"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the navigable rivers of this country are comparatively long and shallow. In order that they may be made fully useful for navigation there has come into vogue a method of improvement known as canalization, or the slack-water method, which consists in building a series of dams and locks, each of which will create a long pool of deep navigable water. At each of these dams there is usually created also water power of commercial value. If the water power thus created can be made available for the further improvement ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... indifference does he extract the blood, and leave a man half alive! And as for the poet, where is the fish which is able to swallow like him? he is drinking oceans of liquor at all times, but the briny sea itself would not slack his thirst. And provided a man be a poet and a lawyer, how is it possible to know whether he be fish or flesh, especially if he be a courtier to boot, as I was, and obliged to vary his taste to every ones palate. But tell me," said he, "whether there ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... it she must. If thy love would pass it by, think this, for her good it is. Many bitter things are in it. What unkind words will now be said! Also, my share in the matter I must tell in the kirk session; and Dominie de Ronde is not one slack in giving the reproof. With our own people a disgrace it will be counted. Can I not hear Van Vleek grumble, 'Well, now, I hope Joris Van Heemskirk has had enough of his fine English company;' and Elder Brouwer will say, 'He must marry his daughter ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... wriggle I grasped it, and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around Ormond's shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of under the jutting shelf ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... be mighty slack for the great gland specialist, Stanley Fenwick. Is this all he can find for his pretty ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... reports that are without foundation and threats that go without fulfilment, and so much occupied besides by the raging troubles of my own wame, that I have been very slack on politics, as I have been in literature. With incredible labour, I have rewritten the First Chapter of the Justice Clerk; it took me about ten days, and requires another athletic dressing after all. And that is my story for the month. The ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over. Mr. Algernon Leary, of the firm of Leary & Slack, counsellors and attorneys at law, with offices at Number Thirty-two Broad Street, was among the very last to depart. Never had Mr. Leary spent a more pleasant evening. He had been in rare form, a variety of causes ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, above all, more spirit in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Sauce, against the earnest counsel of its own advertisement, was forgotten; the pickles passed by. To escape the natural result of his popularity would have needed a stronger will than young Grindley possessed. For a time the true state of affairs was hidden from the eye of Grindley senior. To "slack" it this term, with the full determination of "swotting" it the next, is always easy; the difficulty beginning only with the new term. Possibly with luck young Grindley might have retrieved his position and covered up the traces of ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... late.[10] George and I rode into Pontoise and "scrounged" for eggs and bread. These we took to a small and smelly cottage. The old woman of the cottage boiled our eggs and gave us coffee. It was a luxurious breakfast. I was looking forward to a slack lazy day in the sun, for we were told that we had for the moment outdistanced the gentle Germans. But my turn came round horribly soon, and I was sent off to Compiegne with a message for G.H.Q., and orders to find ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... to our own personal life and work, and to the growth of Christianity in the world, and let us not be staggered because either are so slow. 'The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' How long will that day be of which a thousand years are but as the morning twilight? Brethren, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... bright, happy, a fit place for her children to grow up in. Faithfulness requires that she do always such service as a mother, that Jesus shall say of her home-making, "She hath done what she could." To do less than her best is to fail in fidelity. Suppose that her hand should slack, that she should grow negligent, would she not clearly be robbing God? For even God cannot make a beautiful home ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... down," said Raffles, promptly; "we'll slack it up here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are! I'll fetch you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan't come down till you ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Spooner it can only be said that he is still a bachelor, living with his cousin Ned, and that none of the neighbours expect to see a lady at Spoon Hall. In one winter, after the period of his misfortune, he became slack about his hunting, and there were rumours that he was carrying out that terrible threat of his as to the crusade which he would go to find a cure for his love. But his cousin took him in hand somewhat sharply, made him travel abroad during the summer, and brought him out the next ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... short to satisfy that expectation which by the generality of the enterprisers was first conceived; and being further advised of the slenderness of our strength, whereunto we be now reduced, as well in respect of the small number of able bodies, as also not a little in regard of the slack disposition of the greater part of those which remain, very many of the better minds and men being either consumed by death or weakened by sickness and hurts; and lastly, since that as yet there is not laid down to our knowledge any such enterprise as may seem convenient to be ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... of the lynx was cut into strips and fashioned into a rawhide line which Bill made fast to their belts, leaving plenty of slack to allow free use of the rackets. The rifle was left in the cave, and, muffled to the ears, the two stepped out into ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... changed their beat from one to the other. In the saloon they had started a comic song with a chorus. Said she, after a bit, 'You can bring up now and wait for morning. North of the Gunnel here there's an eddy slack where the tides meet, and you may ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... place—a beautiful place, indeed," and then straightway returned to the house. Edgecomb, slack grammarian though he was, made note of the fact that he spoke of the house in the past tense, quite as if it were a thing that ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... be as quiet as that, Ned. She has only to slack away her cables and drift with the tide that turned half an hour ago, we have got to tow out and set sail. However, the night is dark, the wind is off shore, and everything is in our favour. Do you see if there be anyone about on the decks of the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... bold dashes along the bank, and hidden in belts of reeds. Its capture had often looked certain and yet it had escaped. At first Grace had noticed the animal's confidence, beauty of form, and strength; but it had gradually got slack, hesitating, and limp. Now, when it lurked, half-drowned, in the depths of the pool while its pitiless enemies waited for it to come up to breathe, she began to wish it ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... little in my way lately, George," the hunchback continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion. "Sly business has been slack, my dear, eh?" ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of going home, making sure that peace would soon be concluded. And never did more welcome message come anywhere than that which brought us intelligence of the armistice, and the firing, which had grown more and more slack lately, ceased altogether. Of course the army did not desire peace because they had any distaste for fighting; so far from it, I believe the only more welcome intelligence would have been news of a campaign ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... hands, and some of them he observed were in the habit of spending a great part of their wages and time in dissipation. By way of example to his workmen he laid aside some 12/-to 15/-a week for a considerable period, and when trade was occasionally slack with him, and he had no other occupation for them, he sent his horse and cart to Aston Furnaces for loads of "slag," gathering in this way by degrees a sufficient quantity of this strange building material for the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... sapling bends, While the hand its pressure lends; If the hand its pressure slack, Straight the supple wood springs back. Phoebus in the western main Sinks; but swift his car again By a secret path is borne To the wonted ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... fisherman at Marlborough had secured "a 52-pounder." These heavy fellows, it was explained, "would go through a net like a cannon-ball" if they came "head on," and with ordinary speed; but if they are playing around gently, the swift tide carries them sidewise into the "slack of the net," from which they seem unable to escape. There are usually about forty-five feet between the surface of the water and the top of the nets, therefore the fish are caught at an average depth of fifty feet. The ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... be asked of Catholic children when they grow up and have to take upon themselves the responsibility of keeping their own faith alive, and the practice of their religion in an atmosphere which may often be one of cold faith and slack observance? Neither their spiritual guides, nor those who have educated them, nor their own parents, can take this responsibility out of their hands. St. Francis of Sales calls science the 8th Sacrament for a priest, urging the clergy to give themselves earnestly to study, and he says that great ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... lamb the wolf; "The stag the lion;—so on trembling wings "The dove avoids the eagle:—these are foes, "But love alone me urges to pursue. "Ah me! then, shouldst thou fall,—or prickly thorns "Wound thy fair legs,—and I the cause of pain!— "Rough is the road thou runnest; slack, I pray, "Thy speed;—I swear to follow not so fast. "But hear who loves thee;—no rough mountain swain; "No shepherd;—none in raiments rugged clad, "Tending the lowing herds: rash thoughtless nymph, "Thou fly'st thou know'st not whom, and therefore fly'st! "O'er Delphos' lands, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from the Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke like Cobden ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... an' yallah Mek me open up my eyes; Seems lak it's a-lookin' at me Jes' a-la'in' dah sayin' "Pies." Tu'key gobbler gwine 'roun' blowin', Gwine 'roun' gibbin' sass an' slack; Keep on talkin', Mistah Tu'key, You ain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... on the rope too much," answered the Navajo. "There will be places where you may have to do that. It will be safe to do so for Kitoni will take in all slack, but it will be better ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... would thrust her matrimonial happiness with Oliver unsparingly upon his attention; while he, on the other hand, being provided with no corresponding Olivette, would be left, a sort of emotional celibate, with his slack times and his afternoons and his general need for flattery and amusement dreadfully upon his own hands. He would be tormented by jealousy. In which case—and here he came to verities—his work would suffer. It wouldn't grip him while all these vague demands ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... here on purpose, don't it? But then that's inconsistent with the steam-crusher of the sale. That's the trouble with this brig racket; any one can make half a dozen theories for sixty or seventy per cent. of it; but when they're made, there's always a fathom or two of slack hanging out of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chicago. You have to go back that way. Just then the five o'clock whistles blew and the day shift came off. There was a great army of them, clumping down the road the way they do. Their shoulders were slack, and their lunch pails dangled, empty, and they were wet and reeking with sweat. The motor cars were full of wild phlox and ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... ran on, devising reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... service to my native Taganrog.... I am sure that if my work had been there I should have been calmer, more cheerful, in better health, but evidently it is my fate to remain in Moscow. My home and my career are here. I have work of two sorts. As a doctor I should have grown slack in Taganrog and forgotten my medicine, but in Moscow a doctor has no time to go to the club and play cards. As a writer I am no use except ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... so sure," growled the other, watching him suspiciously. "You've been lying low for a long time, and it's not like you to slack off except when there's something ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... when conversing with him, that Dare's life could not have been one in which the nobler feelings of his nature had been much brought into play, so crude and unformed were his ideas of principle and responsibility, so slack and easy-going his ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in the month of November, when the river was low and the current slack, albeit it raced by at five or ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... he flopped out, flapping as if he hated the touch of the snow, now. She gathered him up and put her lips to his beak. She was flushed and handsome, her eyes bright, her hair slack, thick, but more witch-like than ever. She did ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... ye, How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly; And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back; but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, 70 Much less of powerful gods: let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes; Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leapt into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow, and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... been growing lazy for years. They all grew lazy out East here (Sterne was very conscious of his own unimpaired activity); they got slack all over. But he towered very erect on the bridge; and quite low by his side, as you see a small child looking over the edge of a table, the battered soft hat and the brown face of the Serang peeped over the white canvas ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... Ally, is to let your mother have her way. You just stop at home till she gets you a place where they'll pay you better than I do! She'll find out the sooner that there isn't a better place to be had, for it's a slack time now, and everybody has too many hands! When her pride's come down a bit, you come and see whether I'm able to take you on again.' Now ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... and began slowing for the end of its run—tripped by a block signal set in the ribbon cable. As it came to a stop at the end of the long anchor tube, Steve dismounted and kicked over the short remaining distance, which was spanned only by a slack cable to permit the inertial orientation servos of Hot Rod unhindered freedom to maintain their constant ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... good job in his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... him and asked the reason. "Well, sir," replied the lieutenant, "I will tell you my secret. As soon as the officer I relieve is gone below and out of sight, while the watch is mustering, I walk forward, look round at things generally, and say casually to the captain of the forecastle: 'Just slack off a little of this jib-sheet.' Then about ten minutes before eight bells, after the last log of the watch has been hove, while the men are rousing to go below, I go forward again and say, 'Come here, half a dozen ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... it to be equally disagreeable to both sides. Its reception has been better than seemed probable. Gladstone has spoken out his mind about Parnell, and quite right too; but I wish he had not accused the unlucky loyalists in Ireland of being slack in their own defence. He does not know, evidently, how ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... read something of Drew's blazing anger in his face, for the Mexican's mouth went a little slack and his hand came up in an involuntary gesture as if to ward off ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... dropped mine in camp, but 'tis just the same as theirn." He asked who was ashore. I told him, "There's more of we-uns b'iling some turtle-eggs for dinner. Cap'n, I'd like to swap some eggs for tobacco or bread." His crew soon produced from the slack of their frocks pieces of plug, which they passed on board in exchange for our eggs. I told the youngster if he'd come to camp we'd give him as many as he could eat. Our hospitality was declined. Among other questions he asked if there were any batteries on ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... expresses all the facts of the case. After all, very many of his dreams never got acted at all, possibly indeed, most of them, the dreams of a solitary walk for instance, or of a tramcar ride, the dreams dreamt behind the counter while trade was slack and mechanical foldings and rollings occupied his muscles. Most of them were little dramatic situations, crucial dialogues, the return of Mr. Hoopdriver to his native village, for instance, in a well-cut ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... desert a comrade in that fashion was abhorrent even to the slack conscience of this desperado. So he grudgingly hefted the burden of the senseless figure and plodded under its weight to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... guess ther's mostly slack time till harvest. I thought, mebbe, we could jest haul that lumber from Beacon Crossing. And cut the logs. Parker give me the 'permit.' Seems to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective, 128 degrees west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we could travel a straight line between the two points, and even slack our sheets off a goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of Hilo harbour, but the miserable breeze ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... love over garden walls, you must have had a pretty slack time, even in Alexandretta," ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... desert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and better paid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemy to fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to make the British get slack. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... slack again to-day: all the enemy's big guns silent. But there is great movement among the Boers, who are apparently holding a great council of war at General Joubert's headquarters. This may account for rumours of dissensions between the Free State and ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water—his head high and his ears forward—Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for he was on some errand of grazing beasts. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... eleven o'clock. Tide was full at twelve. I was a pretty good candidate for the crazy house by this time. I'd listened till my ear-drums felt slack, like they needed reefing. And then at last I heard ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a little slack in respect of sounding his horn, it was the only fault of which his employers could complain. He kept the fittings of the car at the very zenith in the matter of polish, he was punctuality personified, and most skilful at the tedious business of repairing ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... got on board and picked up a pole. As there was not another, Thirlwell paddled in the stern while they pushed the craft through the slack. It was hard work and he noted how slowly the pines rolled past. By and by they reached an angry-white rush of current between an island and the bank, and as they could scarcely make progress Scott suggested putting down the poles and paddling across. Driscoll, ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... 'None of your slack, mate,' rejoined the other; 'I won't stand it. Two days more would have made it fifty or better; and no man, more than I, would be content with one half of what he might and ought ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... whistle lever to set the canyon echoes yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was the most natural thing in the world ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen of newspapers and letters; ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... my loyal faith grow slack Although you put the embargo back; No doubt once more you'll countermand it; And anyhow this party scores Since, you'll supply the arms and stores The bill for which so rudely bores A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... mark. His salary wasn't very big, but he had such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half's worth of value out of every dollar that he earned. Never crowded the fashions and never gave 'em any slack. If sashes were the thing with summer shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and when tight trousers were the nobby trick in pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take him fore and aft, Charlie looked all right and talked all right—always careful, ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... sure that, if only we keep ourselves in the love, and continue in the grace of God, He will not slack nor stay His hand on which Zion is graven, until it has 'perfected that which concerneth us,' and fulfilled to each of us that 'which He has spoken to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... engaged, take positions which will bring them most rapidly under fire." Thus summoned, the ten vessels which constituted the van began to go about, as they should have done before; and, although retarded by the slack wind, they had got their heads to the southward by half-past two. Five stood to leeward of the line of battle, but five to windward. The latter would pass not far to the westward of the "Victory," and to meet this fresh attack ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... suddenly leaning forward with her body, at the same time, for an instant, letting the rein slack and touching the neck with her bridle hand. She began to draw away ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... My God!" and thus distracted between her and me, let slack his hold. I tore away and ran around the house, upsetting an old officer, and so through the shrubbery and the servants, whom I hustled one way and another. I heard shouts of "Spy!" "Stop thief!" and the rattle of arms all around me. Several waggons blocked the roadway. I felt ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... an' let's injay The last fine weather while do stay; While thou canst hang, wi' ribbons slack, Thy bonnet down upon thy back, Avore the winter, cwold an' black, Do kill thy flowers, an' avore Thy bird-cage is a-took in door, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... to loop an extra chain under the jutting base of the boulder. The mason who fixed it, standing waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched it round the ankle of the dead man. The dead man's brother jumped down beside him and grasped the slack of it. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the vacant face and the back like a grasshopper; "I be a reg'lar born Christian and my mother afore me, and that's what few gals in the Yard can say. Thomas will take to it himself when work is slack; and he believes now in our Lord and Saviour Pontius Pilate who was crucified to save our sins; and in Moses, Goliath, and the rest of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... good, it will be inexorably enforced against the individual transgressor. God is not slack concerning his promises. He is free from all human weakness. His mind is not limited, like that of man, to be more affected by partial suffering than by that universal disorder and ruin which must inevitably result from ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... John!" said Carter in a resigned tone to the elderly seaman in the bow. "Slack away and let us ride easy to the full scope. They don't seem very talkative on ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... be hanged!" said Morley, turning it over and over admiringly. "If that isn't the cleverest thing I ever saw. This little screw regulates the slack, doesn't it? Does your legal mind get on ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... the same, I'd rather wander off alone than be tied to her apron-strings; so come along, quick! Remember you're to earn your living by picking up sticks, so don't slack!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... brisk during the dinner-hour, and both Cash and Robin considered that we were doing fairly well. Things would be slack at Stoneleigh itself during the afternoon, and the obvious and politic course now was to drive over to the fishing village of Hunnable—I had only time for one, and this was the most considerable—and catch my marine constituents ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... which involves economic danger," as the Imperial Gazeteer remarks, comparing the census returns of 1891 and 1901. "The ordinary agricultural labourers are employed on the land only during the busy seasons of the year, and in slack times a few are attracted to large trade-centres for temporary work." One recalls the influx into England of Irish labourers at harvest time. Professor Radkamal Mukerji has laid stress on the older conditions of village life. ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... was soon applied, for he drew the rope in slowly, till the slack was all gathered in, tightened it more and more, and the loop glided off ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... The brute's bulk blocked the road; the huge green stack Of dewy fodder that it slouched beneath Brushing the yellow walls on either hand, And shutting out the strip of burning blue: And I'd to face that vicious bobbing head With evil eyes, slack lips, and nightmare teeth, And duck beneath the snaky, squirming neck, Pranked with its silly string of bright blue beads, That seemed to wriggle every way at once, As though it were a hydra. Allah's beard! But I was scared, and nearly turned and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... them with red eyes and a thousand queries as to whether that Yankee ruffian would pay any attention to the Sovereign law which he pretended to uphold; whether the Marshal would not be cast over the Arsenal wall by the slack of his raiment when he went to serve the writ. This was not the language, but the purport, of the lady's questions. Colonel Carvel had made but a light breakfast: he had had no dinner, and little rest on the train. But he answered his sister-in-law with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rubbed at his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, "it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits—and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive needs, to work out and carry ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... kind often spoils everything precisely because he wishes to do too much, and falls into those exaggerations which have lent truth to the saying, "Absolute right is absolute injustice." "He who would rule well," runs an ancient aphorism, "must rule with a slack hand." We must not hold our horse's bridle over tightly, for though we may save him from stumbling we hinder him ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... arm and plucked the youth out by the slack of his coat, shook him and propelled him into the darkness, where he collided violently with Sam Pretty Cow. Some one had been over-generous with Sam Pretty Cow. A drunken Indian is never quite safe. Sam Pretty Cow struck out blindly, yelling Piegan ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, helping Jesse ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... commerce. Their route led them to the western coast of South America, and arrangements were made so that they were coaled and provisioned from bases in some of the South American states which permitted a slack observance of the laws ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... land. Both vessels sailed across the White sea (Gandvik). The nights were clear, so that both ships sailed night and day; until one day, towards the time the day turns to shorten, Karle and his people took up the land near an island, let down the sail, cast anchor, and waited until the slack-tide set in, for there was a strong rost before them. Now Thorer came up, and lay at anchor there also. Thorer and his people then put out a boat, went into it, and rowed to Karle's ship. Thorer came ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with the floral goddess's crack-jaw. I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw. I can do "John Wellington Wells" pretty patly; but to read through a horticultural article Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of meaning the words seem to have no particle. I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... felt my only danger lay in stumbling upon some outpost or sentry who might perceive me before I saw him and so cover me with his rifle before challenging, but I knew from observation since my arrival in Cuba that the discipline among the Spanish soldiers was very slack, and I had a pretty firm belief that isolated sentries usually took a ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash. From other shops, the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters—cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... time with the same foes, our professional advocates of "preparedness," our cheerful chemists, our scientific "intellectuals"—all our materialistic thinkers hard- shell and soft-shell,—took the position of Flaubert, just presented; reproached us bitterly for our slack, sentimental pacificism; and urged us with all speed to emulate the scientific spirit of our enemy. There is nothing more instructive in this correspondence than to observe how this last fond illusion ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... shock. The spectators, running nearer, now perceived that the lariat was tied round each man's waist as well as wrapped over his pommel. Soldier Cap weathered the jolt, next plunged suddenly closer, and in the instant of the slack, unwound the rope from his saddle and leaped to the ground. In two leaps more he had Sombrero about the neck. They fell together, rolling and fighting, while Sombrero's horse reared and plowed the soil with them. Dragoons and Cossacks heaped themselves ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... she naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow. Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up the slack cables. A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway with a jerk as the men slipped ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... question of the number of these foreigners. The inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. Where work is slack and difficult to get, a very small addition of low-living foreigners will cause a perceptible fall in the entire wages of the neighbourhood in the employments which their competition affects. It is ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... church!' said Martin, observing that his companion slackened the slack pace of the horse, as ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... you want impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, where do you look for them? Do you go to the top, or to the bottom?"] I declared that so far was I from agreement with these calumnies, that I was of opinion that those homely and truly English qualities which had to some slight extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... strict law of the Camp confined the girls to the pasture, but as it was the last week of the quarantine, they were beginning to grow a little slack about rules. The five victims of the salt cure waited until Miss Huntley and Nurse Robinson were enjoying their afternoon siesta; then, without waiting for any permission, they climbed the fence into the lane, found a thin place in the hedge, and scrambled into ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs Feebly, with futile reach And fingers without clutch. Her thews are slack And curved the ruined back And flesh empurpled like old meat, Yet each conspires To feed those guttering fires With ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... crew the current stem, And, slow advancing, struggle with the stream: But if they slack their hands, or cease to strive, Then down the flood ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... if I seem too slack In calling vengeance on a murderer's head. Impious I deem the alliance which he asks, Requite him words severe for seeming kind, And righteous, if he falls, I count his fall. With this, to those unbribed inquisitors Who in man's inmost bosom sit and judge, The true avengers ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that the result will depend more on a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. Some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness; and in such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions seem to exert peculiarly ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... beneath the hand of a foreign lady; Serve a proud rival." Lo, behind her back Slyly laughed Venus, and her archer minion Held the bow slack. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... slack water there is a depth of six feet covering the sandy bottom of the lagoon, the rush and bubble under the tree-bole has ceased, and every stone, weed, and shell is revealed. Now is the time to look on the deep-water side of the causeway ...
— The Colonial Mortuary Bard; "'Reo," The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... good battle you are righting against alcoholism, are examples for us. You are the new world, younger, not rendered so inactive by secular habits. You can act more easily than we. We may have the advantage, in the old world, of the experience of old people and the habit of observation, but we are slack in reform and action. "If youth had experience and old age ability," says one of our proverbs. We must remain united and join your strength to our experience for the greater progress of the studies which are dear to us and for the greater good benefit ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... has Benis to do with it? Not but that he enjoyed having her here last time well enough. It is the privilege of the mistress of the house to choose her guests. I hope you will not be slack in claiming your privileges. They are much harder to obtain than one's rights. My dear sister was careless. She allowed Benis's father to do just as he pleased. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... looking through the notch of the rear sight so as to perceive the object aimed at, second joint of the forefinger resting lightly against the front of the trigger and taking up the slack; top of front sight is carefully raised into, and held in, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws fixed, and the beak plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence? Arise! he said, even in what appeared most fatal hours of darkness. The slack limbs moved; the body rose and fell. The cost of the effort was the breaking out of innumerable wounds, old and new; the gain was the display of the miracle that Italy lived. She tasted her own blood, and herself knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interrupted by the report of one of our bow-chasers: I sprang on deck. We had got the chase within range of our guns, and we were not likely to let them remain inactive. Still she stood on; not a trace nor a sheet did she slack; and as our gunnery was not first-rate it must be owned, we could not as yet hope to do ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... each other; eyes not large, but brisk and lively; neck slender and long, tapering toward the head, with a little loose skin below; shoulders and fore quarters light and thin; hind quarters large and broad; back straight, and joints slack and open; carcass deep in the rib; tail small and long, reaching to the heels; legs small and short, with firm joints; udder square, but a little oblong, stretching forward, thin skinned and capacious, but not low hung; teats or paps small, pointing outward, and at a considerable ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... seizing the little shadow in his powerful arms and placing her on the ground, while the rope, let slack, slapped ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... the united insult of the united public! Why should an educated and cultured man, a gentleman in point of fact, be absolutely prohibited from hearing a "classical" concert because he wore the Queen's uniform and did that most important and necessary work which the noble Briton is too slack-baked, too hypocritically genteel, too degenerate, to perform, each ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the Athenians while they were ruled by despots were not better in war that any of those who dwelt about them, whereas after they had got rid of despots they became far the first. This proves that when they were kept down they were wilfully slack, because they were working for a master, whereas when they had been set free each one was eager to ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... knights, were so strong that he dared not express his discontent. He himself had twice been engaged with pirates, but had gained no particular credit, and indeed had, in the opinion of his comrades, been somewhat slack in the fray. He was no favourite in the auberge, though he spared no pains to ingratiate himself with the senior knights, and had a short time before been very severely reprimanded by the bailiff for ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You've grown terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You're not simply getting old, you're getting decrepit.... You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite of your red tie, quelle idee rouge! Go on about Von Lembke if you've really something to tell me, and do ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I have spoken without issuing therefrom reliable, seasoned fighters who could keep their heads in the most embarrassing of official positions, and at times when older and wiser men, distracted with the annoyances of life, had either abandoned everything or, grown slack and indifferent, had surrendered to the bribe-takers and the rascals. In short, no ex-pupil of Alexander Petrovitch ever wavered from the right road, but, familiar with life and with men, armed with the weapons of prudence, exerted a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... coaxed and bullied. He sprang out of the water, gnashed his huge jaws, snorted with tremendous rage, and lashed the river into foam; he then dived, and foolishly approached us beneath the water. We quickly gathered in the slack line, and took a round turn upon a large rock, within a few feet of the river. The hippo now rose to the surface, about ten yards from the hunters, and, jumping half out of the water, he snapped his great ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... to a wagon, if he be wild or vicious, keep the lariat the same as I have described until you get him hitched up, then slack it gently, as nearly all mules will buck or jump stiff-legged as soon as you ease up the lariat; and be careful not to pull the rope too tight when first put on, as by so doing you might split the mule's mouth. Let me say here that I have ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... other end, the line passing through a round hawse-hole forward, and conveyed it aft to the shaft. After winding it four or five times round the shaft, I told the boys to haul it taut; and about twenty of them laid hold of the rope to "take in the slack," if we were ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the nose of ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... early; the dawn had scarce begun when he appeared with the tray and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed doing another one about as ill, than making this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discouraged now, were we to weaken and slack off, the whole structure we have built, these past eight years, would come apart and fall away. Never then, no matter by what stringent means, could our free world regain the ground, the time, the sheer momentum, lost by such a move. There can and should be changes ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... rich because its business is done by tragedians and walking-gentlemen, but in spite of them. If the doctor fails to give his medicine, if the fighting grows too rough for the cripple, if business grows slack, or if some good business man with competent assistants starts a strong opposition—what happens? What must inevitably happen? Why, the sick man dies, the cripple gets the worst of it, and the theatrical firm of merchants goes straight ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... forget-me-nots, Look'd hard and sweet at me, and gave it me. I took it, tho' I did not know I took it, And put it in my bosom, and all at once I felt his arms about me, and his lips - Mary. O God! I have been too slack, too slack; There are Hot Gospellers even among our guards - Nobles we dared not touch. We have but burnt The heretic priest, workmen, and women and children. Wet, famine, ague, fever, storm, wreck, wrath, - We ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... this beautiful child, and feel that she is only yours? Annabel, look on me, look on me only one moment! My frame is bowed, my hair is grey, my heart is withered; the principle of existence waxes faint and slack in this attenuated frame. I am no longer that Herbert on whom you once smiled, but a man stricken with many sorrows. The odious conviction of my life cannot long haunt you; yet a little while, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... over to the tent where a quantity of the provisions were kept. Entering this, he quickly saw that it was exactly as he had suggested. Three of the tent pins, which the boys had pounded down with the camp axe, had been pulled up, and this slack allowed the intruder to crawl under the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... his eyes had the deep, varying blueness of lake water. Little wisps and burrs, odors of the forest clung about his clothing; a beard covered his slack, formless mouth. When he told the Homesteader's daughter how the stars went by on heather planted headlands and how the bucks belled the does at the bottom of deep canons in October, she heard in it the call ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... bent about eighty feet of rope to the bole of the windlass, which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken up and the rope lifted the bucket ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... legs is short, but I slog along slack at the knees an' don't worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London |
