," remarked a younger edition of the old gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the back of his head, in ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Whitaker's Almanack" one learns, to begin with, that "the government of Ireland is semi-independent." The separatism of geography has in this case triumphed. The de facto rulers of Ireland in ordinary slack times, and in the daily round of business, are the heads of the great Departments. Some of these are not even nominally responsible to Parliament. The Intermediate Board, for instance, has for thirty years controlled secondary education, but it has ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... instructions are most beautiful, on prayer, especially that of the morning, meekness, compunction, careful self-examination every evening, fasting, humility, alms, &c. In Pa. 43, p. 146, he thus apostrophizes the rich: "Hear this, you all who are slack in giving alms: hear this, you who, by hoarding up your treasures, lose them yourselves: hear me you, who, by perverting the end of your riches, are no better by them than those who are rich only in a dream; nay, your condition is fair worse," &c. He says that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... there,—to Meinertshagen the Prussian Ambassador there, [Seckendorf (Forster, iii. 7).] and to Keppel, Dutch Official gentleman who was once Ambassador at Berlin. Prussian Ambassador applies, and again applies, in the highest quarters; but we fear they are slack. Dumoulin discovers that the man was certainly here; Keppel readily admits, He had Keith to dinner a few days ago: but where Keith now is, Keppel cannot form ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... circus tent. The charms of the little girl, even, were almost totally eclipsed by the captivating loveliness of those ladies who, in spangled tights of blue and pink and red, hung by their teeth at dizzy heights, bestrode glittering wheels upon slack wires, or were shot from cannon to soar, amid black smoke and lurid flame, like angels, far above the heads of ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... elections of 1920 they were victorious in most of the towns. In Belgrade they secured 3600 votes, as compared with 3200 for the Radicals, 2800 for the Democrats—both of whom were not only badly organized but very slack—and 605 for the Republicans. However, the Communists refused to swear the requisite oath, and in consequence were not permitted to take office, the Radicals and Democrats forming a union to carry on. It was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... slack from having it so good, don't think as much as they used to. Why bother when you can tap Central for any information? ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... there were also about 300 convalescents, left behind by nearly thirty regiments. Notwithstanding the vast quantity of stores committed to their care, including the effects of their comrades, and in spite of all warnings, so slack and indifferent was the performance of duty on the part of the garrison of Brashear that, on the morning of the 23d of June, the reveille was sounded for them by the guns of the Valverde battery. Thus sharply aroused, without a thought of what might happen in the rear, the garrison gave its ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... ye see the pink jes' a-creepin' back T' the pale, drawn cheek, an' ye note a smile, Then th' cords o' yer heart that were tight, grow slack An' ye jump fer joy every little while, An' ye tiptoe back to her little bed As though ye doubted yer eyes, or were Afraid it was fever come back instead, An' ye found that th' pink ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... slack—draw it tight. Erni is in Mount Faigel: take this dagger And give it him! you know its caverns well. In one of them you ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... or lean over the parapet of the bridge, to watch the weeds and the quick fishes. It is then, if ever, that you taste joviality to the full significance of that audacious word. Your muscles are so agreeably slack, you feel so clean and so strong and so idle, that whether you move or sit still, whatever you do is done with pride and a kingly sort of pleasure. You fall in talk with any one, wise or foolish, drunk or sober. And it seems as if a hot walk purged you, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... project is, to commence at or near Toledo on the Maumee river, and pass through the southern counties of Michigan into Indiana, and terminate at Michigan city. A third project is, to open a water communication from the navigable waters of Grand river, to Huron river, and, by locks and slack water navigation, enter lake Erie. A canal from the mouth of Maumee Bay to lake Michigan, has also been spoken of as a feasible project;—or one from the mouth of the river Raisin to the St. Joseph, would open a similar communication. ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the piston rod and cylinder packing. If not possible to block the valve properly, cover the ports and oil the cylinder through the indicator plug openings or relief plug holes. If not possible to do this, slack off the bolts on the front cylinder head, wedge the head open so oil can be introduced. In some cases it may be necessary to take the head off; that however, allows dust and grit ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... the other man over. Thorvald obeyed his pull limply, lying face upward, sand in his hair and eyebrows, crusting his slack lips. The younger man brushed the dirt away gently as the other opened his eyes to regard Shann with his old ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and some of the boys was in town this time and things was slack. Come a Sunday evenin' and I heard how some married folks had started up a church. I hadn't been inside of one since I could remember and we all made up our minds to go and see what it ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... knew CH-RL-S ST-RT, 'Twas in a happier day, The Jaunting Car he drove in Went gaily all the way. But now the Car seems all askew, Lop-wheel'd, and slack of spring; Myself and WILL, in fear of a spill, Feel little disposed to sing, As we sit on the Jaunting Car, The drivers at open war, Seem little to care For a Grand Old Fare, As they fight for the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... yelped. "Hi, hi!" screamed I. And on we sped, raising a dust of crisp snow in our wake. It was a famous pack. Fox, the new leader, was a mighty, indomitable fellow, and old Wolf, in the rear, had a sharp eye for lagging heels, which he snapped, in a flash, whenever a trace was let slack. What with Fox and Wolf and the skipper's long whip and my cries of encouragement there was no let up. On we went, coursing over the level stretches, bumping over rough places, swerving 'round the turns. It was a glorious ride. The day was clear, the air frosty, the pace exhilarating. The blood ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... people cries, But you've a principle at stake; Though fellow-workers, lodged in styes, Appeal to you for Labour's sake To fill their lack, Shall true bricklayers waive their Right to Slack? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... distance from each other; eyes not large, but brisk and lively; neck slender and long, tapering toward the head, with a little loose skin below; shoulders and fore quarters light and thin; hind quarters large and broad; back straight, and joints slack and open; carcass deep in the rib; tail small and long, reaching to the heels; legs small and short, with firm joints; udder square, but a little oblong, stretching forward, thin skinned and capacious, but ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... gnawing him with the fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing more intimate than a 'Good morning, Miss Jeanne', had escaped him, till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... about Trinity College, and constant association with books and students had given him a taste for knowledge denied his daughter. Tom had left home when a girl. In the long winter nights during the slack season, after the stalls were bedded and the horses were fed and watered and locked up for the night, the old man would draw up his chair to the big kerosene lamp on the table, and tell the boys stories—they listening with wide-open ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Calvin. "S'pose likely she's slack, hey? house cluttered up? calicker wrapper and shoes down at the heel? ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... supported by a buttress of splendid blocks of squared stone, resting on the rock in the bed of the river, one side being considerably worn away by the action of the water. The longer span was hung very slack, the woodwork forming the pathway was not too safe, and the general ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... The slack fallen lines of the Duke's visage grew suddenly tense. His eyes brightened as the tossing mass in green and gold swept down towards them in a thunder of hoofs, and the long-drawn shout of 'Maasau,' with which the Guard have charged home on so ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... with the men. Their busy time is during the marriage season from November to June. A village tailor is paid either in cash or grain and is not infrequently a member of the village establishment. During the rains, the tailor's slack season, he supplements his earnings by tillage, holding land which Government has continued to him on payment of one-half the ordinary rental. In south Gujarat, in the absence of Brahmans, a Darzi officiates at Bhawad ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... left her, as if volition was no longer hers. Her arms hung slack at her sides and she was swaying a trifle, her face vacant, eyes blank: ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... more purely personal aspect of it, there will be the temptation to grow slack and cold in intercessions and communions, when the immediate occasion that prompted them has passed. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, let us look out for this, expect it, then we shall not be afraid to meet it. ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter |
