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Rack   Listen
noun
Rack  n.  
1.
An instrument or frame used for stretching, extending, retaining, or displaying, something. Specifically:
(a)
An engine of torture, consisting of a large frame, upon which the body was gradually stretched until, sometimes, the joints were dislocated; formerly used judicially for extorting confessions from criminals or suspected persons. "During the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political necessity."
(b)
An instrument for bending a bow.
(c)
A grate on which bacon is laid.
(d)
A frame or device of various construction for holding, and preventing the waste of, hay, grain, etc., supplied to beasts.
(e)
A frame on which articles are deposited for keeping or arranged for display; as, a clothes rack; a bottle rack, etc.
(f)
(Naut.) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes; called also rack block. Also, a frame to hold shot.
(g)
(Mining) A frame or table on which ores are separated or washed.
(h)
A frame fitted to a wagon for carrying hay, straw, or grain on the stalk, or other bulky loads.
(i)
A distaff.
2.
(Mech.) A bar with teeth on its face, or edge, to work with those of a wheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive it or be driven by it.
3.
That which is extorted; exaction. (Obs.)
Mangle rack. (Mach.) See under Mangle. n.
Rack block. (Naut.) See def. 1 (f), above.
Rack lashing, a lashing or binding where the rope is tightened, and held tight by the use of a small stick of wood twisted around.
Rack rail (Railroads), a toothed rack, laid as a rail, to afford a hold for teeth on the driving wheel of a locomotive for climbing steep gradients, as in ascending a mountain.
Rack saw, a saw having wide teeth.
Rack stick, the stick used in a rack lashing.
To be on the rack, to suffer torture, physical or mental.
To live at rack and manger, to live on the best at another's expense. (Colloq.)
To put to the rack, to subject to torture; to torment. "A fit of the stone puts a king to the rack, and makes him as miserable as it does the meanest subject."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... walked naked to and fro, knowing the unknowable, and conscious strangely of experience, intimate but inexpressible, of the absolute. And without surprise, in that blue sky, real with a reality that not the eye but the soul confesses, with its rack of light clouds driven by strange breezes, like the cries and the sighs of lost souls, you saw the Blessed Virgin with a gown of red and a cloak of blue, surrounded by winged angels. Philip felt that the inhabitants of that city would have seen the apparition ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... 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 accomplish ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... will pierce; neglect will wound; threatened evils will make the soul quiver; sharp pain or weariness will rack the body, or make it restless. But what says the Psalmist? "When my heart is vexed, I will complain." To whom? Not ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... an anxious bray from the fourth member of the party. The mule bearing the trail pack was in ludicrous contrast to his own aristocratic companions. His long head, with one entirely limp and flopping ear, was grotesquely ugly, the carcass beneath the pack a bone rack, all sharp angles and dusty hide. Looks, however, as his master could have ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... 1st, A refrigerator which is provided with movable racks, H, within cooling chambers which are arranged beneath an ice chamber, B, constructed with inclined walls, a a a, a drip pan, D, and an ice-supporting rack, c, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... of this country, particularly those of Kaskaskias; it may be proper here to give a description of the mode in which these wines are racked, which will be found simple, effectual, and expeditious; I mean for the lower or ground tiers. The upper, or more elevated ones, rack themselves, without coercion of any kind. When you are about to rack a hogshead of wine upon the ground tier, you place your empty hogshead close to the full one, in which you then put your brass racking cock; on the nozzle of which cock ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... You verged on—well, notoriety. You may laugh, but that's the reason. Mallinson's always on the rack of other people's opinions—judges himself by what he imagines to be their standard of him. Acquaintanceship with a celebrity lifts him in their eyes, he thinks, so really ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason

... white-whiskered fox-master laid the bullets before Albert's uncle, and I felt this would be a trial to his faith far worse than the rack or the thumb-screw in the days of ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... the railway carriage immediately opposite Clovis was a solidly wrought travelling-bag, with a carefully written label, on which was inscribed, "J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough." Immediately below the rack sat the human embodiment of the label, a solid, sedate individual, sedately dressed, sedately conversational. Even without his conversation (which was addressed to a friend seated by his side, and touched chiefly on such topics ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... their brief but brilliant career, there was in training a nobler and hardier race of seamen, from whose hands the helm would not so soon be wrested. The pirates of the Baltic were wrestling with the storms of the wild Cattegat and braving the sleety squalls of the Skager Rack, stretching far out from the land to colonize Iceland and the Faroes, to plant a mysteriously lost nation in Eastern Greenland, and to leave strange traces of themselves by the vine-clad shores of Narraganset Bay. For, first of all nations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... nachelly gwine to rack an' ruin! Zack ain' got no moh sense 'bout takin' cyare of a house den ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... 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 ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... what hideous injustice they enrich themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout you from their presence. The wealthy corporations owning these street car lines in New York see that their drivers and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen hours every day of the week, including Sundays; but when a bill is brought into the State Legislature to limit the daily working hours to twelve, they order their hired agents of the lobby to defeat it. These gamblers of Wall street know that their gains are mainly ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... ready to go up. All the details of the make-up had been completed, and the company settled down as the leader of the small, hired orchestra tapped significantly upon his music rack with his baton and began the soft curtain-raising strain. Hurstwood ceased talking, and went with Drouet and his friend Sagar Morrison around ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... I could do it," she whispered, studying with eager eyes the open book on the music rack. "I—I'm going to try, anyhow!" she ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... those two ladies not neglect a whole or part of those matters, both important as well as unimportant, connected with the inner and outer quarters? Would I not at present have to worry my own mind, instead of leaving things to others? Why, I'd daily have to rack my brain and go and ask them to give me whatever I might need! Of those girls, who've come to my quarters and those who've gone, there only remains this single one. She's, besides other respects, somewhat older in years, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... I am a twister of words; I torture language by trade. You know it, for you have known me a long time, and, if you will pardon my vanity, or rudeness, I observe that my mode of putting the dictionary on the rack amuses you. The fact that you ask for a story shows that well enough. I am a plain man, and there never was any poetry in me, but I have seen it in other people, and I understand why some persons like it. As for stories, I have plenty of them. I, Paul Griggs, have ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... with sympathetic woe, Awake the sigh, and teach the tear to flow; To put on frenzy's wild, distracted glare, And freeze the soul with horror and despair; With just desert enroll'd in endless fame, Conscious of worth superior, Cibber[63] came. When poor Alicia's madd'ning brains are rack'd, And strongly imaged griefs her mind distract, Struck with her grief, I catch the madness too, My brain turns round, the headless trunk I view! 790 The roof cracks, shakes, and falls—new horrors rise, And Reason buried in the ruin ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... jovial swain may rack his brain, And tax his fancy's might; To quiz is vain, for 'tis most plain That what ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... woods bayed the fierce, famished timber wolf. The lighter but more doleful howl of coyote seemed to reply from every point of the compass. And amidst the rack of savage chorus came the harsh human voice that had little the better of the animal world in the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... covers the explosive known as Hellhoffite, and No. 2 is really oxonite, and No. 4 resembles rack-a-rock, an explosive invented by Mr S.R. Divine, and consisting of a mixture of chlorate of potash and nitro- benzol. Roburite, bellite, and securite should perhaps be regarded as belonging to the Sprengel class of ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... with a wand—to the boulder, she sternly commanded, "Come, then, and sit here upon this rock; and give to me an account of all that thou hast done since I left thee in the rose garden or I will split thy ears and stretch thy soul upon a torture rack of ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... Dillon hurried out to the waiting automobile. Both stopped only to take coats and caps from the rack in the hall. ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... frightened Frenchwoman dared not speak or move. She watched him with that impersonal fear so readily aroused in one of her class by the terrifying spectacle of a strong man in his agony. At last he moved listlessly, as though his limbs had just been released from the rack. He held the letter under the lamp again and read it a second time, word for word. He seemed to be forcing himself to accept it as truth. This young King, so valiant, so resourceful, so prompt in action and judgment, could devise no plan, no means of rescue from the abyss. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... replaced a pen that had slipped from a rack on his desk. "He is not an acquaintance of mine," he said. "I only know him as a friend of ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... where one could write to her mother; it was unlikely that even Ellie would go off without assuring some means of communication with her child. At any rate, there was nothing to be done that night: nothing but to work out the details of their flight on the morrow, and rack her brains to find a substitute for the hospitality they were rejecting. Susy did not disguise from herself how much she had counted on the Vanderlyn apartment for the summer: to be able to do so had singularly simplified the future. She knew Ellie's largeness of hand, and had been ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... the bone of some Catholic Saint (?) and admonish the followers of Catholicism to touch this bone, or to kiss it, and declare to them that by so doing they will become entirely cured of any malady that may rack their person with misery. ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... nor speak; they are all foolish and all mad, and they return swearing, beating and giving the lie to each other.'—Op. cit., I, pp. 47-8. The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and gamblers.—See ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... reign of Marcus Antoninus, was apprehended in a desert, and brought before Torquatus, governor of Umbria, then residing at Spoletto, about the year 178. The martyr, paying no regard to his promises or threats, in the first interrogatory was beaten with clubs, and in the second was hung on the rack, but in the height of his torments he cheerfully sang: "Glory be to thee, Lord Jesus!" Three days after, two soldiers were sent by Torquatus, to behead him in the dungeon, unless he would offer sacrifice to an idol, which a priest who accompanied them carried with him for this purpose. The ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... independence; and his example, for he was a notable man even in private life, did much to solidify and strengthen those who leaned to that cause. When the British troops marched from the coast into Upper Georgia, Elijah thought the time had come to take his gun from the rack over the door, and make at least some show of resistance. His courage, and the firmness and decision of his character, made him the natural leader of those of his neighbors whose sympathies were with the Liberty Boys in other parts of the State, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... were tame pleasures; she would often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin's back Ride singing through the shoreless air;—oft-time 485 Following the serpent lightning's winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, And laughed to hear ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... third day Jud Carpenter came out to see about it; but at sight of him the old man took down from the rack over the hall door the rifle he had carried through the war, and with a determined gesture he stopped the employment agent at the gate: "I am a man of God, Jud Carpenter," he said in a strange voice, rounded with a deadly determination, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... Christmas, and all over the Christian world arose paeans of praise for the birth of the Saviour. The sufferer was conscious of the fact, and a sweet smile played upon her lips, as she thought of Jesus—that he had lived and died for her. Pain, that could rack the bones and triumph over the weak body, was powerless to subdue the loving, trusting spirit, that reposed gently on Him who has invited the weary to a present and an ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... rotten fog and mist about your reputation and so turn even your good and gracious actions to evil seeming that—I swear and vow, O most high Sovereign, for whom I have risked, as you wot, life, limb and the fell rack——"' ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... a gray-headed old gentleman to open the door for her—how handsome and bright and alert she looked, as she smiled her acknowledgment! The old gentleman looked back once or twice—even old fogeys have eyes for a pretty woman—but Mrs. Blake was too busy arranging her parcels in the rack to notice the ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to her, taking her into it all. He told her the story of how it happened, the long, hard story which only covered days, but seemed to extend through years. He told of those hours of the day and night on the rack of uncertainty, of trying with the force of mind and soul to banish that thing which had not claimed him then, but stood there beside him, not retreating,—waiting. He told her of that lecture hour Monday morning when he literally divided himself into two parts, one ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... obliged to depose on oath their knowledge of persons worshipping as Dissenters, on penalty of fine, imprisonment, banishment, transportation, and of being sold as slaves. Persecutions of former times were surpassed, the thumbscrew and the boot were used as mild punishments, the rack dislocated the limbs of those who respected conscience, and the stake consumed their bodies to ashes. Villagers were driven to the mountains, and eighteen thousand Dissenters perished, not counting those who were accused of rebellion. He was "a man of words," ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... will add, they wounded 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 to have chopped him all ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... in a curious bout of silence. He took a pipe from a rack, filled it leisurely with tobacco, lit it and smoked for several moments. Then he turned towards his ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Mr. Billings waited and waited. And what was the conversation of his worthy parents inside the garden? I cannot say; but one of the waiters declared that he had served the great foreign Count with two bowls of rack-punch, and some biscuits, in No. 3: that in the box with him were first a young gentleman, who went away, and a lady, splendidly dressed and masked: that when the lady and his Lordship were alone, she edged ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a wide couch heaped with bright cushions, drawn close to an open casement. There was a fire of logs, crackling cheerily in the wide fireplace: there were their own belongings—photographs, books, his own pipe-rack and tobacco-jar: there were flowers everywhere, smiling a greeting. Tea-cups and silver sparkled on a white-cloth; a copper kettle bubbled over a spirit-lamp. And there were his own people clinging round him, welcoming, ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... produce a puzzle of some kind, but without effect. The poor fellow tried his best to follow the examples of his friends the Tapiser, the Weaver, and the Haberdasher; but the necessary idea would not come, rack his brains as he would. All things, however, come to those who wait—and persevere—and one morning he announced, in a state of considerable excitement, that he had a poser to set before them. He brought out a square piece of silk on which were embroidered ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... then, think that it can befall a wise man to be oppressed with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... Matt gets hold of something new, you can be sure the discovery isn't a new kind of can-opener or patent towel-rack that can be 'stolen.' His ideas are safe for the simple reason that there probably aren't more than four other scientists on earth capable of even dimly comprehending them. All you and I can do—whatever this may turn out to ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... respectable chemist," and went into details generally with much energy. Nor had he anything to complain of in the way of unfair dealing in Mr. Gregory Aglonby, who accompanied him and gave him the fullest and frankest particulars about the property, which he pointed out was going to rack and ruin, or rather had gone there. Every broken gate and stony field was dear to his heart, and it was a melancholy pilgrimage to him; but had not Mr. Aglonby said to him that morning, "Brother Gregory, the place must go,—there is no help for it,—and this gentleman seems likely to become ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... flashed field and hill and copse, and the dear "companionable hedgeways." Back flew iterative telegraph posts with Herculean swing, into the Past, looped together in rhythmic movement, marking the pulses of old Time. On, with rack and roar, into the mysterious Future. One could sit at the window and watch the machinery of Time's foundry at work; the hammers of his forge beating, beating, the wild sparks flying, the din and chaos whirling round one's bewildered brain;—Past ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... most important forces of the Oligarchy, continued to call in credits. The Wall Street* group turned the stock market into a maelstrom where the values of all the land crumbled away almost to nothingness. And out of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent Oligarchy, imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its serenity and certitude was terrifying. Not only did it use its own vast power, but it used all the power of the United States Treasury to ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... loved was gone, hurriedly, without a word to her. There remained the Margerisons; Peter, with his friendly smile and gentle companionableness; Hilary, worried and weary and hardly noticing her unobtrusive presence; Silvio, Caterina, and Illuminato sucking gingerbread and tumbling off the rack, and Peggy, on whose broad shoulder Rhoda suddenly laid her head and wept, all ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... foretop-man solemnly, "I have wondered why the Lard saw good to take my legs to Himsalf. Rack'n I knaw now." He reached out a huge hand, gripped the little rifleman and pulled him closer. "There's nawthin cut to waste in this world," he whispered huskily. "And it's my belieft He's been savin of em up this ten year past agin this day—to put the strength of em into your'n, Jack Knapp. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... between the two ports was occupied by a rack, on which were arranged with much taste, a number of richly-embossed arms, pistols, swords, and daggers—and against the bulkhead was another stand, filled with muskets and ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... of impending death darkened the house of the King. In the horrible agony of the rack the old jester confessed. Stripped of his cap and bells, crowned with a wreath of blood, he looked so pathetically funny that the Princess Marigold could not help laughing ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... Moodie cursed in his heart Lord Strathern's fatuity and the facile disposition Lady Mabel had so unexpectedly betrayed. But, though sorely troubled, he was not a man to despair. He resolved to watch L'Isle closely, and to rack his own invention for some way to foil his schemes, while taking care not to betray the least ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... was not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. "There is Henry de Spain's coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you'll find his belt of cartridges. Don't ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... redemptor, and preceded by two familiars of the Holy Office, the latter carrying lanterns, made their way to a subterranean dungeon. The bolt of a massive door creaked, and they entered a mephitic in-pace, where the dim light revealed between rings fastened to the wall a bloodstained rack, a brazier, and a jug. On a pile of straw, loaded with fetters and his neck encircled by an iron carcan, sat a haggard man, of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... Navarre, who, having nothing but the title, had advanced to Niort in order to lend a hand to the afflicted and to affairs in general. This old man, worn down by fever, endured all these causes of anguish and many others that came to rack him more painfully than his grievous wound. As he was being borne along in a litter, Lestrange, an old nobleman, and one of his principal counsellors, travelling in similar fashion, and wounded likewise, had his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... saw him move from Group to Group along the Hitch Rack on Saturday afternoon, shaking hands with the Rustics and applying the Ointment, remarked that Ves was a young man of Rare Promise and could not be held back from the Pay-Roll for ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... whit worse—nay, not so bad—as many civilised human devils, who, in times not long past, and under the cloak of religion, have torn men and tender women limb from limb, and bound them at the stake, and tortured them on the rack, in order to make them swallow a ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... from the desert! My wilds do not hold him; Pale thirst doth not rack, Nor the sand-storm enfold him. The death-gale pass'd by And his breath failed to smother, Yet ne'er shall he wake To the voice of his mother Alas! for the white man! o'er deserts a ranger, No more shall we welcome ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... refusing the honor offered me? That you would make of me a contemptible helpless puppet, a target for your feminine wit, a booby whom you could tease and taunt as much as you liked, whom you could torment and put on the rack until you had driven him mad. (He has risen from the sofa.) Say yourself, Helen; what choice was left to me? (She stares at him, then turns her eyes about helplessly, shudders and struggles for an answer.) In such a case I face just this alternative:—to make an enemy who despises me or—to ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... leisurely gentlemen, giving their victims plenty of time for anticipatory meditation, laying out their utensils quietly, inspecting the thumb-screw affectionately to make sure that it would work smoothly, discussing the rack and wheel with much tender forethought, as though torture were a sweet thing, to be reserved like a little girl's candy lamb, and only resorted to when the appetite has been duly whetted by contemplation. I never had the pleasure of knowing an inquisitor, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... can effect may be accomplished at the focus of invisible rays; the air at the focus remaining at the same time perfectly cold, on account of its transparency to the heat-rays. An air thermometer, with a hollow rack-salt bulb, would be unaffected by the heat of the focus: there would be no expansion, and in the open air there is no convection. The aether at the focus, and not the air, is the substance in which the heat is embodied. A block of wood, placed at the focus, absorbs the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Say, does Heaven degrade The manly frame, for health, for action made? Break down the sinews, rack the brow with pains, Blanch the right cheek and drain the purple veins, To clothe the mind with more extended sway, Thus ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of a wife may have the whole house to herself. I won't even give her the pleasure of supposing that she has thwarted me. She shall never even suspect the state of my heart. That would be bliss indeed to one like her, for then she would find herself able to put me on the rack. No, my boy; I've thought it all over. Scone Dacres is himself again. No more nonsense now. Do you understand now ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... noble only by the sexton's spade? Awake the Present! Though the steel-clad age Find life alone within the storied page, Iron is worn, at heart, by many still— The tyrant Custom binds the serf-like will; If the sharp rack, and screw, and chain be gone, These later days have tortures of their own; The guiltless writhe, while Guilt is stretched in sleep, And Virtue lies, too often, dungeon deep. Awake the Present! what the Past has sown Be in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown! How pride breeds ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... village communities, or conciliating the affections of the cultivators, whom they never saw or wished to see; and they let out the village, or other subdivision of their estates, to second parties quite as little interested, who again let them out to others, so that the system of rack-renting went on over the whole area of the immense possession. This was a system 'more honoured in the breach than in the observance'; for, as the great landholders became involved in the ruin of their cultivators, their estates were sold for ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... fevers rack my brain And rude disorders mutilate my strength, A perfect restoration after pain, I know shall be my recompense at length. And so through grievous day and sleepless night, "Health, health," I cry, "it is my ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... White Penitents buried the body with great ceremony, and performed a solemn service for the deceased as a martyr; the Franciscans followed their example; and these formalities led to the popular belief in the guilt of the unhappy family. Being all condemned to the rack in order to extort confession, they appealed to the parlement; but this body, being as weak as the subordinate magistrates, sentenced the father to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to be broken ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... 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 ...
— 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

... by, when they found themselves seated alone in a third-class compartment, she forgot her promise, being lost in wonder at this funny mode of travelling. She examined the parcels' rack overhead. ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... shown the Electric Heater. This heater is especially designed to dry quickly the test pieces for use in connection with the Scalometer (see Fig. 100) without charring them. It may be attached to any electric light socket of 110 volts direct or alternating current. A metal rack is provided to hold the ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... scudding over the steppe, and beating upon the rampart of the Caucasian heights until their backbone seems to be bellying like a huge sail, and the earth to be whirling and whizzing through unfathomable depths of blue, and leaving behind it a rack of wind-torn clouds which, as their shadows glide over the surface of the land, seem ever to be striving to keep in touch with the onrush of the gale, and, failing to maintain the effort, dissolving ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... you lead her up to the hitching-rack while you were there? Somebody else is likely to pick your plum while your ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... sat uneasily at her own board clutching at a thin fragment of cold dry toast that hung cheerlessly awry in the silver rack, like the last brown leaf to a frosty tree, while she crunched the toast, spoke dryly of the poor; of how 'interesting many of them are;' how when you take the trouble to understand them, you no longer lump them all together in a featureless misery, ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... is flitting before him. She pauses. She stands By his bedside all silent. She lays her white hands On the brow of the boy. A light finger is pressing Softly, softly the sore wounds: the hot blood-stain'd dressing Slips from them. A comforting quietude steals Through the rack'd weary frame; and, throughout it, he feels The slow sense of a merciful, mild neighborhood. Something smooths the toss'd pillow. Beneath a gray hood Of rough serge, two intense tender eyes are bent o'er him, And thrill ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... a small quantity of berries or fruit to can use a deep saucepan with a tight-fitting cover and a few slats of wood. This rack is absolutely necessary to keep the contents of the jars from becoming overheated. Even if they should not break there is a tendency for part of the contents to escape under the cover and be lost. Do not use hay, old clothes, ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... ceiling, painted on the blade with the arms of an Oxford college. There was a small prie-dieu, surmounted by a crucifix of Ober-Ammergau workmanship: there was a mahogany writing-table with a revolving chair set before it; there were a couple of deep padded arm-chairs, a pipe-rack, and a row of photographs—his mother in evening dress, a couple of sisters, with other well-bred-looking relations. Altogether, with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, it was exactly the kind of room that such a wholesome young man ought to have ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... Those hands, how white they are in the moonlight.' He took her hands. 'Why do you trouble and rack your soul about painting? A woman's hands are too beautiful for a palette ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... the willows and some one to come back with the mule to carry forward the portion of meat that could not be taken at first. We intended to dry it at the willows, and then we could carry it along as daily food over the wide plain we had yet to cross. Having carried the meat forward, we made a rack of willows and dried it over the fire, making up a lot of moccasins for the barefooted ones while we waited. We were over most of the rocky road, we calculated that our shoemaking would last us through. This was a very pleasant camp. The tired ones were taking a rest. No one needed ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... I believe the rack would not make me truthful like you, Laetitia—well, has it ever struck you: remember, I do see his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is attractive, he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you . . ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stand stock still with you in Trafalgar Square in the midst of the traffic while you ask me silly riddles, but not if you persist in bringing with you that absurd umbrella. You are too handy with it. Put it back in the rack before we start, or go ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... committee of one," she resumed, "to say that the Ladies' Aid Society have voted unanimously that they want you to preach on hell. The Church is goin' to rack and ruin, and we ain't goin' to stand it no longer. Even the disreputable characters will walk right in and stay all through the sermon—Andy Rogers and the rest. And I was particularly requested to ask whether you wished to have us understand ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... in the possession of the great seal under that scandal of kingship, Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith, "if, from this ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct As water is ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freer, till thou wake refresh'd, Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl [6] Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair green field and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... for judges. The general played thus, he replied with such a card, Padre Irene had a certain card; he led, and then that fool of a Padre Irene didn't play his card! Padre Irene was giving the game away! It was a devil of a way to play! His mother's son had not come here to rack his brains for nothing and lose ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... the bosom friend and disciple of Anne Askew. And she had sat in Smithfield, with blood curdled by horror, to see the hapless Court beauty, a month before the paragon of Henry's Court, carried in a chair (so crippled was she by the rack) to her fiery doom at the stake, beside her fellow-courtier, Mr. Lascelles, while the very heavens seemed to the shuddering mob around to speak their wrath and grief in solemn thunder peals, and heavy drops which hissed upon ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... 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 of a dangerous fit of folly, there were always ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... able,—nursed him, kept him covered, watched over his slumbers, sometimes held him in my arms at the rough places of the road. 'Champdivers,' he once said, 'you are like a son to me—like a son.' It is good to remember, though at the time it put me on the rack. All was to no purpose. Fast as we were travelling towards France, he was travelling faster still to another destination. Daily he grew weaker and more indifferent. An old rustic accent of Lower Normandy ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the top-masts, strike the lower yards, and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer hover around us, but everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes of the mountain, the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as though in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth are showered down like ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... saw that ravenous look of his I almost died for fear he'd make a rush at me— Lord, how he did scare me, how he kept grinding his teeth! In he came and tugged down the meat, rack and all—grabbed a knife and lopped the choice bits off three necks of pork—and smashed every pot and tureen that didn't hold a peck ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... the black ray projector alertly covering the men, he strode over to a closed metal door in the wall just beyond them. He took a small tube from a rack beside it and opened the door by sending a flash of yellow light into the ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells

... of esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... if it don't!" he agreed sympathetically, mentally going over his rack of tires, not quite sure that he had four in that size, but hoping that he had five and that he could persuade the man to invest. He surely needed rubber, thought Casey, as he scrutinized the two casings on the car. He stood ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... necessary supplies may be kept. Two or more sizes of note paper, unruled, with envelopes to match, for the elders of the household; writing tablets and commercial note, together with plain envelopes, for the school-children and everyday uses; a good dictionary, a tray with pen rack and inkstand thereon, and a goodly supply of pens, will complete a corner that will do more toward the family education in good breeding and culture than any other expenditure that can be made, and will render letter-writing ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... know how to," replied Miss Hitty. "I don't know but what everything will go to rack while I'm away. My help is dreadful poor,—I can't calculate for her noway. I shouldn't wonder if she was settin' in the keepin'-room this minute, looking ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... hour they sat in council, 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. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door, but a gentle tap! "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... siege, Barneveld, and other distinguished personages, over whom Count Maurice presided. The accused were subjected to an impartial trial. Without torture, they confessed their guilt. It is true, however, that Cosmo was placed within sight of the rack. He avowed that his object had been to place the city under the authority of Leicester, and to effect this purpose, if possible, without bloodshed. He declared that the attempt was to be made with the full knowledge and approbation ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Enoch, with a wide smile, "I have a new gelding I'd like to try out, to-morrow morning. If you'll join me at seven-thirty on that rack of bones you call a bay mare, I'll tell you ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... you, disease of the Bladder. I had always supposed he would be found dead one good morning, as my Mother was—as I hoped to be—quietly dead of the Heart which he had felt for several Years. But no; it is seen good that he shall be laid on the Rack—which he may feel the more keenly as he never suffered Pain before, and is not of a strong Nerve. I will say no more of this. The funeral Bell, which has been at work, as I never remember before, all this winter, is even now, as I write, tolling ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... though different forms of hat May wreathe my manly brow, No Straw shall e'er (be sure of that) Be half so dear as thou. Hang then upon thy native rack As varying modes compel, Till next year's fashions bring thee ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... well! I pity AEgon. His cattle, go they must To rack and ruin, all because vain-glory was his lust. The pipe that erst he fashioned is doubtless ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus

... and striking effects. Among his novels the best known are: Antonina, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, The Moonstone, and Man and Wife. There is a sameness in these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the beginning to ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... place and greatness, millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests Upon thy doings! Thousand 'stapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dream, And rack thee ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... eating themselves away even whilst we look, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are there but for a moment—that is perennial. If we are wise, we shall fix our gaze much rather on the blue than on the ugly cloud-rack that hides it, and thus shall minister to ourselves occasions for the noble kind of joy which is not noisy and boisterous, 'like the crackling of thorns under a pot,' and does not foam itself away by its very ebullience, but is calm like the grounds of it; still, like the heaven to which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... the entry into a square little room, evidently the parlor of the home. It was dusty and disorderly. The center-table of fine old mahogany was littered with pipes and newspapers. A patent rocker was doing duty as a clothes rack for hats and coats. A mahogany desk was almost indistinguishable under a clutter of doll's furniture. The sunset glow pouring through the window disclosed rolls of dust on ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... may rack us, or party divide us, And bitterness break the gold links of our story, Our father and leader is ever beside us. Live, and forgive! But forget not the glory Of him whose height we try for, A name to live and die for— The ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... her, but rack her brains as she would, no way of working her will occurred to her. Yet if she once lost sight of Pattie, small chance of ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh

... a long time reading this Will; at last he took half a sheet of paper from the rack, and made a prolonged pencil note; then buttoning up the Will, he caused a cab to be called and drove to the offices of Paramor and Herring, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Jack Herring was dead, but his nephew was still in the firm, and old Jolyon was closeted ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... angry glances, and at last by contemptuous murmurs. Seged likewise shared the anxiety of the day, for considering himself as obliged to distribute with exact justice the prizes which had been so zealously sought, he durst never remit his attention, but passed his time upon the rack of doubt, in balancing different kinds of merit, and adjusting the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... for Betty, found her a carriage without company ("I can cry here if I like," said the Betty that Betty liked least), arranged her small packages neatly in the rack, took her 50 centime piece as though it had been a priceless personal souvenir, and ran half the length of the platform to get a rose from another porter's button-hole. He handed it to her through ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... not need to recall that song to remind me of you," he said in a low voice as he spread it on the music rack in front of her, "but I shall always feel its mood when I think ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... apparently with the view of elucidating the points of his case, but in fact for the purpose of estimating the "size of his pile," with the object of ascertaining to what extent he can be "bled." This essential information obtained, the quack at once sets his moral rack to work. Everything will be said not only to confirm the patient's fears, but to increase them. A pretended examination of urine will be made, and he will be gravely told that the quack's worst fears are confirmed, ocular demonstration ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... of the collection suggest the delusions of mysticism, and weep tears of blood; they are distressing to the ear and mind alike, for they are the passionate expression of a faith that puts itself on the rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... herself as she endeavoured to make her hearth and floor a little clean for the reception of her expected guests. Waverley's step made her start, look up, and fall a-trembling, so much had her nerves been on the rack for her patron's safety. With difficulty Waverley made her comprehend that the Baron was now safe from personal danger; and when her mind had admitted that joyful news, it was equally hard to make her believe that he was not to enter again upon possession of his estate. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... There had been some barley and wheat together; but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found several, cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters; and, in all, about five or six gallons of rack. These I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into the chest, nor any room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide begin to flow, though very calm; and I had the mortification to see my coat, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... the tunnel is very wonderful,' went on the lad, 'and I dare say it is necessary, but why, because there happens to be a tunnel inside the mountain, should this beautiful road be allowed to go to rack and ruin? That beats me!' and the boy looked round as if to request an explanation ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... had a new pair. These uppers are disgraceful for a professional man to wear. Number eights from the third rack, Vickey, please. ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse

... [65] "Nay, rack your brain—'tis all in vain, I'll tell you every thing I know; But to the Thorn, and to the Pond Which is a little step beyond, I wish that you would go: Perhaps, when you are at the place, You something of her ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... the dainty room still full of tokens of her presence. The piano stood open with a song he liked upon the rack; a bit of embroidery, whose progress he had often watched, lay in her basket with the little thimble near it; there was a strew of papers on the writing table, torn notes, scraps of drawing, and ball cards; a pearl-colored glove lay ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott

... photos from the rack and threw them into a pigeon hole. "Look here," he said, pointedly, "I wouldn't hurry you ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... He fell back in good order, and in the next second the name behind him made a break at me, when I caught him with my big three-pound pistol, splitting his head open; and next I made a lunge for the third man, cutting him over the forehead so that he fell through a rack of glass, and when he raised up I struck him with my head. The conductor and brakeman interfered and took the ruffians out. There was a quart of blood on the floor; and at the first station they sent out and procured sticking-plaster. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... energy. It then marked 3.20 in the morning. We had wedged Bastin, who was now snoring comfortably, into his berth, with pillows, and managed to tie a cord over him—no, it was a large bath towel, fixing one end of it to the little rack over his bed and the other to its framework. As for ourselves, we lay down on the floor between the table legs, which, of course, were screwed, and the settee, protecting ourselves as best we were able by help of the cushions, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... as Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and waved his ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... form of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle were giving me ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... received; but I had no sooner entered the hall than I perceived that something was very seriously wrong, for the furniture was all disarranged, one of the chairs was overturned, and, so far as I could see in the semi-obscurity, it appeared that Lestrange's guns were not in their usual places in the rack. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... that it was the only life open to an Orkney lad, yet she was ever anxious to delay its beginning, and at these words from her my father did not urge me further, but quietly watched me as I rose from the table and took from a rack over the window a small harpoon, the sharp point of which I tested by pressing ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... said, "but my butter-dish was doing itself proud. It had sneaked up to a magnificent toast-rack with stabling accommodation for about eight pieces, given by somebody with a title. And you ought to have seen the fish-slices. The fish-slices wore gorgeous. I expect William will spend a great part of his married ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... certain village of La Mancha, there lived one of those old-fashioned gentlemen who keep a lance in the rack, an ancient target, a lean horse, and a greyhound for coursing. His family consisted of a housekeeper turned forty, a niece not twenty, and a man who could saddle a horse, handle the pruning-hook, and also serve in the house. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... physically through lack of exercise when she could, through exercise, make herself strong. Even to abuse her feet, the important centre of many important nerves, by tight shoes, is wrong; so is it to rack her spine and upset or throw out of position all the delicate and wonderfully fashioned organs of the abdominal cavity by the wearing of high French heels. Undoubtedly, however, American motherhood and girlhood represent something ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks

... had unlocked a cupboard in the corner of the room. It was a well-filled gun-rack, and he was passing the Winchesters out to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... Bumpkin, on a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly, so as to make it last the longer, with tobacco from his leaden jar; and then, having lighted ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... of old Luke and such others as I could now see through the widening crack my hands unconsciously made in the doorway, told me that the rack was at work in this room so lately given up to revelry. Yet the mutterings, which from time to time came to my ears from one sullen lip or another, did not rise into frightened imprecation or even into any assertion of sorrow or contrition. It ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... Guy Faux, and ending with a recommendation that he should be tortured first gently, and then more severely as might be necessary. Then the depositions of Faux in the Tower, which had been taken down (contrary to his desire) in writing, and which he was compelled to sign upon the rack; his signature was written in faint and trembling characters, and his strength had evidently failed in the middle, for he had only written 'Guido.' There is a distinct admission in the Plot papers in Garnett's own hand that he came to a knowledge of the Plot otherwise than by ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... in that same room, Mrs. Wilson, going in to place some fresh towels upon the rack, found a huge book spread open on Miss Sophronia's bed. The book was number seven in the Reverend Thomas Wilson's most comprehensive encyclopedia; and it was open at the ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... one dive for a rack of arms and snatched down his old sword and ran out, drawing it as he ran. I dashed out and up the stairs, snatched my camera-flashlight and a heavy revolver, gave one yell at Parsket's door: 'The Horse!' and was down and ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... contempt in his silky voice, and Kid Wolf flushed under his tan. Hardy pretended to ignore the visitor completely. The faro dealer slid one card and then another from his box; the case keeper moved a button or two on his rack. Then the dealer raked in the winnings from the losers. The game was going on as usual. The gamblers, taking their cue from Jack Hardy, turned to their games again. It was as if Kid ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... chapter will be found a detailed description of the "delivery bed." Beside this bed, or near by, are to be found the rack on which are airing the necessary garments for the baby's reception—the receiving blanket and other requisites for the first bath—together with numerous other articles essential to ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... impatience, and then cautiously turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it forward, stepped into the room. "Reese," he said, softly, "its Holcombe. Are you here?" The room was dark except for the light from the hall, which shone dimly past him and fell upon a gun-rack hanging on the wall opposite. Holcombe hurried toward this and ran his hands over it, and passed on quickly from that to the mantel and the tables, stumbling over chairs and riding-boots as he groped about, and tripping on the skin of some animal that lay stretched upon the floor. ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... broken by the sounds of rude merriment in the hall below her sleeping-room, where the peasants were dancing. She was wont to say afterwards that this trivial episode had been one of her most painful experiences. Her nerves were on the rack, for she expected that some cruel trial awaited her at Urach. She was terribly weary from the long hours of wandering, and from cold and exposure; her pride had been galled by the gaping, laughing, jeering, mocking crowd ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... descend to my room. Have I yet described it? Nine feet six by seven wide by seven high At the for'ard end a bunk overtopped by two ports looking out upon the main deck. At the after end a settee over which is my book-case. A chest of drawers, a shelf, a mirror, a framed photograph, a bottle-rack, and a shaving-strop adorn the starboard bulkhead. A door, placed midway in the opposite side, is hung with many clothes. A curtain screens my slumbers, and a ventilator in the ceiling chills my toes when turned to the wind. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... in hand, was already in the aisle. Captain Dan, standing between the seats, was struggling to get the suitcase down from the rack above. It was a brand-new suitcase. Serena had declared that their other, the one which had accompanied them on various trips to Boston during the past eight years, was altogether too shabby. She had insisted on buying ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... she had a look of horror in her blue eyes; she belonged to a peasantry who believed in exorcising the fiend by the aid of the cross, and who not so very many generations before had driven him out of human bodies by rack and flame. ...
— Bebee • Ouida

... is business," Tyrrel answered, promptly, taking his cue with Celtic quickness. "Business that may be worth a good deal of money." Erasmus Walker pricked up his ears at that welcome sound, and let the pen drop quietly into the rack by his side. "Only I'm afraid I must ask for a quarter of an hour or so of your valuable time. You will not find it thrown away. You can name your own price ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... which was very brisk and gay, was over, and Captain Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some of the rack-punch that is so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was called and discharged by Pen with great generosity,—"loike a foin young English gentleman of th' olden toime, be Jove," Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as, when they went out of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray



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