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Rack   Listen
verb
Rack  v. t.  
1.
To extend by the application of force; to stretch or strain; specifically, to stretch on the rack or wheel; to torture by an engine which strains the limbs and pulls the joints. "He was racked and miserably tormented."
2.
To torment; to torture; to affect with extreme pain or anguish. "Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair."
3.
To stretch or strain, in a figurative sense; hence, to harass, or oppress by extortion. "The landlords there shamefully rack their tenants." "They (landlords) rack their rents an ace too high." "Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof." "Try what my credit can in Venice do; That shall be racked even to the uttermost."
4.
(Mining) To wash on a rack, as metals or ore.
5.
(Naut.) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
To rack one's brains or To rack one's brains out or To rack one's wits, to exert one's thinking processes to the utmost for the purpose of accomplishing something; as, I racked my brains out trying to find a way to solve the problem.
Synonyms: To torture; torment; rend; tear.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... "You girls can talk if you don't make too much noise. Loud talking always keeps me awake. You may call me when we get to Overton." With these words she bent over her bag, opened it, and drew out a small down cushion. She rose in her seat, removed her hat, and, poking it into the rack above her head, sat down. Arranging her pillow to her complete satisfaction, she rested her head against it, closed her eyes and within five minutes was oblivious ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... clothes-dealer's window, and Mr. Pisgah, wearing a common blouse, a cap, and coarse hide shoes, repaired to the nearest wine-shop, and drank a dead man's portion of absinthe at the zinc counter. Then he returned to his own hotel, but as he reached to the rack for his key, the landlady laid her hand upon it and shook ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... years," he said, "and there would not have been a cottage habitable on the estate, nor a farm worth cultivating. He did absolutely nothing beyond collecting the rents. He let the whole place go to rack and ruin. The first day I arrived I sent him out of the house, with a talking to that he won't forget as long as ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... expressions of genuine feeling, which he was simply incapable of assimilating to the prevailing tone of the book, that of a novela picaresca. His determination to be original and to tell the truth, to avoid all padding and second-hand ideas, kept him on the rack; yet he persevered, working hard at the Life with intervals of discouragement for no less than six years. "Lavengro" eventually appeared, in three volumes, in February, 1851, and was received not merely with coldness and unconcern, but with hostile carping and even derision. ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe

... to triumph when your arguments are unopposed. Allow me to reason for a few moments in my turn. Can you pretend that what you call the happiness of virtue is exempt from troubles, and crosses, and cares? By what name will you designate the dungeon, the rack, the inflections and tortures of tyrants? Will you say with the Mystics[1] that the soul derives pleasure from the torments of the body? You are not bold enough to hold such a doctrine—a paradox not to be maintained. This happiness, then, that you prize so much, ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... divined in these toy-like interiors. The regulations prescribed the arrangement of the "bunks," blankets folded, knapsacks laid at the head of the bed, accoutrements burnished until, at first sight, the four guns in the rack seemed to be a mirror for the orderly spirit of this thrifty grot. The shining plates, cups, and spoons, would have done no discredit to the most energetic, housewife, as they hung from pegs either above the bunks or along the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... head between his hands. "You make me see that there are two sides to the question, Selma. It is true that I was not myself when Elton got my promise to sign the bill. My mind had been on the rack for weeks, and I was unfit to form a correct estimate of a complicated public measure. But a promise is ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... Henceforward he could go backward and forward by day or night, no one would ever mention his name. They all knew now that he was an agent of the Servian and Montenegrin heroes of the insurrection, and the rack would not have extorted information from them. He became a sacred personage in their eyes. In this way, in order to hide himself in darkness, he deceived every one with whom he exchanged a word. The fishermen ferried over the cases at night, and ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... made no further pretences to himself. It was Jane herself, and not the spirit of her sex dwelling in her body, which he desired. A tardy heritage of passion at times rejuvenated him and at others stretched him upon the rack. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... She saw that without revealing her entire scheme—hers and Ruth's—she could make no headway with George. And if she did reveal it he would sternly veto it. So she gave up that direction. She went upstairs; George took his hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door. As he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from one of the hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands in lap, her whole attitude intensely still, was ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... in the Charterhouse; Oliver Clisson turn'd these years agone; The Captal died in prison; and, over all, Edward the prince lies underneath the ground, Edward the king is dead, at Westminster The carvers smooth the curls of his long beard. Everything goes to rack—eh! and we too. Now, Curzon, listen; if they come, these French, Whom have I got to lean on here, but you? A man can die but once, will you die then, Your brave sword in your hand, thoughts in your heart Of all the deeds we have done here in France— ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... Strozzi, who was regarded as the leader of the anti-Cosimo party, was taken prisoner and cast into the fortress of San Giovanni. Apparently his aim was not a restoration of a Papal nominee to the Headship of the State, but his own advancement to that position. He was put on the rack, and eventually done ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... the streets of Paris! What was St. Helena to the bitterness of such existence? The visions of past glory might illumine even that dark-imprisonment; but to be conscious that his supernatural energies might die away without creating their miracles: can the wheel or the rack rival the torture of such a suspicion? Lo! Byron bending o'er his shattered lyre, with inspiration in his very rage. And the pert taunt could sting even this child of light! To doubt of the truth of the creed in which you have been ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... pity— What is joy to them, to me is torture. Now am I rack'd with pains that far exceed Those agonies, which fabling Priests relate, The damn'd endure: The shock of hopeless Love, Unblest with any views to sooth ambition, Rob me of all my reas'ning faculties. Arsaces gains Evanthe, fills the throne, While I ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... will be sufficiently comprehensible to all who are familiar with the disgust and aversion in which the paramours of the evil one were held in that age, so that even upon the rack these subjects were ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... saying, in 1631, "Treat the heads of the church, the judges, or me, as you treat those unhappy ones [accused of witchcraft], subject any of us to the same tortures, and you will discover that we are all sorcerers."[550] He quoted an inquisitor who boasted that if he could get the pope on the rack he would prove him a sorcerer.[551] In the thirteenth century "judges were well convinced of the failure of the procedure with its secret and subjective elements, but they could not in any other way ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... time and took the tray from her with a smile. It was a smile of ashen hue, and fell like a pall upon Marcia's soul. It was as if she had been permitted for a moment to gaze upon a martyred soul upon the rack. Marcia fled from it and went to her own room, where she flung herself on her knees beside her bed and buried her face in the pillows. There she knelt, unmindful of the dinner waiting downstairs, unmindful of the bright day that was droning on its hours. Whether she prayed she knew not, whether ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... warm, however, and sent her fancy flying southward again. She was growing impatient to get on when, to her surprise, a porter hovering in the corridor with a large dressing-bag plumped it into the rack beside her own. Mary started. Could it be possible that any one else had a right to come in ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... were Jack, Walter, Ed and some others of their chums, piled up on a veritable hay rack, and they wore all sorts of farmer clothes. The hay rack evidently set upon the body of ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose

... disappeared on the instant, and as I moved toward the door, I stumbled over something soft that mewed miserably. In a second I had it in my arms,—a rack of bones covered with muddy, tangled gray ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... paintings. It has also a famous library which, in spite of bad usage, is still immensely valuable. Boccaccio made a visit to the place, and when he saw the precious books so vilely mutilated, he departed in tears, exclaiming: "Now, therefore, O scholar, rack thy brains in the making of books!" The library contains about twenty thousand volumes, and about thirty-five thousand popes' bulls, diplomas and charters. There are also about a thousand manuscripts, some of which ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... probably those at Cambridge and New Haven,—the former being eighty-five feet by fifty, and the latter one hundred feet by fifty, in external dimensions. The arrangements for instruction are rather more systematic at Harvard, but Yale has several valuable articles of apparatus—as the rack-bars and the series of rings—which have hardly made their appearance, as yet, in Massachusetts, though considered indispensable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... searching in my bag for some food, when a distant and faint cry struck my ear. I listened; again I heard it. I knew too well what it was. The cry of a pack of wolves. Could they have gained scent of me and be following in my rack? The bare thought of such a thing made me start up, and again set forth at full speed. For what I knew to the contrary, I had both wolves and Indians following me. The wolves were gaining on me, that was certain. I could distinguish the yelps and barks ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... had gone, and the benevolent old gentleman. The crowd was thinning out. The young man at my left rose, and I rose also. We both stared thoughtfully at the hat-rack. There hung two hats: an opera-hat and a dilapidated old stovepipe. The young fellow reached up and, quite naturally, selected the opera-hat. He glanced into it, and immediately a wrinkle of annoyance darkened his brow. He ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... In another instant she had crossed to the entrance hall, blindly snatched an old soft felt hat from the rack, caught up Len's overcoat, and slipped into it, and was gone. Born in that moment of unreasoning terror, her free soul went ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with perfect composure. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... spaces, upwards and out to the horizon. These are transient, 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... a young and beautiful woman, was nearly wrenched asunder on the rack, in the hope of making her implicate the Queen in her heresy. She was afterward burned because she insisted that the bread and wine used in the communion service seemed to her to be simply bread and wine, and not in any ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket, and taking his heavy hunting coat from the rack. "Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... while he deceived you. Did he spend sleepless nights because for months he vilely deceived Lord Newhaven? No. Rectitude was not in him. His conscience was not awake. But I tell you, Rachel, he has suffered like a man on the rack from deceiving you. I knew by his face as soon as I saw him that he was undergoing some great mental strain. I did not understand it, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... Brett was bowling along Knightsbridge in a hansom, having left Hume with a strict injunction to rack his brains for any further undiscovered facts bearing upon the inquiry, and turn up promptly at ten ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... 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 take my word—look ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... interested, of course. Who was to eat those pies? The more pies the merrier! The engineers had constructed a rack to hold them, so that they might be easily counted without confusion. The soldiers had appointed a committee to do the counting with a representative from the cooks to be sure that everything went right. Even the officers and chaplain took an ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... 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 ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the rack, barrels to the front, with dress hats on the shelf, and a mirror in the middle of the mantelshelf. Accoutrements and forage saps were hung on certain hooks, and clothing and other things allowable and necessary were always to be kept in an unvarying ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... do with the chalet while you're away?' Lady Georgina asked, when she announced her intention. 'You can't shut it up to take care of itself. Every blessed thing in the place will go to rack and ruin. Shutting up a house means spoiling it for ever. Why, I've got a cottage of my own that I let for the summer in the best part of Surrey—a pretty little place, now vacant, for which, by the way, I want a tenant, if you happen to know of one: and when it's ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... tobacco, in Indian fashion, to better acquaintance (I forgot to say that the poet had two dozen clay pipes ranged in a small wooden rack), we went forth for a seven miles' walk on the Downs. And at last, from the summit of one, I pointed down to a small field ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... that," I 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 life in slicing fish. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... done and directed by him, Don Diego having only the name of captain general, while he in fact exercised the whole authority. The intention of these malcontents being discovered, several of them were put to death as seditious people; among whom was Francisco de Chaves, who was put to the rack and afterwards hanged as a ringleader of this new conspiracy. One Antonio de Orihuela likewise, who had only arrived of late from Spain, was beheaded, having imprudently asserted that the Almagrians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... I used to rack my brains for answers to your perpetual question, "Why won't you marry me?" It was a desperate risk taking you down to the forest, but you loved me so much that you never questioned the reasons I gave you for my secrecy. I can tell you now, Karl, that in the early days when I used to disappear ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... their minds, just as the driver must wait upon his stubborn donkey. For you can never move one by reason or by threats. He would die and go to the wrong place rather than give up his point. This is why you will see some churches going to rack, antiquated and out of touch with the life about them. Look inside and you will find some old mule steward stalled in the amen corner, with his ears laid back at the pulpit ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... ARM-RACK. A frame or fitting for the stowage of arms (usually vertical) out of harm's way, but in readiness for immediate use. In the conveyance of troops by sea arm-racks form a part ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... he came, went out of the front door, and through the garden to where the pony was made fast, and led him away in search of a stable. He found one behind the house, and filling the rack with hay, returned to the house, and seated himself at a porch which was at the door which led to the back premises, for the keeper's house was large and commodious. Edward was in deep thought, when he was roused by the little girl, the daughter of the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... my hands in my trousers-pockets, by walking instead of ambling or slouching, by wiping the mud from my shoes before entering the house, by a personally conducted tour through the realms of manicuring, and by learning the position and use of the hat-rack. Getting no school credits for such incidental minors in the great scheme of life, I grew careless and indifferent and acquired a reputation that I do not care to dwell upon. If those who had me in charge, or thought they had, ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... 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 Candour, Sense and Ingenuity of those who had the Right on their ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... his gentle memory!—Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his peculiar weaknesses as well as his unique powers; sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart which would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of an earthquake. He shrank from mere uneasiness like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of his death- attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thousand times more than ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... horses down it; if from the village, they have a hard pull up. So the oaken window-seat in the gun-room is as polished and smooth as an old saddle; for if the squire is indoors, he is certain to be there. He often rests there after half an hour's work on one or other of the guns in the rack; for, though he seldom uses but one, he likes to take the locks to pieces upon a little bench which he has fitted up, and where he has a vice, tools, a cartridge-loading apparatus, and so forth, from which the room acquired its name. With the naked eye, however, as the road is half a mile distant, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... a laugh that rang unnatural and hoarse. "Jest! when for a day and a night my soul hath been on the rack and mocking demons have jeered at my ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... allowed gradually to colour. It should never be made long before it is wanted, as it soon becomes tough, unless placed on the fender in front of the fire. As soon as each piece is ready, it should be put into a rack, or stood upon its edges, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... younger man sighed a yawn, as he tossed his hat into the rack above his head. "We shall both be the better for some pure air. London quite does me up. And you—you've been sticking at it months on end, haven't you? You look rather fagged—or at all events you ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... see. It may be that heaven will then permit me to detect this Comte de la Foret in some particularly abominable heresy. For this long-legged ruffian looks like a schismatic, and would singularly grace a rack." ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... acquired a very bad character; and, having given utterance to some sentiments regarding religion which were the very reverse of orthodox, he was summoned before the tribunals of the Inquisition to answer for his crimes as a heretic and a sorcerer. He loudly protested his innocence, even upon the rack, where he suffered more torture than nature could support. He died in prison ere his trial was concluded, but was afterwards found guilty. His bones were ordered to be dug up, and publicly burned. He was also burned in effigy in the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... the great artist's copyright) was dogged by a detective, arrested, and finally thrown into the darkest dungeon beneath the Burlington House moat! Protest was useless. What his terror must have been my pen fails to describe. Visions of the thumbscrew, the rack, and all the tortures conceivable rose in the fertile imagination of my colleague, and beads of perspiration made their appearance upon his massive brow. After weary hours, when lunch-time without the lunch had come and gone, and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... feeble old man, and dragged him out by the hair of his head, with horrid oaths and imprecations. He was trailed in this manner through the mire to the house of the municipal judge, that he might be put to the rack, and forced to discover his accomplices; but he expired on the way. Many other victims were sacrificed to the popular fury. One Mora, who appears to have been half a chemist and half a barber, was accused of being in league with the devil to poison Milan. His house ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... lost in getting ready though," said Murray. "Hand up the arms, and we'll try to give the fellows, whoever they may be, a warm reception if they attempt to molest us." All hands were instantly employed in getting ready for the enemy. The gun was loaded, and several shot placed in a rack near it; the muskets and pistols were also loaded, and cutlasses were buckled on. They had no boarding-nettings, and their only hope of victory was by showing so bold a front at first, that the enemy might be driven off without coming to close quarters. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... The March rack hurries and hectors, The March dust heaps and blows; But the primrose flouts the daffodil, And here's the patient violet still; And the year's first crocus brought me luck, So hey for ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley

... the boughs and branches. Wisdom supreme the entire tree, the 'transcendent law' the fruit, its shade protects all living things; say then! why would you cut it down? Lust, hate, and ignorance, are the rack and bolt, the yoke placed on the shoulder of the world; through ages long he has practised austerities to rescue men from these their fetters. He now shall certainly attain his end, sitting on this right-established throne; as all the previous ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... the scudding rack and mist, and the sheeted rain, almost hid the landscape from the sight. There was a fearful gloom, illumined still more fearfully by the streams of lightning which glittered among the rain-drops. Never had Dolph beheld such an absolute warring of the elements: it seemed ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... tortured in many ways, my poor Claudia. You are now off the rack, that is all. And now, I suppose, we are to ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called "Hallo!" at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until my departure on the next morning we were, according to the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver—the frame to shrink. It was hope—the hope that triumphs on the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... know why I should, but just happened to remember having placed it there. The books fit in a rack under that shelf. I suppose it was only natural for me to remember the incident, and ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster

... living-room as he passed through the hall and reached for his pipe in a rack above the mantel. "Do you smoke," he asked half-hesitatingly, but with an excess of courtesy in his voice as if he were apologizing for asking such ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... sport for the spectators, furnished his chief pastime. At one time he kept up those spectacles for 123 days in succession. In the tortures which he inflicted on Christians, fire and poison, daggers and dungeons, wild beasts and serpents, and the rack, did their worst. He threw into the sea, Clemens, the venerable bishop of Rome, with an anchor about his neck; and tossed to the famished lions in the amphitheatre the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... 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 lies! Nobly disdainful of each slavish art, She makes ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... of Villefranche. "You would scarce credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an old stocking full of gold pieces hid away in ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Already he had crossed the threshold into the hall and was rummaging through an over-loaded hat rack for his fur coat. "Why, yes," he called back, "I quite forgot to ask. Just what kind of a Christmas is it, Flame, that you want to make?" With unprecedented accuracy he turned at the moment to force his wife's arms into the sleeves ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... 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

... a gun is in reality a sentient being of a very high order of intelligence. You may be quite certain that if you abuse your gun, even when you may imagine it to be far out of earshot, comfortably cleaned and put to roost on its rack, your gun will resent it. Why are most sportsmen so silent, so distraits at breakfast? Why do they dally with a scrap of fish, and linger over the consumption of a small kidney, and drink great draughts of tea to restore their equilibrium? If you ask them, they will tell you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... the professor. "Why didn't you add a big stone filter, a plate-rack, and a kitchen boiler? My good man, ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... multitude of their captives, the number subjected to this torture was really very small,—probably not nearly as large in proportion as the number of criminals and political prisoners who, in some countries of Europe, at about the same time, were subjected to the equally cruel torments of the rack and the wheel. These criminals and other prisoners were so tortured because they were regarded as the enemies of society. The motives which actuated the Iroquois were precisely the same. As has been before remarked, the ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... entertaining, have two small rooms on the ground floor, each with its lavatory, and off of it, a rack for the hanging of coats and wraps. In most houses, however, guests have to go up-stairs where two bedrooms are set aside, one as a ladies', and the other as a ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... bend his head to enter the door. He found himself in a very large room inclosed by adobe walls and roofed with brush. It was full of rude benches, tables, seats. At one corner a number of kegs and barrels lay side by side in a rack. A Mexican boy was lighting lamps hung on posts that sustained the log rafters of ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... she had always worn, but the colours were what she had always liked, and in any one of those many dresses she might feel at home in five minutes—they suited her so well. She could see, well enough, that Mr. Linden not only remembered "her style" but loved it,—in the very top rack, that was first laid open, she had proof of this—for besides the finest of lawn and cambric, there were dainty bands of embroidery and pieces of lace with which Faith could ruffle ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... kitchen?" asked Miss Campbell, indicating a row of plates and cups on a plate rack and a small kerosene stove, at one ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes

... and chastise all they call heretics, or persons suspected even of heresy, and their protectors. It is dreadful to think of the power placed in their hands. Already thousands of the inhabitants of the Netherlands have been burned, or drowned, or hung, or killed on the rack; those who can taking to flight, till many parts are well-nigh depopulated. Nothing can be more dreadful than the system of torture employed. The accused person is carried off to prison, often without knowing the crime he is accused of, or his accusers. He is tortured to make him ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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

... retreated slowly before the fierce blaze. One of the other tenants came running with a fire extinguisher in either hand from wall rack down the hall on this floor. As well try to drown a blast furnace. ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... which had evidently been the torture chamber, they found the rusty implements of cruelty—curious arrangements of ropes and pulleys; a rack which had fallen to pieces with age; a brazier with rusty pincers, which had once been heated red hot therein, to tear the quivering flesh from some victim, who had long since carried his plaint to the bar of God, where the oppressors had also ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... bring me a nice pat when my cow was dry; and bread of her own baking too, about as good as I myself make." He chuckled as he wiped the last dish and placed it neatly in the rack. ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... prodigalities to 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... expensive establishment of Commissioners, Secretaries, and Surveyors at Australind, who were accordingly conge'd without much ceremony; and the Western Australian Company, like the "unsubstantial pageant," or Port Grey itself, "melted into air, thin air," leaving "not a rack behind." Yet not exactly so, for it has left behind, like some stranded wreck by the receding tide, a most worthy and high-minded family who ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... was no mere closet, but a large, well lighted and convenient apartment, furnished with every possible appurtenance for the toilet. Here he found his trunk, his valise, his dressing case, all unpacked—his brushes and combs laid out in order, his dinner suit hung over a rack—every requirement of his toilet in complete readiness as if prepared by an experienced valet. All this he had been accustomed to do, and expected to do, for himself. Who had served him? Had Corona ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... genuine swoon. What was the man about to do? He lowered the window on our side. A heavy rain was now falling, and, by a gesture, the man expressed his annoyance at his not having an umbrella or an overcoat. He glanced at the rack. The lady's umbrella was there. He took it. He also took my overcoat and ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... them, it might be helpful to intervene. Still the exhibition was a very painful one, putting a heavy strain upon the spectator. For be a fellow creature never so displeasing in nature and in habit, never so cankered by vanity and self-love, it cannot be otherwise than hideous to see him upon the rack. And that de Courcy Smyth was very actually upon the rack—a rack well deserved, may be, and of his own constructing, but which wrenched his every joint to the agony of dislocation nevertheless—there could be no manner of doubt. Coming as conclusion ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... oil manfully came to his mind as he sat and gazed out the window. When asked what he did with the nickles, the Spartan youth had replied: "Buy more castor oil with it." Joe wearily dragged one of his stock ledgers from the rack and opened it. ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... hunt her down with bloodhounds, and when she is taken I shall hew her limb from limb. I shall stretch her on the rack till her pale white body is twisted and curled like paper ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde

... interval, the burning head tossed to and fro. Still, from time to time, fatigue, impatience, suffering, and surprise, found utterance upon that rack, and plainly too, though never once in words. At length, in the solemn hour of midnight, he began to talk; waiting awfully for answers sometimes; as though invisible companions were about his bed; and so replying to their speech ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... tower of the Temple had already struck four. Toulan had not yet come, and the guards of the day had not yet been relieved. They had had a little leisure at noon for dinner, and during the interim Simon and Tison were on guard, and had kept the queen on the rack with their mockery and their abusive words. In order to avoid the language and the looks of these men, she had fled into the children's room, to whom the princess, in her trustful calmness and unshaken equanimity, was assigning them lessons. Marie Antoinette wanted ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... made to catch the costumes and figures," added Mr. Alden, pointing to a rack containing about a dozen ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood

... the mules, my child, nor anything beside. Go! Quickly shall the servants harness the wagon for you, the high one, with good wheels, fitted with rack above." ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... He came from the feast at Berg Rese's house, drenched with blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his forehead. And he whispered: "Denounce him, betray him, save his soul. Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared. Leave him to the slow torture of the rack, that his soul may have ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... but one thing connected with her which was not a weapon to her hand, and this was, that she was not a fortune. Sir Jeoffry had drunk and rioted until he had but little left. He had cut his timber and let his estate go to rack, having, indeed, no money to keep it up. The great Hall, which had once been a fine old place, was almost a ruin. Its carved oak and noble rooms and galleries were all of its past splendours that remained. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the River, which is the South Branch of Rappahannock, about 50 Yards wide, and so rapid that the Ferry Boat is drawn over by a Chain, and therefore called the Rapidan. At night we drank prosperity to all the Colonel's Projects in a Bowl of Rack Punch, and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... torment was the post-hour. Unfortunately, I knew it too well, and tried as vainly as assiduously to cheat myself of that knowledge; dreading the rack of expectation, and the sick collapse of disappointment which daily preceded and followed upon that well- ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... been meeting Mr. Brumley as confidently as though they had been invisible beings, and now she had to rack her brains for just what might be mistaken, what might be misconstrued. There was nothing, she told herself, nothing, it was all as open as the day, and still her mind groped about for some forgotten circumstance, something gone almost ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... tractor biplane flying near the seashore. The oblong black speck directly under the airplane is an aerial bomb, with guiding fins like a torpedo's, which the bomber, who is sitting in the rear seat, has just released from the rack under him. On most planes a machine gun on a swivel is mounted behind the man in the rear seat. If the plane is a single-seater, the machine gun is stationary, mounted in front of the pilot, and "synchronized," or timed, to fire so that the bullets ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... not disguised. I am disguised when I am forced to wear those things, which do not suit me," said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. "Oh, I know why mamma keeps me like that—she is afraid I should get too fond of dress before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted from serious subjects. It is no doubt all intended for my good, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... his easy, lithe grace towards the gun-rack, but Briscoe sat still in pondering dismay. For it was obvious that Julian Bayne had no intention of soon relaxing the tension of the situation by the elimination of the presence of the jilted lover. Pride, indeed, forbade his ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... hear the low-pitched rumble of a scout-ship blasting from its launching rack. "All we want to do is go out and work Dad's claim," he said for ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... on this occasion was not there and did not answer to his name, but the letter was put in the letter-rack to be delivered by Miller, the messenger. This occasion is vivid in my memory, as if of yesterday, and is the first time I remember ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... return'd: I 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 ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... said the clerk, picking out a ticket from the rack, and stamping it, by sticking it in a noisy nick, before the would-be traveller could speak. When he could, it was with a bright shilling, given him at his father's last visit, a threepenny-piece, and ...
— The Little Skipper - A Son of a Sailor • George Manville Fenn

... England is too pessimistic. I must say, in extenuation, that of optimists I am the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less by political aggregations than by individuals. Society grows, while political machines rack to pieces and become "scrap." For the English, so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness go, I see a broad and smiling future. But for a great deal of the political machinery, which at present mismanages for them, I see nothing else ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... the costume of the Queen's Court now. Instead, he was dressed in a tailor-proud suit of dark blue, a white-on-white shirt and no tie. He selected one of a gorgeous peacock pattern from his closet rack. ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... rod from the rack, and, dipping it in the solution, handed it to me. I cautiously applied it to the tip of my tongue and was immediately aware of a peculiar tingling sensation accompanied by a ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... train was stopping, and there, the very first thing they fell upon, looking portly and imposing in a fur coat, was the rubicund-faced Head of the Firm himself. "It is good," I thought, and supported myself for a moment by the hat-rack, for the revulsion of feeling produced a sudden faintness. He saw me, and sprang forward with a beaming yet respectful countenance. "It is very ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard

... through the resources of art, novel features to their attempts. The others reflected on all that they might suffer and hence even before their bodies were harmed their spirits were thoroughly on the rack, as if they were already undergoing the trial. [-5-] Another reason for their faring worse on this occasion than before was that previously only Sulla's own enemies and the foes of the leaders associated with him were destroyed: among his friends and the people in general no one perished ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... gray walls flashing by him, the whip of twigs, the rush of wind, the heavy, rapid pound of hoofs, the violent motion of his horse—these vied in sensation with the smart of sweat in his eyes, the rack of his wound, the cold, sick cramp in his stomach. With these also was dull, raging fury. He had to run when he wanted to fight. It took all his mind to force back that bitter hate of himself, of his pursuers, of this race for ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... remembered later that he seemed to have twice the number of senses appointed to mortals in that hour. A heavy fragrance fell through the dusk out of the thick of the horse-chestnut tree. A load of hay went by, the rack creaking, the driver sunk well out of sight. He heard the dreaming note of the tree toad; frogs croaked in the lush meadow, water babbled under the crazy wooden sidewalk.—The meadow was one vast pulse of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... centre-table, grasped his wrist, and forced him to make several dabs and passes at the fatal newspaper, which still lay there with a bland impassivity between drop-light and book-rack. "That's how we dash off our little ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... form stiffened, spun half-way around, and toppled sidewise against a rack of drying garments, which fell with ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... you are wrong, for all your learning. But I shall be afraid of you at first—though I am not, in writing thus. You are Paracelsus, and I am a recluse, with nerves that have been all broken on the rack, and now hang loosely—quivering at ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... sleeping on the mats, with their little son Kosanza, a boy of thirteen, curled up in his quilt between them. The light in the night-lamp was at its last flicker, but, peering through the gloom, he could just see the Prince's famous Muramasa sword lying on a sword-rack in the raised part of the room: so he crawled stealthily along until he could reach it, and stuck it in his girdle. Then, drawing near to Sanza, he bestrode his sleeping body, and, brandishing the sword made a thrust at his throat; but ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... pestilences were attributable to it. To these incitements was added a desire to seize the property of the faithful confiscated by the law. Of this the early Christians unceasingly and bitterly complained. But the rack, the fire, wild beasts were unavailingly applied. Out of the very persecutions themselves advantages arose. Injustice and barbarity bound the pious but feeble communities ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... desolate. It was well stored with provisions, but all the valuables had been removed or buried. Lolonois demanded information of the prisoners where the plate, jewels, and money were concealed, and attempts were made to extort confessions by the rack, but to little purpose. He then hacked one of the prisoners to pieces with his sword, declaring that such should be the fate of all, unless the hidden treasures of the town should be forthcoming. But the poor wretches were unable to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, vasculum; boot, imperial; vache; cage, manger, rack. vessel, vase, bushel, barrel; canister, jar; pottle, basket, pannier, buck-basket, hopper, maund|, creel, cran, crate, cradle, bassinet, wisket, whisket, jardiniere, corbeille, hamper, dosser, dorser, tray, hod, scuttle, utensil; brazier; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... drearier vision Passed before me, vague and cloud-like. I beheld our nations scattered, All forgetful of my counsels, Weakened, warring with each other; Saw the remnants of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woeful, Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

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

... as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... my woman's vanity is on the rack. Though some troubles may seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home there are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified by incessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such then is the secret of that sadness ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... terrified for a minute, because until I left home my whole (youthful) male experience consisted of one brother, three cousins, and two curates, dealt with separately and with long sleepy intervals between. I began to wonder how I could possibly manage five tall youths at once, and to rack my brains for the right kind of conversation; but before I should have had time to say "knife" to a curate, I found myself chatting away with those cadets as if I had grown up with them. I never once stopped to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... was weary, he wished himself a horse: no sooner was his wish ended, but he was transformed, and seemed a horse of twenty pound price, and leaped and curveted as nimble as if he had been in stable at rack and manger a good month. Then wished he himself a dog, and was so: then a tree, and was so: so from one thing to another, till he was certain and well assured that he could change himself ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... 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 out ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics, cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world goes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for proof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws, threatens the honestest ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... old name," 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 ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... in attractive apparel. They have taken a lesson from Sir Joshua Reynolds, who says: "men are like certain animals who will feed only when there is but little provender, and that got at with difficulty through the bars of a rack; but refuse to touch it when there is an abundance before them." It is certainly important that all women should understand this; and it is no more than fair that they should practise upon it, since ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... 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, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the labour of his slave, or as the baron lived on the labour of his serf. If the capital of the rich man consists of land, he is able to force a tenant to improve his land for him and pay him tribute in the form of rack- rent; and at the end of the transaction has his land again, generally improved, so that he can begin again and go on for ever, he and his heirs, doing nothing, a mere burden on the community for ever, while others are working for him. If he has houses on his land he has ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... if your 'hatter' won't fraternize?" asked Mr. Crewe. "You young men are naturally sanguine, but I know these diggers. They may be communicative enough over a glass, but next day the rack and thumbscrews wouldn't ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... 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 and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... me if there was a place in which he could hold service on Sunday. I told him that the only place was the billiard-room at the hotel. I prepared it for the ceremony by draping a blue blanket over the table, and I put a red one opposite over the cue rack, thinking it might help him to put a little fire into his discourse. When all was ready, I obtained the bullock bell from the kitchen. The Chinaman cook, who was a sporting character, said:—"Wha for, nother raffle, all ri, put me down one pund." He refused, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... north blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... just room for a little table of books at one end of the divan, and I'm going to have a movable electric lamp with a ground-glass globe and a green shade to be good for the eyes. Your pipe-rack will be on the wall over it. Then by squeezing a little there will be just room for my writing-chair,—you know the one with the desk on the arm and the little ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... Domini and the train; and she was obliged to stand waiting while he looked for it, grubbing frantically in the earth with his brown fingers, and uttering muffled exclamations, apparently of rage. Meanwhile, the tall man had put the green bag up on the rack, gone quickly to the far side of the carriage, and sat down ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... town), charging them severely to discover where they had hid their riches and goods. Not being able to extort anything from them, they not being the right persons, it was resolved to torture them: this they did so cruelly, that many of them died on the rack, or presently after. Now the president of Panama being advertised of the pillage and ruin of Puerto Bello, he employed all his care and industry to raise forces to pursue and cast out the pirates ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... stood up, a tall, slab-sided rack of a man, with his long arms dangling at his sides, half facing Judge Priest and half facing his nephew and his nephew's lawyer. Without hesitation he began to speak. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Oh, if he should ever discover it, he would then know the worst, and be out of his pain; but I would have him ever to continue upon the rack of fear ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... where I stood was a rack of straight swords, and as my hand closed upon the hilt of one of them my eyes fell upon the faces of two of the prisoners who ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... retired to the rack at the back of the wagon, because he wished for quiet in which to write a poem to celebrate the occasion, and the others forgot all about him until they drew under the shade of a grove of trees for the noonday ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater

... flowing side, With stroke on stroke we rack; As down the sinking slope we slide, She cleaves a talking track— Like heather-bells on lonely steep, Like soft rain on the glass, Like children murmuring in their sleep, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... drowning man, for, in truth, the very breath of his life was leaving him. A drumming came into his ears. He felt that he must call out to her before it was too late. He was counting aloud now, his voice like the moan of a man on the rack. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And, when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... Baltic Sea, sailing sou'-sou'west, until they passed Gotland, and they edged west again, leaving Bornholm to port.... And they sailed past Malmoe into the Sound, heading north for the Cattegat.... They turned the Skaw and swung her into the Skage-Rack.... And ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... deal too much to eat and drink three hours before, my partners must have chicken and rack-punch at Vauxhall, where George fell asleep straightway, and for my sins I must tell Tony Storer what I knew about this Virginian's amiable family, especially some of the Bernstein's antecedents and the history of another elderly beauty of the family, a certain ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his Mexican-hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out comes one of the sisters or so ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... with its heaven-arches soaring and striving upward, an Odeum of the tones of the Sphere-music, a world in the world! And overhead[8] the eye-socket of the light and of the sky gleamed down, and the distant rack of clouds seemed to touch the lofty arch over which it shot along! And round about them stood nothing but the temple-bearers, the columns! The temple of all gods endured and concealed the diminutive altars of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke



Words linked to "Rack" :   wheel, plate rack, luggage rack, overcharge, scud, draw, ski rack, crown roast, work on, sail, gait, dress rack, torture, destruction, spit, cruet-stand, plume, wing, surcharge, stretch, extort, demolition, wring, towel rack, wrack, barbecue, rack railway, torment, music stand, rack of lamb, pace, put to work, fleece, framework, rack and pinion, barbeque, hayrack, rack rent, hook, fly, tie rack, hatrack, excruciate, rob, squeeze, seize, bomb rack, coatrack, off-the-rack, spice rack, magazine rack, rack up, wipeout, cut, navigation, torturing, single-foot, toastrack, stand, pilotage, pluck, towel horse, roof rack, dish rack, piloting, prehend, stress, pain, gazump, tripod, soak, support, hurt, pipe rack, bleed, try, instrument of torture, take out, anguish, bicycle rack, bier, music rack, coat rack



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