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More "Slacken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... straight ahead and little to fear so long as the horse kept in the road and met no other rig. In a quarter of a mile he began to slacken his pace. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... would slacken after exertion. The blows began to fall less thick anon, and the point of the unknown knight began to make dreadful play. It found and penetrated every joint of the Donnerblitz's armor. Now it nicked him in the shoulder where the vambrace was buckled to the corselet; now it bored ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... about his neck, and, putting his hands up, found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you leave no space for reply. The difficulties that shoot across her mind you reply to ere she is well conscious of them; and when you feel her hand tremble, or see her eyelids fall, like the leader of a storming party when the guns slacken in their fire, you spring boldly forward in the breach, and blind to every danger around you, rush madly on, and plant your standard ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... buried in sleep; so that it paid for its heedlessness with destruction, and was more pitiable for its own sloth than by reason of the valour of the foe. For in warfare nought is found to be more ruinous than that a man, made foolhardy by ease, should neglect and slacken his affairs ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... unforgiving; and now, weak from grief, she had fainted in his arms, which had never reached out to console her. He gathered her to his breast in a belated atonement and as he kissed her again she stirred. Then he put her down, but when she felt his hands slacken she reached up and caught him by the neck. So she held him a while, until something gave way within him and he pressed ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot. The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September, when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But in the latter half of it cooler nights give promise of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... on they rode. And now the sky looked brighter; there seemed to be an elasticity in the air. Breezy had never carried Dyke so well before, and a sensation came over him, making him feel that he must shout and sing and slacken his rein, and gallop as hard as the ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... spoken, and after them came silence—such a silence as could be felt. Once the hands that gripped Crowther's seemed about to slacken, and then in a moment they tightened again as the hands of a drowning man clinging ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... great rate. At 9.40 a.m. fire was opened, she firing the first shot. I kept my distance as much as possible to obtain the advantage of my guns. Her fire was very accurate and rapid to begin with, but seemed to slacken very quickly, all casualties occurring in this ship almost immediately. First, the foremost funnel of her went, secondly the foremast, and she was badly on fire aft, then the second funnel went, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... look as though the plucky little ship would escape after all, for she was now beyond range of all but the Huascar's heaviest guns, while the Union had been obliged to slacken speed considerably in order to enable her to get her wreckage cleared away. But Condell surmised that the Peruvians must have shrewdly guessed at his destination, and he knew that they would not give up the chase so long as there was a chance of getting him again under their guns. Moreover, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... unimagined glories Of the day? What the evil that shall perish In its ray? Aid it, hopes of honest men; Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; Aid it, paper, aid it, type, Aid it, for the hour is ripe; And our earnest must not slacken Into play. Men of thought and men of action, ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... that makes the skin tingle with desire to bathe, the delicate acidity of grass that caused his horse to whicker. The trail alternated pretty regularly between wooded ridges, where the stones caused him to slacken his pace, and long traverses of the turfy river-bottoms, where he could give his horse his head. Twice during the night he picketed his horse in the grass, and took a short nap himself. At dawn, from the last ridge, he saw the pale expanse of Swan Lake stretching to the horizon, and at sun-up he ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... against his breast in silence while the storm that she had so unwittingly raised spent itself. Then at last as his hold began to slacken she took courage. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... comes the trusty valet whom she had put on guard: it was the expected chaise, which, as well as the three men who accompanied it, were made, without knowing why, to slacken speed. It was King James. Madame L'Hospital accosts him, says he is expected, and lost if he does not take care; but that he may trust in her and follow her. At once they both go to her friends. There he learns all that has happened, and they hide him, and the three men of his suite ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to the trail he had left, and made his way along over it towards the place indicated by the firing, with all the speed which excited nerves and agonizing anxiety could bring to his aid. But, before reaching the spot at which he was aiming, and just as he was beginning to slacken his pace, to look around for it, Gaut Gurley burst through the bushes, a few rods ahead, and, running towards him with all the manifestations of a man in hasty retreat before a pursuing ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... set on and fought stoutly all in a heap, and they aided one another handsomely when they saw their comrades in evil case. Pretty soon after they had come together, one of the French was slain, but the rest did not slacken the fight one whit, and they bore themselves as valiantly all as if they had all been Rolands and Olivers. At last they were forced to stop, and they rested by common accord, giving themselves truce until they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... relative speed of the two vessels he did not at first slacken his own sail, but put his brig to its swiftest pace. He had reason to congratulate himself upon the wisdom of his manoeuvre when he perceived that in spite of every exertion the chase gained upon him, and it was evident that unless he was crippled by a shot, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... dug-out to pieces we would all be knocked out, which would not do; so Dickinson and I alone remained. I remarked to him that this was a pleasant welcome for him on his return from leave! After 2 a.m. the bombardment began to slacken down; and by 2.15 it was all over, and quiet reigned again. I noticed that it had begun to rain. When we took stock we found that D Company had not suffered a single casualty on this occasion! This struck me as being ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... listening librates on unmoving fins. The Nymph emerging mounts her scaly seat, Hangs o'er his glossy sides her silver feet, With snow-white hands her arching veil detains, Gives to his slimy lips the slacken'd reins, 285 Lifts to the star of Eve her eye serene, And chaunts the birth of Beauty's radiant Queen.— O'er her fair brow her pearly comb unfurls Her beryl locks, and parts the waving curls, Each ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Bishop of Arras, under secret instructions from Philip, the Regent Margaret resumed the execution of the edicts against heresies and heretics which had been permitted to slacken during the French war. As an additional security for the supremacy of the ancient religion, Philip induced the Pope, Paul IV., to issue, in May, 1559, a Bull whereby three new archbishoprics were appointed, with fifteen subsidiary bishops and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... pervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, their harpooneer got ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... me across the weed. At that, they unlashed me from the chair, bidding me get out, whilst they sent a message to discover what might be wrong. And this they did, and, presently, there came back word that the big rope had stranded upon the edge of the cliff, and that they must slacken it somewhat at once, the which they did, with many expressions of dismay. And so, maybe an hour passed, during which we watched the men working at the rope, just where it came down over the edge of the hill, and Mistress Madison stood with us and watched; for it was very terrible, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... said Cuculain, "slacken now their going, for that Champion will be an impediment to us in our challengings and our fightings; for when we stop for that purpose he will overtake us, and, be our feats what they may, his and not ours will be the glory. Slacken the going of the horses, for we ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... has been signed,' said I, 'that we should ride like couriers. Suppose, princess, we slacken our pace.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his friends, and he trusted them wholly; he committed himself to them absolutely, without reserve, without condition, without the possibility of withdrawal. No matter how they failed, he loved them still. He was patient with their weaknesses and with their ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... over when to the surprise and disappointment of the youth the progress of the boat began to slacken, soon ceased, and then it slowly floated down stream. The wind had died out more suddenly than it had risen. He quickly dropped the ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... of polish on the one hand, and of scholastic precision on the other—that quality of merit has never been attained in a degree so eminent. This first interchange of thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was tainted with either the moroseness or the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... forget that he said by the time we got there the work would slacken up, and he promised himself a vacation, just to renew his old pleasure of camping out in the wilderness, away ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... percussion, noting the region of the apex beat, noting the rapidity and action of the heart on sitting, standing and lying, and noting the length of time it takes while resting, after exertion, for the speed of the heart to slacken, ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... there was none for him. His cries were stifled by the pressure of the rope, and then he made a desperate effort to gain his feet. In this he succeeded, and stood upright causing the noose for a moment to slacken. He profited by the temporary relief to attempt another ineffectual prayer for pity. A gasping, inarticulate noise in his throat was the sole result; for the muleteer continued his vigorous pulls at the cord, and in an instant the unhappy gipsy felt himself lifted completely ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... did not slacken in the least when they came to two white posts and he heard the superintendent's shout, "Across, all right! Two miles more to town and I think we'll get to the railway station in time for you to catch the eastbound flyer. ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... canoe went flying over the water, and I continued to haul in line fathom by fathom, until I caught sight of, deep down in the water right ahead, a great phosphorescent boil and bubble. Then the pace began to slacken, as the gallant fighter began to turn from side to side, shaking his head and making futile breaks from port to starboard. Bidding me come amidships with the line, Ioane took in his paddle, and picked up the harpoon which we always carried on the outrigger platform in case ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... should put on a medium rudder. When using a weighted tiller the weight should be put in a midway position. The head-sails should be pulled in fairly tight and the aft-sails made slack. The yachtsman, however, should not slacken them as for scudding. Fig. 151 shows a schooner reaching. The thick black lines represent the booms of the sails. If the wind is very light a spinnaker-jib may be set or a jib-topsail in light or moderate ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... might occur, I ran forward, and, seizing the pony by the bridle, drew him as near as I could to the hedge. On came the hoofs—trot, trot, trot; and evidently more than those of one horse; their speed as they advanced appeared to slacken—it was only, however, for a moment. I heard a voice cry, 'Push on,—this is a desperate robbing place,—never mind the dark'; and the hoofs came on quicker than before. 'Stop!' said I, at the top of my voice; 'stop! or—' Before I could ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... appeared in sight, the train seemed to slacken speed for a bit, and a man jumped off the back end, waving a goodbye to the train ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... (hurricanes) may form south of Mexico and strike Central America and Mexico from June to October (most common in August and September); southern shipping lanes subject to icebergs from Antarctica; occasional El Nino phenomenon occurs off the coast of Peru when the trade winds slacken and the warm Equatorial Countercurrent moves south, which kills the plankton that is the primary food source for anchovies; consequently, the anchovies move to better feeding grounds, causing resident marine birds to starve ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Indians. Dugald is close at the turning-point now, but he sees the foremost savage getting the deadly lasso ready. He must shoot, though he has to slacken speed slightly to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the eloquence, business, and fame of Murray or Dunning, and secretly resolved not to slacken his efforts, until all his rivals in the race for glory are outstript is often astonished, as well as broken-hearted, to find business and fame pass by his door, and stop at the more favored mansion of some competitor, in his view less able, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... mile flew by. The unwilling travellers, depressed beyond description, had given up all hope of leaving the car until it reached the point intended by the wily plotters. To their amazement, however, the speed began to slacken perceptibly after they had left the city ten or twelve miles behind. Truxton was leaning against the side of the door, gloomily surveying the bright, green landscape. For some time Loraine had been steadying herself by clinging to his arm. They ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... loading painfully A fallen ass; these unto thee will call To help them, but give thou no heed at all, But pass them swiftly; and then soon again Within a shed three crones shalt thou see plain Busily weaving, who shall bid thee leave The road and fill their shuttles while they weave, But slacken not thy steps for all their prayers, For these are shadows only, and set snares. "At last thou comest to a water wan, And at the bank shall be the ferryman Surly and grey; and when he asketh thee Of money for thy passage, hastily Show him ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... Naval Brigade disappeared over the ridge to meet the enemy, and vigorously returned their fire. For one moment that of the Boers appeared to slacken; then suddenly there came a precipitate retreat of our men, the officers shouting, "Rally on the right! rally on the right!" This order was obeyed, the troops describing a semicircle and coming back to the ridge to a point at left of that from which they had been so suddenly ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... tried in a brave endeavor To chord my harp with the sun, But the strings would slacken ever, And the task was a weary one: And so, like a child impatient And sick of a discontent, I bowed in a shower of tear-drops And mourned ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... point Miss Nevil made a struggle to withdraw her fingers. But it was no easy matter to get Colomba to slacken her grasp. Small and well-shaped though her hand was, it possessed a strength of which we have already ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... and galloping after him like mad, flung the running loop of the lazo over his horns, at the same time winding the other end round the pummel of his saddle. The bull was still standing on all four legs, pulling with all its might against Pancho. Galloping after him, so as to slacken the end of the lazo, we contrived to transfer it from Don Juan's saddle to mine. Now my own horse happened to be a little lame, and I was riding a poor little black beast whose bones really seemed to rattle in his skin. Our acquaintances in the Paseo had been quite facetious about ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... surface of the water, then it passed above the tops of the long grass on the island. This brought the line on a level with the top-sail. This would not do; for a pressure up there might capsize the schooner. Both of the workers saw that they must slacken the line a little to get it into the proper place. Now was the critical time; if the line was too much slackened it might slip under the vessel and upset it that way. Gently they lowered it until it lay against ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... even better; and then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But here we are at Stonnington—a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you know, but I ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... feeling the same as another, within the glass walls and the crystal roof of this place. And the old Queen, your godmother, sending her own Chamberlain to take charge of you, and to be your Guardian, and Governor of the Island. Sure, the wind itself must slacken coming ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... will you like that?" "O mamma darling," came the fervent answer, "do let it be in a knot." And, indeed, the tie of love between us was so tightly knotted that nothing ever loosened it till the sword of Death cut that which pain and trouble never availed to slacken in the slightest degree.] But it was urged upon her that the advantages of education offered were such as no money could purchase for me; that it would be a disadvantage for me to grow up in a houseful of boys—and, in truth, I was as good a cricketer and climber as the best of them—that ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... powers, nor slacken in the course, Thy spotless fame shall quash all false reports: Exert thy powers, nor fear a rival's force, But thou shalt smile at all his vain efforts; Thy labours shall be crown'd with large success; The Muse's aid thy Magazine ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... days, finding the trade beginning to slacken, we hove our anchor up, set our topsails, ran the stars and stripes up to the peak, fired a gun, which was returned from the Presidio, and left the little town astern, running out of the bay, and bearing down the coast again, for Santa Barbara. As we were now going to leeward, we had ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... upon my lips: I led you then to all the Castalies; I fed you with the milk of every Muse; I loved you like this kneeler, and you me Your second mother: those were gracious times. Then came your new friend: you began to change— I saw it and grieved—to slacken and to cool; Till taken with her seeming openness You turned your warmer currents all to her, To me you froze: this was my meed for all. Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, And partly that I hoped to win you back, And partly conscious of my own deserts, And partly that you were ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... abominable sheriff only said, "Oh, let her be; let her feel what it is to fall off from the living God." But Dom. Consul was more merciful, inasmuch as, after feeling the cords, he bade the constable bind her hands less cruelly and slacken the rope a little, which accordingly he was forced to do. But my dear gossip was not content herewith, and begged that she might sit in the cart without being bound, so that she should be able to hold her hymn-book, for he had summoned the school to sing a hymn by the way for her comfort, and he ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... command of the little craft, and insisted on seamanship. Under his skilful direction the student was like a powerful engine, with a steady, measured stroke, and the boat fairly flew, until their oars struck floating ice, and then they had to slacken up, for to strike a mass of ice at their speed would be to ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... and that others were raising a clamor against General Grant in the news papers at the North. Even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be shaken; but at no instant of time did we (his personal friends) slacken in our loyalty to him. One night, after such a discussion, and believing that General McClernand had no real plan of action shaped in his mind, I wrote my letter of April 8, 1863, to Colonel Rawlins, which letter is embraced in full at page 616 of Badeau's ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and by the sum of all the perils that lie ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... through which Clark transacted his affairs sat late one night in his office. He had just returned from dinner at the big house, where he left his host in an unusually genial and communicative mood. It seemed that Clark's mind, tightened with the continued strain of years, had wished to slacken itself in an hour or two of utter candor, and Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated. But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque glass, Clark's magnetic ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... The horses began to slacken speed. They went slower and slower, then stopped altogether. The riders began to dismount and Esther pressed through the bystanders, fearing she would not be able ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... in the bottom," advised Walter, "we can't slacken up now. Or go in the cabin if you like ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... the speed of their journey was such as to prevent much communication; but when a steep ascent compelled them to slacken their pace, a new cause of apprehension occurred to Miss ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... truth that made that aspiration futile and hopeless, had lain ever since the evening of the day before in the Beebeegur, and almost as the chief was speaking the Well was receiving its dead inmates. Where the train begins to slacken its pace on approaching the station, it is passing over the field of the first—the creditable—battle of Cawnpore. Fresh from the butchery Nana Sahib (Dhoondoo Punth) himself had come out to aid in the last stand against the avengers. Yonder is the mango tope which formed the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... sights and sounds that were abroad entered her mind by a side door, if they entered at all. Winthrop might have taken the benefit of them; but up to the bend of the bay he had driven fast and attentively. Here he suffered the horse to slacken his pace and come even to a walk, while his eye took note of the flushing morning, and perhaps the song of the birds reached his ear. It was ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... time he had ever felt the cut of a whip, and the blow was not forgiven. Margaret, fearing further obstruction on the road, turned her horse's head toward the rail fence, and went over it like a bird. In the field, where fast going in the dark had dangers, Margaret tried to slacken the pace, but the little horse would not have it so. He shook his head angrily whenever he thought of the indignity of that blow, while Margaret leaned over and tried to explain and beg pardon for her offense. The second fence was crossed with a clean-cut leap, and only once in the next ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... later that he checked their flight. Slowly at first he cut off the exhaust from their stern and opened the bow valve. Slowly, for their wild speed must slacken as it had been built up, by slow degrees. The self-adjusting floor swung forward and up. Their deceleration was like the pull of gravity, and now straight ahead ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Punch puts to the Public, and on your behalf, my brave lad, And that of your labouring like. To accept your stout help we are glad: If supply of cheap heroes should slacken, and life-saving valour grow dear— Say as courts, party-statesmen, or churches—'twould make some ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various
... of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming. The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire. But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, half-break my chain! Not joyless, though more favored feet Stand calm, where I want wings to beat The floor. At ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... back to San Fernando; and soon came upon the bad surface which had been prophesied. The Gloria bumped over ruts and grooves, and scattered stones, and perforce I had to slacken speed lest she should break some blood-vessel. Nevertheless we did not waste time in covering the six miles to Chiclana de la Frontera; and when we had crashed through this ancient stronghold of the Phoenicians we jolted out into an open, sandy solitude, with only ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... slacken again as another vision rises before him. It is Ballarat now. He is working in a shallow claim at Eureka, his brother by his side. The brother looks pale and ill, for he has been up all night dancing and drinking. Out ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... messenger from him to-day with a flannel undershirt which I had left behind like a gibbering idiot; and perpetrated in reply another baboo letter. It rains again to-day without mercy; blessed, welcome rains, making up for the paucity of the late wet season; and when the showers slacken, I can hear my stream roaring in the hollow, and tell myself that the cacaos are drinking deep. I am desperately hunted to finish my Samoa book before the mail goes; this last chapter is equally delicate and necessary. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more firmly and evenly; but an unhealthy excitement, like fear or anger, will cause it to beat in a rapid and uneven manner. Contrarily, despondency, or a lethargic state of mind, causes the movement of the blood to slacken. The happiness of love is thus the best of all stimulants and correctives for a torpid circulation, and it expands the whole being of a woman like the blossoming of a flower in the sunshine. From the time of her betrothal, Sophia Peabody's headaches ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... not indicating anything during this period (rendered somewhat considerable by the extreme slowness of the movement), the players are then entirely left to themselves, without conductor; and as the rhythmical feeling is not the same with all, it follows that some hurry, while others slacken, and unity is soon destroyed. The only exception possible to this rule is that of a first-rate orchestra, composed of performers who are well acquainted with each other, are accustomed to play together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... we manage it right. Obey orders! The moment I say 'Halt,' I shall slacken my mare's pace. When you see me leave the saddle, jump off instantly, you, and mount her! I will catch the machine before it falls. Are ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... will turn himself into every kind of creature that goes upon the earth, and will become also both fire and water; but you must hold him fast and grip him tighter and tighter, till he begins to talk to you and comes back to what he was when you saw him go to sleep; then you may slacken your hold and let him go; and you can ask him which of the gods it is that is angry with you, and what you must do to reach ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... chief ground of complaint. Frankly I do not think that Miss GROVES' pen is quite sufficiently dashing for this sort of thing. Historical and adventurous romance, if it is to earn my vote, must keep me out of breath the whole time. It should never be allowed to slacken pace; and (to be entirely candid) My Lady Rosia sometimes ambles rather heavily. I forgot to add that it is published by WASHBOURNE, printed on detestable paper, and contains some pleasant illustrations of the places mentioned in the story. In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... can hardly assure themselves of their being redeemed from the vain Conversation they had in the World. Those allowances to this, at best, careless spending of time, which a little share in it, will bring them to make, cannot chuse but abate a great part of their Zeal, and slacken their pace in their spiritual Course; to which these Entertainments are so flat a Reverse, that Dying daily, and going to them, set out as they are, can scarce have their ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... he could scarcely move, a stake being fixed in the earth, with a rope, or tedder, that was about the plaid; he had no sooner enquired what he was, but he conjured him to loose him, and out of sympathy he was pleased to slacken that, wherein he was, as I may so speak, swaddled; but, if I right remember, he signified, he did not recover."—Account of the Parish ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... wrath." Now to such height above our heads were rais'd The last beams, follow'd close by hooded night, That many a star on all sides through the gloom Shone out. "Why partest from me, O my strength?" So with myself I commun'd; for I felt My o'ertoil'd sinews slacken. We had reach'd The summit, and were fix'd like to a bark Arriv'd at land. And waiting a short space, If aught should meet mine ear in that new round, Then to my guide I turn'd, and said: "Lov'd sire! ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... son, I saw him, Sire, Drag'd by the horses that his hands had fed, Pow'rless to check their fierce career, his voice But adding to their fright, his body soon One mass of wounds. Our cries of anguish fill The plain. At last they slacken their swift pace, Then stop, not far from those old tombs that mark Where lie the ashes of his royal sires. Panting I thither run, and after me His guard, along the track stain'd with fresh blood That reddens all the rocks; caught in the briers ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... on still harder, the English horse began to lay back his ears and pull so violently on the rein that his rider had all she could do to hold him, and lacked sufficient strength to direct his course. Seeing Zibeline's danger, Henri hastened to slacken his horse's pace, but it was too late: the almost perpendicular declivity of the other side of the hill added fresh impetus to the ungovernable rush of Seaman, who suddenly became ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... great banks of sand, by which he had passed at sea formerly, and which could not be unknown to them; that in case the ship should fall upon those sands, or any other dangers of that coast, before morning, they should be all lost; and therefore he thought fit to take down some of their sails and slacken their course till, by daylight, they might come to know more certainly in ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... thousand soldiers lying along shore. The Danish ships made no reply. They sailed up grimly silent till they reached a place wide enough to let them wear round, broadside on. Then their guns spoke. Three hours the battle raged before the Swedish fire began to slacken. As soon as he noticed it, Tordenskjold slipped into the inner harbor under cover of the heavy pall of smoke, and before the Swedes suspected their presence they found his ships alongside. Broadside after broadside crashed into them, and in terror they fled, soldiers and sailors ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... The young lady, instead of losing ground, gained upon my brother: she made him run two or three times round the gallery, and then entering a long dark passage, made her escape. Backbarah, who still followed, having lost sight of her in the passage, was obliged to slacken his pace, because of the darkness of the place: at last perceiving a light, he ran towards it, and went out at a door, which was immediately shut after him. You may imagine how he was surprised to find himself in a street ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... can afford; they will improve each of the useful arts, and will day by day render life more comfortable, more convenient, and more easy. Their social condition naturally urges them in this direction; I do not fear that they will slacken ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... repeated journeys to the station of Fortem, where the lightly wounded men used to be put on a steam tramway for transport to the Belgian hospitals, the ambulances would gather their last load and go homeward to Furnes. It was quite dark then, and towards nine o'clock the enemy's artillery would slacken fire, only the heavy guns sending out long-range shots. But five towns or more were blazing fiercely in the girdle of fire, and the sky throbbed with the crimson glare of their furnaces, and tall trees to which the autumn ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... where some succeed, While others are beginning; 'Tis luck, at times, at others, speed, That gives an early winning. But, if you chance to fall behind, Ne'er slacken your endeavor; Just keep this wholesome truth in mind: 'Tis better late ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... heave of the swell to the sun standing in the midst of a sky of brass, with his wake under him sinking in a sinuous dazzle, as though it was his fiery glance piercing to the green depths a thousand fathoms deep. It was hot enough to slacken the nerves and give the imagination a longer scope than sanity would have it ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... it. Some day, some day, We mean to slacken this feverish rush That is wearing our very souls away, And grant to our hearts a hush That is only enough to let them hear The ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... light the Russians could be perceived working vigorously to extinguish them. At last they were seen to be leaving the ship. Soon the flames caught the mast and rigging, and the pillar of fire lit up the whole town and surrounding country. Not a moment did our fire slacken, but no answering flash now shot out from the Russian lines of defence. All night the fire continued, to prevent the enemy ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... trembling. She stopped as though to wait for me, as I was some distance in the rear; when I had overtaken her, she set out on a gallop. We soon reached the foot of the mountain and were compelled to slacken our pace. I then made my way to her side; our heads were bowed; the time had come, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... day shall ye blush for its story, Or brighten your lives with its glory. Our women—oh say, shall they shriek in despair, Or embrace us from conquest, with wreaths in their hair? Accursed may his memory blacken, If a coward there be who would slacken Till we've trampled the turban, and shown ourselves worth Being sprung from, and named for, the godlike of earth. Strike home! and the world shall revere us As heroes ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... not permit Romeo to again slacken his pace, and thus arrived at the Cleverton before the barge was in sight, so slow had ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... where French Bacchanalians caroused before the British conquest, passed the thatch-roofed cots of habitants and, turning suddenly to the right, followed a seldom frequented road, where snow was drifted heavily. Here we had to slacken pace, our beasts sinking to their haunches and snorting through the white billows ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... rate of sailing," he said, "we should be there about ten o'clock to-morrow. That is, provided the ship does not slacken speed or ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... souls with dissolution's strife; Soaks them with unrest; makes our every breath A throe, not action; from God's purest gift Wipes off the bloom; and on the harp of faith Its fretted strings doth slacken still and shift: Life everywhere, perfect, and always life, Is sole redemption ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... followed by cyclists; cyclists issue from every side-street and pour into our road; cyclists rise up out of the ground to follow us. We don't realize all at once that it is the ambulance they are following. Bowing low like racers over their handle-bars, they shoot past us; they slacken pace and keep alongside, they shoot ahead; the cyclists are most fearfully excited. It dawns on us that they are escorting us; that they are racing each other; that they are bringing the news of ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... and parcels, and largely what is to-day entrusted to the express. I recall, too, with pleasure, Horace George, another driver, popular with all the boys, because in sleighing-time he would let us ride on the rack behind, and even slacken the speed of his horses so as to allow us to catch hold ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... us the grace by giving it to us in effect though not in feeling. He uses this means with foresight, because He knows that if a man felt himself to possess it, either he would slacken the pull of desire, or would fall into presumption; therefore He withdraws the feeling, but not the grace. There are others who both receive and feel, according as it pleases the sweet goodness of our Physician to give to us sick folk; and He gives to everyone ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... vessel was able to determine the character of the other, and when the sun went down, leaving a cloudless sky, it was evident that the Arrow had gained on the privateer. Lieutenant Morris felt that his brig must be overhauled unless the wind should slacken. The breeze was now so powerful that, while it bore the frigate onward at its best speed, it prevented the privateer from making its usual way. Before a light breeze, Lieutenant Morris felt quite confident that he could sail away ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... and almost, it seemed, without pity, because it was their work, and they were there to heal what might be healed. It was with a rush that their first cases came, and the M.O.'s whistled and said, "Ye gods! how many more?" Many more. The tide did not slacken. It became a spate brought down by waves of ambulances. Three thousand wounded came to Daours on the Somme, three thousand to Corbie, thousands to Dernancourt, Heilly, Puchevillers, Toutencourt, and many other ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... finger about the trigger, breathed silent relief as he saw it slacken, and watched the muzzle drop slowly from level of his eyes. But it was still held pointed at him, and that barely gave him the chance he longed for. Only let the muzzle leave him for an instant, and he would ask no more. The officer was a small and slightly made man, Macalister, tall ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... mist began to pour down the sides of the mountain. I hurried on, the road making frequent turnings. Presently the mist swept down upon me, and was so thick that I could only see a few yards before me. I was now obliged to slacken my pace, and to advance with some degree of caution. I moved on in this way for some time, when suddenly I heard a noise, as if a number of carts were coming rapidly down the hill. I stopped, and stood with my back close against the high bank. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... as long as the people would allow him. The Germans argued away time with him while they got their submarine fleet built. Then they carried out the programme they had always had in mind and had never thought of abandoning. Now they wish to gain more time, to slacken the efforts of the Allies, if possible to separate them by asking for "discussions"—peace by "negotiation." When you are about to kill the robber, he cries out, "For God's sake, let's discuss the question between us. We can come to terms."—Now here's where the danger comes from the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... raced with the hare. L'Encuerado tried to stop it, but fell in his effort. Sumichrast, quite forgetting his bad hand, dealt the animal a blow with the butt-end of his gun, the effect of which was slightly to slacken the pace of the enemy. The Indian, furious at his failure, threw down his load, and came running up. Our united efforts succeeded, about twenty feet from the stream, in throwing the animal ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... where each individual has a share in the supreme legislative authority, and where coercive laws are yet in a degree destitute of vigor, where the climate and manners can add but little to their energy, where the spirit of party, private interest, slowness and national indolence, slacken, suspend, and overthrow the best concerted measures; although so situated he has found out a method of keeping his troops in the most absolute subordination; making them rivals in praising him; fearing him when he is silent, and retaining their ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... slenderness was lithe and agile. Beneath her soft flesh hard muscles flowed, for she had known the sting of sleet and the splash of sun. But the rapid climb had set her heart pumping fast. Her speed began to slacken. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... again as the mustang tore along, now leaving the yells behind, now slackening or seeming to slacken, till the Indians' whoops were very near, ringing behind and even passing the fugitive, to run echoing from side to side multiplying the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... him. A party of soldiers and sailors close by were working a cannon. The bulwarks were shot away in many places, dead and dying men lay scattered about, the decks were everywhere stained with blood, and no one paid any attention to him until presently the fire began to slacken. Shortly afterwards a Spanish officer came up ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... sharp remorse attends, While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends; Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin, And is all over grandfather within: By day that ill-laid spirit checks,—o' nights Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights. Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit, And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit: While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite, Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right, Contented Roger gallops out ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... sudden enterprises, like a great ferment in the blood, giving double courage and strength for the time, until it sink and settle by nature into its old channel: for, in a few years the piety of these adventurers began to slacken, and give way to faction and envy, the natural corruptions of all confederacies: however, to this spirit of devotion there succeeded a spirit of honour, which long continued the vein and humour of the times; and the Holy Land became either a school, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... to slacken, and Antler gave a sigh of relief. She felt sure that many bison were floundering in the drifts. She hoped they were not far away from the cave. So she dressed in her fur garments and took a large knife and an ax. And at break of day she set ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... into a right adjustment by gentle and cautious treatment. The jarring chords could not be made to vibrate in tune by sweeping them with a rough and unsympathising stroke; all could be reduced to harmony only by some loving and judicious action which would draw up or slacken the discordant strings with a force which would be felt only in its results. It was therefore arranged that on the morrow the physician should bring his patient to the sea-side at noon, and that, while he and she were seated in view ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... o'clock in the afternoon; have pared and cut enough good apples to fill the kettle; put them in a clean tub, and pour the boiling cider over; then scour the kettle and put in the apples and cider, let them boil briskly till the apples sink to the bottom; slacken the fire and let them stew, like preserves, till ten o'clock at night. Some dried quinces stewed in cider and put in are an improvement. Season with orange peel, cinnamon or cloves, just before it is done; if you like it sweeter, you can put ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... heart,' shouted the old soldier, who was now leading us by twenty yards or more. 'We can hear them because the wind blows from that way, but it's odds whether they have heard us. Methinks they slacken in their pursuit.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heard a sound close by her. Looking quickly about her, she spied a large snake just below her naked feet, among the loose stones. Uttering a loud scream, she sprang terrified from the spot; nor did she slacken her speed until she reached the schoolhouse, her delicate feet cut and bleeding in several places, and a large thorn in the side of one foot, which pained her sadly. The girls laughed at her fright, and one rude boy ran out, shouting, at the ...
— The Allis Family; or, Scenes of Western Life • American Sunday School Union
... easily than any other species of quadruped could do. Four are usually attached to a sledge, which they haul with great vigour; being followed by a driver on snow-shoes, whose severe lash is brought to bear so powerfully on the backs of the poor animals, should any of them be observed to slacken their pace, that they are continually regarding him with deprecatory glances as they run along. Should the lash give a flourish, there is generally a short yelp from the pack; and should it descend amongst them with a vigorous ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... its long straight ascent. He took its first steps in a bound, but, as his brain became more perfectly awake, confusion of thought, wonder, a certain timidity because now the screaming had ceased, caused him to slacken his pace. He was thus hesitating in the darkness when he found himself confronted by Madge King. She stood majestic in grey woollen gown, candle in hand, and her dark eyes blazed upon him in terror, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... would immediately abuse her freedom. She cannot become philosophical without losing her special gift, which is the worship of all that is individual, the defense of usage, manners, beliefs, traditions. Her role is to slacken the combustion of thought. It is analogous to that of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... entered London he had had to slacken his pace more and more, the little folks crowded so mightily upon him. The crowd grew denser at every step, and at last, at a corner where two great ways converged, he came to a stop, and the multitude flowed about him and closed ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... should reach some villages of the Babylonian territory, as in fact they did; yet not before they had been alarmed in the afternoon by the supposed approach of some of the enemy's horse, and by evidences that the enemy were not far off, which induced them to slacken their march for the purpose of more cautious array.[6] Hence they did not reach the first villages before dark; these too had been pillaged by the enemy while retreating before them, so that only the first-comers under Klearchus could obtain accommodation, while the succeeding troops, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... strike Central America and Mexico from June to October (most common in August and September); southern shipping lanes subject to icebergs from Antarctica; occasional El Nino phenomenon occurs off the coast of Peru when the trade winds slacken and the warm Equatorial Countercurrent moves south, which kills the plankton that is the primary food source for anchovies; consequently, the anchovies move to better feeding grounds, causing resident marine birds to starve by the thousands ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... flew by. The unwilling travellers, depressed beyond description, had given up all hope of leaving the car until it reached the point intended by the wily plotters. To their amazement, however, the speed began to slacken perceptibly after they had left the city ten or twelve miles behind. Truxton was leaning against the side of the door, gloomily surveying the bright, green landscape. For some time Loraine had been steadying ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... occasionally stepping on a released end of the surplice and angrily tearing her way through the garment. She made her road to the railroad track. That sight, awakening bitter memories of a packed cattle-car, caused her to slacken her Mazeppa-like speed. While she paused, the night express backed onto the side track to await the coming of the eastbound train. The cow, still in meditation, was silhouetted in the light ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... rather to my uneasiness, masses of mist began to pour down the sides of the mountain. I hurried on, the road making frequent turnings. Presently the mist swept down upon me, and was so thick that I could only see a few yards before me. I was now obliged to slacken my pace, and to advance with some degree of caution. I moved on in this way for some time, when suddenly I heard a noise, as if a number of carts were coming rapidly down the hill. I stopped, and stood with my back close ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... in front, stopping the way in the narrow street between two rows of mud-brick houses, and consequently Frank's party had to slacken their pace, the driver having glanced insolently back at them and then fixed his eyes half-wonderingly upon Frank, before turning again and continuing his way, quite ignoring the fact that those ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... had been rendered possible partly by the genius of novel-writers, partly by the appetite of the novel-reader. This latter was to continue unabated: whether the former was to increase, to maintain itself, or slacken must be, to some extent of course, matter of opinion. But we have still two quarter-centuries to survey, in the first of which there may perhaps be some reason for thinking that the novel rose to its actual zenith. Nearly all the writers mentioned in this chapter continued to write—the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... enthusiasm seemed to slacken in the least, reformers appeared to enkindle it again. Such was Bridget, such was Gildas, such were the disciples of St. David of Menevia in Wales, such was any one whom the Spirit of God inspired with love for Ireland. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... counsel, lived upon my lips: I led you then to all the Castalies; I fed you with the milk of every Muse; I loved you like this kneeler, and you me Your second mother: those were gracious times. Then came your new friend: you began to change— I saw it and grieved—to slacken and to cool; Till taken with her seeming openness You turned your warmer currents all to her, To me you froze: this was my meed for all. Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, And partly that I hoped to win you back, And partly ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... insult' means properly to leap as on the prostrate body of a foe; 'to affront,' to strike him on the face; that 'to succour' means by running to place oneself under one that is falling; 'to relent,' (connected with 'lentus,') to slacken the swiftness of one's pursuit; [Footnote: 'But nothing might relent his hasty flight,' Spenser F. Q. iii. 4.] 'to reprehend,' to lay hold of one with the intention of forcibly pulling him back; 'to exonerate,' to discharge of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... snarling beasts they bounded back to the attack. Shirts were torn from their backs, warm, gummy blood on their sweating bared bodies rendered their grips insecure. . . . After what seemed to the watchers a frenzied eternity, their efforts began slowly to slacken. Their grips became more feeble, their hoarse rasping gasps for breath more labored. . . . The Chief attempted groggily to dodge a blow. Shane recovered his balance, rushed him low, and closed. A moment they swayed together, then slowly the trader was lifted ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... It is our just pride as Congregationalists that through this Association more has been done for the true enfranchisement of the freedmen than through any other agency, and it is our duty to see that this great work, in which we have borne so large and honorable a part, halt not nor slacken in its energy because of our failure to keep its treasury replenished and its faithful laborers re-enforced and supported by our gifts and ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., June, 1888., No. 6 • Various
... fortune in a wife, who, like Madeline, was equally with himself enamoured of obscurity. The good Lester, however, proposed to bestow upon his daughter such a portion as might allow for the wants of an increased family, or the probable contingencies of Fate. For though Fortune may often slacken her wheel, there is no spot in which she suffers ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for two hours, the fire of the fort began to slacken, as one after another of the guns was dismounted. Monsieur Renault saw that the place could be no longer defended. Of his hundred and forty-six soldiers, over ninety had been killed and wounded. Collecting the remainder, and their officers, with twenty Sepoys, the governor ordered them to ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... thy gift, where I might dwell In neighbourhood with One to me most dear, That undivided we from year to year 5 Might work in our high Calling—a bright hope To which our fancies, mingling, gave free scope Till checked by some necessities severe. And should these slacken, honoured BEAUMONT! still Even then we may perhaps in vain implore 10 Leave of our fate thy wishes [1] to fulfil. Whether this boon be granted us or not, Old Skiddaw will look down upon the Spot With pride, the Muses love ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... an instant order to fire upon the sailboat. The officers protested, but the Dictator was irrestrainable. He hurried down from the upper deck and ordered two sailors to train the gun at the front on the little craft. The better to accomplish this, he shouted to the Captain to slacken speed, so as not to distract the aim of ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... I do not think that Miss GROVES' pen is quite sufficiently dashing for this sort of thing. Historical and adventurous romance, if it is to earn my vote, must keep me out of breath the whole time. It should never be allowed to slacken pace; and (to be entirely candid) My Lady Rosia sometimes ambles rather heavily. I forgot to add that it is published by WASHBOURNE, printed on detestable paper, and contains some pleasant illustrations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... regulations and methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an universal desolation; and it was even in the height of this general despair that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be His own particular hand, and that above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take notice ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... quarter where the throng of people compelled him to slacken his gait, then halt and dismount. It was but a few doors from the Princess'. One house—a frame, two ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... day dawned the cattle began to slacken their speed, and, by the time the leaders reached the river bank, the rush was at an end. Some of the stock plunged into the edge of the stream where they began drinking, while others ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... for a while after that, while Betty regarded the increasingly muddy road ahead of her with anxious eyes. She had been forced to slacken her speed more and more until now they ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... to test the relative speed of the two vessels he did not at first slacken his own sail, but put his brig to its swiftest pace. He had reason to congratulate himself upon the wisdom of his manoeuvre when he perceived that in spite of every exertion the chase gained upon him, and it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... and the corral were mere specks in the distance, and then even these faded from view. The pony kept to the open country, and not once did he slacken his speed. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... sink into my soul and make me quiet. Everything seemed thinking about me, but nothing would tell me what it thought. Not feeling, however, that I was doing wrong, I was only awed not frightened by the stillness. I made Missy slacken her speed, and rode on more gently, in better harmony with the night. Not a sound broke the silence except the rough cry of the land-rail from the fields and the clatter of Missy's feet. I did not like the noise ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... edge of the black clouds swept over them, and the rain fell down in torrents; but in a quarter of an hour the clouds had passed, and the sun was shining again, and the violence of the flood was beginning to slacken. In half an hour the flood had swept by; and with it had gone every vestige of the wing dam they had builded with so much labor and with so many ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... supervened, and informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable. And lest her resolution might slacken, she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry. The dog glanced up questioningly, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale! Till the broad Sun withdraws his lessening ray: Then must the Pennant-bearer slacken sail, That lagging barks may make their lazy way.[125] Ah! grievance sore, and listless dull delay, To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze! What leagues are lost, before the dawn of day, Thus loitering pensive on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Leutice; Has broken all the flowers on his shield, Next of his sark he has undone the seam, All his ensign thrust through the carcass clean, So flings him dead, let any laugh or weep. Upon that blow, the Franks cry out with heat: "Strike on, baron, nor slacken in your speed! Charle's in the right against the pagan breed; God sent us here ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... made his report, no one on the spar-deck knew exactly what had happened, the general impression being that the boilers had exploded. It is an unmistakable evidence of the courage and discipline of the crew that the fire from the Patrick Henry did not slacken, but went on as regularly as if nothing unusual had occurred. As the vessel was drifting towards the enemy in her disabled condition, the jib was hoisted to pay her head around, and the Jamestown, Lieutenant Commanding Barney, gallantly and promptly came to her assistance ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... at work, they keep them constantly employed for many months together, never suffering the fire to slacken night or day, but still supplying the waste of fuel and other materials with fresh, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... far, no matter how healthy he may be in other respects. If such a horse be given a hard ride or drive, he may start off in high spirits, but soon becomes exhausted, and if he is pushed he will slacken his pace, show a desire to stop, and may stagger or even fall. Examination will show the nostrils dilated, the flanks heaving, the countenance haggard, and the appearance of suffocation. The heart and muscles were ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... galloped over the fields. Those were the days before this accursed wire came into the country, and you could generally break a hedge where you could not fly it, so they did not trouble the gates more than they could help. Then they were down in a hard lane, where they had to slacken their pace, and through a farm where a man came shouting excitedly after them; but they had no time to stop and listen to him, for the hounds were on some ploughland, only two fields ahead. It was sloping upwards, that ploughland, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that collecting for the Upper Canada Academy is a wearisome work, yet I must not slacken my exertions so long as our friends in Upper Canada are in such straits for funds. Brother John has written me an urgent letter from Hallowell, in which he says:—I hope the Lord will give you good success in collecting for our Seminary. Everything depends ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of, heed. castigo m. punishment; dar ——punish. castillo m. castle. Catn pr. n. m. Cato. caudal m. fortune, abundance. causar cause. cautivo, -a m. f. captive. cavernoso, -a cavernous. ceder decrease, slacken, abate, diminish. cfiro m. zephyr, breeze. ceja f. eyebrow. cejijunto, -a close-knit. celebrar celebrate, praise. celeste adj. celestial, heavenly. celestial adj. celestial, heavenly. celoso, -a jealous. cena ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... of the shelter, so that the rain might not drive down upon them. It was a steady downpour for half an hour, when it began to slacken up, and the sun looked as if it might break through ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... corner. He chooses a particular walk, where he may take his prescribed number of turns without interruption, for he would prefer suffering a serious inconvenience rather than be obliged to quicken or slacken his pace to suit the speed of a friend who might join him. My uncle Simon was a character of this cast. I could take it on my conscience to assert that, every night for the forty years preceding his death, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... shout and revel in a wild ecstasy of freedom and power; and you feel inclined to echo their shout, and rejoice with them. Yet it is curious to mark how they slacken their mad speed when they reach the ledge of the fall, and melt into the icy smoothness of its polished brow, as if conscious of the superior force that is destined to annihilate their identity, and dash them into ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... thy powers, nor slacken in the course, Thy spotless fame shall quash all false reports: Exert thy powers, nor fear a rival's force, But thou shalt smile at all his vain efforts; Thy labours shall be crown'd with large success; The Muse's aid ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... far away from the place. Then one of them made a sign, and forthwith they set on and fought stoutly all in a heap, and they aided one another handsomely when they saw their comrades in evil case. Pretty soon after they had come together, one of the French was slain, but the rest did not slacken the fight one whit, and they bore themselves as valiantly all as if they had all been Rolands and Olivers. At last they were forced to stop, and they rested by common accord, giving themselves truce until they should ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be done was to detach the truck half off the rails from the one completely so. To do this the engine had to be moved to slacken the strain on the twisted couplings. When these had been released, the next step was to drag the partly derailed truck backwards along the line until it was clear of the other wreckage, and then to throw it bodily off the rails. This may seem very simple, but the dead weight of the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... obtain any rate of speed that I wish, any variety of inverse movements that I consider likely to make my captives lose their bearings. I can whirl my sling first in one direction and then in another, turn and turn about; I can slacken or increase the pace; if I like, I can make it describe figures of eight, combined with circles; if I spin on my heels at the same time, I am able to make the process still more complicated by compelling my sling to trace every known curve. That ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... none for him. His cries were stifled by the pressure of the rope, and then he made a desperate effort to gain his feet. In this he succeeded, and stood upright causing the noose for a moment to slacken. He profited by the temporary relief to attempt another ineffectual prayer for pity. A gasping, inarticulate noise in his throat was the sole result; for the muleteer continued his vigorous pulls at the cord, and in an instant ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... showed itself so plainly at the outbreak of the rebellion became, ere long, like one of those streams that, starting impetuously from its mountain source, flows on awhile clearly and rapidly, and then begins to wander and slacken its pace, till finally it is lost in the dreariness and desolation of some marshy wilderness, and so never reaches its destination, the open sea. There is no people in the world so abused and defrauded as the bulk of the Southern whites. If you pity the oppressed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Hill, and contradicted the gossip that had reached her; but that as yet, like other absolute sovereigns, the Queen of the Hill thought it politic to go with the popular stream, reserving all check on its direction till the rush of its torrent might slacken; and that it would be infinitely wiser in Mrs. Ashleigh to postpone conversation with Mrs. Poyntz until Lilian's return to L—— as my wife. Slander by that time would have wearied itself out, and Mrs. Poyntz (assuming her friendship to Mrs. Ashleigh to be sincere) ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I was drawn through the water; then when I found the strain slacken, I drew in the line. This manoeuvre was repeated several times, till I succeeded in obtaining a view of what I had caught; or, more properly speaking, of what had caught me. It was merely a glimpse; for the fish, which was a very large one, getting a sight of me within a few yards of him, made ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... this speech evidently impressed the others, for the two men in the middle seats turned at a whisper from the lady and regarded him curiously. Clarence blushed slightly and became silent. Presently the vehicle began to slacken its speed. They were ascending a hill; on either bank grew huge cottonwoods, from which occasionally ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... village seized a small magazine of provisions, forage, and ammunition, which had been provided for the royal forces. This success not only gave them relief at the time, but such hopes for the future, that whereas formerly some of their number had begun to slacken in their zeal, they now unanimously resolved to abide together in arms, and commit themselves and their cause to the event ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... interested himself in practical ways of ditching and tiling. Were farmers hampered in hauling their goods to his trains by bad roads? In that case, he urged upon the states the improvement of highways. Did the traffic slacken because the food shipped was not of the best quality? Then live stock must be improved and scientific farming promoted. Did the farmers need credit? Banks must be established close at hand to advance it. In all conferences on scientific farm management, conservation ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... excellent husbandman, but had resolved not to exceed such a degree of wealth; all above it he bestowed in secret bounties many years after the sum he aimed at for his own use was attained. Yet he did not slacken his industry, but to a decent old age spent the life and fortune which was superfluous to himself, in the service ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... ran at full speed, his glossy coat dripping with perspiration, his nostrils widely distended and showing red with blood. But his pace began to slacken. Darkness gathered before the eyes of Calhoun. "Why, it's getting night," he murmured; "Fred, where are you?" Lower still lower he sank, until he was once more grasping the neck of his horse. A deadly faintness seized him, total ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... his affairs sat late one night in his office. He had just returned from dinner at the big house, where he left his host in an unusually genial and communicative mood. It seemed that Clark's mind, tightened with the continued strain of years, had wished to slacken itself in an hour or two of utter candor, and Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated. But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque glass, Clark's magnetic accents appeared to dwindle before ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... was great, but owing to Dubois's attempt to light matches it ended in failure. Dick bumped his head against the woodwork of the carriage; Kate felt she hated the little comedian, and before she recovered her temper the train began to slacken speed, and there were frequent calls for Dick from the windows of the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... him as well now. He is the kind of being who must have a pet name;' and Mrs. Frost, hoping he might be already arrived, could hardly slacken her eager step so as to keep pace with her niece's feeble movements. She was disappointed; the carriage had returned without Lord Fitzjocelyn. His hat and luggage were come, but he himself was missing. Mrs. Frost was very uneasy, but his father silenced conjectures by saying, that it was his usual ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ashen with fear, clung to the edge of the car, and had eyes and ears for nothing save for the great beast charging full upon them. Jack hurled himself to and fro, trying to slacken a little the bonds which held him a prisoner under such fearful circumstances. If the pad-elephant would only make a fight of it, there would be a chance for its riders to slip down and escape, but ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... abstaining from the use of his spurs, pressed it with his knees and spoke to it cheerfully urging it forward. He now from time to time bent forward and patted it, and for another six miles kept it going at a speed almost as great as that at which it had started Then he allowed it gradually to slacken its pace, until at last first the gallop and then the trot ceased, and it broke ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... first. She was sure he hadn't let her go before the car came. She could see the blaze of the lamps and feel his grip slacken on her arm. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... ask you to consider again and with a very grave scrutiny our objectives and the measures by which we mean to attain them; for the purpose of discussion here in this place is action, and our action must move straight toward definite ends. Our object is, of course, to win the war; and we shall not slacken or suffer ourselves to be diverted until it is won. But it is worth while asking and answering the question, When shall we consider ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he said by the time we got there the work would slacken up, and he promised himself a vacation, just to renew his old pleasure of camping out in the wilderness, away ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... For an instant each man thought whether it would not be better to turn back, but it was only for a second, the enemy's fire seemed to slacken, the officers all drew their sabres and ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... north, however, we escaped the predicted disagreeables by keeping close to the coast; for currents, whether of atmosphere or of water, for some reason slacken in force as they sweep along the land. I do not know why, unless it be the result of friction retarding their flow; the fact, however, remains. So, dodging the full brunt of the wind, we sneaked along inshore, having rarely more than a single-reef topsail breeze, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the Coppice And we're down by the Mill, We're out upon the Common, And the hounds are running still. You must tighten on the leather, For we blunder through the bracken; Though you're over hocks in heather Still the pace must never slacken As we race through Thursley ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was to interest his wife in our protegee. Back I flew, my ears deafened by more "Ya Welads," but though I met many things and many creatures on the congested road, there was no arabeah containing the desired ones. I made my driver slacken pace as we neared the big, square pink house of Rechid Bey, set far back in its garden of palms and impossible statues, on the bank of the Nile. No green turban was in sight, and I wondered what could ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a brisk pace alongside the water, and the rapidity of our motion was an excuse for silence; but as we turned away from the lake, and began ascending a steep acclivity, which led to the moors we had yet to cross on our way home, we were forced to slacken our pace; and as we did so, I asked Henry in a half-joking manner, "Have you recovered the passion you were in just now? Your forebodings seem ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... skill with equal fingers At sign to sharpen or to slacken strings; I keep no time of song with gold-perched singers And chirp of linnets on the wrists ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for explanations until we are alone, Lucy. And now I think the train begins to slacken, and it is the next station at which we ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... his big horse and galloped off down the valley, leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not slacken until the party raced down into the lower canon and around a double turn to the drop in ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... taken. Then the Austrians rushed toward the bridge of the Bormida; but Carra-Saint-Cyr was there before them. The flying multitudes sought the fords, or plunged into the Bormida under a devastating fire, which did not slacken before ten ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Mary, Mr. Wardour did not go very far before he began to slacken his pace; a moment or two more and he suddenly wheeled round, and began to walk back toward Thornwick. Two things had combined to produce this change of purpose—the first, the state of his boots, which, beginning ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... were told to Lir, his heart was glad. Speedily he called around him his train, and in fifty chariots set forth. Nor did they slacken speed until they reached the palace of Bove Derg by the Great Lake. And there at the still close of day, as the setting rays of the sun fell athwart the silver waters, did Lir do homage to Bove Derg. And Bove Derg kissed Lir and vowed to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... (Contra Ep. Parmen. iii, 2) "these words show that when this is not to be feared, that is to say, when a man's crime is so publicly known, and so hateful to all, that he has no defenders, or none such as might cause a schism, the severity of discipline should not slacken." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... contented acquiescence with the old state of things already belongs to the past, and that a return to it is impossible. We must perforce advance, for good or ill, in the path of revision, and cannot even materially slacken the pace nor defer the crisis. One choice, however, is left in our power, and that is the most important of all, namely, the direction which revision shall take—that of conservative and recuperative addition, or that of further ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... single British howitzer was neither dismounted nor silenced; and though the artillery-men could not, perfectly exposed as they were, stand to their gun while the iron hail was striking thick and fast around, yet no sooner did the enemy's fire slacken for a moment than they sprang to their post, ready to return at least one shot for eighty. This extraordinary combat lasted from seven o'clock in the morning till near twelve at noon, when the French ship, having had forty-one men killed and wounded, her commander being ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the war is over. Well, let me tell you, it isn't! Those fellows aren't going to sign the armistice. It's another trick, and we'd be crazy to let anything slacken up here in the company, because, let me tell you, we're going to sail from here within a week, and when we do we're going to see some real fighting." He paused that they might get the full effect of his pronouncement. And then: "If you think the war's ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... great lizards ran from sunny rocks at the sound of their approach, and a deer bounded across the tracks fifty feet in front of the cow-catcher. MacWilliams escorted Hope out into the cab of the locomotive, and taught her how to increase and slacken the speed of the engine, until she showed an unruly desire to throw the lever open altogether and shoot them off the rails ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... town. An addition was made to their diminished stock of eatables, and away they push again. They steer now up the Bay of Quinte; and what a wild and beautiful scene that must have been! Could those toil-worn voyagers have failed to mark it? Why do they slacken their pace? Why do they so often rest upon their oars and look around? Why do they push into this little cove and that? Why do they laugh and talk more than usual? Perhaps their journey is drawing to an end! We shall see. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... madman, and upon James Harmer as a poor dupe, to allow such destruction of property. No sooner were both sets of buildings destroyed than men were set to work with buckets and chains to drench the dusty heaps of the ruins with water, nor would the Master Builder permit the workers to slacken their efforts until the whole mass of demolished ruin was reduced to the condition of a ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... from grief, she had fainted in his arms, which had never reached out to console her. He gathered her to his breast in a belated atonement and as he kissed her again she stirred. Then he put her down, but when she felt his hands slacken she reached up and caught him by the neck. So she held him a while, until something gave way within him and he ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... times, too, that one appreciates at his full value such a noble puller as our wheel dog Nanook. He spares himself not at all; the one absorbing occupation of every nerve and muscle of his body is pulling. His trace is always taut, or, if he lose footing for a moment and the trace slacken, he is up and at it again that the sled lose not its momentum if he can help it. When the lead line is pulled back that the sled may be started by the jerk of the dogs' sudden traction, Nanook lunges forward at the command, "Mush!" and strains at the collar, mouth open and ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... unknown to them; that in case the ship should fall upon those sands, or any other dangers of that coast, before morning, they should be all lost; and therefore he thought fit to take down some of their sails and slacken their course till, by daylight, they might come to know more certainly ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... too bad, and Brad, being a high-spirited lad, would feel the defeat keenly; but he was determined not to take too great chances. When he saw that Colon had reached the limit he meant to slacken the pace, no matter what happened, nor how much the crew shouted at him ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... leading; with an interval between them of three hundred feet. At six the "Constitution" drew up on the weather side of the "Cyane," and five minutes later the action began at a distance of three hundred yards. After a quarter of an hour, noting the enemy's fire to slacken, Stewart stopped his own, to allow the smoke to lift. When he could see, he found the "Constitution" abreast the "Levant," with the "Cyane" astern, luffing up for his port quarter. He gave his port broadside to the "Levant," then braced aback his after-sails, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... his neck, and, putting his hands up, found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... began to slacken her speed, and the tugboat soon was alongside. Up above the inky blackness of the hull figures could be made out, leaning over the port railing, as though peering eagerly at the little craft which was bearing down ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... his intention; and after a few early visits to patients, turned his horse's head along the road which, following the general direction of the river bank, led towards Beaver Creek. He rode tolerably fast for two or three miles, and then began to slacken his pace, and look round him with greater interest. He was still some distance from the creek itself, but the land lay on this side of it, and he was curious to know the condition of the neighbouring farms. He had not been very long resident in Cacouna, and was ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... their course thither, but Martin Alonzo Pinzon, impatient to be the first who should take possession of the treasure which this country was supposed to contain, quitted his companions with his ship, the Pinta, and though Columbus made signals to slacken sail, he paid ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... he labored up a long hill, and though Uncle Sam made no more concession to it than to slacken his unprecedented rate of speed the merest trifle, the difference communicated itself to Tom at once and it seemed, by contrast, as if they were creeping. On and up Uncle Sam went, plying his way sturdily, making a great noise and a terrific ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... will read a little poetry every day, or every week, as the case may be. On that we plunge back into the beautiful, poetic, inspiring city, and adhere to our poetry-reading program—for exactly a fortnight. Then, unaccountably, our resolve begins to slacken. We cannot seem to settle our minds to ordered rhythms "where more is meant than meets the ear." Our resolve collapses. Once again Palgrave is covered with dust. But vacation time returns. After a few days in green pastures and beside still ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... needles move more slowly on the cloth And sweaty fingers slacken And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes— Sped by some power within, Sadie quivers like a rod... A thin black piston flying, One with ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... He felt that if he spoke he might break out into curses, and he was conscious of an unmanly longing to strike her, to mar that beautiful, false face, childlike and pure in every line,—for the expression of rage had melted as quickly as it had come,—to feel the joy of seeing her limbs slacken and her red lips grow white. He clinched his hands and ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Shepherd went about his daily work With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour He to that valley took his way, and there Wrought at the Sheep-fold. Meantime Luke began To slacken in his duty, and at length He in the dissolute city gave himself To evil courses: ignominy and shame Fell on him, so that he was driven at last To seek a hiding-place ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... those of the Americans, the gunners of the latter fired with more precision and effect on this day, and on other occasions, as their own officers afterward admitted. In an hour's time the fire from the enemy's side began to slacken, and continued to abate until noon, when his two batteries to the right were abandoned. Our balls dismounted several of his guns early in the day, and in the afternoon the greater part of his artillery was dismounted or unfit for service. The carriages of three of the guns on the American side ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... and the branches lower, but she would not slacken speed, though now and then she had to bend her head to avoid the leafy twigs as she passed. But this time she answered, not laughing, but ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... She did not slacken her pace till she approached lights and people; and then she was glad to stop for breath. She could not resist going first to Maria, to show her the recovered treasure; and this caused her to direct her steps through the churchyard. It was there that she came in view of lights and people; ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... brought me food and watched me steadfastly while I ate it. His oversight and interest never seemed to slacken. At first it troubled me, but there was in it nothing whatever of the captor gloating over his prisoner; simply, as far as I could make out, a gloomy desire to note how I took matters, which put me on my mettle to keep up a bold front, though my heart was heavy enough at times at the puzzling ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... not the voice, but the mind; not the stretching of the hands, but the intention of the heart; not any outward shape or carriage of the body, but the inward behaviour of the understanding. How then can it slacken your worldly business and occasions, to mix them with sighs and groans, which are ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... injury. The Fury was shifted a few yards into the best place that could be found, and the wind again blowing strong from the northward, the ice remained close about us. A shift of wind to the southward in the afternoon at length began gradually to slacken it, but it was not till six A.M. on the 1st of August that there appeared a prospect of making any progress. There was, at this time, a great deal of water to the southward, but between us and the channel there ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... scuttled along until the placid bosom of the Potomac came into view; beside that for a few minutes, then over the bridge to the Virginia side, in the dilapidated little city of Alexandria. The car did not slacken its speed, but wound in and out through dingy streets, past tumble-down negro huts, for half an hour before it came to a standstill in front ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... Britons who must suffer and fall. Our destiny is heavy upon us; we must "dree our weirde," for we have begun walking on the road of conquest, and we must go forward or die. The man who has the wolf by the ears cannot let go his hold; we cannot slacken our grip on anything that once we have clutched. But it is terrible to see how we are bleeding at the extremities. I cannot give the figures detailing our losses in little wars during the past forty years, but they are far worse than we incurred in the world-shaking fight of Waterloo. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... destruction into Wagner, while the fleet of iron vessels battered down the works of the haughty and impregnable little fort. All the afternoon one hundred great guns thundered at the gates of Wagner. Toward the evening the bombardment began to slacken until a death-like stillness ensued. To close this part of the dreadful programme Nature lifted her hoarse and threatening voice, and a severe thunder-storm broke over the scene. Darkness was coming on. The brave Black regiment ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... he stop to say a word, even after we had got to a considerable distance, and our voices could not possibly have been heard by the foe. I had great difficulty in keeping up with him at the rate he went; but not till we got within sight of the fort did he slacken his pace and allow me to ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... speed of the train began to slacken—all too soon. She now dreaded to learn her fate. Was she, or was she not, worth a few ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... six, eighteen pounders, was not brought up until the end of April, and before that period threw assaults had taken place with very serious loss. On the 4th of May our powder began to fail us. This cruel event obliged us to slacken our fire. We also wanted shot; and an order of the day fixed a price to be given for all balls, according to their calibre, which might be picked up after being fired from the fortress or the two ships of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... quiet, and inviting; yet Smith knew that the whole Indian police force might be there to greet him. He had been gone many days, and much might have happened in the interim. It was characteristic of Smith that he did not slacken his horse's pace—he could ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... wayward mind like his. He's got in a state now when I wouldn't trust him a yard. And I hope to God you'll hold the reins tight, miss, and not slacken till they're man and wife. Once let him see his way clear to ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... hierarchy. Yet in a sense the converse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only practicable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off motor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself to slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit practice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the need of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a moment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never quit his ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... he brought his boat about. "Slacken your sheet, Peggy! easy—that's right! a half-hitch—look here, young lady! I believe you have been humbugging us all; don't tell me you never sailed a ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... they all made much of "service" and "loyalty to duty." The Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you were a good servant and did not slacken on the job. As for loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful per-formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward away from the enthusiastic ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... slowly, watching the motion of your engine all the while. When you have obtained the speed you require, run the thumb nut down as tight as you can with your fingers. Never use a wrench on these nuts. To slow or slacken the speed, loosen the jam nut as before, except that you must run it up a few turns, then taking hold of the thumb nut, turn down slowly until you have the speed required, when you again set the thumb nut secure. In regulating the speed, be careful not to press down ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... time he and Wallace held forth, though strongly suspecting that they must have been asleep. But what he said caused more than one cheek to flush; and doubtless a number of lads inwardly resolved that from henceforth they would never, never allow themselves to slacken their ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... great route to Washington, having passed Philadelphia and expecting Baltimore, are attracted, if it is a way-train, by a phenomenon. The engine is observed to slacken, and a little elderly man with a lantern, looking in the twilight like an Arabian Night's phantom with one red eye in the middle of its body, places himself just in advance of the locomotive. He trots nimbly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... we produced things for use, because they were useful and beautiful, we should go on producing with a good will until everybody had a plentiful supply. If we found ourselves producing too rapidly, faster than we could consume the things, we could easily slacken our pace. We could spend more time beautifying our cities and our homes, more time cultivating our minds and hearts by social intercourse and in the companionship of the great spirits of all ages, through the masterpieces of literature, music, painting and sculpture. But instead, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But here we are at Stonnington—a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you know, but I shall ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... thing all over again. And oh! what a lot he drank—first milk and then cider, and then mixed the two together in a way that would have disagreed with any body except a Brownie. As it was, he was obliged to slacken his belt several times, and at last took it off altogether. But he must have had a most extraordinary capacity for eating and drinking—since, after he had nearly cleared the table, he was just as lively as if he had ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... she hardly noticed that the train had begun to slacken its pace; presently, it stopped at a large station. The old lady roused herself, tied her bonnet strings, and ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... went through the jungle, walled in by a hundred kinds of trees and ferns and vines. Now and then we came into a cleared space, a native plantation, a hut surrounded by breadfruit-, mango- and cocoanut-, orange- and lime-trees. No one called "Kaoho!" and Mademoiselle N—— did not slacken her pace. We swept into the jungle again without a word, my horse following her mount's flying feet, and I ducking and dodging branches ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... forests now join from either side, and now recede, according as the sinuous valley brings their lines together or disparts them. There is a sound of cow-bells on the meadows; and the roar of the stream is dulled or quickened as the gusts of this October wind sweep by or slacken. Italiam petimus! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... wild growths of roses and blackberry-bushes, the tangle of ivy and woodbine, and the lovely vistas through leafy framings of sunny hillsides and woods, of pastures dotted with grazing cattle, and of peaceful farm homes. It is a country idyll, sweet and restful! We may slacken our horses reins while he crops the wayside grass, or we may sit on a fallen stone from the old wall, while we muse of early days when there was no turnstile to block our path, but we should wander on around the loops of Sargent's woods, and gather at will the blue and white violets, the ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... snakes endued with human faces, all crushed by the tempest raised by thy wings. My ears are deafened by the roar of the deep. So stunned am I that I can neither hear nor see anything. Indeed, I have forgotten my own purpose. Slacken thy speed, O ranger of the sky, remembering the risk to a Brahmana's life. O sire, neither the sun, nor the cardinal points, nor the welkin itself, is any longer perceptible to me. I see only a thick gloom around me. The body is no longer visible to me. I see only thy two eyes, O oviparous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... more he loved her, the more set, the more rigid became all the habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften them—to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to Catholic practice—to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself for years—to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, inflamed ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stars, having strapped on our packs and slung our rifles over our shoulders, we mounted and rode forward, our animals going much more briskly than they had done on the previous evening. When the sun rose the heat became as great as ever and the poor beasts began to slacken their speed, but eager to get on, we urged them forward with spur and rein until we began to fear that they would break down altogether. Suddenly, however, pricking up their ears and stretching out their necks, they broke ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... only hear the shouts and yells. He kept the water up to his chin and continuously splashed his face in the endeavour to slacken the efforts of the mosquitoes. The cries approached. He saw men outlined against the stars and then some gleams of lanterns. Something stirred ponderously near to him. It might be a crocodile, but he dared not move. The figures seemed to stay on the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the men with me began to slacken their exertions, and some fairly took to their heels. However, I had just caught sight of Rupert advancing towards me and did not ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the State. Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... ignorant amateur to another," I asked, "isn't the right thing to pull gently on the reins and then slacken? You go on doing it till the animal gets your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... at a rapid pace, and did not slacken his speed until he reached home. Dinner was ready, and he sat down with none but Helen, who could scarcely touch a morsel. Her father saw at once the state of her mind, and felt that it would be injudicious to introduce any subject that might be calculated to excite her. They ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... against General Grant, in hopes to regain the command of the whole expedition, and that others were raising a clamor against General Grant in the news papers at the North. Even Mr. Lincoln and General Halleck seemed to be shaken; but at no instant of time did we (his personal friends) slacken in our loyalty to him. One night, after such a discussion, and believing that General McClernand had no real plan of action shaped in his mind, I wrote my letter of April 8, 1863, to Colonel Rawlins, which letter ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the two friends took their leaves, with the same compliment of striking each other's hoof; and the gray made me signs that I should walk before him; wherein I thought it prudent to comply, till I could find a better director. When I offered to slacken my pace, he would cry hhuun hhuun: I guessed his meaning, and gave him to understand, as well as I could, "that I was weary, and not able to walk faster;" upon which he would stand ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... for palliating all these difficulties," I answered eagerly. "In the first place, the last act of the experiment must be preceded by the administration of woorara, to slacken the rapidity of the heart's action. In the second place, I do not propose to open the chest with the bistoury. The operation, even though aided by chloroform, would cause too violent a shock to the nervous system. But I intend to burn through gradually, by successive applications of caustic, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... movement as our principle, it is, on the contrary, possible, and even easy, to slacken speed by imperceptible degrees, ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... far our chronicle; and now we pause, Though not for want of matter; but 't is time According to the ancient epic laws, To slacken sail, and anchor with our rhyme. Let this fifth canto meet with due applause, The sixth shall have a touch of the sublime; Meanwhile, as Homer sometimes sleeps, perhaps You 'll pardon to my muse ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... had been told the truth, watched the fight with admiration, sharply touched with anxiety. Expert in the moulding of buttons, he knew very well that Callandar was drawing rather recklessly upon his newly acquired strength. If the tension did not slacken soon there might be another physical breakdown, and then—Willits shrugged his shoulders. It would be entirely too bad if this very fine button were to be spoiled after all. His heart was sore for ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the creator and teacher of iniquity. Thus then she spake with fawning words entangling him, right and left, around with her toils and meshes, and she began to shake the citadel of his soul, and to slacken his tension of purpose, and to soften the temper of his mind. Then the sower of these evil tares, and enemy of the righteous, when he saw the young man's heart wavering, was full of joy, and straightway called to ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three quarters of an hour thoroughly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... describe outwards segments of a circle. He turned his face away for a few moments and then looked at the planet again. The phenomenon was repeated. He knew it for a trick of tired eyes and a warning to slacken his labours. On the next afternoon he called at Beaufort Gardens, and was received warmly by ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... any time in the season did Coach Morton allow the training work to slacken. Regularly the entire squad turned out for field work. If the afternoon proved to be stormy, then four blasts on the city fire alarm, at either two o'clock or two-thirty, notified the young men that they were to report at the ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... ardent admirer of Comte's writings before I had any communication with himself; nor did I ever, to the last, see him in the body. But for some years we were frequent correspondents, until our correspondence became controversial, and our zeal cooled. I was the first to slacken correspondence; he was the first to drop it. I found, and he probably found likewise, that I could do no good to his mind, and that all the good he could do to mine, he did by his books. This would never have led to discontinuance of ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... from the ocean, each vessel was able to determine the character of the other, and when the sun went down, leaving a cloudless sky, it was evident that the Arrow had gained on the privateer. Lieutenant Morris felt that his brig must be overhauled unless the wind should slacken. The breeze was now so powerful that, while it bore the frigate onward at its best speed, it prevented the privateer from making its usual way. Before a light breeze, Lieutenant Morris felt quite confident that he could sail away from any ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... English cruiser, in which case, so it has often been known to happen, a part of the living cargo would be thrown overboard, trusting that the horror of leaving human beings to be drowned would compel the officers of the English cruiser to slacken their speed while picking the poor wretches up, and thus give the slaver a better chance of escape. (This I have seen done ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for any purpose of impeding, or even of delaying the revolt. He himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise, or even to slacken in his zeal; for Zebek-Dorchi, distrusting the firmness of his resolution under any unusual pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the very earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of the Khan's well known superstition, to engage him, by means of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... left the Emerald City just at sunrise and the Sawhorse traveled very swiftly over the roads towards the north, but in a few hours the wooden animal had to slacken his pace because the farm houses had become few and far between and often there were no paths at all in the direction they wished to follow. At such times they crossed the fields, avoiding groups of trees and fording the streams and rivulets whenever they came to ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... driver to slacken the pace, but evidently the fellow fails to hear. Then he puts his head out of the window and once more elevates his voice, but the rattle of the plunging vehicle, together with the noise made by the driver himself, as he shouts at his steeds like a ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... were called, and detailed to their several posts on the tower, and about the rock. In order to give additional purchase or power in tightening the tackle, one of the blocks of stone was suspended at the end of the movable beam of the crane, which, by adding greatly to the weight, tended to slacken the guys or supporting-ropes in the direction to which the beam with the stone was pointed, and thereby enabled the men more easily to brace them one ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Rolling slide, and lying still Shadow forth the banks at will: [10] Or sometimes they swell and move, Pressing up against the land, With motions of the outer sea: And the self-same influence Controlleth all the soul and sense Of Passion gazing upon thee. His bow-string slacken'd, languid Love, Leaning his cheek upon his hand, [11] Droops both his wings, regarding thee, And so would languish ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Tom's low chuckling laugh, which was just like that of a cuckoo in a bush, and divining that the object was to reach the boat by a detour, he did not slacken his speed. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... hour after comes the trusty valet whom she had put on guard: it was the expected chaise, which, as well as the three men who accompanied it, were made, without knowing why, to slacken speed. It was King James. Madame L'Hospital accosts him, says he is expected, and lost if he does not take care; but that he may trust in her and follow her. At once they both go to her friends. There he learns all that has happened, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... fortunate in having incurred no very serious injury. The Fury was shifted a few yards into the best place that could be found, and the wind again blowing strong from the northward, the ice remained close about us. A shift of wind to the southward in the afternoon at length began gradually to slacken it, but it was not till six A.M. on the 1st of August that there appeared a prospect of making any progress. There was, at this time, a great deal of water to the southward, but between us and the channel there lay one narrow and not very close stream of ice touching the shore. A shift of ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... a street of stately residences and scuttled along until the placid bosom of the Potomac came into view; beside that for a few minutes, then over the bridge to the Virginia side, in the dilapidated little city of Alexandria. The car did not slacken its speed, but wound in and out through dingy streets, past tumble-down negro huts, for half an hour before it came to a standstill in front of an ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... man Is smitten with some pest; his elements Are all confounded; in his veins the blood, Which ran a wholesome river, leaps and boils A fiery flood; his heart, which kept good time, Beats like an ill-played drum-skin, quick and slow; His sinews slacken like a bow-string slipped; The strength is gone from ham, and loin, and neck, And all the grace and joy of manhood fled; This is a sick man with the fit upon him. See how be plucks and plucks to seize his grief, And rolls his bloodshot ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... felt the current slacken, for he had been swimming across it and could feel its power, he turned and looked back. As he did ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... should be griev'd, young Prince, to think my presence Unbent your thoughts, and slacken'd 'em to arms, While, warm with slaughter, our victorious foe Threatens aloud, and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Battle Squadron came into action and opened fire at a range of 20,000 yards. The enemy's fire now seemed to slacken. The destroyer Landrail, of 9th Flotilla, who was on our port beam, trying to take station ahead, sighted the periscope of a submarine on her port quarter. Though causing considerable inconvenience from smoke, the presence of Lydiard and Landrail ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... up her rope reins, and Beck flew up the road as if all Sherman's army were after her; nor did she slacken until she reached the great gateway which turned into the Hermitage. Only a flat-topped post remained of the gate, and a boy of twelve, with a face like Religion's, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... to be done was to detach the truck half off the rails from the one completely so. To do this the engine had to be moved to slacken the strain on the twisted couplings. When these had been released, the next step was to drag the partly derailed truck backwards along the line until it was clear of the other wreckage, and then to throw it bodily off the rails. This may ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... now. He is the kind of being who must have a pet name;' and Mrs. Frost, hoping he might be already arrived, could hardly slacken her eager step so as to keep pace with her niece's feeble movements. She was disappointed; the carriage had returned without Lord Fitzjocelyn. His hat and luggage were come, but he himself was missing. Mrs. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that account. But, whether he disbelieved these wild stories or whether, in his eager pursuit of the chase, he disregarded them, I know not; certain, however, it is, that he was decoyed by the white wolf to this open space, when the animal appeared to slacken her speed. My father approached, came close up to her, raised his gun to his shoulder, and was about to fire, when the wolf suddenly disappeared. He thought that the snow on the ground must have dazzled his sight, and he let down ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... little triumph now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we try at least to give the adversary as good as he brings; and, with swift force or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish this and the other solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Creation; and so proceed with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it! The Fifty feudal Knights, for example, were of unjust greedy temper, and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten knights'-fees;—but they know now whether that has profited them aught, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... my say on munitions, though I could continue the story much longer. But the wonder of it consists really in its vastness, in the steady development of a movement which will not end or slacken till the Allies are victorious. Except for the endless picturesqueness of the women's share in it, and the mechanical invention and adaptation going on everywhere, with which only a technical expert could deal, it is of course monotonous, and I might weary ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from him—and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds him six feet behind the gliding ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hastened on, but in a short time were obliged to slacken the pace. The cardinal could not keep up with them, though with every wish to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the same signification. He was an excellent husbandman, but had resolved not to exceed such a degree of wealth; all above it he bestowed in secret bounties many years after the sum he aimed at for his own use was attained. Yet he did not slacken his industry, but to a decent old age spent the life and fortune which was superfluous to himself, in the service of his ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... "reaching." For this particular work the yachtsman should put on a medium rudder. When using a weighted tiller the weight should be put in a midway position. The head-sails should be pulled in fairly tight and the aft-sails made slack. The yachtsman, however, should not slacken them as for scudding. Fig. 151 shows a schooner reaching. The thick black lines represent the booms of the sails. If the wind is very light a spinnaker-jib may be set or a jib-topsail in light or moderate breezes. In the case of a wind that comes over the stern quarter, as indicated ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... the pirates got no farther, though the fire did not slacken on either side. The pirates lay among the scrub, hidden in the bushes, in little knots of two and three. They watched the castle embrasures after each discharge of cannon, for the Spaniards could not reload without exposing themselves as they sponged or rammed. Directly a Spaniard appeared, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... chamber door, the knot of Evan's resolution began to slacken. The clear light of his simple duty grew cloudy and complex. His pride would not let him think that he was shrinking, but cried out in him, 'Will you be believed?' and whispered that few would believe him guilty of such an act. Yet, while something said that full surely Lady Jocelyn would not, a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and spirit by the fierce purity of the sea, he only saw the more clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened. He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to do in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much serious hope, he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... of the black clouds swept over them, and the rain fell down in torrents; but in a quarter of an hour the clouds had passed, and the sun was shining again, and the violence of the flood was beginning to slacken. In half an hour the flood had swept by; and with it had gone every vestige of the wing dam they had builded with so much labor and ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... civilization—the knowledge of the art and a possible skill in its exercise come almost of themselves. The real test of the artist in love is in the skill to carry it beyond the period when the interests of nature, having been really or seemingly secured, begin to slacken. The whole art of love, it has been well said, lies in forever finding something new in the same person. The art of love is even more the art of retaining love than of arousing it. Otherwise it tends to degenerate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gone a step or two farther, he saw on the mountain side a broad road that rose above the village. Clearly there must be an old town and a new town; and, indeed, when the commandant reached a spot where he could slacken the pace of his horse, he could easily see between the houses some well-built dwellings whose new roofs brightened the old-fashioned village. An avenue of trees rose above these new houses, and from among them came the confused sounds of several industries. He heard the songs ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... the Prince donned his armour, mounted his black steed, and, spear in hand, dashed out of the west gate of the city. He pressed on his horse, which went swift as the wind, nor did he slacken speed till he came up with the water-stealing dragons, who still retained the forms in which they had appeared to him in his dream. On a cart were the two identical baskets he had seen; in front of the ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... stillness of the night began to sink into my soul and make me quiet. Everything seemed thinking about me, but nothing would tell me what it thought. Not feeling, however, that I was doing wrong, I was only awed not frightened by the stillness. I made Missy slacken her speed, and rode on more gently, in better harmony with the night. Not a sound broke the silence except the rough cry of the land-rail from the fields and the clatter of Missy's feet. I did not like the noise she made, and got upon the grass, for here there was no fence. But the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... ferns and vines. Now and then we came into a cleared space, a native plantation, a hut surrounded by breadfruit-, mango- and cocoanut-, orange- and lime-trees. No one called "Kaoho!" and Mademoiselle N—— did not slacken her pace. We swept into the jungle again without a word, my horse following her mount's flying feet, and I ducking and dodging ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... nut and turn it back slowly, watching the motion of your engine all the while. When you have obtained the speed you require, run the thumb nut down as tight as you can with your fingers. Never use a wrench on these nuts. To slow or slacken the speed, loosen the jam nut as before, except that you must run it up a few turns, then taking hold of the thumb nut, turn down slowly until you have the speed required, when you again set the thumb nut secure. In regulating the ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... finding the trade beginning to slacken, we hove our anchor up, set our topsails, ran the stars and stripes up to the peak, fired a gun, which was returned from the Presidio, and left the little town astern, running out of the bay, and bearing down the coast again, for Santa Barbara. As we were now going to leeward, we had ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... he ran swiftly down the hill, and, followed by the others, did not slacken his pace till they reached the city. They then shaped their course more slowly towards Saint Paul's, and having gained the precincts of the cathedral, Solomon Eagle, who now assumed the place of leader, conducted them to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... dare to say that the associations did wrong in thus giving themselves to the evangelistic work, while the calls for it were greater than the committee could meet. This work engrossed them till the calls began to slacken, and then they awoke to the fact that they were neglecting their true work, a special instrumentality in which they believed and for which they existed—that is, "A work for young men by young men through physical, social, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... outstrip her, and overtake the sail, which is a schooner, and looks suspicious, very. We order her to 'heave to,' which order is wilfully or unwittingly misunderstood. At any rate she does not slacken her speed, till she finds our guns brought to bear, and we nearly running her down. Then she stops: we send a boat with officers and men to board her and see if we have really a prize, and all is excitement. One officer offers his share for ten dollars—another for twenty—a third ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... your city"; and this, I presume, is law and custom everywhere that a man should please the gods with offerings according to the ability which is in him. (28) How then should a man honour the gods with more beautiful or holier honour than by doing what they bid him? but he must in no wise slacken or fall short of his ability, for when a man so does, it is manifest, I presume, that at the moment he is not honouring the gods. You must then honour the gods, not with shortcoming but according to your ability; and having so done, be of good cheer and hope to receive the greatest blessings. For ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... ear, and she was responding with such a burst of speed that the beef-riders were quickly left far behind. At length nothing was to be seen or heard of them; and, believing that they had given over the chase as hopeless, the young trooper allowed the panting mare who had borne him so bravely to slacken her heading pace until it was reduced to ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... possessed of similar faces, and Timis and Timingilas and snakes endued with human faces, all crushed by the tempest raised by thy wings. My ears are deafened by the roar of the deep. So stunned am I that I can neither hear nor see anything. Indeed, I have forgotten my own purpose. Slacken thy speed, O ranger of the sky, remembering the risk to a Brahmana's life. O sire, neither the sun, nor the cardinal points, nor the welkin itself, is any longer perceptible to me. I see only a thick gloom around me. The body is no longer visible to me. I see only thy two eyes, O oviparous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... flanks, the cossacks might have made successful coups de main. They would thereby have harassed the army, and retarded its march, but Barclay seemed fearful of discouraging us: he put out his strength only against our advanced guard, and that but just sufficiently to slacken ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... were torn from their backs, warm, gummy blood on their sweating bared bodies rendered their grips insecure. . . . After what seemed to the watchers a frenzied eternity, their efforts began slowly to slacken. Their grips became more feeble, their hoarse rasping gasps for breath more labored. . . . The Chief attempted groggily to dodge a blow. Shane recovered his balance, rushed him low, and closed. A ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could dare to ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... voice died within him: he gave the rein to his barb, impatient to close the fatal ceremonial, and did not slacken his speed till almost within bow-shot of the first ranks of the army. Never had Christian war assumed a more splendid or imposing aspect. Far as the eye could reach extended the glittering and gorgeous lines ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... swung himself off the edge, and in a very short time Malchus felt the rope slacken. He followed at once. The first twenty feet the descent was absolutely perpendicular, but after that the rock inclined outward in a steep but pretty regular slope. Malchus was no longer hanging by the rope; but throwing the principal portion of his weight still upon it, and placing his feet on the ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... you unlace your reputation thus] Slacken, or loosen. Put in danger of dropping; or perhaps ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... a little, my man," Wilkinson said. "That will do, just enough to keep the wind on the starboard quarter. Keep her at that, keep her at that." Edgar had the sail ready to hoist. "Slacken the tack a little. Now, half a dozen of you tail on here, and get ready to haul it down as soon as the sail is up to its full height and the halliards secured. Now, lads, tail on to ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... fresh mandate. During the straightaway run he was not to approach the gray car nearer than sixty yards or thereabouts—in effect, remaining within the same block if possible, but, if the gray car stopped in front of any dwelling, he was to slacken speed and pass it, taking the middle of the road, and holding himself in instant readiness to halt ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... muttered Ketill. "Could you not have told us to slacken speed? The dead could hear a ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... making him considerable presents were obliged to intrust them to those who seemed to be most in his confidence, for no one was permitted to approach or converse with him, except when he was hurrying to or returning from the Emperor. Even then he did not slacken his pace, but walked on hastily, for fear that those who approached him might waste his time without paying for it. Such was the manner in which ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... the hurry of the Ocean ceas'd, Soon as its God appear'd above the Waves: Who, managing his Steeds in Air serene, Flies swift with slacken'd ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... his webbed claws expands, His watery way with waving volutes wins, 280 Or listening librates on unmoving fins. The Nymph emerging mounts her scaly seat, Hangs o'er his glossy sides her silver feet, With snow-white hands her arching veil detains, Gives to his slimy lips the slacken'd reins, 285 Lifts to the star of Eve her eye serene, And chaunts the birth of Beauty's radiant Queen.— O'er her fair brow her pearly comb unfurls Her beryl locks, and parts the waving curls, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Coppice And we're down by the Mill, We're out upon the Common, And the hounds are running still. You must tighten on the leather, For we blunder through the bracken; Though you're over hocks in heather Still the pace must never slacken As we race through Thursley Common ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hapless son, I saw him, Sire, Drag'd by the horses that his hands had fed, Pow'rless to check their fierce career, his voice But adding to their fright, his body soon One mass of wounds. Our cries of anguish fill The plain. At last they slacken their swift pace, Then stop, not far from those old tombs that mark Where lie the ashes of his royal sires. Panting I thither run, and after me His guard, along the track stain'd with fresh blood That reddens all the rocks; caught in the briers Locks of his hair hang dripping, gory spoils! I ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... cannibals were shot down like sheep; and Frobisher scarcely realised what was happening until he saw the last savage throw up his hands and fall. Then he felt his bonds slacken, and he staggered weakly forward, to find himself supported by the arms of a Japanese officer, while, standing about in groups at the edge of the jungle, could be seen the figures of the soldiers, leaning ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... the motor tends to increase, a centrifugal regulator placed upon the motor reduces the action of the pump and, consequently, the supply of water to the tube, thus checking the velocity of the machine. If the velocity tends to slacken, the inverse process is employed. In order to stop the machine, it suffices to turn off the water furnished by the pump by means of a three-way cock, and to send the water back to the reservoir of supply. The boiler ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... then up its long straight ascent. He took its first steps in a bound, but, as his brain became more perfectly awake, confusion of thought, wonder, a certain timidity because now the screaming had ceased, caused him to slacken his pace. He was thus hesitating in the darkness when he found himself confronted by Madge King. She stood majestic in grey woollen gown, candle in hand, and her dark eyes blazed upon him in terror, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... rose, although by their light the Russians could be perceived working vigorously to extinguish them. At last they were seen to be leaving the ship. Soon the flames caught the mast and rigging, and the pillar of fire lit up the whole town and surrounding country. Not a moment did our fire slacken, but no answering flash now shot out from the Russian lines of defence. All night the fire continued, to prevent the enemy ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... while she called, "Do not outrun me, Fair Brother!" But he seemed not to hear her, for not a bit did he slacken the speed ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... the object of my pursuit; and my heart bounded with joy when I at last saw him set out alone and in the advancing twilight. I followed him till he left the main road. Now, I thought, was my time. I redoubled my pace, and had nearly reached him, when some horsemen appearing, constrained me again to slacken my pace. Various other similar interruptions occurred to delay my plot. At length all was undisturbed. I spurred my horse, and was nearly on the heels of my enemy, when I perceived him join another man: this was you; I clenched my teeth and drew my breath, as I ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of it, keeping the upper part of his body in an erect position, and finding great difficulty to cram his legs within. Four horses are attached to it by cords, which form the whole harness, and driven by one postilion on horseback, they set off at full speed and neither stop nor slacken their pace until they reach the next post-house. Within the distance of half a mile from it, the postilion gives warning of his approach by a repeated and great cracking of his whip, so that by the time of arrival another cart is got ready to receive the traveller' ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... came within range of it on his way up the street, his pace would slacken, and when he reached it he would stop at the edge of the pavement and stand with his basket on his arm, gazing at the lettering with an absorbed air of interest and curiosity. It read, "Milton January, Claim Agent." He could not read, but he had heard comments made upon the profession of ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to die out. In this way he amused himself until the straggling town of the Divide came in sight, when, putting his spurs to his horse again, he managed, under pretense of the animal becoming ungovernable, to twice "cross the bows" of the fugitives, compelling them to slacken speed. At the second of these passages Van Loo apparently lost prudence, and slashing out with his whip, the lash caught slightly on the counter of Hamlin's horse. Mr. Hamlin instantly acknowledged ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... cast of the dice. Everything must depend upon speed. How lucky that Mannering has betaken himself to Edinburgh! His knowledge of this young fellow is a most perilous addition to my dangers,"—here he suffered his horse to slacken his pace—"What if I should try to compound with the heir?—It's likely he might be brought to pay a round sum for restitution, and I could give up Hatteraick—But no, no, no! there were too many eyes on me, Hatteraick himself, and the gipsy ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... soon calmed down again, though he did not slacken his pace, keeping on as fast as his weakness and the darkness would allow, with the result that it was not more than half ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... "you make a difference between the just liberality that provides for property and intelligence, and the dangerous liberality that would slacken the reins of an ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... straw in various places, and re-mounting their horses, stood around it till they saw that no efforts which the peasants might use could extinguish the flames. Westerman then gave the word of command for their return; they started at a sharp trot, and he did not allow them to slacken their pace till he had again passed the ruins of the little village ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... satisfied with a mere change of shape? This has been the grapple of two brothers that already struggled with each other even in the womb. One of them has fallen under the other; but let simple, good-natured Esau beware how he slacken his grip till he has got back his inheritance, for Jacob is cunninger with the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... its allotted corner. He chooses a particular walk, where he may take his prescribed number of turns without interruption, for he would prefer suffering a serious inconvenience rather than be obliged to quicken or slacken his pace to suit the speed of a friend who might join him. My uncle Simon was a character of this cast. I could take it on my conscience to assert that, every night for the forty years preceding his death, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... found the loop of the lasso, which he loosened, but did not think to slip over his head, in the confusion of his perceptions and thoughts. It was a wonder that it had not choked him, but he had fallen forward so as to slacken it. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... could be traversed in ten seconds, they would have him before he could string it and fit an arrow. If only he had been fresh as in the morning! But he had had a long walk during the day and not much food. He knew that his burst of speed must soon slacken, but ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... good spirits, despite her sleepless night. When youth and strength are to the fore, a night's sleep is not of much account, for the system once braced up is not allowed to slacken. It was a notable sign of her strong nature that she was not even impatient, but waited with calm fixity the hour at which she had asked Leonard Everard to meet her. It is true that as the time grew closer her nerve ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... they are intensely suspicious, and of course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest. When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading. When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... five minutes the canoe went flying over the water, and I continued to haul in line fathom by fathom, until I caught sight of, deep down in the water right ahead, a great phosphorescent boil and bubble. Then the pace began to slacken, as the gallant fighter began to turn from side to side, shaking his head and making futile breaks from port to starboard. Bidding me come amidships with the line, Ioane took in his paddle, and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable. And lest her resolution might slacken, she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry. The dog glanced up ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... and lands, and the depth of heaven, and sweep them through space in their flying course. But, fearful of this, the lord omnipotent hath hidden them in caverned gloom, and laid a mountain mass high over them, and appointed them a ruler, who should know by certain law to strain and slacken the reins at command. To him now Juno spoke thus ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... that one appreciates at his full value such a noble puller as our wheel dog Nanook. He spares himself not at all; the one absorbing occupation of every nerve and muscle of his body is pulling. His trace is always taut, or, if he lose footing for a moment and the trace slacken, he is up and at it again that the sled lose not its momentum if he can help it. When the lead line is pulled back that the sled may be started by the jerk of the dogs' sudden traction, Nanook lunges forward at ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... as he has occasion for, nor does he mistake one for the other. If a rope-dancer, for instance, does but will, the spirits instantly run with impetuousness, sometimes to certain nerves, sometimes to others—all which distend or slacken in due time. Ask him which of them he set a-going, and which way he begun to move them? He will not so much as understand what you mean. He is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward springs of his machine. The lute-player, who is perfectly ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... are on the same level, with a tendency to sink rather than to rise, and though emulation may urge on the leading spirits and keep them at racing speed, this does not quicken the interest in knowledge for its own sake, and the work is apt to slacken when the stimulus is withdrawn. And all the time there is comfort to the easy-going average in the consciousness of how many there ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... affectation of good qualities which one has not, or the sillier pride of what does not deserve commendation in itself. By Mr. Harte's account, you are got very near the goal of Greek and Latin; and therefore I cannot suppose that, as your sense increases, your endeavors and your speed will slacken in finishing the small remains of your course. Consider what lustre and 'eclat' it will give you, when you return here, to be allowed to be the best scholar, for a gentleman, in England; not to mention the real pleasure and solid comfort which such ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... "Slacken yet more;" and before the pursuers could recover their confusion, a third fell, then a fourth, before the unerring shafts. The fifth was at the fearful gleeman's mercy, but he restrained himself, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... at such a time, but it hurt him keenly. And then the lights grew blurred, and he felt that he was making heavy mechanical strokes that barely kept his lips above the water-line. He felt the current slacken perceptibly, but he was too much exhausted to take advantage of it, and drifted forward with it, splashing feebly like a dog, and holding his head back with a desperate effort. A huge, black shadow, only a shade blacker than the water around him, loomed up ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... of thine own, That ever since I vainly try To wash away the inherent dye: Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white. To all the ports of honour and of gain I often steer my course in vain; Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again, Thou slacken'st all my nerves of industry, By making them so oft to be The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy. Whoever this world's happiness would see Must as entirely cast off thee, As they who only heaven desire Do from the world retire. This was my error, this my gross mistake, Myself ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... children committed to his charge. He carried, also, packages and parcels, and largely what is to-day entrusted to the express. I recall, too, with pleasure, Horace George, another driver, popular with all the boys, because in sleighing-time he would let us ride on the rack behind, and even slacken the speed of his horses so as to allow us to catch ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... Love's fair, furze-garmented, And brightly crowned with golden bracken. Your loyalty of heart and head, Of love (and lead) I'm sure won't slacken. "Bless ye, my children! May your New Love Be firm and lasting as ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... away from you. He will turn himself into every kind of creature that goes upon the earth, and will become also both fire and water; but you must hold him fast and grip him tighter and tighter, till he begins to talk to you and comes back to what he was when you saw him go to sleep; then you may slacken your hold and let him go; and you can ask him which of the gods it is that is angry with you, and what you must do to reach your ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... of ivy and woodbine, and the lovely vistas through leafy framings of sunny hillsides and woods, of pastures dotted with grazing cattle, and of peaceful farm homes. It is a country idyll, sweet and restful! We may slacken our horses reins while he crops the wayside grass, or we may sit on a fallen stone from the old wall, while we muse of early days when there was no turnstile to block our path, but we should wander on around the ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... gathered, producing thicker darkness than before; and heavy peals of thunder, heralded by pale sheets of lightning that threw a ghastly but insufficient light over objects, were again heard rattling at a distance over the woods. The fire of the savages began to slacken, and by and by entirely ceased. They waited perhaps for the moment when the increasing glare of the lightning should enable them better to distinguish between the broken timbers, the objects of so many wasted volleys, and the crouching bodies ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... key again and darted back to the window, to feel the rope quivering for a few moments and then slacken. ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... so early as this. It's all in the way of business to them, too. Let's pass them first," he suggested, "and then slacken down and ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... to their party; at the same time also they make a charge on the enemy, now disheartened by the discomfiture of their stronger wing. The valour of none shone more conspicuous in that battle. The consul provided for all emergencies; he applauded the brave, rebuked wherever the battle seemed to slacken. When reproved, they displayed immediately the energy of brave men; and a sense of shame stimulated them as much as praises excited the others. The shout being raised anew, and making a united ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... firmly suggested that I might shut my window, as the evening was cold. I did so, with an apology, and relapsed into silence. The train ran swiftly on, for a long time, and it was already beginning to slacken speed before entering another station, when I roused myself and made a sudden resolution. As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly lighted platform, I seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers, and got ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... have done even better; and then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But here we are at Stonnington—a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my dears, as we have brought no cockswain. Neither of you need land, you know, but I shall ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... obliged to go that way I saw her, sitting sewing in her accustomed place, and she would smile and bow to me—brightly at first, but after a time with a wistful, weary expression, or I fancied so. It was of necessity a hurried glimpse that I had, although my horse would slacken his speed of his own accord as we approached the holly hedge that bounded her bower; but I began to be uneasily aware of a change in her appearance. I might be mistaken, but I certainly thought her eyes looked unnaturally large, as if her cheeks had ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... good apples to fill the kettle; put them in a clean tub, and pour the boiling cider over; then scour the kettle and put in the apples and cider, let them boil briskly till the apples sink to the bottom; slacken the fire and let them stew, like preserves, till ten o'clock at night. Some dried quinces stewed in cider and put in are an improvement. Season with orange peel, cinnamon or cloves, just before it is done; if you like it sweeter, you can ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... said. "I don't mind. My reason, Billy, is a young man. Don't let your arm slacken that way. I don't see any one or anything beyond you in any direction in this world. You know that. There is nothing in the expression 'a young man' to turn you suddenly cold toward me. Don't be a goose.... Not so tight." They laughed happily. "I will even tell you his name," she resumed—"David ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... storm began to slacken, and Antler gave a sigh of relief. She felt sure that many bison were floundering in the drifts. She hoped they were not far away from the cave. So she dressed in her fur garments and took a large knife and ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... a sufficient motive to the same virtue, and thus insures their being retained in that unprovidedness which forbids independence and true social dignity? On this point, were we a workman, we should be sorry to rest in an affirmative, or to allow it to slacken our exertions or sap our self-denial; because if there is a higher development of the labouring state in store for society, it can only be attained by the more speedy perfection of the contract state in the entire independence of the workman. The writer from whom we ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... but whoso doeth it not within the stablished term is punished. After awhile, behold, they find honey exuding from the chinks of the house,[FN102] and when they have eaten thereof and tasted its sweetness of savour, they slacken in their ordered task and cast it behind their backs. So they patiently suffer the straitness and distress wherein they are, with what they know of the future punishment whereto they are fast wending, and are content with this worthless and easily won sweetness; and the Steward ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... if as this horse bears them along on the wings of his speed, they chance to see some great personage, a man of noble birth, high wisdom, and universal fame, then, however pressing their haste, they refrain their speed that they may do him honour, slacken their pace and rein in their horse: then straightway leaping to the ground they transfer to their left hand the switch, which they carry wherewith to beat the horse, and with right hand thus left free approach the great man and salute him. If it please him for a while ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the time in which the greatest interchange of property, and the most vigorous transactions of business, with all accompanying bustle and activity, take place. For an hour or two this continues. About three o'clock the tide is evidently on the ebb; business begins to slacken, and those who have their transactions brought to a close, meet their families and friends at the place of rendezvous—always a public house. It is now, indeed, when the heat and burden of the day have passed, and refreshment becomes both grateful and necessary, that the people ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... The great point is, that if you are worthy of this impression at all, there isn't a single item of it of which the association isn't noble. Hold to it fast that there is no other such dignity of arrival as arrival by water. Hold to it that to float and slacken and gently bump, to creep out of the low, dark felze and make the few guided movements and find the strong crooked and offered arm, and then, beneath lighted palace-windows, pass up the few damp steps on the precautionary carpet—hold to it that these things constitute ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... nearly throttled Finn, and brought him rolling on his back with all four feet in the air. Before he could rise again, the man had planted two ferocious kicks on his ribs; and Finn was thankful then to draw a free breath by moving towards his persecutor, so as to slacken the pressure on the lead. But, the moment he had drawn breath, the desire to escape possessed him once more, and he repeated his leap for freedom. This time the man was prepared, and, in addition to the pressure brought about ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... big horse and galloped off down the valley, leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not slacken until the party raced down into the lower canon and around a double turn to the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... always go the same way, but not always at the same pace. And, consequently, though a wise man ought not so much to give the reins to human passions as to let him deviate from the right path, he may, notwithstanding, without prejudice to his duty, leave it to them to hasten or to slacken his speed, and not fix himself like a motionless and insensible Colossus. Could virtue itself put on flesh and blood, I believe the pulse would beat faster going on to assault than in going to dinner: that is to say, there is a necessity she should heat and be moved upon this account. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... We slacken our pace. As he reads, he follows the lines with his finger, wagging his head with an air of conviction, and his lips moving like a woman's ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... distance of thirteen miles to cover. Part of the road lay through the valley which had given the farm its name, but then it ran up and over a series of hills, and through several patches of woods. Under the trees it was dark, and they had to slacken their speed for ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... street, some three hundred yards from where they stood, a strong Bavarian column had debouched from the Douzy road and was charging up the Place de l'Eglise. The square was held by a regiment of sailor-boys, who appeared to slacken their fire for a moment as if with the intention of drawing their assailants on; then, when the close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most surprising maneuver was swiftly executed: the men abandoned their formation, some of them stepping ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... information of this. Now, if you agree with me that this appointment would dissatisfy rather than gratify the Whigs of this State, that it would slacken their energies in future contests, that his appointment in '41 is an old sore with them which they will not patiently have reopened,—in a word that his appointment now would be a fatal blunder to the administration and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the force of the wind aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics raised upon them. The CALIFORNIA was to windward of us, and had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet home the fore-royal!"—"Weather sheet's home!"—"Lee sheet's home!"—"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward away from the enthusiastic lady ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... This, or the reverse, which we believe might happen any year, and could certainly not be detected without far more accurate observations and calculations for the mean sea-level than any hitherto made, would slacken or quicken the earth's rate as a timekeeper by one- tenth of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... air; the pungency of poplar, the mellowness of balsam, the bland smell of river-water that makes the skin tingle with desire to bathe, the delicate acidity of grass that caused his horse to whicker. The trail alternated pretty regularly between wooded ridges, where the stones caused him to slacken his pace, and long traverses of the turfy river-bottoms, where he could give his horse his head. Twice during the night he picketed his horse in the grass, and took a short nap himself. At dawn, from the last ridge, he saw the pale expanse ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... night began to sink into my soul and make me quiet. Everything seemed thinking about me, but nothing would tell me what it thought. Not feeling, however, that I was doing wrong, I was only awed not frightened by the stillness. I made Missy slacken her speed, and rode on more gently, in better harmony with the night. Not a sound broke the silence except the rough cry of the land-rail from the fields and the clatter of Missy's feet. I did not like the noise she made, and got upon ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... hundred yards, and that was not far enough. It could be traversed in ten seconds, they would have him before he could string it and fit an arrow. If only he had been fresh as in the morning! But he had had a long walk during the day and not much food. He knew that his burst of speed must soon slacken, but he ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... every sail our ships could bear." The words italicized sum up the whole philosophy of a general chase. The pursued are limited to the speed of the slowest, otherwise he who cannot but lag is separated and lost; the pursuer need slacken no whit, for his friends are ever coming up to his aid. Overtaking is inevitable, unless the distance ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... imaginings were vain. She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist. She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable. And lest her resolution might slacken, she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry. The dog glanced up questioningly, and ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... stopped. For an instant each man thought whether it would not be better to turn back, but it was only for a second, the enemy's fire seemed to slacken, the officers all drew their sabres and ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the time he and Wallace held forth, though strongly suspecting that they must have been asleep. But what he said caused more than one cheek to flush; and doubtless a number of lads inwardly resolved that from henceforth they would never, never allow themselves to slacken their ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... Pity and A Loyal Councillor; as a cavalier, A Book of Good Riding. Still more to our purpose, he was always at the side of his brother Henry, helped him in his schemes and brought his movement into fashion at a critical time, when enterprise seemed likely to slacken in ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... however, we escaped the predicted disagreeables by keeping close to the coast; for currents, whether of atmosphere or of water, for some reason slacken in force as they sweep along the land. I do not know why, unless it be the result of friction retarding their flow; the fact, however, remains. So, dodging the full brunt of the wind, we sneaked along inshore, having ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... thither, but Martin Alonzo Pinzon, impatient to be the first who should take possession of the treasure which this country was supposed to contain, quitted his companions with his ship, the Pinta, and though Columbus made signals to slacken sail, he paid no regard ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... through his head, and from the range of British bullets it seemed quite probable that he was accidentally shot by some of the Americans. This was the only man killed near where Fernando stood. The firing began to slacken when he fell. While three or four men were carrying the body away, a white flag was raised on the opposite side of the breastwork, and the firing ceased. The white flag was a handkerchief on a sword or stick. It was raised by a ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... shall every man have praise of God." How great shall be that felicity, which shall be tainted with no evil, which shall lack no good, and which shall afford leisure for the praises of God, who shall be all in all! For I know not what other employment there can be where no weariness shall slacken activity, nor any want stimulate to labor. I am admonished also by the sacred song, in which I read or hear the words, "Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house; they will be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... inclination to merriment become, that she found at last the only way to keep from bursting into loud laughter was to slacken the curb, and go off at a canter—I mean, to laugh freely but gently. This so infected her father, that he straightway accompanied her, but with more noise. Malcolm sat in misery, from the fear not so much of discovery, though that would be awkward enough, as of the loss to the laird of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... had for watching then. For now we had come to the real danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could dare to ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... in another minute, by a strange caprice of fate, those Edouard had come to intercept, quickened their pace to intercept him. As soon as he saw their intention he thrilled all over, but did not slacken his pace. He told Dard to take his coat and throw it over his foot, for here were ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... blood is magnetic in character because of the iron it contains. If four grams of iron is the normal quantity in the blood, it is clear that the reduction of this amount, say by two grams, will lessen its susceptibility and slacken its circulation. The electrical nerve ends will then strain in vain for the electricity which the blood current should yield, and ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the night, and during his walks. And each recurrence was accompanied by the consciousness that he had not done his best in the case, but had allowed the silence of the accused man to influence his judgment and slacken his efforts to unravel the clues he had originally discovered. Thus he travelled back to his starting-point, that the conviction of Penreath had not solved the mystery of the murder of ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... internal decline of the government was late in affecting the treatment of foreign affairs, yet it did affect them at length. The government became unsteady and vacillating; they allowed the reins which they had just grasped to slacken and almost to slip from their hands. The guardian-regent of Syria was murdered at Laodicea; the rejected pretender Demetrius escaped from Rome and, setting aside the youthful prince, seized the government of his ancestral kingdom under ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the north, more induced by chance than any particular motive; all quarters of the world having about equal attractions for me. I was in high spirits at finding myself once more on horseback, and trotted gaily on, until the heat of the weather induced me to slacken my pace, more out of pity for my horse than because I felt any particular inconvenience from it—heat and cold being then, and still, matters of great indifference to me. What I thought of I scarcely know, save and except that I have a glimmering recollection that I felt some desire to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the extreme slowness of the movement), the players are then entirely left to themselves, without conductor; and as the rhythmical feeling is not the same with all, it follows that some hurry, while others slacken, and unity is soon destroyed. The only exception possible to this rule is that of a first-rate orchestra, composed of performers who are well acquainted with each other, are accustomed to play together, and know almost by heart the work they are executing. Even then, the inattention of a single ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... you would slacken the pace of your horses, to satisfy the passion of his amorous heart, and so make of a delightful night the longest night of all; that you would give him more time for his transports, and retard the birth of day since it will hasten the return of ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... intentionally foregoes the graces of polish on the one hand, and of scholastic precision on the other—that quality of merit has never been attained in a degree so eminent. This first interchange of thought upon a topic of literature did not tend to slacken my previous disposition to retreat into solitude; a solitude, however, which at no time was tainted with either the moroseness or the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... but somehow the heavy, clumsy creature managed to keep abreast of her; was even gaining upon her, drawing up, up, above her head. Vivia put on a spurt, and passed Peggy, climbing very swiftly—for a moment; then the ache in her wrists compelled her to slacken her rate of speed, and the thickset figure came up, up, steadily and surely. Truth to tell, though Peggy Montfort was awkward, she was as strong as a steer. Her weight was not fat, but sheer bone and brawn; and her one hundred and forty pounds were easy enough for her to carry, even ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... fair, furze-garmented, And brightly crowned with golden bracken. Your loyalty of heart and head, Of love (and lead) I'm sure won't slacken. "Bless ye, my children! May your New Love Be firm and lasting as ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... noticed two separate things that had a bearing on their mission—the first was that for some reason they no longer romped along at their earlier speed, showing that the pilot had seen fit to slacken his craft to a considerable degree, though keeping up steerage way. The second thing that struck Perk was the fact that they were slowly but surely making a decided swing off to the west, which if continued would make their ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... our dinner. After two mortal hours of hard eating, the pace began to slacken, and as evening closed in, a sense of peaceful repose seemed to descend upon our labors. Pastels shed an aromatic vapor through the room. The well-iced decanters went with measured pace along; conversation, subdued to the meridian of after-dinner comfort, just murmured; the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... replied Captain Dinks. "I don't quite agree with you. I thought it best to keep the ship before the wind, not only because it eases her but on account of the gale being bound to slacken down soon; and if we run down to a lower latitude, as I have frequently done in this part of the ocean before, we will probably get fine weather and be able to tinker up the old craft and make her look ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... formerly, and which could not be unknown to them; that in case the ship should fall upon those sands, or any other dangers of that coast, before morning, they should be all lost; and therefore he thought fit to take down some of their sails and slacken their course till, by daylight, they might come to know more certainly in what part ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... same, on they rode. And now the sky looked brighter; there seemed to be an elasticity in the air. Breezy had never carried Dyke so well before, and a sensation came over him, making him feel that he must shout and sing and slacken his rein, and gallop as hard ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... the girls of Isabella Thoburn College forget all these interests when vacation days come round. This tells something of holiday opportunity. How do our summer vacations compare with it? "How apt one is to slacken and get a little selfish in planning out a programme for a holiday. One is not tied down to the usual duties and routine of school work, and plans are made as to the best possible way of spending the ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... places—he suffered John to half force him from the field; and, with a few of his lords, and only sixty men-at-arms, reached his nearest castle of Broye in safety. At midnight he again set out, and did not slacken his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... as the mere publication of new principles is concerned, and so far also as merely self-regarding action goes, one who has the keenest sense of social responsibility, and is most scrupulously afraid of doing anything to slacken or perturb the process of social growth, may still consistently give to the world whatever ideas he has gravely embraced. He may safely trust, if the society be in a normal condition, to its justice of assimilation and rejection. There are a few individuals for whom ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... are doing most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and by the sum of all the perils that lie ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... out into the lake and accomplished a third of the voyage, they were met by a skiff containing the faithful chaperons Mrs. Simpkins and Mr. Meigs. They hailed, but Mr. King, who was rowing his boat, did not slacken speed. "Are you much tired, Miss Benson?" shouted Mr. Meigs. King didn't like this assumption of protection. "I've ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Parmen. iii, 2) "these words show that when this is not to be feared, that is to say, when a man's crime is so publicly known, and so hateful to all, that he has no defenders, or none such as might cause a schism, the severity of discipline should not slacken." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... bringing the wind so far forward that the Brooklyn was no longer able to carry sail. And now the chase in her turn began to gain upon her huge pursuer. But she was now in salt water, and her boilers were beginning to "prime" furiously. It was necessary to slacken speed for a time, and as she did so the Brooklyn again recovered her advantage. Then gradually the foaming in the Sumter's boilers ceased, and she was again put to her speed. The utmost pressure was put on; the propeller ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... which brought snow with it, light at first, but increasing in heaviness as the day went on. The road rapidly became covered, and my horse, unable on the treacherous foothold to maintain the canter of the morning, was compelled to slacken into a trot. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... at La Riviere exerting every effort to levy an army. It was no easy task, and the review held on July 27th showed a meagre return for his exertions. But he did not slacken his efforts. Lists were immediately drawn up showing the vacancies in each company, and his money stress did not prevent his offering increased pay as an extra inducement to recruits. "An excellent means of encouragement," ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... urged on still harder, the English horse began to lay back his ears and pull so violently on the rein that his rider had all she could do to hold him, and lacked sufficient strength to direct his course. Seeing Zibeline's danger, Henri hastened to slacken his horse's pace, but it was too late: the almost perpendicular declivity of the other side of the hill added fresh impetus to the ungovernable rush of Seaman, who ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... frost stealing away the vital heat—ingenuity could not devise a more terrible scene of torture to the birds. Neither for the thrushes nor for the new-born infants in the tent did the onslaught of the winter slacken. No pity in earth or heaven. This one thrush did, indeed, by some exceptional fortune, survive; but where were the family of thrushes that had sung so sweetly in the rainy autumn? Where ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... that might come. For meal after meal he divided these delicacies among them—morsels of biscuit, and tinned meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes meanwhile were turned again and again to the storm raging without, as it had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent. If it would but slacken, a boat could go out to the nets set in the lake near by some days before, when the sun of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets had been set the storm had raged. On the day when the last morsel of meat and biscuit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... neighbourhood with One to me most dear, That undivided we from year to year 5 Might work in our high Calling—a bright hope To which our fancies, mingling, gave free scope Till checked by some necessities severe. And should these slacken, honoured BEAUMONT! still Even then we may perhaps in vain implore 10 Leave of our fate thy wishes [1] to fulfil. Whether this boon be granted us or not, Old Skiddaw will look down upon the Spot With pride, the Muses love ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... battering the door and listened. The rifle fire began to slacken. No more than an occasional shot was to be heard. The fighting had died down. It was too late for the prisoners to take any active part in it. They began to consider the future. They made up their minds to take the advice given them and ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... detachment of 20 men of the 60th Battalion, reached the Canadian position from Stanbridge. With this additional force Col. Smith was enabled to strengthen his skirmish line, and better secure the right flank of his position. Firing was kept up until about 5 o'clock, when the Fenian fire began to slacken, with the exception of a few dropping shots from the enemy, who had taken shelter in the houses along the road. These riflemen were carefully marked by the Canadian skirmishers, and searched for by a shower of bullets whenever ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... engrained with tar, some of which latter has established itself under my nails in a position of such natural strength that it defies all my efforts to dislodge it. The worst work I had was when David (MacDonald's eldest) and I took the charge ourselves. He remained in the lighter to tighten or slacken the guys as we raised the pole towards the perpendicular, with two men. I was with four men in the boat. We dropped an anchor out a good bit, then tied a cord to the pole, took a turn round the sternmost thwart with it, and pulled on the anchor line. As the great, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many months passed on; and once again The Shepherd went about his daily work With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour 440 He to that valley took his way, and there Wrought at the Sheep-fold. Meantime Luke began To slacken in his duty; and, at length, He in the dissolute city gave himself To evil courses: ignominy and shame 445 Fell on him, so that he was driven at last To seek a hiding place beyond ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... forward the fleet pony, and they did not slacken their speed until street after street had been traversed, corner upon corner turned, and they were in sight of the Plaza de la Mar, with its myriads of ships' masts and flags in view. Then, driving more slowly, Mr. ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming. The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire. But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... result with fatuous content. In such a monstrous deck-cargo, all poised above the donkey's shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack-saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveller should have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, was the work of too many sympathizers to be very artfully designed. It is true they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... putting Tlemonidas himself to the sword with more than a hundred others of his company. Teleutias, when he saw what was happening, snatched up his arms in a fit of anger and began leading his hoplites swiftly forward, ordering at the same time his peltasts and cavalry to give chase and not to slacken. Their fate was the fate of many before and since, who, in the ardour of pursuit, have come too close to the enemy's walls and found it hard to get back again. Under a hail of missiles from the walls they were forced ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... local bank through which Clark transacted his affairs sat late one night in his office. He had just returned from dinner at the big house, where he left his host in an unusually genial and communicative mood. It seemed that Clark's mind, tightened with the continued strain of years, had wished to slacken itself in an hour or two of utter candor, and Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated. But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque glass, Clark's magnetic accents appeared to dwindle before the inexorable character of the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... who felt now he loved his friend with all his heart, "how I wish I was going with you on the campaign!" The other pressed both the boy's hands in a grasp of friendship, which, each knew, never would slacken. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... began to give up themselves to their fears and to think that all regulations and methods were in vain, and that there was nothing to be hoped for but an universal desolation; and it was even in the height of this general despair that it Pleased God to stay His hand, and to slacken the fury of the contagion in such a manner as was even surprising, like its beginning, and demonstrated it to be His own particular hand, and that above, if not without the agency of means, as I shall take notice of in ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... over. The nation too saw with delight an aristocrate so well adapt himself to their costume, their principles, and their passions. The ardour of his patriotism did not suffer the impulse, that confounded in him the king and the people, to slacken; and in the course of his short administration he did wonders of activity. He visited and put in a state of defence all the fortified places; raised an army, harangued the troops; arrested the emigration of the nobility, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... have tended to slacken—not to stop—the sale, is also suggested by the author himself. This was the growing popularity of My Novel and Villette. And Miss Bronte's book calls to mind the fact that she was among the earliest readers of Esmond, the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... runs out of the boat as if he was bewitched, with such an extraordinary swiftness, that he was out of sight as it were in an instant; but at his return I perceived him slacken his pace, because he had something in his hand. And this I found to be as he approached nearer, an earthen jug with some water for his father, with two more cakes of bread, which he delivered into my hands. Being very thirsty myself I ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... dangers for them. She had known that she must crouch, and pause, and think of it, and look at it, and nerve herself with the memory of her wrongs. Then, at some moment in which her heart was wrung to the utmost, she would gradually slacken her hold, and the dark, black, silent river should take her. She climbed up into the niche, and found that the river was very far from her, though death was so near to her and the fall would be so easy. When she became aware that there was nothing between her ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... the question, I suppose," Saxham said coldly, "that you should slacken in your ministrations among the sick and wounded, and keep out of daily and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sick, wrapped in a plaid, so that he could scarcely move, a stake being fixed in the earth, with a rope, or tedder, that was about the plaid; he had no sooner enquired what he was, but he conjured him to loose him, and out of sympathy he was pleased to slacken that, wherein he was, as I may so speak, swaddled; but, if I right remember, he signified, he did not recover."—Account of the Parish of Suddie, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... at Howard's side as the fisherman whistled for sea-way and moved his vessel forward with the fleet flanking him astern in V formation. Mascola's boats gave no heed to the signal save to draw closer together and slacken speed as they ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... been, is a composition only fit for sudden enterprises, like a great ferment in the blood, giving double courage and strength for the time, until it sink and settle by nature into its old channel: for, in a few years the piety of these adventurers began to slacken, and give way to faction and envy, the natural corruptions of all confederacies: however, to this spirit of devotion there succeeded a spirit of honour, which long continued the vein and humour of the times; and the Holy Land became either a school, wherein young princes went to learn the art of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... as if a spectre were at her heels, and even when in the street, did not venture to slacken her speed. Although the dusk was rapidly passing into dark, a good deal of notice was attracted by the sight of a well-dressed young girl running along, holding a handkerchief to her face, and every now and then emitting a loud sob. People stood and stared ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... When his honour the Laird of Gandercleugh, with his wife and three daughters, the minister, the gauger, mine esteemed patron Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham, and some round dozen of the feuars and farmers, had been consigned to immortality by Tinto's brush, custom began to slacken, and it was impossible to wring more than crowns and half-crowns from the hard hands of the peasants whose ambition led them ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... time was verging upon noon. He reached the Scioto at eleven o'clock. They had come fifty miles through the trailless wilderness in seven hours! He dared not slacken. Together they plunged into the stream and swam across. He mounted again; they were away. The swim had freshened the good ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... those days were poetic figures. They had no reality. In an encounter at full speed, men and horses would be crushed, and neither men nor horses wished such an encounter. The hands of the cavalrymen reined back, the instinct of men and horses was to slacken, to stop, if the enemy himself did not stop, and to make an about if he continued to advance. And if ever they met, the encounter was so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the horses, the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... it was thought of dangerous consequence to slacken the rigour of the laws, in favour of any person, merely on account of his bravery and success in battle. The king was puzzled how to act. He was divided between a regard for the laws, and a desire to save the young warrior, who had rendered him such ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... disarray—still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch a prisoner—a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar be felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. One old game treads on the heels of another—twenty within the hour—and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of genius inventive ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... more wearily the wolves bit and tore their way; then they came staggering to a stand, three spear lengths from the lost eagle, and then the pressure behind seemed to slacken, and the serried spears in front bore them ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... now lasted about an hour and a half, and the fire from the enemy began to slacken, when we suddenly discovered that all the sails on her mainmast were enveloped in a blaze. Fire spread with amazing rapidity, and, running down the after rigging, it soon communicated with her magazine, when her whole stern was blown off, and her valuable cargo emptied into ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... side began to slacken, and General Meade, learning that our guns were becoming hot, gave orders to cease firing and to let the guns cool, though the Rebel balls were making fearful havoc among our gunners, while our infantry ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... rapidity of our motion was an excuse for silence; but as we turned away from the lake, and began ascending a steep acclivity, which led to the moors we had yet to cross on our way home, we were forced to slacken our pace; and as we did so, I asked Henry in a half-joking manner, "Have you recovered the passion you were in just now? Your forebodings seem to have ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... rows of old thorn trees; Jim remembered that he had meant to cut them down. There was a deep ditch between the trees and a belt of rough grass, then the narrow road, and a ditch on the other side. After a few minutes a dark mass loomed in the haze and Jim knew it would be prudent to slacken speed, but his lamps were nearly out, and a little farther on he must avoid an ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... forced BAYES, whom sharp remorse attends, While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends; Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin, And is all over grandfather within: By day that ill-laid spirit checks,—o' nights Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights. Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit, And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit: While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite, Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right, Contented Roger gallops out ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and sudden. The potations which had swelled and bloated his carcase had already weakened the springs of energy. One more huge effort, that came near to overpower me, and in which the pistol happily exploded, and I felt his grasp slacken and weakness come on his joints; his legs succumbed under his weight, and he grovelled on his knees on the stone floor. 'Spare ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in its allotted corner. He chooses a particular walk, where he may take his prescribed number of turns without interruption, for he would prefer suffering a serious inconvenience rather than be obliged to quicken or slacken his pace to suit the speed of a friend who might join him. My uncle Simon was a character of this cast. I could take it on my conscience to assert that, every night for the forty years preceding his death, he had one foot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... devised means for palliating all these difficulties," I answered eagerly. "In the first place, the last act of the experiment must be preceded by the administration of woorara, to slacken the rapidity of the heart's action. In the second place, I do not propose to open the chest with the bistoury. The operation, even though aided by chloroform, would cause too violent a shock to the nervous system. But I intend to burn through gradually, by successive ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... hissing to the deep below. Up rose keen Conrad from his silent trance, A long, long absent gladness in his glance; "'Tis mine—my blood-rag flag! again—again— 1660 I am not all deserted on the main!" They own the signal, answer to the hail, Hoist out the boat at once, and slacken sail. "'Tis Conrad! Conrad!" shouting from the deck, Command nor Duty could their transport check! With light alacrity and gaze of Pride, They view him mount once more his vessel's side; A smile relaxing in each rugged face, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... I thought at last, "it's no affair of mine. I'm only sent of an errand. It's all the same as going for a sheep or a bag of corn." And with this idea, I whipped up. But the sight of the slanting roof made me slacken the reins; and when I found myself really hitching my horse, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Prince donned his armour, mounted his black steed, and, spear in hand, dashed out of the west gate of the city. He pressed on his horse, which went swift as the wind, nor did he slacken speed till he came up with the water-stealing dragons, who still retained the forms in which they had appeared to him in his dream. On a cart were the two identical baskets he had seen; in front of the cart, dragging it, was ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... very well, and I was admiring the pretty back with its girlish shoulders and slim tapering waist, when suddenly a woman, riding in the opposite direction, swerved across the road on her wheel, before Miss Cunningham had been given either time to slacken her speed or to turn ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... whether be had yielded to a momentary impulse of anger, he suffered keenly for his bravado; for at every bound of the horse, his agony increased. Finally he could endure no more. He came to a complete stand, and requested his suite to slacken their pace. They rode on in perfect silence, the officers casting stolen glances at the king, whose lips quivered, while his face grew every moment paler with suppressed anguish. But he bore it all without a sigh, until they had reached the point for which ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... not leave him till they were both exhausted with running.... The guide then said that some treacherous design was meditated against them, ... and conducted them through very bad ways as fast as they could run. When he was desired to slacken his pace, he answered that they might follow him in any manner they pleased, but that he was impatient to get to his family, in order to prepare shoes and other necessaries for his journey. They did not, however, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... him. Every soldier in the army was devoted to him, for he shared all their toils and perils. "Cities," he said, "are not taken by keeping in tents; as scholars, in the absence of the master, shut their books, so my troops, without my presence, would slacken their blows." ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... be for me a source of endless tears. I saw thy hapless son, I saw him, Sire, Drag'd by the horses that his hands had fed, Pow'rless to check their fierce career, his voice But adding to their fright, his body soon One mass of wounds. Our cries of anguish fill The plain. At last they slacken their swift pace, Then stop, not far from those old tombs that mark Where lie the ashes of his royal sires. Panting I thither run, and after me His guard, along the track stain'd with fresh blood That ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... Finn, and brought him rolling on his back with all four feet in the air. Before he could rise again, the man had planted two ferocious kicks on his ribs; and Finn was thankful then to draw a free breath by moving towards his persecutor, so as to slacken the pressure on the lead. But, the moment he had drawn breath, the desire to escape possessed him once more, and he repeated his leap for freedom. This time the man was prepared, and, in addition to the pressure brought about by Finn's reaching the end of his tether, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... never given him such an opportunity of showing his honesty. They had proceeded above three miles, when Partridge, being unable any longer to keep up with Jones, called to him, and begged him a little to slacken his pace: with this he was the more ready to comply, as he had for some time lost the footsteps of the horses, which the thaw had enabled him to trace for several miles, and he was now upon a wide common, where were ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... through the cool willows, looked good to Smith. It looked peaceful, and quiet, and inviting; yet Smith knew that the whole Indian police force might be there to greet him. He had been gone many days, and much might have happened in the interim. It was characteristic of Smith that he did not slacken his horse's ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... thoughts, she hardly noticed that the train had begun to slacken its pace; presently, it stopped at a large station. The old lady roused herself, tied her bonnet strings, and ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... not slacken. Indeed the hate of the citizens of Avignon against these two bold Englishmen, whose courage and resource they attributed to help given to them by the powers of evil, seemed to grow from day to day, even as the plague grew in the streets of that sore-afflicted city. From their walls they could ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, half-break my chain! Not joyless, though more favored feet Stand calm, where I want wings to beat The floor. At least earth's bond ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... impossible for me to see my own hand. Apprehensive that some accident might occur, I ran forward, and, seizing the pony by the bridle, drew him as near as I could to the hedge. On came the hoofs—trot, trot, trot; and evidently more than those of one horse; their speed as they advanced appeared to slacken—it was only, however, for a moment. I heard a voice cry, 'Push on,—this is a desperate robbing place,—never mind the dark'; and the hoofs came on quicker than before. 'Stop!' said I, at the top of my voice; 'stop! or—' Before I could finish what I was about to say there was a stumble, a ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... full speed, his glossy coat dripping with perspiration, his nostrils widely distended and showing red with blood. But his pace began to slacken. Darkness gathered before the eyes of Calhoun. "Why, it's getting night," he murmured; "Fred, where are you?" Lower still lower he sank, until he was once more grasping the neck of his horse. A deadly faintness seized him, total darkness was ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... afraid of suffering like Pluto, because it was only going to take us a few hours to get to Riverdale. I found that we always went slowly before we came in to a station, and one time when we began to slacken speed I thought that surely we must be at our journey's end. However, it was not Riverdale. The car gave a kind of jump, then there was a crashing sound ahead, and ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... rapidly for some time. At length, on ascending a hill, they were obliged to slacken their ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... the engines slacken their respiration. The Guadeloupe begins to utter her steam-cry of warning,—regularly at intervals of two minutes,—for she is now in the track of all the ocean vessels. And from far away we can hear a heavy knelling,— the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... than the receiving. We must look upon ourselves, not as misers' chests to be kept locked for our own benefit, but as centres of distribution; and the better we fulfil our function as such centres the greater will be the corresponding inflow. If we choke the outlet the current must slacken, and a full and free flow can be obtained only by keeping it open. The spirit of opulence—the opulent mode of thought, that is—consists in cultivating the feeling that we possess all sorts of riches which we can bestow upon others, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... Wagner, while the fleet of iron vessels battered down the works of the haughty and impregnable little fort. All the afternoon one hundred great guns thundered at the gates of Wagner. Toward the evening the bombardment began to slacken until a death-like stillness ensued. To close this part of the dreadful programme Nature lifted her hoarse and threatening voice, and a severe thunder-storm broke over the scene. Darkness was coming on. The brave Black regiment ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... and the horse is not in condition to stand the severe exertion of going fast or far, no matter how healthy he may be in other respects. If such a horse be given a hard ride or drive, he may start off in high spirits, but soon becomes exhausted, and if he is pushed he will slacken his pace, show a desire to stop, and may stagger or even fall. Examination will show the nostrils dilated, the flanks heaving, the countenance haggard, and the appearance of suffocation. The heart and muscles were not accustomed to the sudden ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... untied,' as the children say. The hand that clasps anything, by slow and imperceptible degrees, loses muscular contraction, and the grip of the fingers becomes slacker. Our minds and affections and wills have that same tendency to slacken their hold of what they grasp. Unless we tighten up the machine it will work loose; and unless we make conscious efforts to keep ourselves in touch with God, His hand will slip out of ours before we know that it is gone, and we shall fancy ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw: and now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas, cannon without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try it. (Deux Amis, viii. 179-88.) ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the craft draws nigh, With slacken'd sail, she feels the tide; 'Stand clear the cable!' is the cry— The anchor's gone, we ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... enemy's counter-battery guns must have run out of ammunition, for they gave little more trouble for the rest of the day. Our field guns however continued to fire all that day and through the greater part of the night; their fire did not slacken whether shells were bursting around them or not. And great credit must be given to these gunners for their share in dispersing five enemy attacks. The battery on the east side of the wood, belonging to the 41st Division, came in ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... inn* *house A kneading trough, or else a kemelin*, *brewing-tub For each of us; but look that they be large, In whiche we may swim* as in a barge: *float And have therein vitaille suffisant But for one day; fie on the remenant; The water shall aslake* and go away *slacken, abate Aboute prime* upon the nexte day. *early morning But Robin may not know of this, thy knave*, *servant Nor eke thy maiden Gill I may not save: Ask me not why: for though thou aske me I will not telle Godde's privity. Sufficeth thee, *but if thy wit be mad*, *unless thou be To have ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... terrible though these perils may be, there is always a deep sense of underlying consolation in the closer drawing of the bond of brotherhood. But when the scourge of deadly sickness has passed over the land, the effect has almost always been to slacken this tie; the inherent love of life, natural to human beings, turning to an almost incredible selfishness, and inducing men to abandon their nearest and dearest in the hour of peril, leaving them, if stricken, to die alone, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the crown prince—"our Fritz," as the people affectionately called him after this, later the Emperor Frederick William—made his appearance on the field with his army. Assailed on both flanks and pressed in the centre, the Austrians first began to slacken fire, then to waver, then to give way under the terrific concentrated fire of the needle-guns, then to retreat into ignominious flight. The contending forces were about equal; but science and the needle-gun won the day, and changed the whole aspect of modern warfare. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... season with confidence, as he thinks there is a chance of my bowling to him too; but he is mistaken. As before, he will be in charge of the heavy roller, and he will also be required to slacken the ropes of the net at the end of the day. His prospects, however, are certainly improved this season, as he will be qualified to bowl for the whole two hours, but only on the distinct understanding (with Phyllis) that he does his own fielding ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... stopping the way in the narrow street between two rows of mud-brick houses, and consequently Frank's party had to slacken their pace, the driver having glanced insolently back at them and then fixed his eyes half-wonderingly upon Frank, before turning again and continuing his way, quite ignoring the fact that those behind were ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... what he was doing, I rode full speed after him, and in an authoritative tone called to him to drive with more care. He was obliged to slacken his pace before he could understand what I said. When he had heard me repeat my injunction, which I did with no little vehemence, he looked at me first in astonishment, then with a sneer, and was raising his whip to lash the horses forward ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... be roasted or scorch'd in a little time, and after they are off the Kiln, to plump the body of the Corn and make it take the Eye, some will sprinkle water over it that it may meet with the better Market. But if such Malt is not used quickly, it will slacken and lose its Spirits to a great degree, and perhaps in half a Year or less may be taken by the Whools and spoiled: Such hasty dryings or scorchings are also apt to bitter the Malt by burning its skin, and therefore these Kilns are not ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... away, down helm, I say; Slacken sheets, let the good boat go.— Give her room, give her room for a spanking boom; For the wind comes on to blow— (Haul away!) For the wind comes on to blow, And the weather-beam is gathering gloom, And the scud flies ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... train began to slacken—all too soon. She now dreaded to learn her fate. Was she, or was she not, worth a few thousand ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... being driven, they are intensely suspicious, and of course frightened. They know every spot in the jungle, and are acquainted with all the paths, tracks, and open places in the forest. When they are nearing an open glade, or a road, they slacken their pace, and go slowly and warily forward, an old buck generally leading. When he has carefully reconnoitred and examined the suspected place in front, and found it clear to all appearance, they again put on the pace, and clear the open ground at their greatest speed. The best chance ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the leg. Thus:—if a horse rear, it is useless for the rider to afford him a slack rein, if she do not also lean forward, in order, by throwing her weight on his fore-parts, to bring him down, and also to save herself from falling backward over his haunches. Should the rider, when her horse rises, slacken the reins, but retain her usual position on the saddle, if he rear high, she must necessarily be thrown off her balance; and then, if she hang on the bit, in order to save herself from falling, there is great danger of her ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... What the unimagined glories Of the day? What the evil that shall perish In its ray? Aid it, hopes of honest men; Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; Aid it, paper, aid it, type, Aid it, for the hour is ripe; And our earnest must not slacken Into play. Men of thought and men of ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... dust, as lightning strikes through a cloud, darted a great, raw-boned, ugly chestnut. Like the Empire Express, he came rocking, thundering, spurning the ground. At his coming, Gold Heels, to the eyes of the crowd, seemed to falter, to slacken, to stand still. The crowd gave a great cry of amazement, a yell of disgust. The chestnut drew even with Gold Heels, passed him, and swept under the wire. Clinging to his neck was a little jockey in a green cap, green jacket, and hoops of green ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... is provided with muscles for altering its tension automatically. If we are "straining our ears" to catch a shrill sound, we tighten the membrane; while if we are "getting ready" for a deep, loud report like that of a gun, we allow the drum to slacken. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... the sagging nets with their load of cod and flounders, shot the phantom boat I was pursuing, and I followed, obliged to slacken speed as we twisted in and out under the keels of the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... so difficult to make an impression on this iron band of warriors, began at length to slacken their efforts, and finally allowed Ferdinand to draw off the remnant of his forces without further opposition. The king continued his retreat without halting, as far as the romantic site of the Pena de los Enamorados, about seven leagues distant from Loja; and, abandoning all thoughts of offensive ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... it. The wax also protects it afterwards, and keeps the wet from rotting it. The waxed thread fills the hole better too, and what is of as much consequence as anything, it sticks so that the last stitch doesn't slacken before the next comes, but holds so tight that, although the leather is very springy, it cannot make it slip. The two pieces are thus got so close together that they are like one piece, as you will see when ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... simple fact for himself. If we tie a stone to the end of a string, and keep whirling it round and round fast enough, there will be a strong pull from the stone in an outward direction, and the string will remain tight all the time that the stone is being whirled. If, however, we gradually slacken the speed at which we are making the stone whirl, a moment will come at length when the string will become limp, and the stone will fall back ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... sooner were both sets of buildings destroyed than men were set to work with buckets and chains to drench the dusty heaps of the ruins with water, nor would the Master Builder permit the workers to slacken their efforts until the whole mass of demolished ruin was reduced to the ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... enemies were gaining fast upon him, and it was now evident that they must overtake him before he could reach the land. In an instant he had leaped into the water, and disappeared; but his pursuers were too well aware of his object to slacken their exertions, and held on their way towards the shore. When he rose again to the surface, their canoe was at no great distance. Two of the strongest of them plunged into the river; one of them, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... has lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the State. Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of fortune ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... again and again as the mustang tore along, now leaving the yells behind, now slackening or seeming to slacken, till the Indians' whoops were very near, ringing behind and even passing the fugitive, to run echoing from side to side multiplying the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... stop running, nor did he slacken his pace, but looking straight ahead, as if not daring to look back, to learn if he were followed, he raced down the street, fear plainly showing in every movement of ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... to spend a portion of his time in foolish criticisms on Greek and Hebrew words, and in efforts to make the worse appear the better reason. As for myself, I was committed to change. I was travelling downwards at the time, at a rather rapid rate, and was not to be turned back, or even made to slacken my pace. The ordinary kind of theological vanities I regarded with the utmost contempt, and I had come to look on some portions even of Christ's own teachings as nothing more than doubtful human opinions. I held ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... But the blows slacken again as another vision rises before him. It is Ballarat now. He is working in a shallow claim at Eureka, his brother by his side. The brother looks pale and ill, for he has been up all night dancing and drinking. Out behind them ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians. Now when the Egyptian army had once tasted of this prosperous success, by the means of Moses, they did not slacken their diligence, insomuch that the Ethiopians were in danger of being reduced to slavery, and all sorts of destruction; and at length they retired to Saba, which was a royal city of Ethiopia, which Cambyses afterwards ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... When love begins to slacken and decay, It uses an enforced ceremony: There are no tricks in plain ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... she came off the ground with very little strain, so that, upon the whole, considering the situation in which the ships were lying, we thought ourselves fortunate in having incurred no very serious injury. A shift of wind to the southward in the afternoon at length began gradually to slacken it, but it was not till six A.M. on the 1st of August that there appeared a prospect of making any progress. The signal to that effect was immediately made; but, while the sails were setting, the ice, which had at first been three quarters of a mile distant from us, was observed to be ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... we flew, each aerenoid going at its maximum speed; surely Zarlah had gone far enough north; she must slacken her speed soon to turn down a branch canal, and I would then be able to run alongside of her car and signal my presence. There was a gleam of hope in this, and to it I clung like a drowning ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
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