"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slack here for several years, and although I've done my own little best, what is one against so many, if ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... of your boat," I said. He did so. I drew in the slack until a fair towing length remained and made it fast. While he was busy I ventured to glance at Miss Colton. Her eyes were snapping with fun and she seemed to be enjoying the situation. But, catching ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the draw, it was lifted for the Speed, she had passed, and the wind was in her sail once more. Yet, somehow, she hung back. And then I saw that the men in her were of those with whom Mr. Gabriel had spoken at noon. Dan's sail fell slack, and we drifted slowly through, while he poled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... like a top, and seven is time enough for me to rise. Two hours aint such a bad lot of sleep for a woman of my years. Let's see, I'm sixty-eight. In one sense sixty-eight is old, in another sense it's young. You slack down at sixty-eight; you don't have such a draw on your system, the fire inside you don't seem to require such poking up and feeding. When you get real old, seventy-eight or eighty, then you want a deal of cosseting; but sixty-eight is young in one sense of the word. This is the slack ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... when he put his fut on the deck when we brought the Ludovico into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, 'Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don't keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch—'tis insanitary.' Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we'd had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin' foul o' the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... They fell slack, however, when the Queen reached his channel and flapped lazily, reversing to catch the wind and nose her cautiously into the shallows. Jeff dismissed it impatiently—a change of wind or some crafty maneuver of old Charlie Mack's to take ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... the rabbit. The man gave a great shout and start of terror, and sprang, and the Cat slid clawing to the floor, and the rabbit fell inertly, and the man leaned, gasping with fright, and ghastly, against the wall. The Cat grabbed the rabbit by the slack of its neck and dragged it to the man's feet. Then he raised his shrill, insistent cry, he arched his back high, his tail was a splendid waving plume. He rubbed against the man's feet, which were bursting ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... against her, in which it was not forgotten that years before she had sat in the cellar of the poor dairy-woman's mother, and there bewitched the cocks and hens, as many old people still living could testify; and the bailiff's wife is by no means slack either in helping her to the same death as the poor dairy-mother. While the whole town and adjacent country rang with these proceedings, Sidonia's disquietude became evident. Every day she sent Anna Apenborg up to the court-house, and there ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... found," cried Mrs. Blinkerly Dank-some-Hankly triumphantly, "a perfect human race and teach it the immortal principles of woman's rights. So, if we can't persuade Parliament to come out for us, we'll take Parliament by the slack of its degraded trousers, some ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... own lives. Some preparation had been made, and fortunately it was so, for all the sails still set were blown out of the bolt ropes. The frigate was hove on her beam-ends. Where Quacko had come from nobody knew, when on a sudden he was seen hanging to the slack end of a rope. In vain one of the topmen made an attempt to grasp him. The rope swung away far over the foaming sea. He swung back, but it was to strike the side apparently, for the next instant the rope returned ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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. The air of the fireside withers ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rest, Imogen's figure was that of the typical well-groomed, well-trained, American girl, long-limbed, slender, rounded; in her carriage a girlish air of consciousness; the poise of her broad shoulders and slender hips expressing at once hygienic and fashionable ideals that reproved slack gaits and outlines. As they walked, as they talked, watching the slow advance of the great steamer; as their eyes rested calmly and intelligently on each other, one could see that the girl's relation to ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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 to ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... [With a certain geniality] My dear fellow, I don't want to put a pistol to your head. You've had a slack rein so far. I've never objected to your sowing a few wild oats-so long as you —er—[Unseen by SIR WILLIAM, BILL makes a sudden movement] Short of that—at all events, I've not inquired into your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 sister her ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... favoured 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. The small holder, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Put it to yourself what would 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 ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... to within about four yards of a point immediately beneath the enemy. There it struck sharply upward, and before it had faded from my gaze at the place whence it had set out I heard a horrid thump and a piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot forward, with a slack rope higher than the limb to which he was attached. Here the rope tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight, and back he swung in a breathless curve to the other end of his arc. The ram had fallen, a heap of indistinguishable ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... words of advice to Will, but the lad paid no heed; he merely drew himself up on the ladder, saw that the life-line was slack, and, clasping the leaden back-piece with both hands, with the life-line running loosely between his arms to act as a guide, he once more plunged into the sea, the weight seeming to take him ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... horse's hoofs were heard clattering along the road, and a fine-looking lad in a midshipman's uniform cantered up on a pony, holding his reins slack, and sitting with the careless air of a sailor. He had a noble broad brow, clear blue eyes, and thick, clustering, brown curls, his countenance being thoroughly bronzed by southern suns and sea air. His features were well formed and refined, without ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... produce one false step: he flew round the course, every stride like the ricochet of a 32lb. shot; his adversary broke-up again and again, losing both his temper and his place, and barely saved his distance, as the gallant Tacony—his rider with a slack rein, and patting him on the neck—reached the winning-post—time, 2m. 25s. The shouts were long and loud; such time had never been made before by fair trotting, and Tacony evidently could have done it in two, if not three ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of myself," said he, turning his eyes upon her. "If we're not married soon, very soon, it will be too late. I mean that it would be a mockery. For me, at any rate. One may wish to go one way, and be swept another, especially when the mooring line is slack." His breast rose and fell at a quick, agitated breath. "But promise me that you'll not speak ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... they never fadg'd, 25 But only by the ears engag'd: Like dogs that snarl about a bone, And play together when they've none, As by their truest characters, Their constant actions, plainly appears. 30 Rebellion now began, for lack Of zeal and plunders to grow slack; The Cause and covenant to lessen, And Providence to b' out of season: For now there was no more to purchase 35 O' th' King's Revenue, and the Churches, But all divided, shar'd, and gone, That us'd to urge ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... into the whole household as well. Mullins, in his later years, had been a dependent 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 eyes, ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of divinity, law or physic, few, I believe, would 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 palace, receive and spend his rents; ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... widely open, the other shut, and the tongue 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 of a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... qualities are incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness of our capacity, To aspire is our privilege, and a privilege which we are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... earnestly. Or else he wants means to set her out, he hath no money, and though it be to the manifest prejudice of her body and soul's health, he cares not, he will take no notice of it, she must and shall tarry. Many slack and careless parents, iniqui patres, measure their children's affections by their own, they are now cold and decrepit themselves, past all such youthful conceits, and they will therefore starve ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... him it had been a little slack, on account of its being so hard to get money. We staid there a week longer, and tried every conceivable plan to force the landlord to ask us for money, but he never mentioned it during our stay. We sold our team and carriage for three hundred dollars cash, and ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... easiest, freest, happiest man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek cat, purring and winking in the light, and falling every now and then into an idle doze, as from excess of comfort. Toby looked on from a tall bench hard by; one beaming smile, from his broad nut-brown face down to the slack-baked buckles in his shoes. The very locks that hung around had something jovial in their rust, and seemed like gouty gentlemen of hearty natures, disposed to joke on their infirmities. There was nothing surly or severe ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... up with a mist of perplexity in his deep eyes. He realized vaguely that Ham had accomplished a feat somehow savoring of business acumen, which was a matter he could not hope to comprehend. Yet some comment seemed expected of him, so out of a slack interest he inquired, "Were they good lambs, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... gather'd one From out a bed of thick forget-me-nots, Look'd hard and sweet at me, and gave it me. I took it, tho' I did not know I took it, And put it in my bosom, and all at once I felt his arms about me, and his lips - Mary. O God! I have been too slack, too slack; There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards - Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath, - We have so play'd the coward; but by God's grace, We'll follow Philip's leading, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the gate at Priesthaughswire, And warn the Currors o' the Lee; As ye cum down the Hermitage Slack, Warn doughty ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... along 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 marriages, and in some Brahman marriages a Darzi is called ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Discourse is, what I fear you would not read out, therefore shall not insert. But I assure you, Sir, I heartily lament this Loss of Time, and am now resolved (if possible, with double Diligence) to retrieve it, being effectually awakened by the Arguments of Mr. Slack out of the Senseless Stupidity that has so long possessed me. And to demonstrate that Penitence accompanies my Confession, and Constancy my Resolutions, I have locked my Door for a Year, and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... 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 ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... another hear them speak, The patient virgins wise: "Surely He is not far to seek,"— "All night we watch and rise." "The days are evil looking back, The coming days are dim; Yet count we not His promise slack, But watch and ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 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 in them: things to be baked on sheets should be placed on ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Very soon the trees became familiar, she remembered every turn of the road and bend on the fences; and at last the grove of oak and chestnut shading the knoll at the intersection of the roads met her eye. She looked for the forge and bellows, for the anvil and slack-tub; but shop and shed had fallen to decay, and only a heap of rubbish, overgrown with rank weeds and vines, marked the spot where she had spent so many happy hours. The glowing yellow chestnut leaves dropped down at her feet, and the oaks tossed their gnarled arms ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 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 ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... attained the rank of senator, was deprived of all his property, and imprisoned by Theodora in an underground dungeon, where she kept him fastened to a kind of manger by a rope round his neck, which was so short that it was always quite tense and never slack. The wretched man was always forced to stand upright at this manger, and there to eat and sleep, and do all his other needs; there was no difference between him and an ass, save that he did not bray. No less than four months were passed by him in this ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... person with regard to the face and the hands and the feet. Georgie had been conscious of walking a little lamely lately; he had been even more conscious of the need of hot towels on his face and the "tap-tap" of Mr Holroyd's fingers, and the stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... 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 ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... girl who used to live on the sixth floor; counting her apprentice, that little squint-eyed Augustine, who was as ugly as a beggar's behind, that made three persons in her employ. Others would certainly have lost their heads at such a piece of good fortune. It was excusable for her to slack a little on Monday after drudging all through the week. Besides, it was necessary to her. She would have had no courage left, and would have expected to see the shirts iron themselves, if she had not been able to dress up in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Cameron enthusiastically, "but you are trying too hard. Forget the distance this time and think only of the easy slow swing. Let your muscles go slack." So he ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... how they're improvin' the human race. Now look here, Mis' Carrington, let an old woman talk. I'm old and I got wrinkles in my face but there ain't none in my heart, and the only way to keep 'em out of your heart is just to fill it to bustin' with love. Keep the skin tight; don't let it git slack. Why, you'll find you been goin' without love and it's like eatin' without an appetite. It's fillin' your life with somethin' that don't satisfy. Even if you feel you ain't got the best man in the world, make the best of the one you got, and, just 'cause he's yourn, you'll ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... 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 ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old Lame-Boy is. He just pesters ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... interminable roads, in sun and rain, without ever reaching that mysterious country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work as 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, stonecutter; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up fagots, tended goats ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... was directed to another negro, who lay on the beach rolling and foaming at the mouth, apparently in a fit. "What's the matter with that fellow?" said I to the same negro who continued close to me, notwithstanding Swinburne's stick. "Eh! call him Sam Slack, massa. He ab um tic tic fit." And such was apparently the case. "Stop, me cure him;" and he snatched the stick out of Swinburne's hand, and running up to the man, who continued to roll on the beach, commenced belabouring him ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... greater advantage, labor and materials which, but for it, would have been employed for other purposes. Meanwhile the causes making for unemployment will be unaffected. Miscalculations will still be made, the building trades will still become slack in the winter, the casual methods of engaging dock laborers will still continue, trade cycles will still recur, while beneath them, and concealed by them, some industries will expand and others will decay. Thus, like the armies at Salonika, the new business would ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... o'clock the Danish fire began to slack. One-half the line was a mere chain of wrecks; some of the floating batteries had sunk; the flagship was a mass of flames. Nelson at this point sent his boat ashore with a flag of truce, and a letter to the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... kept them chiefly for cod. They hoped thus to bring the fish fresh and good to market, for, unless they were overcrowded, the cod lived quite as contentedly in the tanks as in the open sea. But in one respect the fishermen were disappointed. They found that the fish arrived slack, flabby, and limp, though well fed and ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... himself to the cutter's crew, who were convulsed with laughter, "some of you run out that gang-plank, and another slack up that line." ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... 13 inches square, with a thickness of three inches. The best quality of baked brick is of a yellowish-white tint, and very much resembles our Stourbridge or fire brick; another kind, extremely hard, but brittle, is of a blackish blue; a third, the coarsest of all, is slack-dried, and of a pale red. The earliest baked bricks are of this last color. The sun-dried bricks have even more variety of size than the baked ones. They are sometimes as large as 16 inches square and seven inches ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... as far as possible, British commerce. Their route led them to the western coast of South America, and arrangements were made so that they were coaled and provisioned from bases in some of the South American states which permitted a slack observance of the laws respecting the duties ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... into her; but it ain't a-goin' to catch us, sir; I've brung her through many and many a time like this. I'll bring her through this one, and then you must do the rest. Now, then,' says he, 'stand by, put your helm just a few spokes a-weather, don't check her at all with the rudder, slack a foot or two of the lee braces and check in to wind'ard; keep your eye constant on that sail, Mr. Clark'—that were the second mate—'and don't let it shake; keep it good full and give her away; lay the crochick yard square, and come up to the main-braces, all of you.' And so, gently, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chief nerve of hell's pained heart eternally. Thou art abolished from the midst of these That are what thou wast: Pius from his knees Blows off the dust that flecked them, bowed for thee. Yea, now the long-tongued slack-lipped litanies Fail, and the priest has no more prayer to sell— Now the last Jesuit found about thee is The beast that made thy fouler flesh his cell— Time lays his finger on thee, saying, "Cease; Here is no room for thee; go down ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 rioters were resisted by Colonel Anderson and a small force. They raised a flag of truce, answering ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the room. When some mens' slaves was caught on another man's place he was allowed 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
... wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... deed in this world of ours! Unheard of the pretence is. It plainly threatens the Great Powers; Is fatal in all senses. A just deed in the world! Call out The rifles! ... be not slack about The National Defences.' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... are we slack in our companionship in these courses. Our imagination is slower and clumsier than the French—rarer also, by far, in the average English mind. The only man of power equal to Dore's whom we have had lately among us, was ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... them upon horseback, they let the rein go slack. The time drew near when on Castile they needs must turn the back. Spinaz de Can, it was the place where the Cid did alight. And a great throng of people welcomed him there that night. On the next day at morning, he got to horse once ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... 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 of their own decisions and conclusions, their ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... be eleven o'clock. Tide was full at twelve. I was a pretty good candidate for the crazy house by this time. I'd listened till my ear-drums felt slack, like they needed reefing. And then at last I heard her ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with the resignation of a man already chastened by misfortune and fatigue. He went into the waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker—the new stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place—sat down in front of an irritatingly dull fire banked up with slack, and nursed his damaged hand and meditated on ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... I'm e'en as vexed as ye can be—But I am a bridegroom, ye see, and that puts a' things out o' my head, I think. There's the marriage-dinner, or gude part o't, that my twa brithers are bringing on a sled round by the Riders' Slack, three goodly bucks as ever ran on Dallomlea, as the sang says; they couldna come the straight road for the saft grund. I wad send ye a bit venison, but ye wadna take it weel maybe, for ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... I've felt the drops Cold on his brow, and raised his lifeless arms Whose corded strength hung slack as a sick child's! O, it is true! And you must stand by him! Fight at his side! I thought to do it! ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... bad place to land if there weren't two of us," he went on. "It is our being together in this yacht that is likely to cause suspicion. You could easily pretend that you'd come over from Gibraltar, and the port authorities there are pretty slack." ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... give them as much water as they could hold in the hollow of their hands: And, notwithstanding our own great extremity, they were given it, to teach them some humanity, instead of their accustomed barbarity both to us and other nations. Some put leaden bullets into their months, to slack their thirst by chewing them. In every corner of the ship, the miserable cries of the sick and wounded were sounding lamentably in our ears, pitifully crying out and lamenting for want of drink, being ready to die, yea many dying for lack thereof. Insomuch, that by this great extremity we lost many ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... reach the deep-sea swells outside. Her whistle blew cheerily and was answered by the single tug-boat moored to the railroad wharf. And after that the villagers straggled back to their various daily concerns. Even the landlord of Swan's Hotel sighed as he balanced up his books. Business would be slack for some ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... hours renewed their cannonade as hotly as ever. The Russians could be seen pouring troops across the bridge over the harbor from their camps on the north side, to resist the expected attack. From twelve to five the firing was slack. At that hour the French again began their cannonade ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... journey, when he has got squaws and baggage with him, a red-skin never goes at a walk, and the horses will keep on at this lope for hours. That is right. Don't sit so stiffly; you want your legs to be stiff and keeping a steady grip, but from your hips you want to be as slack as possible, just giving to the horse's action, the same way you give on board ship when vessels are rolling. That is better. Ah! here comes Pete. I took this way because I knew it was the line ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... 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, "as ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... legs and up over the opposite side of the neck, back over the withers, and wrapped once behind the elbow around that portion of the rope which passes between the front legs. The leg is then drawn away from the body and forcibly pushed forward by an assistant, while another person tightens up the slack in the rope until the affected leg is off the ground in front of the supporting leg. The rope is then drawn taut and the assistant grasps the tail and pulls the cow toward the affected side. The animal makes a lurch to keep from falling, contracts the muscles, and the patella slips into place ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... animals were sure-footed as mountain goats. Otherwise they could never have reached the valley right side up. It was a stretch of broken shale with much loose rubble. The soft sandstone farther along had eroded and there was a great deal of slack debris down which the horses slipped and slid, now on their haunches and ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... droopt her head till her ringlets fell into her fish-plate: and she swallowed Lord Crabs's flumry just as she would so many musharuins. My lord (whose powers of slack-jaw was notoarious) nex addrast another spitch to Miss Griffin. He said he'd heard how Deuceace was SITUATED. Miss blusht—what a happy dog he was—Miss blusht crimson, and then he sighed deeply, and began eating his turbat and lobster sos. ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Palestine falling slack, and more need for them on the homeward side of the sea, their Hochmeister, Hermann of the Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. There the titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen advises him of that field ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the rope and the bear rose to her hind feet to ease the strain on her neck. Instantly they pulled in the slack. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... As the days go by, let him feel his latent powers developing, and glory in the thought that they have been given him for his own joy and that of humanity. Then when temptation comes to him, and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening to ruin the peace and harmony of his life. And so ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... receive it, and the postmaster-general who permits the department to exceed that simple duty and intermeddle with the rights of the people should not only be impeached and removed from office in one time and two motions, but taken by the slack of the pantalettes and pitched headlong into the penitentiary. It appears that the indignant people assaulted the nigger postmaster. That is indeed to be regretted; still I can but wonder that they do not ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... heedless pair of sportsmen slack! You never mark, though trout or jack, Or little foolish stickleback, Your baited snares may capture. What care has SHE for line and hook? She turns her back upon the brook, Upon her lover's eyes to look In ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... caressing them, kissing them. Would it be possible to forget them, to reconcile oneself to them? He must think—must get away from these crowded streets where faces seemed to grin at him. He remembered that Parliament had just risen, that work was slack in the office. He would ask that he might take his holiday now—the next day. And they ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... that plainly was not thinking. Nothing interested him; he never looked at the papers, never cared to hear a word of news. His eyes more unsteady, his lips looser, his neck thinner and longer, he looked more than ever like a puppet whose strings hung slack. How often would Ginevra have cast herself on his bosom if she could have even hoped he would not repel her! Now and then his eyes did wander to her in a dazed sort of animal-like appeal, but the moment she attempted response, he turned into a corpse. Still, when ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... zoologist. "You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without the deaconess. You mustn't be slack; you ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... been made angry, or grieved, or to have compassionated; by States, those in right of which we are in a certain relation good or bad to the aforementioned feelings; to having been made angry, for instance, we are in a wrong relation if in our anger we were too violent or too slack, but if we were in the happy medium we are in a right relation to the feeling. And ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... 1792, I was attending some labourers on my farm, when one of them said to me, "There is a bird's nest upon one of the Coal-slack Hills; the bird is now sitting, and is exactly like a cuckoo. They say that cuckoo's never hatch their own eggs, otherwise I should have sworn it was one." He took me to the spot, it was in an open fallow ground; the bird was upon the nest, I stood and observed her some time, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... allies.[373] It was not without reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reudnitz. Leaning against the stove, he ran over several names of those who were now slack in their duty; and when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was not the Augereau of Castiglione. "Ah! give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am," retorted ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... window seemed a furnace door That gave upon a bed of ore; The thunder rumbled out the muttered Words that his failing tongue had uttered— Another flash, a rending crack— The old man crumpled like a sack; I felt his stringy arms go slack. How could he sit so dead, so still! While wind ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... teaching them to dance on the ground was simple enough (by the association of music and a hot floor); but we are not informed how they were taught to skip the rope, or whether it was the tight or the slack rope, or how high the rope might be. The silence of history on these points is fortunate for the figurantes of the present day; since, but for this, their fame might have been utterly eclipsed. Elephants may, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... came to an evening in September when Daniel and Jennie had not seen each other for as many as three days, the longest period of absence in the history of their attachment. Work was slack with the trust company that day, and Daniel had seized the opportunity to leave the Equitable Building early and see the Baltimores inflict a defeat on the Buffalo nine at Union Park, in the homestretch of the pennant race. As he ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... condition, and all loaded. There were additional oars, in case of accident, and that little sail called trinquet, which assists the speed of the canoe at the same time the boatmen row, and is so useful when the breeze is slack. When Aramis had seen to all these things, and appeared satisfied with the result of his inspection, "Let us consult Porthos," said he, "to know if we must endeavor to get the boat out by the unknown extremity of the grotto, following the descent and the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have accompanied the creation of life peers. Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... a moment upon the slack end of the rope until he felt that the stone was lodged with fair security at the shaft's top, then he swung out over the black depths beneath. The moment his full weight came upon the rope he felt it slip from above. He waited there in ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... multiplied many times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were asked to repel ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... hours of yesterday morning, the Vindictive groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... yet in their leading-strings as to some parts of literature, there is the more room for improvement; and I am confident that the genius of my fellow-citizens will not be slack in the important work. You will please to recollect, sir, that during one hundred and sixty years of our childhood we were in our nonage; respecting our parent and looking up to her for books, science, and improvements. From her we borrowed much learning and some prejudices, which time alone can ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... was more to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces—rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more than bloom that ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... phoebe, that constructs such an exquisite home, or of a bustling, energetic Jenny wren, that "looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness." She is a flabby, spineless bundle of flesh and pretty feathers, gentle and refined in manners, but slack and incompetent in all she does. Her nest consists of few loose sticks. without rim or lining; and when her two babies emerge from the white eggs, that somehow do not fall through or roll out of the rickety lattice, their tender little naked bodies ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... 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 a fraction of a second to look around ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a textbook 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 that ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... has her praise. Now mark a spot or two That so much beauty would do well to purge; And show this queen of cities, that so fair May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise. It is not seemly, nor of good report, That she is slack in discipline; more prompt To avenge than to prevent the breach of law: That she is rigid in denouncing death On petty robbers, and indulges life And liberty, and ofttimes honour too, To peculators of the public gold: That thieves at home ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... out of Germany?" Colonel Holt asked. "The Germans seem to be getting slack about prisoners lately. O'Malley and Jones got back a few ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... charges. He has to earn the interest on his capital, he has to keep his mill in repair, he now and then has to meet the demands of the times and purchase improved appliances, and he has to keep a certain number of employes, whether business is brisk or slack. He might, therefore, if he saw fit to employ the logic of railroad managers, earn revenue enough to meet his fixed charges from the business which his regular customers give him, and then do any business coming from beyond ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... of its groove, sometimes with an audible snap. The patient suffers pain and is disabled until the tendon is replaced. Reduction is easy, but as the displacement tends to recur, an operation is required to fix the tendon in its place. An incision is made over the tendon; if the sheath is slack or torn, it is tightened up or closed with catgut sutures; or an artificial sheath is made by raising up a quadrilateral flap of periosteum from the lateral aspect of the fibula, and stitching it over ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... concert is universally conceded to be the treasurer's report. So much on hand at the last meeting, so much contributed by each class during the month last past, so much expended, so much left on hand at present. We used to sit and listen to it with slack jaws and staring eyes. Money, money, oceans of money! Thirty-eight cents and seventy-six cents and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Panhandle was then purely a cattleman's town. It was a great shipping point—at one time the greatest in the world—and was becoming a railroad centre. I was there a good deal, and for amusement during the slack season went to work to fix up a polo ground. No one in the town had ever even seen the game played, so the work and expense all fell on myself. I was lucky to find a capital piece of ground close to the town, absolutely level and well grassed. After measuring and laying off, with a plough ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... sweet blooming flowers, is behind them; and the view backwards is cheerful and picturesque. There are generally five presses at work; which, for a provincial printing office, shews business to be far from slack. Mons. B. sells a great number of almanacks, and prints all the leading publications connected with the town. In fact, his title, as Imprimeur du Roi, supposes him to take the principal lead as a printer. This agreeable man has a brother who is professor of rhetoric in the College Royale ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... makes gas for gas engines at present is the Dawson, and in it anthracite is used, because of the difficulty of getting rid of the tar coming from the Siemens and Wilson producers, using any ordinary slack. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... clump of trees on the edge of the field. Their shade invited like a beckoning hand. Little beads of perspiration stood on her forehead. A warm lassitude spread through her body, turning her muscles slack. Hadn't Gertrude said Aunt Jessica didn't let them work in too hot ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not 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 the 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 no loveliness ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Norah. "It was only Geoff's illness that made me a bit slack. And we've had a busy summer, haven't we? I think our little war-job hasn't turned out ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... Enough of the slack of the weightier line was kept on board the wreck—the end being there made fast—to permit the middle of the rope being fastened round a man and of his being dragged away from the wreck through the sea into the lifeboat. A ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... like a dream. He went on deck, and examined with a critical eye the standing and running rigging, than which nothing could be neater or better. The old tub in which he had been blown off the day before was anchored near her, with a slack line from her stern to the yacht, as he had left her. The dingy old craft looked so mean and insignificant compared with the yacht, that the contrast put him almost out of conceit with the brilliant plan he had considered to purchase the former. He was ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... Beatrice, as a young unmarried girl, wore a silk flat cap to match her corsage, with a plush hood, which fell over her shoulders and covered her violet frock; white slippers with high heels, ornamented with gold rosettes and cherry-coloured fringe. The arms of both were untrammelled, except far a thin slack cord which left their hands free to carry a crucifix and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
