|
|
|
More "Ruck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two go on chattering like that we shall get no birds," said Dave sharply. "What a pair o' ruck-a-toongues you are; just like two ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... remembers them perfectly. Deulin, during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... nature; his genuineness, simplicity, modesty, diffidence, self-depreciation, poverty in the quality of vanity-and, in no contradiction of this last, his simple pleasure in the flowers and general ruck sent to him by Tom, Dick and Harry from everywhere—a pleasure that suggested a perennial surprise that he should be the object of so much fine attention—he was the most lovable great child in the world; (I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grasping, slipping, pursuing, and right in the midst of them, as quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, Dimsdale!" "Well collared, Dimsdale; well collared, indeed!" The little quarter-back had come to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... patriotic turn at the work of the land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... cresting sea; and, silent as though she slept, The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... GONE. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... You won't, my brave boy; that a novice could tell. You'll be left in the ruck at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... the sled on which the boys and old Andy fought, came through the ruck of the struggle. Andy hacked with a hatchet the paws from the last Kodiak that tried to seize the sled, and the two boys continued to pour bullets ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... went on his way, leaving Olive to ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others. ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... intelligent Americans or read the contemporary literature of the first French Revolution to understand. I find, for example, so typical a young American as the late Frank Norris roundly asserting that it is the People to whom we are to ascribe the triumphant emergence of the name of Shakespeare from the ruck of his contemporaries and the passage in which this assertion is made is fairly representative of the general expression of this sort of mysticism. "One must keep one's faith in the People—the Plain People, the Burgesses, the Grocers—else of all ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and dregs, of society—hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity. Hence, fits ...
— The Road • Jack London
... women of the most extravagant attire and behaviour it is possible to imagine. I saw a punchinello on stilts wading among the rest; there were women flaunting feathers on their tousled heads, and moustachioed bullies who might have come from the ruck of some army on the march; pages, minions, magicians, astrologers, women's ruffians, castrati—it was as if one of the wildest hours of the Piazzetta of Venice had been transported by witchcraft to this quiet place. As I approached, wondering at what I saw, a creature, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... straps, and would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... was not a sign. Amiable? Laura fancied that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened when he spoke to her. But the ruck of people? She doubted whether Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... paths, looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. "Mrs. Ruck—Miss Sophy Ruck," said ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for his ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... dust-cloud, lifted now and then, he could see naked forms swaying, bending forward, plying their weapons. Somewhere in the midst of it, out in the ruck of hoof and horn, his friend was riding, forgetting all else but the excitement of the chase. What if accident had befallen either of them? Lewis could not ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory—that the mass of them had behaved rather ill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse and worse for Baillie's feelings, not only ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of everybody doing anything of the kind. The ruck of men have no private judgment to claim the right of. They take whatever's given them in the way of morals by their pastors and masters. Only exceptional people have ideas of their own to carry out; and there are not ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... out of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Person and of His Divine Ancestors, of implicit obedience to Him as head of the army (a position, by the way, opposed to all former Japanese ideas, according to which the Court was essentially civilian); furthermore, of a corresponding belief that Japan is as far superior to the common ruck of nations as the Mikado is divinely superior to the common ruck of kings and emperors. Do not the early history-books record the fact that Japan was created first, while all other countries resulted merely from the drops ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... beyond all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... we should want to sleep in a place like De Aar. Disgusted, we tried the hotel. Here they loosed dogs on us and turned out the guard. Still more disgusted, we returned to our bedding, and sardined in with the ruck ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... word, or action, riveted the attention. It was a triumph beyond applause, beyond any mere outward demonstration of approval. Winston felt the spell deeply, his entire body thrilling to her marvellous delineation of this common thing, her uplifting of it out of the vile ruck of its surroundings and giving unto it the abundant life of her own interpretation. Never once did he question the real although untrained genius back of those glowing eyes, that expressive face, those ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... a particularly attractive lad. He was not tall for his years, and his head was somewhat too large for his body. He had a "great ruck" of light, sandy hair which he plastered down to keep it from curling; keen blue-gray eyes, and rather large features. Still, he had a fair, delicate complexion, when it was not blackened by grime or tan; a gentle, winning ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from the forecastle. Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them. I looked to see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval. On the contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of corpses, with her face in her hands, crying—for she was a young girl, you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the mothers of those dead friends ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... armed, conspiring in a mantle, draining a brimming goblet, but never—at least within my recollection—taking a part of any individuality, or one that gave him a chance of singing or speaking a single line by himself. He had been one of the ruck when I had first seen him, and now, after at least twenty years, the ruck still claimed him for its own. I remember I had woven a sort of romance about him. There, I had thought to myself, is a man who, no doubt, began his stage career with high aspirations, and noble ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... for instance, would soon rise to a higher level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed necessary to remove ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. METEOR ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man alive at ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... what is known as the Timourid age—the age beloved above all others by discerning connoisseurs—and it is tempting to assign to this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr. Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398; yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. Rather, I incline to think that these are the work of an ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... red, fought its way to the surface. A great tossing head, bloody past recognition, flung out from the ruck. One quick glance he shot from his ragged eyes at the little flying form in front; then with a roar like a waterfall plunged toward it, shaking off the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... was kicked off again. Almost immediately Acton secured near the centre. He dribbled through the ruck of his opponents until he saw Bourne upon him. With a smile of triumph upon his lips he gently rolled the leather to Chalmers, who was hungrily waiting for the pass out on the touch-line. Chalmers waltzed beautifully for the short run almost to the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... emergence until now, people began to be afraid that he had emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty, and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there came a time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... women of the Bible—my wife says so. She knows all about them. And the best painters in the world have shown her standing among the field of oats. By the Lord, sir, it's sheer blasphemy! and worse than that, it's making people—good, religious people, mind, not the ruck—it's making them ask why the blazes I gave you the ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... an individuality that invites consideration from the ruck of commonplace men. Of mingled Irish, Scotch, and English blood, the first predominated, and the Celtic element in him was strong. A man of vigorous health, careless of gain, a wanderer, and by his own choice something of an outcast, he led to the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... indisputable? Yet in the very midst of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... A moment later the ruck poured into the plaza and made for Rosendo's house. Don Mario, holding his cane aloft like a sword, was at their head. Raging with disappointment at not finding the fugitives in the house, they threw the furniture ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... long row of shops was crowded almost dangerously. Magnificent dray horses, with long hair on the fetlocks above their big heavy hoofs, bridling in conscious pride of silver-mounted harness and curled or braided manes, rose above the ruck as their ancestors, the warhorses, must have risen in medieval battle. The crowd parted before them and closed in behind them. Here and there, too, a horseman could be seen—with a little cleared space at his heels. Or a private calash picking its ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... men and women of the most extravagant attire and behaviour it is possible to imagine. I saw a punchinello on stilts wading among the rest; there were women flaunting feathers on their tousled heads, and moustachioed bullies who might have come from the ruck of some army on the march; pages, minions, magicians, astrologers, women's ruffians, castrati—it was as if one of the wildest hours of the Piazzetta of Venice had been transported by witchcraft to this quiet place. As I approached, wondering at what ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... all the throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and yelling, "Aim ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Charley Joyce, and Sam Sloman, riding well in the first flight of second horsemen—his lordship's pad-groom, Mr. Fossick's man in drab with a green collar, Mr. Wake's in blue, also a lad in scarlet and a flat hat, with a second horse for the huntsman. Drawing still nearer came the ruck—men in red, men in brown, men in livery, a farmer or two in fustian, all mingled together; and a few hundred yards before these, and close upon his lordship, were the elite of the field—five men in scarlet and one in black. Let us see who they are. By the powers, Mr. Sponge ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... consider how difficult, not to say dangerous, must be the operation of gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash himself with his knife while attempting to operate on the tail of a skate. Either accident may be slight or it ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chicago—who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the recognized fact that these men were enemies, my heart throbbed, almost in pride, as I watched them pass. They were Americans, and magnificent fighting men. I had seen them, or their fellows, in the ruck and toil of battle, playing with death, smiling in the face of defeat. Now they were marching grimly forward to another clash of arms, through the blinding dust, heedless of all else but duty. This was what stirred me. No proud review, with glittering uniforms ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... to Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... drink, merry-go-rounds and fiddlers, and an immense concourse of every condition of folk, black slaves and water-side Indians, squatters from the woods, farmers from all the valleys, and the scum and ruck of the plantations. I found some of my friends, and settled my business with them, but my eyes were always straying to the green awning where ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. Dencombe's ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... he cried, striking his brow, 'when I know that I carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and cannon, and men; it crosses Europe at the will of ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... ignorant rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn't sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole lives, their whole histories, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid ruck of plagiarism, and they didn't know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they've caught filching a chop! ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... car squirmed out of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive confidence, his gaiety—to judge from ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and second, the diggers' favourite third; but old Rainbow, lying well up, was coming through the ruck hard held and looking full of running. They passed close by us. What a sight it is to see a dozen blood horses in top condition come past you like a flash of lightning! How their hoofs thunder on the level turf! How the jockeys' ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... silent as though she slept, The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... escaped from the ruck by his extraordinary personal strength; once free from the confused mass, his speed, in which he surpassed all the barbarians, enabled him to easily avoid capture. But as he flew his heart was dead within him, for there was no hope of retrieving ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the presumption of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... he said, as he returned after his third trip. "The bells are ringin', an' they're a swarmin' up the hill,—two ingines, an' a ruck o' boys an' men. Melindy, she's keepin' the laundry door locked, an' a ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it accessible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... music the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down the alleyway and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the day,—for a few minutes only; and the Prime Minister passed through the room in the course of the evening. Dukes and duchesses below the royal degree were common; and as for earls and countesses, and their daughters, they formed the ruck of the crowd. The Poet-laureate didn't come indeed, but was expected; and three Chinese mandarins of the first quality entered the room at eleven, and did not leave till one. Poor Lady Elizabeth suffered a great deal with those mandarins. From all this it will be ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again and pretty soon about. Let him give it to the kid who's ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... about Stabber and the opposing orator seemed all in an instant to split asunder, and with trailing war bonnet and followed by only two or three of his braves, the former lashed his way westward and swept angrily out of the ruck and went circling away toward the crest, while, with loud acclamation, brandishing shield and lance and rifle in superb barbaric tableau, the warriors lined up in front of the victorious young leader who, sitting high in his stirrups, with ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... returned the call that same evening. I dropped in on him as he took his seat to dine solus at the Albion. The dining-room, I should tell you, was fairly full. Usual ruck of people: sort of too-English; English you see at tables-d'hote and nowhere else in the world, with an end-of-season preponderance of females who stay to look after the British chaplain a little longer than he needs, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... followed by the head copy-reader in the same strain. Two of the older sub-editors perpetrated some meaningless but well-meant remarks, and the current of events bade fair to end in complete stagnation, when from out of the ruck, midway of the table, there rose the fringed and candid head of one William S. Marchmont, ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never a word ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... them, guarding his head the while from the lances that were rained on him; and he lifted the guidon higher and higher, till, out of the ruck and the throng, the brazen bird caught afresh the rays ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and in the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... and the kettles. Not a bad notion, eh? But ten times as much wouldn't have been enough, and the hose burst at the third stroke, so that only one boat got anything to speak of. But Lord, she dropped out of the ruck as if she'd been swept with langridge. Squealed like a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... double dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... Out of the ruck of the defenders of the Moon, a single Aircar, whose gleaming gray side was marked with queer crimson splashes, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... for the ruck, for the ninety and nine, who, after all, ought to find it impossible, not merely hard. But it's different for you and me, Jimmy Grierson, because we're not in the ruck. Of course you'll write, for it's ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... field of hunters, first one man leading them, then others following, and after them the first ruck and then the crowd. It was apparent to all who knew anything that two packs had joined. These were the Hitchiners, as the rival sportsmen would call them, and this was the Hitchin Hunt, with Mr. Fairlawn, their master. Mr. Fairlawn ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... white man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep, and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh, that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might happily go to ground! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for some well known though still distant protection. But the man who doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres in chasing the wearer of it. The solitary red coat becomes distant, and ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... not feel hurt or unhappy. He was in his most philosophical mood when he reached his aerodrome. He had a cause for gratification in that she knew his name. Evidently, it was something to be a sergeant if by so being you stand out from the ruck of men. As to her name he had neither thought it opportune ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... great race. Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colours moved up with great celerity. Merritt, glancing over his shoulders, shook out the last wrap on ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... break to the persistent monotony of the regular treadmill round, should be, they think, sufficient for any sane, well-balanced, self-respecting creature,—and if a man or woman elects to stand out of the common ruck and say: "I refuse to live in a chaos of uncertainties—I will endeavour to know why my particular atom of self is considered a necessary, if infinitesimal, part of the Universe,"—such an one is looked upon with either distrust or derision. In matters of love especially, where the most ill-assorted ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... mistress; and it is almost impossible not to adore a young lady who is universally beloved, for the simple reason that this general affection is very rarely accorded to any but a loving nature. There is an instinct in these things. From all the ruck of Cheapside a vagrant dog will select the man who has most toleration for the canine species, and is most likely to give him shelter. A little child coming suddenly into a circle of strangers knows in which lap it may find a haven, on which bosom it may discover safety and comfort. If mistress ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... hardy men went out upon the water, sailed forth beneath the white spread of new-made canvas, and, midst the creaking of spars, the slapping of ropes, the scream of the hawser, the groan of the windlass, and the ruck and roar of wave-beaten wood, carved out their destinies. They fought. They bled. They conquered and were defeated. In the hot struggle and the desperate attack they played their parts even as the old Vikings of Norway and the sea rovers ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... corner, by the clock, a couple of Town Councillors stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man, who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who says: "Yes, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... vessel called the Vespasian. He had been spending the previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen. At last he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home overland minus his vessel. He afterwards joined the service of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... indeterminately present to her, and led her often to speculate as to how it was that Mr. Cardiff's work expressed him so little. It seemed to her that the one purpose of a personality like his was its expression—otherwise one might as well be of the ruck. "You write with your intellectual faculties," she said to him once; "your soul is curiously ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... talents. One survives by dint of its prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... up from the ruck of things." Reason would have plausibly said, "it's by virtue of feverish toil that you have become what you are. Being endlessly industrious is the best road—for you—to the heights." And, self-reassured, they ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Rundschau, the Berliner Post, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, and the Berliner Neueste Nachrichten are the property of Junker reactionists, or else, like the Lokal Anzeiger, the Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who "casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics, the prophet of a great, strong ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... mast. It took the lad only a second, however, to realize that his Captain's plight was serious. The big Yankee was fighting wearily with a broken cutlass, and his face was gray beneath the red stream of blood that ran from a wound above his eye. Jeremy plunged into the ruck of the battle, careless now of danger. A sort of berserk rage possessed him at the sight of that wound. He hewed his way frantically toward the mast, and suddenly found Bob there beside him, cutting and lunging like a demon. He gasped out a cheer. But even as it left his ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... pictures the girl built up as she lay, half waking, half dreaming between her blankets. Pictures in which MacNair, misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him, and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid picture—the real picture—which she herself had seen with her ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... that he was the Lord Chief Justice of England,—Sir Alexander Cockburn, one of the most conspicuous figures in the social annals of the 'thirties and 'forties, the "Hortensius" of Endymion, whose "sunny face and voice of music" had carried him out of the ruck of London dandies to the chief seat of the British judicature, and had made him the hero of the Tichborne Trial and the Alabama Arbitration. Yet another personage of intellectual fame who was to be met in ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... know," said Chinn, strolling slowly to the table-land. A few of the elder men stood in an irregular semicircle in an open glade; but the ruck of people—women and children were hidden in the thicket. They had no desire to face the first anger ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hounds entered Broughton Spinnies, Phineas and Madame Goesler were still together. He had not been riding actually at her side all the morning. Many men and two or three ladies had been talking to her. But he had never been far from her in the ruck, and now he was again close by her horse's head. Broughton Spinnies were in truth a series of small woods, running one into another almost without intermission, never thick, and of no breadth. There was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... vapours of falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... looking from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for his sake—all hopes ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... had had no love-affairs. Instinctively she had held herself aloof from the ruck of the young mountain-men, neither she nor they knew why, unless it was because she owned the valley land and so was what the mountain folk called rich. Most of them had tried to pay her court, but ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... never stand their charge, and were defeated by the Milesians with a loss little short of three hundred men, the Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians, and driving before them the barbarians and the ruck of the army, without engaging the Milesians, who after the rout of the Argives retreated into the town upon seeing their comrades worsted, crowned their victory by grounding their arms under the very walls of Miletus. Thus, in this battle, the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... astonished at the beauty and power of this novel. But true as it is to life and place, full of deep interest and rare humor and vivid descriptions, there seemed to be risk of its passing unheeded in the crowd, and rush, and ruck of fiction.... Literature has been enriched with a wholesome, genial, and noble tale, the reading of which is a pleasure in store ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... hunters are to be hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the Oxfordshire and ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... disappear in the distance.—They are off,—not yet distinguishable, at least to me. A little waiting time, and they swim into our ken, but in what order of precedence it is as yet not easy to say. Here they come! Two horses have emerged from the ruck, and are sweeping, rushing, storming, towards us, almost side by side. One slides by the other, half a length, a length, a length and a half. Those are Archer's colors, and the beautiful bay Ormonde flashes by the line, winner of the Derby of 1886. "The Bard" has made a good ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... hundred and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... man assured her, "except in mentioning the name of Ruthven Smith. Anybody who has lived in America as long as I have, associates jewels with the name of Ruthven Smith. His 'Ruthven' lifts him far above the ruck of a mere Smith—like myself, for ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... figure, that I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took its place in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... logarithms and our laborious methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of spellikins—a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself when, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... object, which happened to be Norah's shoulder, and clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his native Irish. They thundered up the straight, Billy crouching on Shannon's neck, very still. Then behind him the Mulgoa horse drew out from the ruck and came in chase. Nearer and nearer he came, while the shouts from the crowd grew louder. Up, up, till his nose was at Shannon's quarter—at his girth—at his shoulder, and the winning-post was very near. Then suddenly Billy lifted his whip and brought it down once, and Shannon shot forward ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... again, tearing the leathern straps, and would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... anyhow," said he. "You've simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can't grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and waste and sin and misery of the present system. I don't blame you. You're a product of your environment. You can't help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... most important. Of Bernard's hot passions there was not a sign. Amiable? Laura fancied that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened when he spoke to her. But the ruck of people? She doubted whether Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if they had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... they had brought him, would be set against his lack of the ordinary gentleman's upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and made him ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... particularly attractive lad. He was not tall for his years, and his head was somewhat too large for his body. He had a "great ruck" of light, sandy hair which he plastered down to keep it from curling; keen blue-gray eyes, and rather large features. Still, he had a fair, delicate complexion, when it was not blackened by grime ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and again his clinched fist reached its mark, and slowly he broke away from clutching hands, and regained his feet. It was a terrific struggle, but luck, as well as skill, was with him. The next he knew, out of the red ruck, was that he had Hobart by the throat, jammed against the wall, with fingers clinched in the throat. Then he saw the other coming, a dim, shapeless thing, that he kicked at viciously. The boot must have landed, for he was suddenly free to strike ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... remark, casually, "I allus reckoned Kansas was purty close to hell," and said no more about it. Harlan was the proprietor and bartender of the Oasis and catered to the excessive and uncritical thirsts of the ruck of range society, and he had objected vigorously to the placing of the second sign in his place of business; but at the close of an incisive if inelegant reply from the marshal, the sign went up, and stayed up. Edwards' language and delivery were ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... has a significance which raises it out of the ruck of this complaining correspondence. Amerigo Vespucci had just returned from his long voyage in the West, when he had navigated along an immense stretch of the coast of America, both north and south, and had laid the foundations of a fame which was, for a time at ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Skull and Spectacles was kind to me, partly, perhaps, because I differed somewhat from the ordinary ruck of customers of the Skull and Spectacles. Had it been known that that crazy, villainous old alehouse contained such a pearl, I make no doubt that the favour of the place would have gone up, and its customers improved in outward seeming, if not in inward merits or morals. The gallants of the town—for ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are feats of about an equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl himself ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suburban Toronto home where the spinster aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons. Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be any fatted calf. Secondly, he did not go because there was seldom ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on his way, leaving Olive to ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while she thought ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Charles Fort, near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures of Clerical Life ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... and savage look that came on Mr. Pike's face, and was prepared for I knew not what awful monstrosities to emerge from the forecastle. Instead, to my surprise, came three fellows who were strikingly superior to the ruck that had preceded them. I looked to see the mate's face soften to some sort of approval. On the contrary, his blue eyes contracted to narrow slits, the snarl of his voice was communicated to his lips, so that he seemed like a ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled, with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward, grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackham would cut ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller's dreadful stamp; ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... Julietta, who is immured by wicked arts in the "Convent of Grey Penitents," tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth. The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be: but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people—almost as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for facts like these ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... of the world is in the thing," he said; "and a day it would be for a notch on a stick and a rasp of gin in the throat. And if I get the sight of me eye on a buffalo-ruck, it's down on me knees I'll go, and not for prayin' aither. Here's both hands up for a start in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a rasping voice, like a saw biting into a log. "Ker-r-ruck! ker-r-ruck!" sounded Reddy's rolling call. And they began to scold Jimmy Rabbit, until he put his paws over his ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Arras, which left France almost at the discretion of Burgundy. On December 18 he was still no farther than Bruges, where he entered into a private treaty with Philip; and it was not until January 14, ten weeks after he disembarked in France, and attended by a ruck of Burgundian gentlemen, that he arrived in Paris and offered to present himself before Charles VII. The king sent word that he might come, if he would, with a small retinue, but not with his present following; and the duke, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by, little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... plicature^, plait, pleat, ply, crease; tuck, gather; flexion, flexure, joint, elbow, double, doubling, duplicature^, gather, wrinkle, rimple^, crinkle, crankle^, crumple, rumple, rivel^, ruck^, ruffle, dog's ear, corrugation, frounce^, flounce, lapel; pucker, crow's feet; plication^. V. fold, double, plicate^, plait, crease, wrinkle, crinkle, crankle^, curl, cockle up, cocker, rimple^, rumple, flute, frizzle, frounce^, rivel^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... would have him see himself—a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... if there ever was a woman in such a ruck of trouble!" said poor Collet Pardue, wiping her eyes. "Here's my man took to prison, saints knows what for—my man 'at was as quiet as ever a mouse, and as good to me as if he'd ha' been a cherubim, and me left with all them childre—six ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... "Mr. Ruck, sir," says I, "is the Tory solicitor, and Messrs. Hodge and Smithers the Liberals." I knew them very well, for the fact is, before Mary Smith came to live in our parts, I was rather partial to Miss Hodge, and her great gold-coloured ringlets; ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ever built a tram or railway, now transformed into exceedingly plain-spoken politician. "If PARNELL had taken corner seat, his comings and goings—especially his goings—would have been more easily marked. Sitting midway down the Bench, amongst the ruck of Members, he was not noticeable except when he wanted to be noticed. Could slink in and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... staggered on a yard or two and slipped it back to Denton. Denton made a yard or two more and passed it to Corder. Corder fell back with it into the arms of Ranger. Ranger let Corder drop, but captured the ball, and with one of his lightning swoops carried it out of the ruck for twenty yards, when, as he fell, Yorke came up and captured it. Yorke, alas, was cut short in his career before he had gone ten yards, but Clapperton was there to take it. Away he went, shaking ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... I was puzzled to know how to try to help Mason, and, at the same time, save my mugwump purity undefiled. It was a delicate place. But presently, out of the ruck of confusions in my mind, rose a sane thought, clear and bright—to wit: since it was a mugwump's duty to do his best to put the beet man in office, necessarily it must be a mugwump's duty to try to ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... I asked one who had already, before the war, established a style and a reputation—I asked Friesz, I think—"Et les jeunes?" "Nous sommes les jeunes" was the reply. Those young French painters who should have been emerging from the ruck of students between 1914 and 1919 had either been killed, or deflected from their career, or gravely retarded. Only now is la jeunesse beginning to give signs of vitality; only now is a new crop ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... caught a jumbled jargon of Spanish shouts, mingled with Mexican and American words, and then out of the ruck of riders a ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... he gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of what may ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of good and a moderate amount of harm. Those who suffered through him deserved what they got; and fate would have punished them sooner or later if he had not forestalled her. Between a Lupin who selected his victims among the ruck of wicked rich men and some big company promoter who deliberately ruins numbers of poor people, would you hesitate for a moment? Does not Lupin ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... And I still incline to Percy's opinion. Olga is always wonderful to me. Her lips are such a soft and melting red, the red of perfect animal health. The very milkiness of her skin is an advertisement of that queenly and all-conquering vitality which lifts her so above the ordinary ruck of humanity. And her great ruminative eyes are as clear and ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Sultan, straining every nerve and muscle to carry them to safety, galloped ahead of the cattle, the boys rode into the ruck, beating the brutes with their quirts in an endeavor to ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... he murmured. "It's very kind of you to come here—very. My daughter—" he hesitated. He finished the sentence by drawing up a chair and clearing its seat of the ruck of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Raffles, "this is fame at last! It is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers into the society of the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics we've heard ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... streets, they were intently watched by crowds of men, women, and children; the men were principally rebel soldiers, mixed with a smattering of insurgent townspeople, the women and children—creatures of all sorts—from the village folk to the common ruck which follows a native army. Many were picturesque, but others looked like the drainings of the slums of larger cities. There was no doubt as to the sentiments they entertained for the white people, for, as they caught sight of Helmar's face, under escort of rebel soldiers, ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... was snow in London, that the visit would entail almost continuous travelling for nearly thirty hours each way, and that my sister cannot sleep in a train, it seemed as if Berry, at any rate, was pulling out of the ruck. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... first and second, the diggers' favourite third; but old Rainbow, lying well up, was coming through the ruck hard held and looking full of running. They passed close by us. What a sight it is to see a dozen blood horses in top condition come past you like a flash of lightning! How their hoofs thunder on the level turf! ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... were making for the Duke's pernicious wood. In the first field or two there was a succession of gates, and there was not much to do in the way of jumping. Then the fox, keeping straight ahead, deviated from the line by which they had come, making for the brook by a more direct course. The ruck of the horsemen, understanding the matter very well, left the hounds, and went to the right, riding for the ford. The ford was of such a nature that but one horse could pass it at a time, and that one had to ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the presumption of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... right through the ruck he came sailing — I knew that the battle was won — The son of Haphazard was failing, The Yattendon filly was done; He cut down the Don and the Dancer, He raced clean away from the mare — He's in front! ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... light the legends on the tombstones could be read, brief voices saying, "I am Bertha Ruck," "I am Tom Gage." And they say which day of the year they died, and the New Testament says something for them, very proud, very emphatic, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man's control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... went up from all the throats. A blind panic drove these men in a surging swaying mob to and fro along the shore like a herd of cattle afraid of the water. Some few jumped into the river then, but most of them did so only after the last discharge. Three times Brown's men fired into the ruck, Brown, the only one in view, cursing and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to the persistent monotony of the regular treadmill round, should be, they think, sufficient for any sane, well-balanced, self-respecting creature,—and if a man or woman elects to stand out of the common ruck and say: "I refuse to live in a chaos of uncertainties—I will endeavour to know why my particular atom of self is considered a necessary, if infinitesimal, part of the Universe,"—such an one is looked upon with either distrust ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... and pictures the girl built up as she lay, half waking, half dreaming between her blankets. Pictures in which MacNair, misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him, and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid picture—the real picture—which she herself had seen with her own eyes that ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colours moved up with great ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... stood outside the ruck that determines the destinies of all such typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to her by Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed the character of Ginger, the possibilities of rejection, and the influence of Mrs. Stott; and she ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... always stood above the muck and ruck—clear and clean and unassailable. But this—this is too much! It is the spark. There is no forecasting what ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of her country or clan: A stranger, mother-naked, and marred with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... admiration for the one-time mysterious crook could now once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace Morse—and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah, an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper to meet Jimmie Dale's eyes—and with it a column and a ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... life, Miss Granger," her companion answered lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. METEOR ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and yet so desperate the narrow roadway was strewn with bodies. Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word of command, no shout of direction ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... and also those nearly forty volumes by Henry St. George. For all the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. Dencombe's grievance was against ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... passed with his hat in his hand. He began to feel that he was in the midst of something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were unmoved. Perhaps they had only increased the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... a lifetime. Rowley, as no doubt you've heard, has just accepted a slum parish in Shoreditch. Well, he wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself. You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic pilgrims. There'll be nothing but the thought of our ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... before us, dived into an alley opposite, and were lost to sight. My companion picked up the object; and we had just time to make out that it was a bell-handle and name-plate, when the pursuers came up—six or seven "peelers" and specials, with a ruck of men and boys. We were collared on the instant. The fact of the property being found in our possession constituted a flagrans delictum—we were caught "red-handed." It was vain to argue that, had we been the delinquents, we should scarcely have been standing there still, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... aren't going to do that sort of thing. We aren't going to join the ruck. We'll go about in holiday times all over the world. I want to see Fusiyama. I mean to swim in the South Seas. With you. We'll dodge the sharks. But all the same we shall have to have a house in London. We have to be ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a free and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show's his course to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands: some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, with open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, were ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his native Irish. They thundered up the straight, Billy crouching on Shannon's neck, very still. Then behind him the Mulgoa horse drew out from the ruck and came in chase. Nearer and nearer he came, while the shouts from the crowd grew louder. Up, up, till his nose was at Shannon's quarter—at his girth—at his shoulder, and the winning-post was very near. Then suddenly Billy lifted his whip and brought it down once, and Shannon shot forward ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... I'd have collected up brandin' irons an' other truck for the round-up, an' a hundred miles through spring sweetness was a heap sight more temptin' to me; so I give in an' soon we was under way. "Where is the course laid out, Barbie?" I sez. "You know I won't see much of you back there in the ruck an' I ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... The others were men and women of the most extravagant attire and behaviour it is possible to imagine. I saw a punchinello on stilts wading among the rest; there were women flaunting feathers on their tousled heads, and moustachioed bullies who might have come from the ruck of some army on the march; pages, minions, magicians, astrologers, women's ruffians, castrati—it was as if one of the wildest hours of the Piazzetta of Venice had been transported by witchcraft to this quiet place. As I approached, wondering at what I saw, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... loving women, were, by the conditions consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9. Strabo. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... their patriotic turn at the work of the land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, and the harvest moon (as promised in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... wicked arts in the "Convent of Grey Penitents," tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth. The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be: but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action on persons of genius, gave us Zastrozzi on the one side and Northanger ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... do that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... supreme—he knew how to fight, remembered instinctively every trick and guard. Again and again his clinched fist reached its mark, and slowly he broke away from clutching hands, and regained his feet. It was a terrific struggle, but luck, as well as skill, was with him. The next he knew, out of the red ruck, was that he had Hobart by the throat, jammed against the wall, with fingers clinched in the throat. Then he saw the other coming, a dim, shapeless thing, that he kicked at viciously. The boot must have landed, for he was suddenly free to strike ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... the usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... at the Skull and Spectacles was kind to me, partly, perhaps, because I differed somewhat from the ordinary ruck of customers of the Skull and Spectacles. Had it been known that that crazy, villainous old alehouse contained such a pearl, I make no doubt that the favour of the place would have gone up, and its customers improved in outward ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... set against his lack of the ordinary gentleman's upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and made him ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... triumph beyond applause, beyond any mere outward demonstration of approval. Winston felt the spell deeply, his entire body thrilling to her marvellous delineation of this common thing, her uplifting of it out of the vile ruck of its surroundings and giving unto it the abundant life of her own interpretation. Never once did he question the real although untrained genius back of those glowing eyes, that expressive face, those sincere, quiet tones which so touched ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... reaching them, he gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of what may be, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... did not feel hurt or unhappy. He was in his most philosophical mood when he reached his aerodrome. He had a cause for gratification in that she knew his name. Evidently, it was something to be a sergeant if by so being you stand out from the ruck of men. As to her name he had neither thought it opportune nor proper ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... empty an ink-bottle over the young calf? Fauntleroy kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... on them, guarding his head the while from the lances that were rained on him; and he lifted the guidon higher and higher, till, out of the ruck and the throng, the brazen bird caught afresh the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... The whole lot cleared to the gate but two—Donald, the big white horse, and my Jack. They stood solitary, one here, one there. I began to get interested, for I thought Jack was off his feed. In came the man with the bucket and all the ruck of curious horses at his tail. Right round he went to where Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, and the majestic Donald ate it, and the ruck of common horses followed the man. On he went to the second station, Jack's (J. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only escaped from the ruck by his extraordinary personal strength; once free from the confused mass, his speed, in which he surpassed all the barbarians, enabled him to easily avoid capture. But as he flew his heart was dead within him, for there was no hope of ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen, schoolmistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, "Murray" in hand, over the railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Gare de Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies of the world. In hoc signo vinces! The message had ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... tawny and red, fought its way to the surface. A great tossing head, bloody past recognition, flung out from the ruck. One quick glance he shot from his ragged eyes at the little flying form in front; then with a roar like a waterfall plunged toward it, shaking off the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... the Berliner Post, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, and the Berliner Neueste Nachrichten are the property of Junker reactionists, or else, like the Lokal Anzeiger, the Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who "casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics, the prophet of a great, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... this sort had been disposed of, the ruck of presentees, standing like a lot of school-boys in a long row, were "presented," which ceremony was deemed to have been effectually accomplished by one duck of the grand ducal head, to be divided among all the recipients, and an answering ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... no fear of everybody doing anything of the kind. The ruck of men have no private judgment to claim the right of. They take whatever's given them in the way of morals by their pastors and masters. Only exceptional people have ideas of their own to carry out; ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... by the mast. It took the lad only a second, however, to realize that his Captain's plight was serious. The big Yankee was fighting wearily with a broken cutlass, and his face was gray beneath the red stream of blood that ran from a wound above his eye. Jeremy plunged into the ruck of the battle, careless now of danger. A sort of berserk rage possessed him at the sight of that wound. He hewed his way frantically toward the mast, and suddenly found Bob there beside him, cutting and lunging like a demon. He gasped out a cheer. But even as it left ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... innuendoes let fall by his mother, left him coolly incredulous; the girl still seemed to him altogether distant; but from the first sight of her face he had evolved a stolid, unfaltering conception of her difference from the ruck of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... crushed with a sense of her own terrible impotency. A failure! She must write herself down a failure! At her age, with her ambitions, with her artistic temperament and creative instincts, she was yet to be denied all coherent means of expression. She was to fall back amongst the ruck, a young woman of talent, content perhaps to earn a scanty living by painting Christmas cards, or teaching at a kindergarten. Her finger-nails dug into her flesh. It was the bitterest moment of her life. She flung herself back into the bare little room, cold, ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out o' this Injun fry-pan fust, old hoss! I could lick my own weight in wild-cats, but this ruck o' Injuns is jest a little ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and sag of waist—all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and bears down upon a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, not nervous when he gets a child on his knee all by himself and tells her delightful stories,—but nervous as a boy on his first day at school when he finds himself being lionised in a drawing-room, or picked out of the ruck of guests for any particular notice. And so when he joined the 13th, behind the ebullient spirits was this innate bashfulness, which, added to the natural modesty of a gentleman, kept his animal spirits in a delightful ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... mystery. And I still incline to Percy's opinion. Olga is always wonderful to me. Her lips are such a soft and melting red, the red of perfect animal health. The very milkiness of her skin is an advertisement of that queenly and all-conquering vitality which lifts her so above the ordinary ruck of humanity. And her great ruminative eyes are as clear and limpid as any ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Here's a marrowy bone of gossip Lady Hannah shall never crack. And yet I wouldn't swear there's not an angel husked inside that dried-up little chrysalis. For God made all women, though He only turned out a few of 'em perfect, and some only just a little better than the ruck." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... he leant forward with his long sword, in the wild energy of the moment, as though hoping to reach the game against all possibility. Now for the spurs! and as these, vigorously applied, screwed an extra stride out of Tetel, I soon found myself in the ruck of men, horses, and drawn swords. There were seven of us,—and passing Abou Do, whose face wore an expression of agony at finding that his horse was failing, I quickly obtained a place between ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... has excellent chances. He's head and shoulders above the ruck of black-and-white artists. He makes wonderfully good comics. He'll have no trouble getting into ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... you'll get over it best in that way. We'll go over to Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... queer, Dad thinks. He come here one day last week about ten in the morning, said his doctor told him to go out 'en the country for his health. He's stuck up and citified, and wears gloves, and takes his meals private in his room, and all that sort of ruck. They was saying in the saloon last night that they thought he was hiding from something, and Dad, just to try him, asks him last night if he was coming to see the fight. He looked sort of scared, and said he ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... And the best painters in the world have shown her standing among the field of oats. By the Lord, sir, it's sheer blasphemy! and worse than that, it's making people—good, religious people, mind, not the ruck—it's making them ask why the blazes I gave you ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... repeated with a note of bitterness. Could there be praise from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place in the ruck of men; you ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... jumbled jargon of Spanish shouts, mingled with Mexican and American words, and then out of the ruck of riders a solitary horseman spurred ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never a word had been uttered, and being ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... knowingly as he left the shop. "Coming back for it in a week, of course! All of 'em are. Name of Smith, as usual! Most of 'em are." Yet this man's honouring Mr. Smith with a comment looked as if he thought him unlike "most of 'em." He never indulged in reflections on the ruck—be ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... station, Charles Fort, near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures of Clerical Life ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... stream, until he heard the rapids. Now he was towing it back. He planned to go just as far and as fast up stream as he could. The current, to him, had become the crowd. One can see the crowd as it brushes past, as one can never see it from the ruck.... Sometimes it came to him in a flash, that this new David Cairns was but another lie and pose—but this couldn't hold. It was a bit of deviltry that wouldn't stand scrutiny. There had been too much unfolding o' nights; too many gifts found upon the doorstep of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... was not so bad. It was Haldane's personal conception of it which caused the difficulty. Probably it was his sense of fairness to her which made him accept matters quietly—as he did accept them. It was his comfort to-day, out of all the ruck of his artificial self-reproach, that Ida had never known—as he said—how he ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the church bell in alarm; the tavern's took fire an' burns plumb to the ground; drinks, chuck, bed, raiment, the whole bunch of tricks; an' thar's our wise sport out in the snow an' nothin' but a black ruck of smokin' ruins to remind him of that ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who hound victims to the combat, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later in the year, by which means you will partially obtain that quiet, without ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... squirmed out of the ruck of vehicles and came rolling on to the sward. The gentleman ensconced upon its back seat was for the saddle, and plainly glad of it. His careless, handsome face was radiant, his manner full of an easy, inoffensive confidence, his gaiety—to judge from his companions' laughter—infectious. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... now, people began to be afraid that he had emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty, and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there came a time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... men went out upon the water, sailed forth beneath the white spread of new-made canvas, and, midst the creaking of spars, the slapping of ropes, the scream of the hawser, the groan of the windlass, and the ruck and roar of wave-beaten wood, carved out their destinies. They fought. They bled. They conquered and were defeated. In the hot struggle and the desperate attack they played their parts even as the old Vikings of Norway and the sea rovers ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Stormont, and he remembered well enough the solemnity with which she had always alluded to the fact, in the course of domestic discussions. Who the Stormonts were he could not recall that he had ever learned, but his mother had been very clear indeed about their superiority to the usual ruck of people. He would ask his sister whether she knew anything about them. In the meantime there was no denying that Stormont was a fine-sounding name. He reflected that it was his own middle name—and, on the instant, fancy ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... wrong o' this thing? Cromwell stands for the people's cause, Charles is crowned by the ancient laws; English meadows are sopping red, Englishmen striking each other dead,— Times are black as a raven's wing. Out of the ruck and the murk I see Only one thing! The King has trusted his banner to me, And I must fight ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the blatant clamour, of ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... disclose this to anybody if I was you," was his parting salutation. "Leastways, not for a day or two. Let the ruck of 'em embark first at Liverpool. If it gets wind, some of them may be for turning crusty, because they are not favoured with ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... intently watched by crowds of men, women, and children; the men were principally rebel soldiers, mixed with a smattering of insurgent townspeople, the women and children—creatures of all sorts—from the village folk to the common ruck which follows a native army. Many were picturesque, but others looked like the drainings of the slums of larger cities. There was no doubt as to the sentiments they entertained for the white people, for, as they caught sight of Helmar's face, under escort of rebel ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, and the representatives ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... vacation, where plenty of perfect hunters are to be hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... and left with his huge sword, and cut down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, Dimsdale!" "Well ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... until now, people began to be afraid that he had emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty, and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there came a time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... its owner stopped talking and stared at the tall stranger with some apprehension. Then the big man beckoned unobtrusively to a policeman. It was evident that Farr was not of the same sort as the ruck of men from among whom he had just emerged, nevertheless he had come from among them. The lordly man in the car had observed him moving in the group, for Farr had loomed above the heads of the others; what he had been saying to ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... midst of something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... had worked her mount easily up through the ruck to contend with Peep-sight. The half-thoroughbred was three years old and his muscles had been hardened by many a wild scramble up and down the hills of El Palomar; he was game, he was willing, and for half a mile he was marvelously fast, as Farrel ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... tide; and he would prove the superiority of the "Halicore" over the "Mary Jane," with many clenching allusions to aged authorities. If the black fleet went out with a northerly breeze blowing, he could name the ship that would be first clear of the ruck; if the wind were off the land, he knew which ship would be suited by having the breeze on the beam. Long before he ever saw the outside of the bar he had heard of every point on the coast. The possibility of becoming anything but a sailor ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... it still is your luck to be left in the ruck, and of fame you're an impotent seeker, If you fruitlessly aim at a Senate's acclaim when you can't catch the eye of the Speaker, If whenever you rise you observe with surprise that the House is perceptibly thinner, And your eloquent pleas are ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... was to be seen; I admired; and then I asked one who had already, before the war, established a style and a reputation—I asked Friesz, I think—"Et les jeunes?" "Nous sommes les jeunes" was the reply. Those young French painters who should have been emerging from the ruck of students between 1914 and 1919 had either been killed, or deflected from their career, or gravely retarded. Only now is la jeunesse beginning to give signs of vitality; only now is a new crop coming to the surface; so now I will take the foolhardy risk of pronouncing the names of a ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... of the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... drawing-office, and laughed outright at logarithms and our laborious methods of getting out quantities. But he could set sheers and tackle in a way that made the rest of us look silly. I remember once how, through the parting of a chain, a sixty-foot girder had come down and lay under a ruck of other stuff, as the bottom chip lies under a pile of spellikins—a hopeless-looking smash. Myself, I'm certificated twice or three times over; but I can only assure you that I wanted to kick myself when, after I'd spent a day and a sleepless night over the job, I saw the game ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the legends on the tombstones could be read, brief voices saying, "I am Bertha Ruck," "I am Tom Gage." And they say which day of the year they died, and the New Testament says something for them, very proud, very emphatic, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... their enjoyment, and try in all ways to win their favor and cut you out, you have the sat isfaction at any rate of keeping them to yourself, though you lose the pleasures which arise from being sought after, and made much of for their sakes, and feeling raised above the ruck of your neighbors. On the other hand, if they are all like this, you might as well try to keep the sunshine and air to yourself. Universal human nature rises up against you; and besides, they will not stand it themselves. And, indeed, why should they? Women, to be very attractive to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... between horse and rider; but Lionel's firm hand triumphed over the animal's temper for the time at least; and presently he was hurrying onward at a stretching gallop, which speedily carried him beyond the ruck of riders. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a white man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... were booths that sold food and drink, merry-go-rounds and fiddlers, and an immense concourse of every condition of folk, black slaves and water-side Indians, squatters from the woods, farmers from all the valleys, and the scum and ruck of the plantations. I found some of my friends, and settled my business with them, but my eyes were always straying to the green awning where ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... though she slept, The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of them, as quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, Dimsdale!" "Well collared, Dimsdale; well collared, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the presumption of ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the new owner. He was followed by the head copy-reader in the same strain. Two of the older sub-editors perpetrated some meaningless but well-meant remarks, and the current of events bade fair to end in complete stagnation, when from out of the ruck, midway of the table, there rose the fringed and candid head of one William S. Marchmont, the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... conception of it which caused the difficulty. Probably it was his sense of fairness to her which made him accept matters quietly—as he did accept them. It was his comfort to-day, out of all the ruck of his artificial self-reproach, that Ida had never known—as he said—how he ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... gates, and there was not much to do in the way of jumping. Then the fox, keeping straight ahead, deviated from the line by which they had come, making for the brook by a more direct course. The ruck of the horsemen, understanding the matter very well, left the hounds, and went to the right, riding for the ford. The ford was of such a nature that but one horse could pass it at a time, and that one had to scramble through deep mud. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... I'm speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... social conventions and obligations which form a kind of break to the persistent monotony of the regular treadmill round, should be, they think, sufficient for any sane, well-balanced, self-respecting creature,—and if a man or woman elects to stand out of the common ruck and say: "I refuse to live in a chaos of uncertainties—I will endeavour to know why my particular atom of self is considered a necessary, if infinitesimal, part of the Universe,"—such an one is looked upon with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... paddock—eh, what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again and pretty soon about. Let him give it to the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... battle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory—that the mass of them had behaved rather ill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... loved her, since the days they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... back up the Pilcomayo river. Among them is one showing a shod hoof; but he knows that has not been made by his master's horse, the bar being larger and broader, with the claw more deeply indented. Besides, he sees not the pony's tracks—though they are or were there—and have been trodden out by the ruck of ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... our finest and fastest merchantmen had hauled out from the main body, and under a heavy press of canvas was already hull-down in the south-eastern board, being evidently in possession of a prize-crew, while, in the thickest of the ruck, was a very large brigantine, under exceedingly short canvas, yet keeping pace with the slow-sailing merchantmen, first sheering alongside one and hugging her affectionately for a few minutes, and then turning her attention to ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... corporation, Mr. Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... them perfectly. Deulin, during fifty-odd years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... to by six chorus-girls at once, that he condescended to take a look at me through the peephole. Then he ran up to me, gave my chin another hitch, pulled my neck another foot or two out of my collar, added a ruck or two to my sleeves, and said he liked the other side of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... a clamour of calls and acclaim The pair race away from the ruck: The horse to the last of it game— A marvel of muscle and pluck! But the foot of the Sappho is there, And Kingston's invincible strength; And the numbers go up in the air— The colt is the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... but two—Donald, the big white horse, and my Jack. They stood solitary, one here, one there. I began to get interested, for I thought Jack was off his feed. In came the man with the bucket and all the ruck of curious horses at his tail. Right round he went to where Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, and the majestic Donald ate it, and the ruck of common horses followed the man. On he went to the second station, Jack's (J. in the plan), and poured out a feed, and the fools of horses went in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... George, and the Expence, Three as tall Ships, as e'r did Cable tewe, The Henry Royall, at her parting thence, Like the huge Ruck from Gillingham that flewe: The Antilop, the Elephant, Defence, Bottoms as good as euer spread a clue: All hauing charge, their voyage hauing bin, Before Southampton to ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... to be out of the nightmare, though it seemed still upon him, the horrible clamours, all gonging and blaring at him; the red, maddened faces, the clenched fists, the open mouths, all raging at him—all the ruck and uproar swam about the dazed old man as he made his slow, unseeing way ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... hardly got that bluff humg up before—"Inglegojang! inglegojang!" goes the church bell in alarm; the tavern's took fire an' burns plumb to the ground; drinks, chuck, bed, raiment, the whole bunch of tricks; an' thar's our wise sport out in the snow an' nothin' but a black ruck of smokin' ruins to remind him of ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... but latterly only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success in ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... at all events, than England: the poor man is on a level with the rich, and means to stay there. Those who want to go into Irish politics, under Home Rule as now, must take their chances in the ruck; but if they do, they will find a people ready and even eager to recognise their qualities, and to allot perhaps more consideration than is ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... known as the Timourid age—the age beloved above all others by discerning connoisseurs—and it is tempting to assign to this famous period the illustrations in a manuscript belonging to Mr. Herramaneck, now in the possession of Mr. Arthur Ruck, from which are drawn the paintings reproduced on Plate I. This temptation is strengthened by the fact that the manuscript is said to be dated 1398; yet it is a temptation to which I am unwilling to yield. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... beauties that had been immersed therein by the poets of old. When we say that our freshman, like other freshmen, "began" this course, we use the verb advisedly; for, like many other freshmen who start with a burst in learning's race, he soon got winded, and fell back among the ruck. But the course of lectures, like the course of true love, will not always run smooth, even to those who undertake it with the same courage as ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... of the usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the Beaten ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Summers came panting in with the ruck, after all was over; and the first use he made of his breath, after he had recovered it sufficiently to speak, was to abuse me in unmeasured terms for what he was pleased to term my "meanness," in leaving him to struggle up the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... o' changes for better an' wur, An' this is one change among th' ruck; We'n a toime o' prosperity,—toime o' success, An' then we'n a reawnd o' bad luck. We're baskin' i' sunshine, at one toime o'th day, At other toimes ceawerin' i'th dark; We're sometoimes as hearty an' busy as owt, At other toimes ill, an' ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the mess and ruck of common life that denned ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... dear child," said Miss Skipwith, looking from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for his sake—all ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... there ever was a woman in such a ruck of trouble!" said poor Collet Pardue, wiping her eyes. "Here's my man took to prison, saints knows what for—my man 'at was as quiet as ever a mouse, and as good to me as if he'd ha' been a cherubim, and me left with all them ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... impotency. A failure! She must write herself down a failure! At her age, with her ambitions, with her artistic temperament and creative instincts, she was yet to be denied all coherent means of expression. She was to fall back amongst the ruck, a young woman of talent, content perhaps to earn a scanty living by painting Christmas cards, or teaching at a kindergarten. Her finger-nails dug into her flesh. It was the bitterest moment of her life. She flung herself ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... varying the monotony of War Office administration by solving problems in tactics. Indubitably he is a student: incidentally he is an innovator. This fact of mental duality raises him in a moment out of the ruck of mere cavalry experts—of both sorts. On the one hand he is not a competent machine working out other people's ideas in the field of battle: on the other he is no blundering theorist whose ideas crumple ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... a note of bitterness. Could there be praise from a woman's lips more deadly? You are kind; you are put in your place in the ruck of men; ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... conservative, If an exact portraiture of him were given, the ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... floors now, which we treated, upon the strength of the label, with this Prince of Pastes, "Beesene"—"guaranteed not to show wear or dirt or to grow gritty; water-proof, gravel-proof. No rug will ruck on it, no slipper stick to it. Needs no weighted brush. Self-shining. The only perfect Floor Wax known. One box will do ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... poor fellow's buried round by the north side of the church,' said Mattocks, still eyeing the skull. 'It could not be Counsellor Gallagher, that was kilt in the jewel with Colonel Ruck—he was hot in the head—bud it could not be—augh! not ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others. It was ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... racehorse, and though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... an inconceivably brief time had Edison passed from poverty to independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the deadening drudgery of the key. Best of all he was enterprising, one of the leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always looking; and, to use his own criticism of himself, he had "too sanguine a temperament to keep money in solitary confinement." With quiet ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you all, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... to be to them the same as before. To face them and look them down, to hear whispers behind his back, to feel himself watched and judged, on that far past of his. Suppose even that it could be kept out of the papers; Wilkins amiable and acquiescent, Beverly's confession hidden in the ruck of legal documents; and he stealing back, to go on as best he could, covering his absence with lies, and taking up his work again. But even that uneasy road was closed to him. He saw David and Lucy stooping to new and strange hypocrisies, watching with anxious old eyes ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... throng without the double door, hurling them back from the battered entrance in sudden panic, a powerful stream of cold water, shooting from unseen nozzle, broke up and demoralized the drunken barrier. Skilfully directed into the heart of the crowd at the door-way, then into the ruck and tumult within, it first cleared a passage, then, torrent-like, swept away into it, tumbling and swearing and cursing, but going, the last able-bodied invader of saloon sanctity, bestowing upon its foul interior the first thorough washing it ever received, driving the despoilers before ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... heaped upon him. If he could only make a century! or even fifty. Even twenty, if it got the school out of a tight place. He was as nervous on the Saturday morning as he had been on the morning of the M.C.C. match. It was Victory or Westminster Abbey now. To do only averagely well, to be among the ruck, would be as useless as not playing at all, as far as his chance of his first ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out of the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too. Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of singular sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little lines which qualified their dominating ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... down yet, but has barely saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep, and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh, that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might happily go to ground! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for some well known though still distant protection. But the man who doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres in chasing the wearer ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... wife and the feeling we have for God, that it is reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very presence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... beyond applause, beyond any mere outward demonstration of approval. Winston felt the spell deeply, his entire body thrilling to her marvellous delineation of this common thing, her uplifting of it out of the vile ruck of its surroundings and giving unto it the abundant life of her own interpretation. Never once did he question the real although untrained genius back of those glowing eyes, that expressive face, those sincere, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... just accepted a slum parish in Shoreditch. Well, he wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself. You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic pilgrims. There'll be nothing ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... eloquence, and Kingsley with his fiery zeal, and Hughes and Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams. In 1852 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers conducted in London and Lancashire a strike which ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... clear and calm. Armed with the paraphernalia for a day's tour, we set off down the slope. Correll put the primus stove and the inner pot of the cooker in the ready food-bag, McLean slung on his camera and the aneroid barometer, while I took my ruck-sack with the rations, as well as field-glasses and an ice-axe. In case of crevasses, we attached ourselves to an alpine rope in long procession. According to the "Epic" it ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... spent a very anxious two hours, possibly the most anxious in the lives of most of us. We were all wet, dirty, and dishevelled, and looked sorry objects. One of the passengers, a tall, stout man, was somewhat handicapped by his nether garments slipping down and finally getting in a ruck round his ankles when he was climbing up the ladder on to the raider. A German sailor, to ease his passage, went down the ladder and relieved him of them altogether. He landed on the raider's deck minus this important part of his wardrobe, ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... against his lack of the ordinary gentleman's upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and made him ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... out upon the water, sailed forth beneath the white spread of new-made canvas, and, midst the creaking of spars, the slapping of ropes, the scream of the hawser, the groan of the windlass, and the ruck and roar of wave-beaten wood, carved out their destinies. They fought. They bled. They conquered and were defeated. In the hot struggle and the desperate attack they played their parts even as the old Vikings of Norway and the sea ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... young Dennison went on his way, leaving Olive to ponder upon the accuracy of his diagnosis. Was it only larynx, after all? Or had the new young rector something back of it, something that singled him out from the ruck of men, and held him up as worthy of attention? Olive's eyes grew thoughtful, for an instant, at the question. Then the laugh came back into them again, the while she ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... slipped it back to Denton. Denton made a yard or two more and passed it to Corder. Corder fell back with it into the arms of Ranger. Ranger let Corder drop, but captured the ball, and with one of his lightning swoops carried it out of the ruck for twenty yards, when, as he fell, Yorke came up and captured it. Yorke, alas, was cut short in his career before he had gone ten yards, but Clapperton was there to take it. Away he went, shaking off the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and sag of waist—all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, or else condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, as though these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck of membership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivacious member was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness of manner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a ready but utterly ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... music began again, and horn-rimmed Newland Sanders already had his arm about her waist. They disappeared into the ruck of dancers. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... this kind are scattered through his pages as they are scattered through those of Wordsworth. Nevertheless he was a great poet, bringing us before Wordsworth out of the ruck of artificiality and insincerity. Does any one suppose that Pope in his Essay on Man, that Johnson in his London or that Goldsmith in his Deserted Village had any idea other than the production of splendid phrases. Each ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, and the harvest moon (as promised in the cover picture) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... (so time runs) Is made tributary; With the ruck of Adam's sons We must draw and carry; Ground by common serfdom down, By our debts confounded, Debts to market-place and town ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it—Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it. But it only shows a ruck ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash himself with his knife while attempting to operate on the tail of a skate. Either accident may be slight or it may ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... urge me, it is impossible! My house is a basilica rather than a villa, owing to the crowds of visitors from Formiae. But (you'll say) do I really compare the AEmilian tribe to the crowd in a basilica?[232] Well, I say nothing about the common ruck—the rest of them don't bother me after ten o'clock: but C. Arrius is my next door neighbour, or rather, he almost lives in my house, and even declares that the reason for his not going to Rome is that he may spend whole days with me here philosophizing! And then, lo and behold, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... first With the bright look we know, From the broad, white brows the kind eyes Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow, White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse, Towel on arm and her inkstand Fretful with quills. Here in the ruck, anyhow, Surging along, Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs - Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles - Hustles the Class! And they ring themselves Round the first bed, where the Chief (His dressers and clerks at ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... vast amount of good and a moderate amount of harm. Those who suffered through him deserved what they got; and fate would have punished them sooner or later if he had not forestalled her. Between a Lupin who selected his victims among the ruck of wicked rich men and some big company promoter who deliberately ruins numbers of poor people, would you hesitate for a moment? Does not Lupin ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Fort, near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures of Clerical Life ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... that I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took its place in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... struggle, mingled with curses and blows. With one upward swing of my body I was safely aboard, knife still in hand, peering eagerly forward. Through the gloom concealing the deck, I could perceive only dim figures, a riot of men, battling furiously hand to hand, yet out of the ruck loomed through the darkness in larger outline than the others—-Cochose, the negro. I leaped at the fellow, and struck with the keen knife, missing the heart, but plunging the blade deep into the flesh of the shoulder. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in my power," she answered slowly. "Until he has fallen back again to the ruck. Until he has tasted a little of the misery from which at least he might ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took its place in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... gripped at the nearest object, which happened to be Norah's shoulder, and clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his native Irish. They thundered up the straight, Billy crouching on Shannon's neck, very still. Then behind him the Mulgoa horse drew out from the ruck and came in chase. Nearer and nearer he came, while the shouts from the crowd grew louder. Up, up, till his nose was at Shannon's quarter—at his girth—at his shoulder, and the winning-post was very near. Then suddenly Billy lifted ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an inevitable ingredient ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... and the Expence, Three as tall Ships, as e'r did Cable tewe, The Henry Royall, at her parting thence, Like the huge Ruck from Gillingham that flewe: The Antilop, the Elephant, Defence, Bottoms as good as euer spread a clue: All hauing charge, their voyage hauing bin, Before ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... with double dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... a while to lift herself from the common ruck of the aristocracy by outshining the others in charities and in splendors. She soon grew weary of the everlasting appeals for money to send to Europe. She grew weary of writing checks and putting on costumes for bazaars, spectacles, parades, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a jumbled jargon of Spanish shouts, mingled with Mexican and American words, and then out of the ruck of riders a ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... plenty of perfect hunters are to be hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... The public, if it had held any private admiration for the one-time mysterious crook could now once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace Morse—and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah, an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper to meet Jimmie Dale's eyes—and with it a column and a half of ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... their heads. Signs of that are on all sides of us. "What is the Kingdom of Heaven?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the guidance of inspiration to ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... implicit obedience to Him as head of the army (a position, by the way, opposed to all former Japanese ideas, according to which the Court was essentially civilian); furthermore, of a corresponding belief that Japan is as far superior to the common ruck of nations as the Mikado is divinely superior to the common ruck of kings and emperors. Do not the early history-books record the fact that Japan was created first, while all other countries resulted merely from the drops that fell from the creator's spear when he had finished his main work? ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... all those men come to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that carries them on to reaches of inward sanctification that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, and ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... said to have been performed on trademarks (such as {PostScript}, NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many {marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... however, rejoices in the performance of work, which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as a being apart from the ruck of her sex. She now takes her meals alone, and at her own hours. She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the Cultivation of Mustard and Cress on the Desert Patches of the Mile End District. After this she will hasten ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... whiskey bottle long enough to remark, casually, "I allus reckoned Kansas was purty close to hell," and said no more about it. Harlan was the proprietor and bartender of the Oasis and catered to the excessive and uncritical thirsts of the ruck of range society, and he had objected vigorously to the placing of the second sign in his place of business; but at the close of an incisive if inelegant reply from the marshal, the sign went up, and stayed up. Edwards' language ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... forward on their own wing with the careless disdain of men advancing against Ionians who would never stand their charge, and were defeated by the Milesians with a loss little short of three hundred men, the Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians, and driving before them the barbarians and the ruck of the army, without engaging the Milesians, who after the rout of the Argives retreated into the town upon seeing their comrades worsted, crowned their victory by grounding their arms under the very walls of Miletus. Thus, in this battle, the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... git out o' this Injun fry-pan fust, old hoss! I could lick my own weight in wild-cats, but this ruck o' Injuns is jest ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... God, that it is reasonable to consider the former also as a sacred thing. They do so value that close love of mated man and woman, they are so intent upon its permanence and completeness and to lift the dear relationship out of the ruck of casual and transitory things, that they want to bring it, as it were, into the very presence and assent of God. There are many who dream and desire that they are as deeply and completely mated as this, many more who would fain be so, ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time marry, though never ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Evans; and also those nearly forty volumes by Henry St. George. For all the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... pleasant to him. He was surrounded by something approaching the natural man. Maybe they were drawn from the dregs of society, but nevertheless they had forcibly established their right to live—a feature that had lifted them from the ruck of thousands of law-abiding citizens. He experienced a friendly feeling for these ruffians. More, he had a certain respect ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... for the Pickwickians to draw the inn out from the ruck of the commonplace, and to spread its fame to all corners of the globe; and the fact that it once had royal patronage is nothing in comparison to the other fact that it was the headquarters of the Pickwickians on a certain ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... instalments, it may be, to one hundred and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Dad thinks. He come here one day last week about ten in the morning, said his doctor told him to go out 'en the country for his health. He's stuck up and citified, and wears gloves, and takes his meals private in his room, and all that sort of ruck. They was saying in the saloon last night that they thought he was hiding from something, and Dad, just to try him, asks him last night if he was coming to see the fight. He looked sort of scared, and said he didn't want to see no fight. And then Dad says, 'I guess you ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing of the sums which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... may be people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful. Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his forsaken wife's pitiful fate—a responsibility which he himself tacitly admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... slow music. Their son Horatio falls in love with a certain Julietta, who is immured by wicked arts in the "Convent of Grey Penitents," tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth. The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be: but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the stage before he told his tale, the tale would remain untold. Then Betty, subdued, fell into an attitude of meek listening, hands on lap. The tale when told indeed proved to be a very ordinary affair, marked out perhaps a trifle from the ruck by the facts that there was another pretender in the field with whom Ancoats had already had one scene in public, and would probably have more; that Ancoats being Ancoats, something mad and conspicuous was to be expected, which would ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... minute, and yet so desperate the narrow roadway was strewn with bodies. Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word of command, no shout of direction from either ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Cara, they raced also with the sense of fast-slipping hope and relentlessly marching doom. Outwardly Cara set a pace for vivacious and care-free enjoyment that left Mrs. Porter-Woodleigh, the "semi-professional light-hearted lady," as O'Barreton named her, "to trail along in the ruck." Alone with Benton, there was always the furrow between the brows and the distressed gaze upon the mystery beyond the sky-line, but Pagratide and Von Ritz were vigilant, to the end that their ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Lyon, he felt an unfamiliar stinging in his heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies of the world. In hoc signo vinces! The ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Neueste Nachrichten are the property of Junker reactionists, or else, like the Lokal Anzeiger, the Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung, the organs merely of the War trade House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who "casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of aesthetics, the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... years of his life, had moved through a maze of men, remembering faces as a ship-captain must recollect those who have sailed with him, without attaching a name or being able to allot one saving quality to lift an individual out of the ruck. For it is a lamentable fact that all men and all women are painfully like each other; it is only their faces that differ. For God has made the faces, but men have manufactured their ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... wings as strong as Church buttresses. Once in his stride, a horse had to jump or fall. He couldn't run out. In the Maribyrnong Plate, twelve horses were jammed at the second wall. Red Hat, leading, fell this side, and threw out The Glen, and the ruck came up behind and the space between wing and wing was one struggling, screaming, kicking shambles. Four jockeys were taken out dead; three were very badly hurt, and Brunt was among the three. He told the story of the Maribyrnong Plate sometimes; and when he described ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... startling words begin to fall dead upon the ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, you no longer hear it. Our attention requires to be surprised; and to carry a fort by assault, or to gain a thoughtful hearing from the ruck of mankind, are feats of about an equal difficulty and must be tried by not dissimilar means. The whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may bawl himself ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the gate but two—Donald, the big white horse, and my Jack. They stood solitary, one here, one there. I began to get interested, for I thought Jack was off his feed. In came the man with the bucket and all the ruck of curious horses at his tail. Right round he went to where Donald stood (D) and poured out a feed, and the majestic Donald ate it, and the ruck of common horses followed the man. On he went to the second station, Jack's (J. in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... operation of gutting, cleaning, and packing fish on a dark night with a smack dancing a North Sea hornpipe under one's feet. Among the dangers are two which merit notice. The one is the fisherman's liability, while working among the "ruck," to run a sharp fish-bone into his hand, the other to gash himself with his knife while attempting to operate on the tail of a skate. Either accident may be slight ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... or two before our questions came on, and thus had many opportunities of hearing Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli, and all the leading speakers. After a time the pleasure, when compulsory, began to pall; and I used to wonder what on earth could induce the ruck to waste their time in following, sheeplike, their bell-wethers, or waste their money in paying for that honour. When Parliament was up we moved to Dublin. I lived with Horsman in the Chief Secretary's lodge. And as I had often stayed at Castle Howard before Lord Carlisle became ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... field or two there was a succession of gates, and there was not much to do in the way of jumping. Then the fox, keeping straight ahead, deviated from the line by which they had come, making for the brook by a more direct course. The ruck of the horsemen, understanding the matter very well, left the hounds, and went to the right, riding for the ford. The ford was of such a nature that but one horse could pass it at a time, and that one ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in learning and birth than the ruck o' soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It show's ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... fame at last! It is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers into the society of the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics we've heard ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... — N. fold, plicature[obs3], plait, pleat,ply, crease; tuck, gather; flexion, flexure, joint, elbow, double, doubling, duplicature[obs3], gather, wrinkle, rimple[obs3], crinkle, crankle[obs3], crumple, rumple, rivel[obs3], ruck[obs3], ruffle, dog's ear, corrugation, frounce[obs3], flounce, lapel; pucker, crow's feet; plication[obs3]. V. fold, double, plicate[obs3], plait, crease, wrinkle, crinkle, crankle[obs3], curl, cockle up, cocker, rimple[obs3], rumple, flute,frizzle, frounce[obs3], rivel[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... transformed into exceedingly plain-spoken politician. "If PARNELL had taken corner seat, his comings and goings—especially his goings—would have been more easily marked. Sitting midway down the Bench, amongst the ruck of Members, he was not noticeable except when he wanted to be noticed. Could slink in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... it best in that way. We'll go over to Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... a vast amount of good and a moderate amount of harm. Those who suffered through him deserved what they got; and fate would have punished them sooner or later if he had not forestalled her. Between a Lupin who selected his victims among the ruck of wicked rich men and some big company promoter who deliberately ruins numbers of poor people, would you hesitate for a moment? Does not Lupin come ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the mess and ruck of common life that denned and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... draining a brimming goblet, but never—at least within my recollection—taking a part of any individuality, or one that gave him a chance of singing or speaking a single line by himself. He had been one of the ruck when I had first seen him, and now, after at least twenty years, the ruck still claimed him for its own. I remember I had woven a sort of romance about him. There, I had thought to myself, is a man who, no doubt, began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man's control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... young man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled, with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward, grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... my unshod horse was not fit for galloping over lava and rough ground, and I asked the men where I should stay to be out of danger. The leader replied, "Oh, just keep close behind me!" I had thought of some safe view-point, not of galloping on an unshod horse with a ruck of half maddened cattle, but it was the safest plan, and there was no time to be lost, for as we rode slowly down, we sighted the herd dodging across the open to regain the shelter of the wood, and much ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... women bear the discomforts of gestation and the actual perils and pangs of birth with exemplary fortitude: and it is a gross slander for anyone to maintain that a few cowardly and degenerate individuals really represent that devoted sex. But these writers are indeed well out of the ruck of ordinary humanity, because they tell us that "whatever the means employed, and whether righteous or not, the propensity to limit the highest form of life operates silently and steadily amongst ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... foreign ministers, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru, and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under these safeguards, portly clergymen, schoolmistresses, gentlemen in grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry pour unhindered, "Murray" in hand, over the railways of the Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he travels without a passport, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... love to by six chorus-girls at once, that he condescended to take a look at me through the peephole. Then he ran up to me, gave my chin another hitch, pulled my neck another foot or two out of my collar, added a ruck or two to my sleeves, and said he liked the other side of my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... him. If he could only make a century! or even fifty. Even twenty, if it got the school out of a tight place. He was as nervous on the Saturday morning as he had been on the morning of the M.C.C. match. It was Victory or Westminster Abbey now. To do only averagely well, to be among the ruck, would be as useless as not playing at all, as far as his chance of his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... every nerve and muscle to carry them to safety, galloped ahead of the cattle, the boys rode into the ruck, beating the brutes with their quirts in ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. "Mrs. Ruck—Miss Sophy Ruck," said my ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again and pretty ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... an ink-bottle over the young calf? Fauntleroy kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... pursuing, and right in the midst of them, as quick and as erratic as a trout in a pool, runs the calm-faced little man, dodging one, avoiding another, slipping between the fingers of two others. Surely he is caught now. No, he has passed all the forwards and emerges from the ruck of men, pelting along at a tremendous pace. He has dodged one of the Scotch quarters, and outstripped the other. "Well played, England!" shout the crowd. "Well run, Buller!" "Now, Tookey!" "Now, Dimsdale!" "Well collared, Dimsdale; well collared, indeed!" The little quarter-back had come to an ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will have passed through school without emerging in any way from the common ruck of ordinary boys. He will have left at a comparatively early age in order that his education may no longer be neglected, and will have betaken himself to the fostering care of one of the numerous establishments which exist to prove that the private coach Codlin is superior ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... leathern straps, and would not make off until I struck a box with my riding whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... legs and arms, a pandemonium of dancing figures, a horrible chorus of maddened yells. I caught a glimpse of Asa Hall flung high into the air, shot dead in mid-flight, the whirling body dropping into the ruck below. I saw the savage, whose fingers were twined in my hair, lift a gleaming tomahawk and circle it about his head; I stared into the hate of his eyes, and as it swept down—there was a glare of red and yellow flame ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... camp not greatly distant from his birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons. Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be any fatted calf. Secondly, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were unmoved. Perhaps they had only increased the disorder. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... death is only the last incident in life and not the most important. Of Bernard's hot passions there was not a sign. Amiable? Laura fancied that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened when he spoke to her. But the ruck of people? She doubted whether Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if they had all ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9. Strabo. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... England,—Sir Alexander Cockburn, one of the most conspicuous figures in the social annals of the 'thirties and 'forties, the "Hortensius" of Endymion, whose "sunny face and voice of music" had carried him out of the ruck of London dandies to the chief seat of the British judicature, and had made him the hero of the Tichborne Trial and the Alabama Arbitration. Yet another personage of intellectual fame who was to be met in Society was Robert Browning, the least ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... go by, little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... be sure," concluded Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck! But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward—then for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal. When at length he could no longer descry ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... white dust-cloud, lifted now and then, he could see naked forms swaying, bending forward, plying their weapons. Somewhere in the midst of it, out in the ruck of hoof and horn, his friend was riding, forgetting all else but the excitement of the chase. What if accident had befallen either of them? Lewis could not avoid asking ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word of command, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... snow in London, that the visit would entail almost continuous travelling for nearly thirty hours each way, and that my sister cannot sleep in a train, it seemed as if Berry, at any rate, was pulling out of the ruck. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... survives by dint of its prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing of the sums which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... better than they should be. Even short stories when they are masterpieces are not "what the public wants." So the bright young men go into outer darkness, sadly looking for new jobs, and with its third number Snooks's Monthly has fallen into line with the indistinguishable ruck of monthly magazines, only indeed distinguishable one from the other by the euphonious names of ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... confident sport ain't hardly got that bluff humg up before—"Inglegojang! inglegojang!" goes the church bell in alarm; the tavern's took fire an' burns plumb to the ground; drinks, chuck, bed, raiment, the whole bunch of tricks; an' thar's our wise sport out in the snow an' nothin' but a black ruck of smokin' ruins to remind him of that cinch ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Brr-rr-rrr—more speed, more competition—and all for what? For culture? No, my friend, for money. Missionary! I tell you, as long as Western Europe with all its wonders of modern science and its Christianity and its political reforms hasn't turned out a better type of humanity than the mean ruck of men we have now—we'd do best to stay at home and hold our counfounded jaw. Here's ourselves!" ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... slinks out of town for a period of enforced abstinence from the joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic outrage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not highly desirable? One or two comparatively innocent men may be caught in the ruck, but they generally manage to intimate to the police that the latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their escape. The others resume their tramp from city to city, clothed in the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... centuries the educated class ignored the ruck of vulgar literature. They ignored, and therefore did not, properly speaking, despise it. Simple ignorance and indifference does not inflate the character with pride. A man does not walk down the street giving a haughty twirl to ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... fawning and supplicating. The ruck of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud personalities to an old lady near ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... about to be withdrawn, when the fresh one is brought under the child's body as that which is soiled is removed. The greatest care should always be taken that the under sheet is perfectly free from ruck or wrinkle; in long illnesses the skin becomes chafed and bed-sores may be produced by neglect of this simple precaution. The complaint that a child throws off the bed-clothes is easily remedied by a couple of bits of tape tied on either side loosely from the sheet ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguish place for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured and jabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and somber sky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in the forest and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... white devils was a terror. Had they come to kill? The individuals torn out of the ruck became very limp in the seamen's hands: some, dragged aside by the heels, were passive, like dead bodies, with open, fixed eyes. Here and there a coolie would fall on his knees as if begging for mercy; several, whom the excess of fear made unruly, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, and the representatives ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts abound, being "more common than the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... may stare! You're one of them yourself—though maybe just so much above the ruck of them that I'm willing to waste words on you. Listen to me!" She springs to her feet and moves towards him. "I hate you and despise you every one. Oh, I could tear the eyes out of every man on this earth—and yours ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... answered lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but enjoy life, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... now and try on your dress?" Ally asked, looking at her with wistful admiration. "I want to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... The ruck of the men were lower down than our two heroes, and there were others far away to the left, and others, again, who had been at the end of the gorse, and were now behind. Our friends were not near the hounds, not within two fields of them, but the hounds ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... the winter vacation, where plenty of perfect hunters are to be hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... went out upon the water, sailed forth beneath the white spread of new-made canvas, and, midst the creaking of spars, the slapping of ropes, the scream of the hawser, the groan of the windlass, and the ruck and roar of wave-beaten wood, carved out their destinies. They fought. They bled. They conquered and were defeated. In the hot struggle and the desperate attack they played their parts even as the old Vikings of Norway and the sea ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a free ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... they were intently watched by crowds of men, women, and children; the men were principally rebel soldiers, mixed with a smattering of insurgent townspeople, the women and children—creatures of all sorts—from the village folk to the common ruck which follows a native army. Many were picturesque, but others looked like the drainings of the slums of larger cities. There was no doubt as to the sentiments they entertained for the white people, for, as they caught sight of Helmar's ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... not have a shout over the perseverance and patient continuance of the converts? See the worshippers of the race horse, as, whipped and spurred, the winner draws out from the ruck and passes the post first! How the mad votaries of the gambling idol make the air ring with their cries! And shall not we be as interested as we see men and women contend successfully for "the prize?" Is not the cant sometimes on the side of those who are so anxious for what they call decorum? ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... solidity of his arguments. Johnson, our third metropolitan, had early descended, or else condescended, to pungent snapping at the heels of the nominees, as though these sacred persons had been ordinary mortals like the ruck of membership on his own side of the table. By far our most vivacious member was William Rutledge, of Port Fairy, who, with an earnestness of manner, contrasting with a merry twinkle of the eye, and with a ready but utterly ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... doing all in my power for him. He's such a soft little ass,—confound Thorne! he makes me mad with his cursed suspicions!—and then the boy is out of place here in this rough-and-tumble tiltyard. Reminds me of a delicate wineglass crowded in among a ruck of ale ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the very midst of hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who hound ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... them, he gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of what may be, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... to have been performed on trademarks (such as {PostScript}, NeXT, {NeWS}, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization. Too many {marketroid} types think this sort of thing is really cute, even the 2,317th time they do it. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... "BERTA RUCK" will write for us such pretty books as Sweethearts Unmet (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), we need never feel ourselves dependent on America for our supply of sugary novels. This home-grown variety is just as sweet, and really, I think, may be guaranteed not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... contend that there is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... flight of second horsemen—his lordship's pad-groom, Mr. Fossick's man in drab with a green collar, Mr. Wake's in blue, also a lad in scarlet and a flat hat, with a second horse for the huntsman. Drawing still nearer came the ruck—men in red, men in brown, men in livery, a farmer or two in fustian, all mingled together; and a few hundred yards before these, and close upon his lordship, were the elite of the field—five men in scarlet and one in black. ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the man assured her, "except in mentioning the name of Ruthven Smith. Anybody who has lived in America as long as I have, associates jewels with the name of Ruthven Smith. His 'Ruthven' lifts him far above the ruck of a mere Smith—like myself, for instance"; ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... dislocated neck, being made love to by six chorus-girls at once, that he condescended to take a look at me through the peephole. Then he ran up to me, gave my chin another hitch, pulled my neck another foot or two out of my collar, added a ruck or two to my sleeves, and said he liked the other side of my face better, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... officer in a kilted regiment—writing home a short time ago described his sensations, as, emerging from the bloody ruck of his first engagement, he presently found himself, worn and spent, gazing at the figure of the Crucified One. And as he very beautifully said, 'Jesus came ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to impose their will upon others. It was then that their real trials began, as the undisciplined ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Jockey. You won't, my brave boy; that a novice could tell. You'll be left in the ruck at the end, my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... new reports and rumors of more farther on. The headquarters of Hoover's employers were in Coolgardie when he arrived, but were soon moved on to Kalgoorlie, following the railroad. The offices were in one of the three or four stone, two-story buildings, which lifted themselves proudly above the ruck of sweltering little toy-like houses of corrugated iron. Forty thousand people were supposed to be living in this "camp" at one time, buying water at two shillings six pence the gallon, which was cheap—they were paying seven shillings in some other camps. At first it was all brought by ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... it was denner-time The toon was in a low! The reek rase up as it had been Frae Sodom-flames, I vow. We lowst and rade like mad, for byre And ruck bleezt a' thegither, As gien the deil had broucht the fire Frae's hell to mak anither! 'Twas a' wrang, and a' wrang, And a'thegither a' wrang, Stick and strae aboot the place Was ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... eyes as if for inspiration, and helped himself to salad. 'It's this,' he said. 'Isn't it possible, isn't it even probable that being ill, and overstrung, moping a little over things more or less out of the common ruck, and sitting there in a kind of trance—isn't it possible that you may have very largely IMAGINED the change? Hypnotised yourself into believing it much worse—more profound, radical, acute—and simply absolutely hypnotizing others into thinking so, too. Christendom ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... fate of Lord Robert Cecil. He is regarded by his countrymen as unpractical. Men speak well of him, and confess willingly that he is vastly superior in character and intellect to the ruck of politicians, but nevertheless wind up their panegyrics with the regretful judgment that, alas, he is ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... who had ridden straight,—so that justice might in some sort be done,—it would perhaps be better. When you have nearly broken your neck to get to hounds, or made your horse exert himself beyond his proper power, and then find yourself, within three minutes, overtaking the hindmost ruck of horsemen on a road because of some iniquitous turn that the fox has taken, the feeling is not pleasant. And some man who has not ridden at all, who never did ride at all, will ask you where you have been; and his smile will give you the lie in your teeth if you make any attempt to explain the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... RUCK" is among the few writers from whom I can really enjoy stories about the War. She has an engaging way with her that can turn even that (at least the more endurable aspects of it) to favour and prettiness. And in The Land Girl's Love Story (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), a theme after her own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... romance into my speculations. Often I have backed a horse for his name, for something curious, or literary, or classical about his name. Xanthus, or Podargus, or Phaeeton, or Lampusa has often carried my investment to an inconspicuous position in the ruck. Another plan of mine, which I believe every Duffer adopts, was backing my dreams—those horses of air. About the time of the Derby one always reads about lucky persons who backed a dream. But one does not read about the unlucky persons who take the same precaution. Several ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... by Henry St. George. For all the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. Dencombe's grievance was against fate, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... Stabber and the opposing orator seemed all in an instant to split asunder, and with trailing war bonnet and followed by only two or three of his braves, the former lashed his way westward and swept angrily out of the ruck and went circling away toward the crest, while, with loud acclamation, brandishing shield and lance and rifle in superb barbaric tableau, the warriors lined up in front of the victorious young leader who, sitting high in his stirrups, with one magnificent red arm uplifted, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... and more, as detailed accounts of the battle arrived, it became clear that the Scots could claim only a little of the merit of the victory—that the mass of them had behaved rather ill; that the luck or the generalship of Field-marshal Leven had deserted him, and he had been carried far away in a ruck of fugitives; and that, in fact, with the exception of David Leslie, the Scottish Major-general, who really did good service, no Scot in command had shown much head, or been of any considerable use, at Marston Moor. But, worse and worse ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... chances. He's head and shoulders above the ruck of black-and-white artists. He makes wonderfully good comics. He'll have no trouble getting into the weeklies, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Heaven?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the guidance of inspiration to ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... this enchanted island, there was no reveille to awaken us in the morning, and in the evening the only sound we could hear was the "ruck" of the waves on the far outer shores and the sad tolling of the bell buoy when the heaving swell of the ocean came ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... fences. He has not been down yet, but has barely saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep, and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh, that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might happily go to ground! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for some well known though still distant protection. But the man who doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres in chasing the wearer of it. The solitary red coat becomes distant, and ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... instance, would soon rise to a higher level than that Belgravian swamp over which the malarian vapours of falsehood, and slander, and self-seeking, and prurient imaginings hang dense and thick. She would rise to the loftier table-land of that really great world which governs and admonishes the ruck of mankind by examples of noble deeds and noble thoughts; the world of statesmen, and soldiers, and thinkers, and reformers; the salt wherewithal society ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... see the old gee in the paddock—eh, what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... that I e'er might have the hap To get the bird which in the map Is call'd the Indian ruck! I'd give it him, and hope to be As rich as Guise or Livine, Or else ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hacking with broken blade, pushing into the midst of the melee as if he had real joy in the encounter. While I thus had him in view, a knife whistled through the air, there was a quick dazzle in the sunlight, and he reeled backward off his horse and disappeared in the ruck below. ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... are scattered through his pages as they are scattered through those of Wordsworth. Nevertheless he was a great poet, bringing us before Wordsworth out of the ruck of artificiality and insincerity. Does any one suppose that Pope in his Essay on Man, that Johnson in his London or that Goldsmith in his Deserted Village had any idea other than the production of splendid phrases. Each and all of them were ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... I confess, would not be much to say against him, seeing that it is nothing but the ordinary professorial or academic mind, and I suppose that the only difference between Freeman and the ruck of the professors was that he was more impulsive or articulate and had a greater facility in expressing ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... shillings a week rising by slow instalments, it may be, to one hundred and fifty a year; the four-roomed house at Brixton; the girl wife, pretty, perhaps, but sinking so soon into the slatternly woman; the squalling children. How could I, unaided, expect to raise myself from the ruck? Was not this the more ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... relentlessly marching doom. Outwardly Cara set a pace for vivacious and care-free enjoyment that left Mrs. Porter-Woodleigh, the "semi-professional light-hearted lady," as O'Barreton named her, "to trail along in the ruck." Alone with Benton, there was always the furrow between the brows and the distressed gaze upon the mystery beyond the sky-line, but Pagratide and Von Ritz were vigilant, to the end that their ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... I am sorry," she said. "All that we need is a leader, and you might have been he. As it is, I suppose we shall muddle along somehow until some one comes out of the ruck strong enough to pull us together.... Come and see me in London, Lawrence. Who knows but that you may ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there is a law and a provision in the life of grace that all those men come to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that carries them on to reaches of inward sanctification that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... is your luck to be left in the ruck, and of fame you're an impotent seeker, If you fruitlessly aim at a Senate's acclaim when you can't catch the eye of the Speaker, If whenever you rise you observe with surprise that the House is perceptibly thinner, And your eloquent pleas are a sign to M.P.'s that it's nearly ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... let fall by his mother, left him coolly incredulous; the girl still seemed to him altogether distant; but from the first sight of her face he had evolved a stolid, unfaltering conception of her difference from the ruck of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... ink-bottle over the young calf? Fauntleroy kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who says: "Yes, sir, thank you," and "No, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... at last. Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles. And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck— The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck. We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined "O sir, my eyes—I'm blind—I'm blind, I'm blind!" Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not blind; in time he'd get all right. "I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. lib. 5. cap. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... against the sky and the grama grass curled slowly on its stem, the rain wind rose up suddenly out of Papagueria and swooped down upon the desolate town of Bender, whirling a cloud of dust before it; and the inhabitants, man and horse, took to cover. New-born clouds, rushing out of the ruck of flying dirt, cast a cold, damp shadow upon the earth and hurried past; white-crested thunder-caps, piling-up above the Four Peaks, swept resolutely down to meet them; and the storm wind, laden with the smell ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... fear of everybody doing anything of the kind. The ruck of men have no private judgment to claim the right of. They take whatever's given them in the way of morals by their pastors and masters. Only exceptional people have ideas of their own to carry out; and there are not enough exceptional ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives' ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... worked her mount easily up through the ruck to contend with Peep-sight. The half-thoroughbred was three years old and his muscles had been hardened by many a wild scramble up and down the hills of El Palomar; he was game, he was willing, and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were unmoved. Perhaps they had only increased the disorder. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... rejoicings, and there went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of corpses, with her face in her hands, crying—for she was a young girl, you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the mothers of those dead friends ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... up. Hard behind us came Rischenheim, and hot on his heels a score of fellows, pushing and shouldering and trampling. We in front had a fair start, and gained the stairs unimpeded; Rischenheim was caught up in the ruck and gulfed in the stormy, tossing group that struggled for first footing on the steps. Yet, soon they were after us, and we heard them reach the first landing as we sped up to the last. There was a confused din through all the house, and it seemed now to echo muffled and vague through the walls ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... birthplace and the suburban Toronto home where the spinster aunts still lived. He did not go to see them at first, for two reasons. Primarily, because he had written them a full and frank account of himself when he got out of the ruck and achieved success in San Francisco. Their reply had breathed an open disappointment, almost hostility, at his departure from the chosen path. They made it clear that in their eyes he was a prodigal son for whom there would never be any fatted calf. Secondly, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... first field or two there was a succession of gates, and there was not much to do in the way of jumping. Then the fox, keeping straight ahead, deviated from the line by which they had come, making for the brook by a more direct course. The ruck of the horsemen, understanding the matter very well, left the hounds, and went to the right, riding for the ford. The ford was of such a nature that but one horse could pass it at a time, and that one had to scramble through deep mud. "There'll be the devil to pay ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... rejoices in the performance of work, which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as a being apart from the ruck of her sex. She now takes her meals alone, and at her own hours. She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the Cultivation of Mustard ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success in recent experiments; ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... whip. They soon became accustomed even to this and drew back only a few steps. Then I remembered the apples, and as soon as the jackals crept up again, I threw one of them with all my strength into the ruck, and used them as missiles till the last apple had disappeared into the darkness. Most of my shots were misses, for I only once heard a howl from one of the ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... wheresoever these incomprehensible humans demanded with whip and spur—in this line of passive and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man's control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence toward ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... before he told his tale, the tale would remain untold. Then Betty, subdued, fell into an attitude of meek listening, hands on lap. The tale when told indeed proved to be a very ordinary affair, marked out perhaps a trifle from the ruck by the facts that there was another pretender in the field with whom Ancoats had already had one scene in public, and would probably have more; that Ancoats being Ancoats, something mad and conspicuous was to be expected, which would bring the matter inevitably to his mother's ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... specialty of this sort had been disposed of, the ruck of presentees, standing like a lot of school-boys in a long row, were "presented," which ceremony was deemed to have been effectually accomplished by one duck of the grand ducal head, to be divided among all the recipients, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... mildest-mannered man that ever built a tram or railway, now transformed into exceedingly plain-spoken politician. "If PARNELL had taken corner seat, his comings and goings—especially his goings—would have been more easily marked. Sitting midway down the Bench, amongst the ruck of Members, he was not noticeable except when he wanted to be noticed. Could slink in and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... in one of the paths, looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. "Mrs. Ruck—Miss Sophy Ruck," said my ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... right, anyhow," said he. "You've simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can't grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and waste and sin and misery of the present system. I don't blame you. You're a product of your environment. You can't help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more vital ideas ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... easy to fill chapter upon chapter; for, if you are generous, you will throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
