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Rack   /ræk/   Listen
Rack

verb
(past & past part. racked; pres. part. racking)
1.
Go at a rack.  Synonym: single-foot.
2.
Stretch to the limits.
3.
Put on a rack and pinion.
4.
Obtain by coercion or intimidation.  Synonyms: extort, gouge, squeeze, wring.  "They squeezed money from the owner of the business by threatening him"
5.
Run before a gale.  Synonym: scud.
6.
Fly in high wind.
7.
Draw off from the lees.
8.
Torment emotionally or mentally.  Synonyms: excruciate, torment, torture.
9.
Work on a rack.
10.
Seize together, as of parallel ropes of a tackle in order to prevent running through the block.
11.
Torture on the rack.



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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the days that are past, formed some stern old grand inquisitor, torturing the life out of human sinews because he ought. The grand inquisitor's devotion and conscience told him that he ought to advance the holy faith by every engine in his power, and therefore, as he considered that the rack, the thumbscrews, the rope, the fire and the faggot were the best possible engines, he used the same to the utmost of his ability; and thought, alas for humanity! that he ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop

... found that this did not tend to the reformation of mankind. Slowly the fires of hell have been dying out. The climate has been changing from year to year. Men have lost confidence in the power of the thumbscrew, the fagot, and the rack here, and they are losing confidence in the flames of perdition hereafter. In other words, it is simply a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... veneration will grow, later, if you get in the habit of letting old people have a show, and get up and offer them your chair, and run errands for them without expecting them to pay you. This place on the back of your head, where there is a bump as big as a hickory nut, is what we call the hat rack bump, because you can hang your hat on it. The barber ought to have cut a couple of slices off that bump with his lawn mower. Here is a bump that shows that you are color blind. Be careful, or you will marry a negro girl by mistake. As a precaution, when you begin ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... hopes in the hypocrisy of her sex; but perseverance makes it as bad as fixed aversion. I desire your opinion, whether I may not lawfully play the Inquisition upon her, make use of a little force, and put her to the rack and the torture, only to convince her she has really fine limbs, without spoiling or distorting them. I expect your directions, ere I proceed to dwindle and fall away with despair; which at present I don't think advisable; ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... an Author quoted by Monsieur Bayle [8] it is said the Price of Wood was raised in England, by reason of the Executions that were made in Smithfield. These Disputants convince their Adversaries with a Sorites, [9] commonly called a Pile of Faggots. The Rack is also a kind of Syllogism which has been used with good Effect, and has made Multitudes of Converts. Men were formerly disputed out of their Doubts, reconciled to Truth by Force of Reason, and won over to Opinions by ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... view. If we say that the ideal is generally regarded as unattainable, and that mankind will by no means agree in thinking that the criminal is happier when punished than when unpunished, any more than they would agree to the stoical paradox that a man may be happy on the rack, Plato has already admitted that the world is against him. Neither does he mean to say that Archelaus is tormented by the stings of conscience; or that the sensations of the impaled criminal are more agreeable than those of the tyrant drowned ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... by that first baptism of fire and blood, and expanded the simple and grave warnings of the gospel into a lurid poetry of physical torture. Hence, while Christianity brought multiplied forms of mercy into the world, it failed for many centuries to humanize the savage forms of justice; and rack and wheel, fire and fagot were the modes by which human justice aspired to a faint imitation of what divine justice was supposed to extend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... right the blockhead hits!) Yet more to rack thy heart, and break thy brain, Thy niece has been before the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... appeared and these hurried along bent on getting to the stove at the back of some store. The windows of the stores were frosted and the wind rattled the tin sign that hung over the entrance to the stairway leading to Doctor Welling's office. Before Hern's Grocery a basket of apples and a rack filled with new brooms stood on the sidewalk. Elmer Cowley stopped and stood facing George Willard. He tried to talk and his arms began to pump up and down. His face worked spasmodically. He seemed about to shout. "Oh, you go on back," he cried. "Don't stay ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... end this passage suddenly widened into a half circle, sufficiently extended to accommodate the huge butt of the mizzenmast, which was completely surrounded by an arm-rack crowded with short-swords, together with all manner of small arms. A grimly silent guard stood at either side, and I perceived the dark shadow of a third still farther beyond, while the half-dozen cabins close at hand had their doors tightly closed, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... proprietor and without decreeing the community of goods and gains, they mean, by any system of taxation whatever, to relieve the people and restore to labor what capital takes from it. In vain do I rack my brains; on all questions I see power placed in the falsest situation, and the opinion of journals straying ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... would the strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held it up ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... Best try him then with goads, or burning irons; Put him to the strappado: I have heard The rack hath cured the gout; 'faith, give it him, And help him of a malady; be courteous. I'll undertake, before these honour'd fathers, He shall have yet as many left diseases, As she has known adulterers, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... drank her wine as though burning with a fever. Sometimes, when the stillness had become portentous, Lapo rolled up his sleeves, inspected his scarred, swarthy arms, and mumbled, with the grin of a man stretched on the rack: ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... noon when I first awoke, and the sun was low in the sky before I slept—slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... 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 hold ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... heart-rack none the less. Dalhousie was no lifelong friend like O'Neill, or even like Chas Cooney. But Vivian, having made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer, had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... occupation as to prevent one from thinking great thoughts at the same time, thoughts worthy to be committed to paper afterwards. Now, as a song-writer, I ask how can one get inspiration while gazing at a row of saucepans, a cullender, a bottle of metal paste, one ditto knife polish and a plate-rack? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various

... his most amiable expression, but unless his face greatly belied him, fierce, ungoverned passions were accustomed to rule his being. His wife, Francisca, had one of those countenances that appear to dare you to find them out: hard, silent, and sullen, she looked as if the rack itself could not force her to speak unless she willed it; and her face reminded you constantly of a wooden mask, which not even the strongest emotions could make transparent, and allow you to catch a glimpse ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... than a herd of swine a kennel muddy, More than a brilliant belle polemic study, More than fat Falstaff lov'd a cup of sack, More than a guilty criminal the rack, More than attorneys love by cheats to thrive, And more than ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... the Lords that sway That Herd, and Ladies whom those Lords obey. And what's the Loadstone can such guests invite But moves on two Poles, Profit and Delight, Which will be soon, as on the Rack, confest When every one is tickled with a jest: And that pure Fletcher, able to subdue A Melancholy more then Burton knew. And though upon the by, to his designes The Native may learne English from ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher

... necessary, adjusted each time it is tuned. The hammers need occasional and careful attention to preserve original tone quality and elasticity. Never allow the piano to be beaten or played hard upon. This is ruinous to both the action and tuning. When not in use the music rack and top should be closed to exclude dust. The keyboard need never be closed, as the ivory needs both light and ventilation and will eventually ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... wonderfully well and terribly hungry, and had hastened at her washing and dressing so that she could run downstairs and get something to eat. When she went into the kitchen she saw that dinner was over, for the plates were drying in the rack and Peggy, the maid, was not there. It was incredible that she had not known why Peggy had gone out, that she should fatuously have told herself that the girl was probably working in the dairy; but in those days her mind was often half asleep with love ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... brought round and placed on the rack behind the wagon. It was a large black trunk, securely bound with brass bands, and showed marks of service, as if it had been considerably used. Two small strips of paper pasted on the side bore the custom-house marks of Havre and Liverpool. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Simpelmayer. He was not thinking of shoes or shoemakers just then, though, to judge by his face, he was thinking very intently of something. And well he might, for he had been reading serious stuff. The walls of his little chamber were lined with books, and there was a small sliding-rack on the table, presumably for those volumes he immediately required for his work. A rare copy of Sextus Empiricus, with the Greek and Latin side by side, lay open on an inclined desk at one end, and the table was strewn with papers, on ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... as the genius of the poet, and ancient and generous as the blood of the nobles. And then the fare is something beyond your ordinary gross terrestrial food! Sea and land are ransacked to supply it; and the invention of six ingenious cooks kept eternally upon the rack to make their art hold pace with, and if possible enhance, the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... too much absorbed with his own exultation to mark the look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed had he been upon the rack. 'There,' he continued, after a short silence, 'you have your message and can retire—unless you have any further—ha!—any ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... and slow to move, was of a keenly searching kind. No muffling up in furs and broadcloth kept it out. It seemed to penetrate into the very bones of the shrinking wayfarers, and to rack them with cold and pains. Everything was wet and clammy to the touch. The warm blaze alone defied it, and leaped and sparkled merrily. It was a day to be at home, crowding about the fire, telling stories of travellers ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... soul is rack'd Why I ne'er smile as was my wont: I only know that, as a fact, I don't. I used to roam o'er glen and glade Buoyant and blithe as other folk: And not unfrequently ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... I was working in a simulated spacesuit—the actual number was still being made to fit an accurate plaster cast of my body. So the boys figured out a clamp that would hold my helmet firmly to the gate, and a chin rack inside the helmet against which I could press and hold my head steady enough to keep my binoculars focused where they had to be focused. At a certain point I went back to Paul Cleary and said I thought I could ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman

... our duty to do in Ireland, and we have been too long away from it already. My husband has his business, and I have my home, and they are both going to rack and ruin. Besides," she added slyly, "it is just possible that if we did come to the States we might ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I was in my sleep I dreamed, and behold the heavens grew exceeding black: also it thundered and lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony; so I looked up in my dream and saw the clouds rack at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud attended with the thousands of heaven. They were all in a flaming fire, and the heaven also was in a burning flame. I heard then a voice, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... the chance of 'catching' it, as though it were the most dangerous of microbes. But now that I had enjoyed a little of the common experience of childhood, a great change had come upon me. Before I went to Clifton, my mental life was all interior, a rack of baseless dream upon dream. But, now, I was eager to look out of the window, to go out in the streets; I was taken with a curiosity about human life. Even from my vantage of the window- pane, I watched boys and girls go ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... the rack, with the windlass and chains, upon which the sufferer was laid. About his ankles were fastened chains, and about his wrists also, and then priests began turning this windlass, and they kept turning until the ankles, the shoulders and the wrists were all dislocated, and the sufferer ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point. In anything which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; while it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... of the present volume will not find such a story of cruel and relentless punishment inflicted upon advocates of woman suffrage as is related in the earlier volumes of this History, but the passing of rack and thumbscrew, of stake and fagot, does not mean the end of persecution in the world. Those who stand for this reform to-day do not tread a flower-strewn path. It is yet an unpopular subject, under the ban of society and receiving ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... said the Queen. "Indeed we doubted not of it; her whole demeanour bears it out. I found her moping in a corner of yonder grotto; and every word she spoke—which indeed I dragged from her as by the rack—she instantly recalled and forswore. But how came she hither? Why had you ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... per cent. It was then pressed through under the great emergency of the public necessities. But I may now recur to what I then said, namely, that its principle was false and dangerous, and that, when its time came, it would rack and convulse our system. I said we should not get rid of it without throes and spasms. Has not this been as predicted? We have felt the spasms and throes of this convulsion; but we have at last gone through them, and begin to breathe again. It is something that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... scaffold, the best of men: while whole assemblies of fiends, calling themselves men, are from day to day meditating torment and torture for his heroic widow; On whom, with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chambermaid of hers In their reach, and with the rack in their hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence? What other virtue ever sustained such an ordeal? But who can wonder, when the Almighty himself is called by one of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... comprehend the anguish of my feelings. To be disjointed and torn piecemeal by the rack was a torment inexpressibly inferior to this. Nothing excites my wonder but that I did not expire before the ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... The winter-storm may rack and roar; We do not fear its blast; And we'll bear with faith and fortitude The lot that thou ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... company of them are tranquilly engaged in breakfasting on his coverings and the rushes of his couch; they are on his table, his seats, along his pillow and his walls; they are playing before his door, running hither and thither through the crevices of his roof, multiplying themselves on his rack and shelf; all biting, gnawing, nibbling—some his seal-skin hat, his tobacco-pouch, the bark ornaments of his furniture; others the handles of his tools, his pipes, his ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine

... useful or ornamental purpose the green willows growing everywhere in Spenersberg Valley might not be applied. The very pictures hanging on the wall—engraved likenesses of the great masters Mozart and Beethoven—had their frames of well-woven willow twigs; and the rack which held the books and sheets of music was ornamented on each side with raised wreaths of flowers wrought by deft hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... them cruelly whipped. I will relate one instance. One Sabbath morning, before I got out of my bed, I heard an outcry, and got up and went to the window, when I saw some six or eight boys, from eight to twelve years of age, near a rack (made for tying horses) on the public square. A man on horseback rode up, got off his horse, took a cord from his pocket, tied one of the boys by the thumbs to the rack, and with his horsewhip lashed him most severely. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... into which we burst, half bedroom, half workshop, or rather laboratory, for on a deal table by a window stood a rack of test-tubes, several beakers, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... be, all alone there, and seeing poor Castle Blanch going to rack and ruin. I could cry about it whenever I think of it; but how much worse would it have been if he had deserted too! As long as he is in the old vicarage there is a home spot to me in the world! ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... He is 'on the rack,' in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure the sight of Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him the whole truth, he feels that in that case his life is over and his 'occupation gone' with all its glories. But he has not abandoned hope. The bare possibility ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... arrested me the moment I arrived, and handed me over to the Inky Inquisition—eight gentlemen of the Press—who placed me on the interviewer's rack at the demand of insatiable modern journalism. I scraped through the ordeal as well as could be expected in the circumstances, considering I hadn't yet acquired my land-legs. The raging waves may roar their loudest, and the stormy winds may blow their hardest, but ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... bag. Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand, At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide, Though functionally here on humanity's side, The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal physician Attending the rack o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... of great warmth and comfort about it. There was a fire of driftwood smouldering in a wide clay chimneyplace, and a sweet warm smell of wood smoke in the air. There were a number of wooden chairs, and a table, and several great black oaken chests curiously carved, and a great rack hanging from the roof, on which I saw hams, and guns, and tarpaulin hats, and oars, and coils of rope. The far end of the room was dark to one coming in out of the sunshine, but, in some way, and I can hardly tell how, it ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me. I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought, and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my lady was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected blot on meek ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... commanding because it gave shelter to the rebels. Near St Eustache the Swiss adventurer and leader of the rebels, Amury Girod, took possession of a farm belonging to a loyal Scottish family. His men cut down the trees about the farm-house, fortified it rudely, and lived in it at rack and manger until Colborne came to St Eustache. These were typical cases of loss, and surely, when order was again restored, they were cases for compensation. The loyal and the innocent should not have to suffer in their goods for their innocence and ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... visiting! I rack and rack my brains to find what grief could have come to Elspeth. She will ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... though he was continually tortured with the belief that his success in life had not equalled his merits. As AEnone entered, he was bending over a shield, and earnestly engaged in burnishing its brazen mouldings. At his side leaned a short sword, awaiting similar attention, and in a rack beside him were a number of weapons of different varieties and sizes, which had already submitted to his restorative skill, and now ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of God who inspired them. 'Few rich and few noble,' as the apostle says, 'were called.' It was to poor people, old people, weak women, ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the idols which they knew were ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... extraordinary, if we suppose the conspirators were actuated by the councils of the Jesuits, who have been ever famous for finesse and dexterity. Besides, the discovery of all the particulars was founded upon confession extorted by the rack, which at best is a suspicious evidence. Be that as it will, the Portuguese government, without waiting for a bull from the pope, sequestered all the estates and effects of the Jesuits in that kingdom, which amounted to considerable sums, and reduced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... and were hurried and worried and flurried at the last at the station. You look so white and tired. How your breath comes and goes! And I think you're new to our Canadian ways. I saw you didn't understand about the checks for the baggage. Let me take away this bag and put it up in the rack for you. Here's a footstool for your feet; that'll ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it. "Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo;" I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's religion, I ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... shrouds the night, and rack; Hear, in the woods, what an awful crack! Wildly the owls are flitting, Hark to the pillars splitting Of palaces verdant ever, The branches quiver and sever, The mighty stems are creaking, The poor roots breaking and shrieking, In wild mixt ruin down dashing, O'er ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... leaving the red bundle on the seat beside her. It was lucky, I told her, that the carriage wasn't full, otherwise it would have had to go up in the rack, where it ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... and Portia would have delayed him from making his choice from very fear of his choosing wrong. For she loved him dearly, even as he loved her. "But," said Bassanio, "let me choose at once, for, as I am, I live upon the rack." ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... them, they mauled them, yea, and almost brained many of them. Many did I say, yea most, if not all of them. Mr. Conscience they so wounded, yea, and his wounds so festered, that he could have no ease day nor night, but lay as if continually upon a rack; but that Shaddai rules all, certainly they had slain him outright. Mr. Lord Mayor they so abused that they almost put out his eyes; and had not my Lord Willbewill got into the castle, they intended ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... the rack and slammed the door behind him; and she, as understanding of what had happened dawned upon her, fell forward upon the banister with ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... to the desk across the room, she snatched a sheet of note paper from the rack, seated herself, and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... the carpet a soft, green Wilton; the hanging lamp quite ornate, while a magnificent upright piano was firmly anchored against the butt of the aftermast. It was a yacht-like interior, even to the sheet music on the rack, and a gray striped cat dozing on one of the softly cushioned chairs. Gazing about, I could scarcely realize this was an abode of criminals, or that I was there a captive. It was the sudden grip of my guard which brought the truth ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... of course the doctor could see him then. So she unlocked the door of the dormitory and let him in. I asked her if he had his boots on. She said no; he was going up in them, contrary to rule, when she reminded him of it, and he took them off and put them in the rack in the wood-closet. I have seen the boot-boy, and he says he noticed when he went there this morning early to clean them, No. 6 rack was empty. So your brother must have come down, after he had gone up to the dormitory, and ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... blow to one stretched so long on the rack, is plain from Margaret's letters. "I shall never again," she writes, "be perfectly, be religiously generous, so terribly do I need for myself the love I have given to other sufferers. When you read this, I hope your heart will be happy; for I still like to know that others are ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... corners and edges. This box has hollow gudgeons at two diagonally opposite corners and these gudgeons are open as shown to provide for charging and discharging. The box is rotated by gears meshing with a circumferential rack midway between gudgeons and another set of gears operate to tilt the mixer. The inside of the box is smooth, there being no deflectors, as its shape is such as to fold the batch repeatedly and thus ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... a large plastine container filled with a white, crystalline powder. Then he selected a couple of bottles filled with a clear, faintly yellow liquid, and took a hypodermic gun from the rack. ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... to Japan, where my father went as Minister in 1895, and did not care to try it a second time. The building is very old and very much out of repair. It was a beautiful place in its prime, but had been allowed to go to rack and ruin. The custom is that the magistrate has to find a place and supply the food, etc., for high officials when passing through, and it is not exactly the thing to refuse their kind offer, but my father was always very independent and politely ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... stationed themselves on the steps leading to the choir. At the same moment, also, the torches were extinguished, and the whole of the building buried in profound darkness. Presently after, a sound was heard of footsteps approaching the nave, but nothing could be discerned. Expectation was kept on the rack for some minutes, during which many a stifled cry was heard from those whose courage failed them at this trying juncture. All at once, a blue light illumined the nave, and partially revealed the lofty pillars by which ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... slow accumulations of ten long years. It was a miserable and totally inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... they sate in counsel,— At length the Mayor broke silence: For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain,— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain, O for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what could hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though wondrous ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... talks too like a man that knew the world, To have been long a peasant. But the rack Will teach him other language. Hence with him! [As the Guards are carrying him away, his peruke falls off. Sure I have seen that face before. Hermogenes! 'Tis he, 'tis he, who fled away with Eubulus, And with ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... named the third morning as the one that would find him most free from his numerous engagements. The coolness of this reply was exasperating to the bishop, and he thought he divined in the delay a deliberate intention to keep him on the rack of uncertainty. Being a man of ample leisure, he had found plenty of time to formulate the position he meant to take. He and his daughter had threshed out the subject, and now avoided it by mutual consent. Their relationship ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... enlargement of the town water-system—how he had manoeuvred and financed, persuaded small loans at ruinous interest, and laid pipe and made joints by lantern light while the workmen slept, and then been up ahead of them to outline and direct and rack his brains over the raising of the next week-end wages. For he had carried on old Isaac's policy. He would not let go. The future ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. I recalled the time when I, too, had enjoyed the rack on which he voluntarily ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... abruptly on an important change of plan, replaced the log and charts in the rack as the first logical step. They contained nothing but bearings, courses, and the bare data of navigation. To Davies they were hard-won secrets of vital import, to be lied for, however hard and distasteful ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... the simplest but most becoming of travelling costumes, she was agreeably conscious that the onlookers to her send-off had been unanimously admiring in their regard, and, as she stood arranging her bags on the rack overhead, she saw her own face in the strip of mirror and ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... examples of heroism. There were mothers who followed their sons, and wives their husbands into exile: one saw here a kinsman's courage and there a son-in-law's devotion: slaves obstinately faithful even on the rack: distinguished men bravely facing the utmost straits and matching in their end the famous deaths of older times. Besides these manifold disasters to mankind there were portents in the sky and on the earth, thunderbolts and other premonitions of good ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... floor space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... the Bible to read the lessons, blessed if there wasn't a coffin-plate, worn as thin as a sheet of paper, marking the place, Then he goes into the pulpit, and the first thing he sees was a jawbone full of teeth lyin' on the cushion; there was ribs in the book-rack; there was a tooth in his glass of water; there was bones everywhere—you never see such a sight in all yer life! The young man must ha' taken a basketful into the church. Some he put into the pews, some into the collectin' boxes, some under the cushions—you never ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... every hour like him less. There were several ladies, French and English, with Miss Fermor, all on the rack to engage the Baronet's attention; you have no notion of the effect of a title in America. To do the ladies justice however, he really look'd very handsome; the ride, and the civilities he receiv'd from a circle of pretty women, for they were well chose, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... the man in the ticket office, turning to his rack and taking down a long strip of ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... giving the house its name. It is a simple old house with the air of a home about it, and the intimate possessions of the author lie about as he left them. His bed is made up, his umbrella hangs upon the mantelshelf, his old felt hat rests upon the rack, the photograph of his friend James Whitcomb Riley looks down from the bedroom wall, and on the table, by the window, stands his typewriter—the confidant first to ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... go there. Putting some papers in order upon his desk, and locking up others, he carried the letter for Ventnor into Mr. Galloway's private room and placed it in the letter rack. Two others, ready for the post, were lying there. Then he went to the front door to look out for Yorke. Yorke was ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... company to dinner," Wade called to Santry as he untied a horse from the hitching rack near the barn and rode ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... my faculties to her service. This was the recompense which it was in my power to make for the benefits that I had received. Would not this procedure bear the appearance of the basest ingratitude? The shadow of an imputation like this was more excruciating than the rack. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... Duncan stalked out of the house, helping himself to his hat as he passed the rack ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... your parchments black with lies—shut fast your coward doors— And brand the aged chief with crimes his generous heart abhors: When truth avails not, well you know how to supply the lack With secret tales and with wild words extorted by the rack! There is an hour for every power—an hour of darkness this! Spur on, ye slaves of Antichrist! or ye ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... corner of the garden, he led the way to a large shed which stood partly behind the cottage, which he said was his stable; thereupon he dismounted and led his donkey into the shed, which was without stalls, but had a long rack and manger. On one side he tied his donkey, after taking off her caparisons, and I followed his example, tying my horse at the other side with a rope halter which he gave me; he then asked me to come in and taste ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... anxiety, and struggling thought, Painful as female throes: whether the bard Display the deeds of heroes; or the fall Of vice, in lay dramatic; or expand The lyric wing; or in elegiac strains Lament the fair; or lash the stubborn age, With laughing satire; or in rural scenes With shepherds sport; or rack his hard-bound brains For the unexpected turn. Arachne so, In dusty kitchen corner, from her bowels 140 Spins the fine web, but spins with better fate, Than the poor bard: she! caitiff! spreads her snares, And ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... extraordinary. What a dismal change from pleasant suppers at the Mule, where he sat in triumph with expert operators and great wits! He is at the lees of life, poor rogue; and those fingers which once transcribed improper romances are now agonisingly stretched upon the rack. We have no sure knowledge, but we may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, would go the same way ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... all the west was dark, and inky black The level ruffled water underneath, And up the wind-cloud tossed, a ghostly rack, In many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... backbone. Shape each piece in semi-circle, having ribs outside and sew pieces together to form a crown. Trim ends of bones evenly and rather short and wrap each bone in thin strip fat scraps to prevent bone from burning. Place on rack in dripping pan with bowl in center of crown to preserve its shape. Dredge with flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper, basting frequently with melted Crisco, and allowing 9 minutes to the pound for roasting. Cover bones ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... vanquished is already of the vanquishers. Till then, the Right must be content to be called the Wrong, and — which is far harder — to seem the Wrong. There is no spiritual victory gained by a verbal conquest; or by any kind of torture, even should the rack employed be that of the purest logic. Nay more: so long as the wicked themselves remain impenitent, there is mourning in heaven; and when there is no longer any hope over one last remaining sinner, heaven itself must confess its defeat, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the sandy road. There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on the back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, on the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy, an imp out of a story-book. John was told that the black boy was a slave, and that the carriage was from Baltimore. Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty, wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... harsh Austerity allied, Or clad in cynic garb of sordid hue: See him with Tyranny's fell tools supplied, The rack, the fagot, or the torturing screw, Or girt with Bigotry's besotted crew: What wonder, thus beheld, his looks should move Our scorn or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... not probably in Ireland a landlord so popular as I am this moment—at least among my tenants on that property. Restoring M'Evoy, however, is but a small part of what I have done. Carson's pranks were incredible. He was a rack-renter of the first water. A person named Brady had paid him twenty-five guineas as a douceur—in other words, as a bribe—for renewing a lease for him; yet, after having received the money, he kept ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... in the west moved very slowly upwards, and the rain continued to fall, although less drenchingly than before. The setting sun strove with the cloud-rack and coloured the veil of vapour that its rays could not pierce. The nightingales and thrushes in the shrubs, and the finches amidst the later blossoms of the may, took heart again, and the song rose ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... rapidity which disconcerted his adversaries. It is not known what became of Pantaleon, whether he was executed or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death or had to purchase their pardon dearly. Sadyattes was stretched on a rack and torn with carding combs.* Glaucias, besieged in his fortress of Sidene, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the king demolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who should thereafter ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... a certain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings too closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some steward will come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everything go to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of English ministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objects of statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to make the two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriotism. He founded, if we may use ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... pillar-and-claw stand is sufficiently steady. For larger instruments other arrangements are needed, both to give the telescope steadiness, and to supply slow movements in altitude and azimuth. The student will find no difficulty in understanding the arrangement of sliding-tubes and rack-work commonly adopted. This arrangement seems to me to be in many respects defective, however. The slow movement in altitude is not uniform, but varies in effect according to the elevation of the object observed. It is also limited in range; and quite a little series ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor

... water—were wound upon reels, making about two hundred pounds weight of wire to each reel. Two men and one mule were detailed to each reel. The pack-saddle on which this was carried was provided with a rack like a sawbuck placed crosswise of the saddle, and raised above it so that the reel, with its wire, would revolve freely. There was a wagon, supplied with a telegraph operator, battery and telegraph instruments for each division, each corps, each army, and one for my headquarters. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... should she disturb the gentle confidence of his sister and her daughter? She could not make them miserable merely to lift from her own mind a portion of its anxiety. She could only lie awake, night after night, and rack her brain with a thousand gloomy forebodings. She recalled certain phrases he had used in moments of pathetic confidence. She recalled the quick look of pain with which he sometimes paused in the middle of his speech, the almost ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... dealt with according to their folly. There used to be special houses of correction in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, an occasional application of the rack, and other gentle instruments of torture of an inventive age, were wonderfully efficacious in curing a man of his folly. Nor was there any special limit to the time during which the treatment lasted. And in case ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... Sartoris said. "What has it done for me? You have been a good sister to me, but your attentions have been a little embarrassing sometimes. And if you had hoped to change me, you had your trouble for your pains. You may put me on the rack and torture me, but not one ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't you ask ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... and fro in the little room, for hour after hour, till his head whirled, and his legs ached. Out of doors there was fitfully glinting sunshine upon the wet roofs; a pale blue now and then revealed amid the grey rack. Two years ago he would have walked twenty miles on a day like this, with eyes for nothing but the beauty and joy of earth. Was he not—he suddenly asked himself—a wiser man now than then? Did he not see into the truth of things; whereas, formerly, he had seen only the deceptive ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... impossible to break through these chains of propriety, of neatness, of order. Would anybody in this trim household care in the very least whether the old Irishman broke his heart or not? whether he and the Irish girl had to go forth from the home of their ancestors? whether the wild, beautiful, rack-rent sort of place was kept in the family ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... it a thought; if you haven't, it's the devil! It's like health—no one who hasn't been on the wrong side of the dividing line knows what a horrible place the wrong side is. Those two things—I daresay there are others—poverty and ill-health—put a man on the rack. The healthy man, and the man with a sufficient income, are apt to think that the poor man and the ill man make a great fuss about very little. I don't know about ill-health, but by George, I know all about poverty—and I'll tell you once for all. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... There was a trig two-wheeled trap with a smart horse and harness, and both Rolfe and Berenice were possessed of the latest novelty of the day—low-wheeled bicycles, which had just then superseded the old, high-wheel variety. For Berenice, also, was a music-rack full of classic music and song collections, a piano, a shelf of favorite books, painting-materials, various athletic implements, and several types of Greek dancing-tunics which she had designed herself, including sandals and fillet ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... behaviour—not so could any addition be made to the awfulness of the fact that the eye of God was upon us—but witnesses to the truth, people who did what God wanted them to do, come of it what might, whether a crown or a rack, scoffs or applause; to behold whose witnessing might well rouse all that was human and divine in us to chose our part with them and their Lord.—When I came home, I had an early dinner, and then betook myself to my Saturday's resort.—I ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald



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