"Work off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... notwithstanding the new issue, they are not to return to the Department any of the old stamps on hand, but will sell them in the ordinary way. At first, the public may prefer getting new stamps, and if so, there is no objection to this wish being acceded to, but it is also desirable to work off in due course all remnants of old stamps. A change in the design of the stamp of the present series of postcards, post-bands and stamped envelopes, to correspond with that above referred to, will be made as soon as the present stock of these ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... in a panic of joy at the situation. They managed in the excitement to work off a number of old horrors that had been refused for years and years—ancient, dust-stained landmarks on the shelves. Mr. Strouther showed the things, Mr. Streckfuss wrote the list of purchases,—he made many mistakes in prices, but strangely never to his own damage; and the entire staff of assistants ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... concerned him? Bill had to work off his overjoy at this by an exuberant flourish. He whisked about Belle,—outer edge backward. She stopped to admire. He finished by describing on the virgin ice, before her, the letters B.P., in his neatest style of podography,—easy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Captain Murray Sueter. In this statement the duties of naval aircraft were laid down; the two first to be mentioned were: '(1) Distance reconnaissance work with the fleet at sea. (2) Reconnaissance work off the enemy coast, working from detached cruisers or special aeroplane ships.' The policy is clear and sound; but a world of ingenuity and toil was involved in those two short phrases—'with the fleet at sea', and 'working ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... reading party and then to ask me in a postscript to join it, made me want to go to Oriel at once and speak to him. But, fortunately, it was nearly eleven o'clock and I could not get out of college, so as Murray had gone back to his room I went along the passage to work off some of my agitation on him. Murray, however, was one of those annoying men who know exactly when they have had enough of anybody, and I found his oak sported. I beat upon it for some time without any result, and having told Murray my opinion of him in a voice loud enough to penetrate ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... to work off that fogbound and desolate coast, and attack the constant stream of traffic between England and Archangel. There are two other boats besides ourselves on the job, but we shall all be ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... all-important part in every festivity. She will be the one to whom every one will go for instructions, and it may be her own heart will be very sore at the thought of parting with her daughter. Where there are other grown-up girls they would naturally take some portion of the work off her hands, but she is nominal head ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... such a hurry to see the peacocks and hear them scream. She said they did, and that we'd laugh when old Jack brayed," cried Bab, hopping about on one foot to work off ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... rambler rose over the dining-room window and cut flowers for all the vases. This was ordinarily my work, and I loved it, but it gave her pleasure, and above all it gave her a home pleasure which she had missed. I asked her if she would train the roses every day while she was with us, taking the work off my hands. She coloured softly as she gladly consented, and went prettily and importantly ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... said Pearl, "I could see the people wanted to sing or cry, or dance, or something, to work off their emotions; so I signalled to Bessie Cowan, who is one of our best singers, to start a hymn that the children sing every morning. They knew it well, and the people had learned it from them. I never heard anything like ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... kiss, and remained pacing up and down the room to work off her indignation before returning to her father. She was quite as angry with herself, as with my Lady, for having lost her temper, and so given her enemy an advantage, more especially as when her distress became less agitating, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the dirt, appears in 'colours', grains, or little nuggets along the base of the half-moon of sand. The more gold there is in the dirt, or the coarser the gold is, the sooner it appears. A practised digger can work off the last speck of gravel, without losing a 'colour', by just working the water round and off in the dish. Also a careful digger could throw a handful of gold in a tub of dirt, and, washing it off in dishfuls, recover ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... you can, but keep your eye on Jefferson. Get up right high, before you head across to the canyon of the Missouri, so you can be above the high cliff that you can't get over in the bed of the stream. Then you go down in the canyon and cross, best you can, and then ride up on the far side, and then work off for ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Tredegar Fire Brigade strike is settled. Patrons are asked to bear with the Brigade, who have promised to work off arrears of fires in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... the boys need to work off some of their energy, and there's always a show they might happen ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Indian uprisings, and more frequent Indian scares, afforded abundant material upon which the young enterprising and adventurous spirits of the day could work off their surplus energies. Hunting, too, afforded a pleasurable and profitable pastime to the young when not engaged in the work of building houses, barns, and fences, and the boy of ten who could not pick off the head of a grouse or pheasant at thirty or forty yards ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... around the cabin, like two puppies that had a surplus of energy to work off. Part of the time Lovin Child was a bear, chasing Bud up and down the dead line, which was getting pretty well worn out in places. After that, Bud was a bear and chased Lovin. And when Lovin Child got so tickled he was perfectly ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... not a wife, to follow the oxen as well—and make everything ready at home, so that you may not have to ask of another, and he refuses you, and so, because you are in lack, the season pass by and your work come to nothing. Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... say against 'em is, they sometimes do a little more shooting than seems really needed; but such doings is apt to have a show of reason at the bottom of 'em, and don't happen often anyhow—most being satisfied to work off their high spirits some other way. With them that's not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on top it sends 'em along quick into clear deviltry—the kind that makes you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a damn; and it's ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... Helen felt sorry for Benny, but there was little they could do to aid him. It was not as if they could take some of the burden of work off his shoulders. His act was peculiar, and he ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... Gifford was perhaps the most eccentric, but his "Travels" in Arabia were famous, even among the famous travels of that generation. Francis Turner — or, as he was commonly called, Frank Palgrave — unable to work off his restlessness in travel like Gifford, and stifled in the atmosphere of the Board of Education, became a critic. His art criticisms helped to make the Saturday Review a terror to the British artist. His literary taste, condensed into the "Golden Treasury," helped Adams to more literary ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... just as I was about to set off for a fortnight's motor-boat trip up the Danube with Elsie Hazzard and her stupid husband, the doctor. I compromised with myself by deciding to give them a week of my dreamy company, and then dash off to England where I could work off the story in a sequestered village I had had in mind for ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... employment. I was indeed set at rest by this declaration; but it did not quite please me to know that the pretty girl was in a public shop, and at a place where the fashionable world found a convenient resort. But I betrayed nothing, and strove to work off my jealous care in silence. For this the younger cousin did not allow me a long time, as he once more came forward with a proposal for an occasional poem, told me all the personalities, and at once desired me to ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... take my advice and do what I said at first. Let somebody take the place and work off the debt—in a way, you understand. You can look about for a music class, and Lizzie here can get a position in the public schools. Of course you know you are welcome at my house as long ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... and transepts are the work of Norman architects, but the choir has been destroyed in order to be rebuilt by more graceful designers and more skilful hands. The old city is full of craftsmen, assembled to complete the church. Some have come as a religious duty, to work off their tale of sins by bodily labour. Some are animated by a love of art—simple men, who might have rivalled with the Greeks in ages of more cultivation. Others, again, are well-known carvers, brought for hire from distant towns and countries ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... remnants of suspense burst and scattered, and every one had to do something or other to work off the oppression. They seized the heads of the farmers' horses and pushed them back, clapped their hands, attempted jokes, or only laughed noisily while they ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... answered Bok, "and I think it is even a better idea to get a day's work off before I take ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... fired you because you lost your head; because you forgot you were playing football. If you're only going into this to work off your private grudges, then I don't want you around. I'll fire you off and keep you off. You're here to play football, to think of eleven men, not one. You're to use your brains, not your fists. Why, the first game you play in some one will ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... however, she did not launch out into immediate explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little lunch to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... disposed; but like all negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they received allowance on Saturday for instance some of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... young people, so young that they could properly compel Kendal to go into the fields with them and make cowslip balls, and some robust girls of eighteen and twenty, who mutely demanded the pleasure of beating him at tennis every afternoon. He was able in this way to work off the depression that visited him daily with the damp odor of London art, criticism, quite independently of its bias toward himself. He told himself that he had been let off fairly easily, though he winced considerably under the adulation of the Daily Mercury, and found himself breathing most freely ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... went on, lightly. "We're promised a couple of Emergency men from Ulster in a few days, and that will take the weight of the work off our hands. It isn't as if it were a busy time. No crops to be saved in winter, you see, and no farm work except stall-feeding the cattle. That ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... have known, man and madman, twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap, a little too fond of the creature,—who isn't at times? But Tommy had not brains to work off an overnight's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last night and with a superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came staggering under ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... 1864, the United States sloop-of-war Kearsarge lay at anchor off the sleepy town of Flushing, Holland. Her commander, John Ancrum Winslow, had served in the navy of the United States for thirty-seven years, and had done good work off Vera Cruz in the war with Mexico, but the crowning achievement of his life was at hand. As his ship lay swinging idly at her anchor, a boat put off to her, a messenger jumped aboard, and three minutes later a gun was fired, recalling instantly every member of the ship's ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... lust. I share her frenzy, I hug her with a sort of delirium, I enjoy a felicity which is on the point of carrying me to the regions of bliss.... but, at the very moment of completing the offering, she fails me, moves off, slips away, and comes back to work off my excitement with a hand which strikes ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rushing upor downin elevators, after the most erratic and extraordinary fashion; a vivid spot on either cheek, and eyes in a shadow, and a mouth that grew graver every hour. O if she could but order the coachman to driveanywheretill she said stop!but no such orders could go through Byrom; she must work off her mood at home. And so at last, in the darkest dress she had, Wych Hazel once more sat down before the fire, and put her face in her hands. All through the day, under and over everything else, the old shyness ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown, work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely practical program, and Peter felt set ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... would be more than pleased. You see, he has his cargo pretty nearly loaded, and hopes to be able to get away at midday the day after to-morrow; so the sooner I am on board the sooner I shall be able to take some of the worry and trouble and work off his shoulders." ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... yesterday," said Dunster. "It must have been a rag! Couldn't we work off some other rag on somebody before I go? I shall be stopping here till Monday in the village. Well hit, sir—Adair's bowling is perfectly simple if you go ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing, dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap; a little too fond of the creature—who isn't at times? but Tommy had not brains to work off an over-night's surfeit by ten o'clock next morning, and unfortunately, in he wandered the other morning drunk with last night, and with a superfoetation of drink taken in since he set out from bed. He came staggering under his double burthen, like ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... his illegal action forfeited his claim altogether. An unwarranted seizure for debt was fined, as was the distraint of a working ox. The debtor being seized for debt could nominate as mancipium or hostage to work off the debt, his wife, a child, or slave. The creditor could only hold a wife or child three years as mancipium. If the mancipium died a natural death while in the creditor's possession no claim could lie against the latter; but if he was the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... said, "that you had all better go back to the fair-ground, while I look into things. There's an item or two on the program Mr. Carson wants to work off before supper." ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... on account of the curiosity felt or the liberty taken, but on account of her having successfully disguised it. She knows I keep an intermittent diary—I've confessed to her it's the way in which I work things in general, my feelings and impatiences and difficulties, off. It's the way I work off my nerves—that luxury in which poor Charles Edward's natural narrow means—narrow so far as ever acknowledged—don't permit him to indulge. No one for a moment suspects I have any nerves, and least of all what they themselves do to ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... like. And so I am watching the development of a problem with which I, that is, my mind, can have very little to do. Question: shall I get stiffer as the days grow colder, until on the hike they will discharge me as an old man; or will it all work off as I get used to the exercise, until I am limber? It is really a very serious matter, my dear, this being forty-five years old. One should turn life into a profession, and study how to become young. There are a number of men of my age or older here ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... it is, and I hope you will find something to use it on and work off some of that ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... carrying the puppy, so that he should not arrive muddy at his new mistress's house. She had twined a ridiculous blue ribbon in his russet curls, which he tried to work off whenever he got a chance, desisting only to lick ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... and chances were he'd be one again more often than he'd care to admit. In a short while, hours perhaps, he'd be gone—and he'd never see Dorothy again. Somehow the thought was not as comforting as he had expected, and he tried to work off a lingering doubt that rose to ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... Ballads and Books in a new edition of Robert Laneham's Letter on the Entertainment at Kenilworth in 1575. The veteran Ballad illustrator, Mr. William Chappell, undertook to edit the "Roxburghe Ballads," and produced nine parts, when the Rev. J.W. Ebsworth took the work off his hands. Mr. Ebsworth had previously reproduced the "Bagford Ballads," and he is now the editor-in-chief of the Society. The following is a short list of the publications of the Society: Nos. 1, 2, 3, 10, "Ballads from Manuscripts"; Nos. 4, 5, 6, 8, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... a mass of bad work in him which he will have to work off and get rid of before he can do better—and indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems very little hope for him at all. We must all sow our ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... haggard patience was saving the manufacturer himself from ruin, who had been engaged in over-manufacturing, till his warehouses groaned with an enormous stock which the cotton blockade enabled him to work off. Great fortunes have been made in this way, while the operative slowly went to rags, road-mending, and the poor-rates. In London, hard upon midnight, I have often been attracted by the sound of street-music to a little group, in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... pleasure. To-day you will ride for penance; and incidentally"—an irrepressible little smile crept round the corners of the Bishop's mouth, and twinkled in his eyes—"incidentally, my daughter, you will work off a certain stiffness from which you must be suffering, after the unwonted exercise. Ah me!" said the Bishop, "that is ever the Divine method. Punishments should be remedial, as well as deterrent. There ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... sea. Though the sea-breeze was very reviving after the hot pestilential air of New Orleans, yet as it came directly in our teeth, our captain wished it from some other quarter. We were enabled, however, to work off the shore; and as during the night the land-breeze came pretty strong, by day-break the next morning we ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... business—as he and Mr Hambly agree—is to make sure that the wives and children of our reservists want neither food nor money to pay their rent. . . . They tell me that in a few weeks the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association will be ready to take much of this work off our hands, though acting through local distributors. Indeed, the Vicar—indeed, my husband has already received a letter from the District Secretary of the Association asking him to undertake this work. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... wasn't the only person, present, and I hadn't arrived at the beginning. Somebody should have stopped the fellow; the shares he tried to work off ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... way—so far as it goes. She doesn't begin to pay me as she would have to pay another girl in my position—if I have any there. I haven't said anything about it to her, because I wanted to work off my indebtedness to her on account of what she spent on me in bringing me up—she never let me forget that in those first seven years! I want to give more than I've had," she said proudly, "and sometime I shall tell her ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away, to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not one of those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry their love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of Mrs. Pocock's advantage." No, no; though there was a queer present temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a relief, he wouldn't talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work off on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's calculated omissions of reference. The effect she produced of representing her mother had been produced—and that was just the immense, the uncanny part of it—without ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... season of great joy. The head men of each village presented oxen, milk, and beer, more than the horde which accompanied him could devour, though their abilities in that line are something wonderful. The people usually show their joy and work off their excitement in dances and songs. The dance consists of the men standing nearly naked in a circle, with clubs or small battle-axes in their hands, and each roaring at the loudest pitch of his voice, while they simultaneously lift one leg, stamp ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... handsome and gay that wherever he went laughter went with him. He too was a discoverer, but his discovery was of Paris and the Latin Quarter. It had filled a year between Chicago, where he had been Oscar Wilde's discovery, and Rome, and he had had time to work off his first fantastic exuberance as discoverer before I met him. "Donoghue is all right," they would say of him at the Nazionale; "he has got past the brass buttons and pink swallow tail stage, even if he does cling to low collars and tight pants ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Mackenzie said, nodding his grave head; "he'd work off the wrong girl on a man as sure ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... batting practice, there was some running around the bases. But Manager Watson knew better than to keep the boys at it too long, and soon called the work off for the day. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... you must be somewhat in need of exercise. I would advise you to go to the gymnasium to work off your superfluous energy. Why did you carry Helen from the room? Has she ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... how? Crawling, belike?" No, she would not go, saying by way of excuse that she was poorly, and could not move her legs. And to make things bad as could be, when once they had taken the work off her hands, and she had nothing to do at all, she collapsed, and was thoroughly ill. She kept about for a week in spite of it, Axel looking furiously at her; but she stayed on from sheer malice, and at last she had to take ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... some kind, that's all I c'n tell," he admitted. "But of course, they'd need a press of some sort to work off the paper money on. Now, chances are, it's bein' put up right in that long shed yonder, that we c'n see. Question is, how're we goin' to get close enough to peek through a crack, and find out ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... of men at a distance than of those at the front. Men who have been fighting most of the time for three or four years generally become pretty cool, while those in the rear seem to become hotter and hotter as the end approaches, and even for some time after it is reached. They must in some way work off the surplus passion which the soldier has already exhausted in battle. Whatever may be true as to Sherman's methods before Lee surrendered, the destruction inflicted on the South after that time was solely the work of passion, and not of reason. Of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... overpowering health of inhabitants (caused by total absence of smoke and fogs), County Council establishes Gymnasia, Rowing Matches, and free public Pugilistic Contests, in order to work off ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 18, 1891 • Various
... mother of a boy be?" she returned. "Ben has been training me in courage ever since he was born; apparently the prize-ring or the circus would have been his natural field of operations; so I have chained him down to the law and given him an aeroplane so he can work off his extra steam away from the publicity ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... do to cure a case of ulcerated stomach is to withhold the foods which create fermentation. Then the liver will be allowed time to work off the poisons which are clogging its substance and when this has come about the stomach will slowly return to its ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... all we were planning to do to-day. I'd like to go down to the gym this afternoon and watch the bulletins of the game. I decided not to go, but if I can get my work off that'll be the next best thing; and besides it'll help to pass the time. It's going to be a long day ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... compliment. But there IS a 'drag,' as you call it. There's going to be a big one, too, I'm afraid—when they get out and see this tract we're going to work off this spring." She stopped and studied him as a ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... Good Thing that resembled a Three-Sheet of the Old Homestead. It was looking up at the Top Stories and bumping against Hydrants and Unsurpassed Coffee Bulletins. The flip Yahooda, with the City Education and Thirty Centuries of Commercial Training to back him up, saw that here was a Chance to work off some Old Stock. So when the mild old Gentleman with the strawcolored Sluggers and the Freckles on his Wrists came near enough, he Closed with him and told him to come inside and look at a New Style called the McKinley Overcoat because the President had one ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... work off the shoal, or stay there; and I am sure I don't care what she does," added Dory, as he looked ahead at the savage waves that were piling up in the ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... you call him "the heroic defender of the national honour" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what is ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... heard nothing of this, or he might perhaps have thought better of Fenn. As for the junior dayroom, it was obliged to work off its emotion by jeering Jimmy Silver from the safety of the touchline when the head of Blackburn's was refereeing in a match between the juniors of his house and those of Kay's. Blackburn's happened to win by four goals and eight ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... writers are puzzling; always trying to work off an epigram," the younger man remarked. "However, I suppose there's as much French as English ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... required to fast from time to time for short periods, and to work off his superfluous energy by means of hard running, swimming, and the vapor-bath. The bodily fatigue thus induced, especially when coupled with a reduced diet, is a reliable cure ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... universally applicable discovery of all; it is the one through which our intellectual life most strikingly blends with the moral and practical part of human nature. Progress in knowledge is often paradoxically indicated by a diminution in the apparent bulk of what we know. Whatever helps to work off the dregs of false opinion, and to purify the intellectual mass—whatever deepens our conviction of our infinite ignorance—really adds to, although it sometimes seems to diminish, the rational possessions of man. This is the highest kind of merit that is claimed for Philosophy, by its earliest ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... future years yet to come, thou art longing to paedicate my love. Nor is't done secretly: for thou art with him jesting, closely sticking at his side, trying every means. In vain: for, instructed in thy artifice, I'll strike home beforehand by irrumating thee. Now if thou didst this to work off the results of full-living I would say naught: but what irks me is that my boy must learn to starve and thirst with thee. Wherefore, desist, whilst thou mayst with modesty, lest thou reach the end,—but ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... going on, Sir, Bligh had found his boat—which he'd left by the shore—and was pulling up the river to work off his rage. Ne'er a thought had he, as he flounced through the churchyard, of the train of powder he dribbled behind him: but all the way he blew off steam, cursing Parson Polwhele and the whole cloth from Land's End to Johnny Groats, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her father died, and her mother had to manage the farm, and she to help her. The mortgage they had to work off was a stump; but faith and Luclarion's dairy did it. It was a stump when Marcus wanted to go to college, and they undertook that, after the mortgage. It was a stump when Adam Burge wanted her to marry him, and go and live in the long red cottage at Side ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... quickly began to fumble under the coat, unfastening the buckle. It required a moment to work off the heavy halter without giving the blinded animal a glimpse of the light; then Woodbury caught the bridle reins firmly just beneath the chin of the horse. With the other hand he took the stirrup strap and raised his foot, but he seemed to change ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... blind, sir," was the startling answer, "Mr. Billings has some old goods that he is trying to work off. They are not quite up to the mark, but that ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... up here before you've gone very far," he predicted. "Just the same, you might have come by the office and asked permission before you began to work off your digging ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... a period of sleep then intervened before early morning rising that my system did not have time to work off the alcohol. As a result I awoke with mouth parched and dry, with a slight heaviness of head, and with a mild nervous palpitation in the stomach. In fact I did not feel good. I was suffering from the morning sickness of the steady, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... comparing their sum with the run from four o'clock, that the ship had run as many miles to the southward as would bring her up to the Bell Rock. To ascertain exactly the position of the ship, he desired the master to work off the run by the log up to eight o'clock, P.M., and in a short time the master reported that by his calculation the light which they saw was no other than the floating light of the Bell Rock, and that they had now only to bear up and ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... sulks, she came to the conclusion that a good sharp spin on her bicycle would be the best mental tonic she could have; so she got a cup of coffee and a biscuit, took out her machine, and started away to work off, as she hoped, the presentiment of coming trouble which seemed to have fastened ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... John Watson announced to his family that old Sam Motherwell wanted Pearlie to go out and work off the caboose debt. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... as he comprehended Mather's drift, ably seconded him. He had his own grudges against his neighbors to work off, and nothing could be easier. All that was needed was for one of the children, or any one else, to affirm that they were afflicted, and perhaps to foam at the mouth, or be contorted as in a fit, and to accuse whatever person they chose ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... that Mrs. Fitzgerald would have taken her to the North to nurse her baby while she was gone to Europe. In that case, he intended to follow after; and he thought some good people would lend them money to buy their little ones, and, both together, they could soon work off the debt. But this project had been defeated by Mrs. Bell, who brought a white nurse from Boston, and carried her infant grandson ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... at it doubtful. "Course, I was lookin' for second-hand stuff, but I don't think he ought to work off anything that ancient ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... would see after the breakfast in future, father, and I have begun this morning—partly because it is my duty to take the work off her hands, and partly because I wanted a private ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... USNM 213356; 1958. The winnowing basket was used to work off the chaff from the threshed grain. When the grain was tossed into the air, the wind would blow away the chaff and the grain would fall back into the basket. Sometimes the grain would be poured from another basket into a winnowing basket, with ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... himself, for he knew the man would return to his tale, and probably all the sooner for being left to work off his ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... it would be likely to work off some of its effects, and thus would rob the cow-pox of its efficacy on the system. I do not like to interfere with vaccination in any way whatever (except, at the proper time, to take a little matter from the arm), but to allow the pock to have ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... canoe upon the wharf log, which was nearly on a level with the water, left her, without tying, to look for some angle worms. It being rough on the Lake at the time, the rolling of the waves caused the boat to work off, and before he could return she had drifted well out on the broad waters of the Lake. We were too small to realize our situation. Not knowing how to paddle, we were left to the mercy of the waves. On the return of my father, seeing the great peril I was in, required ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... liberty, bound to have it or die. Thar's one of' em with a knife, an' the first kidnapper that crosses that sill, man or woman—fur we'll trust no more women, Samson—gits the knife to the hilt! The blessed light that shone onto Calvary an' Bunker Hill is a gleamin' on the blade. Work off your irons, if you kin; I'll git you rafters outen this roof to jab with if you can't do no better. Are you all ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... answer,' said the cheerful Mrs Boffin. 'When we worked like the neighbours, we suited one another. Now we have left work off; we have left off suiting ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... they discovered that she had roused them three hours too soon. Long before the usual bell rang everybody was up and dressed, which did not bring breakfast any the quicker, though it allowed the girls time to work off some of their spirits by a run round the garden. Punctually at a quarter to nine o'clock a row of omnibuses arrived to convey the seventy-three pupils and their ten teachers to the station. Each girl carried her bathing costume and towel in a neat parcel, and large hampers of lunch ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... her she made the vow as she had made it fifty times already. She would be gentle with him; she would be patient; she would let him work off on her the agony of his suffering nerves, and smile at him through it all. She would help him out of the idiotic situation in which he found himself. The other girl was only an incident, as the show-girl had been to the Bellington boy, and could be disposed of. She attached to that ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... no small time and labour to take; but he was desirous of employing the people in a long siege, to prevent their having leisure for factious proceedings at home. This was ever the policy of the Romans, to work off the elements of internal strife in attacks on ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the more haste since he was unable to repay this courtesy with the most trifling purchase; such slight matters annoyed Kirkwood intensely. Perhaps it was well for him that he had the long walk to help him work off the fit of nervous exasperation into which he was plunged every time his thoughts harked back to that jovial black-guard, Stryker.... He was quite calm when, after a brisk walk of some fifteen minutes, he reached ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... (ah! what has become of it?); and his casual discovery and courtship of a girl like that celestial convertite; and her sorrow when she finds that she is only a substitute; and her victory by persuading her lover to paint her as the Magdalen and so work off the witchery.[213] Of course some one may shrug shoulders and murmur, "Always the berquinade?" But I do not think La Morte ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... said the crockery man, "has made a big hole in our business. Some one suddenly discovered that crockery would be a taking thing to help work off poor goods. Of course, the home jobber benefited by it for a very short time, and then the New York importers stepped in and took the cream. Baking-powder men, coffee-grinders, tea houses, and others sent out crockery, and people, got so ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... at Paris at three o'clock P.M., October 17th, and here received our first news of the submarine work off Nantucket. In the evening we met Antoine Borrel, deputy from Savoy, on six days' leave of absence from the Alsace Lorraine district. He entered the war a common soldier and now has the Legion ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... in a great cumber of cases, studiously concealed from the people. And this is how the government behaves now, except in the case of the German Mennonites, living in the province of Kherson, whose plea against military service is considered well grounded. They are made to work off their term of service ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... sat side by side plying their oars in perfect time. It did them both good to have some employment which would enable them to work off ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... never happen to them so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs—For the stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of food, and turning it into chyle—and the lungs the only engine of sanguification—it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite brought it: or admitting the possibility of a man's overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds however to his lungs—the engine was of a determined size and strength, and could elaborate ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... her belt. The Duke made the same bargain. The girl's fingers trembled as she handed him the flower. Albert felt a choking feeling in his throat. The crowd pressed round. A German offered ten thousand francs for a flower which the young girl had put to her lips. At last Albert could work off some of his emotion. He repulsed ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... large audience. Jim was neither a bad-hearted nor cruel fellow; he simply had a body too large for his disposition. In the phrase of the West, he was "staggering with strength," and in Thumper he found a chance to work off his superfluous nervous energy—also to occupy the centre of our local stage for the brief time of train-stop. If it is love that makes the world go round, certainly vanity first put it into motion. "All is vanity," said the Preacher. From the devoted astronomer's austere lifework to the ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... enough to generalize from. If you were arguing that your city should establish a municipal gymnasium, you would try to show that of the boys and young men brought before the police courts for petty mischief and more serious offenses almost all have lacked the chance to work off their animal spirits in a healthy way. Wherever you can thus establish your special case in a class which has known characteristics or consequences, you can then apply the characteristics and consequences of the class ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... been turning over the cabbage-ground, working the harder that he still hoped to work off the sickness that yet kept growing upon him. The sun was hot, and his head, which had been aching more or less all day, now began to ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... soon found out. Miss Sheldon herself looked anything but pleased and said: 'That Miss Ward is the most insolent girl with whom I have ever come in contact. I refused to allow her to go to New York City for the week end and she made some extremely impertinent remarks to me. She has a condition to work off. I felt ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... team spirit. To have a successful team, any coach will tell you, there must be a brotherly feeling among the members of the team. The men must chum together on and off the field. Team work on the field is made much easier if there is team work off the field. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Attached by large buttons, toggles or lampwick braces, they reached as high as the lower part of the chest. Below, they had lamp-wick lashings which were securely bound round the uppers of boots or finnesko. In walking, the trousers would often work off the leather boots, especially if they were cut to a tailor's length, and snow would then pour up the leg and down into the boots in a remarkably short time. To counteract this, Ninnis initiated the very satisfactory plan of sewing a short length of canvas ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... her wont in the family circle, but sat on the grass by her uncle, watching him with adoring eyes, trying to work the signet ring off his big little finger, which in the memory of man—of Molly, I mean—had never been known to work off, while she gave him the benefit of small pieces of local and personal news in a half whisper from time to time as they ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?" Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported, she might not be dismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the summerhouse and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims followed suit and the whole ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... cruiser and this time finished her with a torpedo. Finding he had two torpedoes left Commander Tovey then made for the German battle line with the last ounce of steam the Onslow's engines could work off. He fired them both, and probably hit the dreadnought that was seen to reel out of line about three minutes later. The Defender, though herself half wrecked by several hits, then limped up and took the Onslow in tow till one o'clock the next afternoon, when tugs ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of Salts to work off the effects of the Arsenic, we Camped on the S. S. Sailed the greater part of this day with a hard wind from the S. E. great deel of Elk Sign, and great appearance of ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... could only be conjectured, but it had been obviously terrible. The nor'-wester was blowing up and was pressing the wounded ships upon the shoals, from which, if it held, it seemed impossible in their crippled state they would be able to work off. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... his chair. He took a few turns up and down the room to work off the stiffness, and grumbled on: "Done? To me? Nothing, of course. But she's hysterical out and out. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... your fun than mine. I have no grudge to work off on the old man. Since you command, I will obey. I will do my best, but, to be quite frank, I do ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... work off his animal spirits," the Commissioner said; "it's a pity to let so much energy go ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... unknown coast, where supplies are not to be had; this rendering it expedient that they should be sufficiently capacious to carry a considerable stock of provisions and stores for all their purposes. The small vessel, if caught upon a lee shore, and unable to work off, has a chance of finding security for anchorage where a large ship cannot; and if no such shelter offer, she has in her favour a greater probability of saving her crew by running on shore; her light draught of water admitting her to approach the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... not complete his sentence for a time. He was wondering just "how much of a sucker" this young man might be. Tandy himself held some small blocks of securities which might very properly be reckoned in the feline and canine class. He wondered if it might not be possible to "work off" some of these, in company with some better stocks, on this young man. He was closely scrutinizing Temple's visage, trying to "size him up." After seeming to meditate for a brief ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... imagination in reading or otherwise, that the practical man can hope to be in physical or mental condition to do them. He needs a rest from his actual self. A man cannot even be practical without this imaginary or larger self. Unless he can work off his unexpressed remnant, his limbs are not free. Even down to the meanest of us, we are incurably larger than ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... tell you something, Dick," the secretary answered, firmly. "Don't you work off all your dyspeptic ideas in this neighborhood. My Senator is a great man. They can't appreciate him up here because he's honest—crystal clear. I used to think I knew what a decent citizen, a real man, ought to be, but he's taught me some new things. ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... with Monny and Captain Fenton (I can't call him Antoun when I talk to you; its too silly!) and he'll probably be coming down in a minute. Then, if we stop where we are, we'll have to jump up and get out of the way, to let him pass. And he's sure to linger and work off his English on us. I don't think we'll want to be interrupted that ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and when a nation has no surrounding nations to fight, it will, as we have just proved, fight itself. When it can have no foreign war, it will get up a domestic war; for the human animal, like all animals, must work off in some way its fighting humor, and the only sure way of maintaining peace is always to be prepared for war. A regular standing army of forty thousand men would have prevented the Mexican war, and an army of fifty thousand well-disciplined and efficient troops at the command of the President ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... next morning when Tristram took him for a canter round the Park. He was glad of it: he required something to work off steam upon. He was in a mood of restless excitement. During the three weeks of Zara's absence he had allowed himself to dream into a state of romantic love for her. He had glossed over in his mind her distant coldness, her frigid adherence ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... was the immaculate condition of the place where, when his dinner was finished, Scotty's roving eye sought something upon which to work off his burning indignation. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of which, even in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Goodwood was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Osmond should lavish refinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he found some private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... should keep this on if I were you, Marion. You'll find it very handy. One can entertain so cheaply up the river; one is not expected to make much of a show. [She turns to her husband.] Your poor cousin Emily used to work off quite half her list that way—relations and Americans, and those sort of people, you know—at that little place of theirs at Goring. You remember it—a poky hole I always thought it, but it had a lot of green stuff over the ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... was ailing, but already his eldest child, a girl of ten, took a great deal of the work off her mother's shoulders, poor baby. He was perfectly natural, and said in the simplest way that if the choice were to fall on him it would relieve him of many grinding anxieties; whereupon I privately determined that if the choice did not fall on ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... there wasn't much left to tell her about the Castle or the Castle Rock. When I began to work off my erudition by mentioning the name of Edwin, for whom Edinburgh was named, and who made it a royal borough in the eleventh century, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... found it necessary to work off his excitement upon the prisoners. He stood on tiptoe, holding the window bars in his hands, and jeered at the ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... school." The daughter sighed. "Honest, father, sometimes when I've been on my feet all day, and the children have been mean, and the janitor sticks his head in and grins, so I'll know the superintendent is in the building and get the work off the board that the rules don't allow me to put on, or one of the other girls sends a note up to watch for my spelling for he's cranky on spelling to-day, I just think, 'Lordee, if I had a job in some one's kitchen, I'd be too happy to ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... unwilling witness to the father's brutality, felt every nerve in his body tingle with a longing first to break the head of that brutal Dutchman, and then to go and take little Tillie in his arms and kiss her. To work off his feelings, he sprang up from the settee, put on his hat, and flung out of the house to walk ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... she marry Conquest? He was shouldering his way through the crowds when the question made itself heard, with a curious illuminating force that suggested its own answer. He was walking, partly to work off the tension of the strain under which these few days were passing, and partly because he had got the idea that he was being shadowed. He had no profound objection to that, though he would have preferred to give himself up of his own free will rather than to be arrested. Perhaps, after all, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the wall. The effects of the restoratives supplied by my pal at the hotel bar were beginning to work off, and I felt a little weak. Through a sort of mist I seemed to have a vision of Aunt Agatha hearing that the head of the Mannering-Phippses was about to appear on the vaudeville stage. Aunt Agatha's worship ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... for it. Indeed, one of my main objects in re-visiting my old home was to fetch that locket away. It contains a lock of hair and one of those miniatures which men used to paint before photography drove such work off the field." ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... thus was required to prevent cricket from becoming a tyrant, as so often befalls those whose skill renders them valuable. Tennis became Coley's chief recreation, enabling him to work off his superfluous energy at the expense of far less time than cricket matches require, and in this, as in everything active, he ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is easy to break in upon the sublime mood and drag the genius back to earth. Certain country cousins who occasionally visited the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson cut all mental work off short; the philosopher laid down his pen when the cousins came a-cousining and literally took to the woods. An uncongenial caller would instantly unhorse Carlyle, and Tennyson had a hatred of all lion-hunters—not merely because they were lion-hunters, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... these injuries, the child should be at once removed from the parental care, and the parents charged with the cost of a suitable maintenance—which need not be excessively cheap. If the parents failed in the payments they could be put into celibate labour establishments to work off as much of the debt as they could, and they would not be released until their debt was fully discharged. Legislation of this type would not only secure all and more of the advantages children of the least desirable sort now get from charities and public institutions, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... first I've heard of it!" Connie fluttered up and down the room in her white dressing-gown, occasionally breaking into a dance-step, as though to work off a superfluity of spirits. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... so will Chot Ramsey, and you three ought to be able to bed 'em down to-night. Drive 'em along easy. Dirk knows how to do it, and there's plenty of water along the way. Don't hurry 'em; if you do they'll work off all their fat, and beef is too high now to waste it by running it off the hoof. Mosey along now!" and the ranchman turned from ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... in wet weather, certainly, when he could not work off any superfluous steam in the garden, he had lately taken to flinging himself flat on the floor and kicking, if thwarted in any way. And Miss Bibby had vaguely recognized that this was due to his being deprived so long ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... pattern your conduct on mine or Mathews's, March. We weren't a very well-behaved lot, I fear. But I don't believe our pranks did much harm. In those days football wasn't as popular as it is to-day, at Hillton, and fellows couldn't work off their surplus animal spirits thumping a pigskin as they can now. Football is a great benefactor in that way, March. It has done away with hazing and street brawls and gate stealing and lots of other deviltry. By the way, how are you getting ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of bone and dry skin, whose greed and penury had starved his own soul. He had brought her there and put burdens upon her, with the assurance that it would be only for a little while, until somebody could be hired to take the work off her hands. Then he had advanced the plea of hard times, when the first excuse had worn out; now he had dropped all pretenses. She was serving, as he had married her to serve, as he had brought her there in unrecompensed ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... cue to work off a long, wan smile, and he smiled accordingly. The effort so worked on the feelings of one of the younger pupils that she burst into tears, and offered the bone ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... is all right," said a gentleman standing by. "The rogue was quite ingenious in trying to work off his bad money through a ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... have very shoal work off those mangroves, Yeo," said Amyas; "I doubt whether we shall do aught now, unless we find a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... slackest season in the farm-year, visited often to observe and comment on the off-worlder's work. Aaron Stoltzfoos privately regarded the endless conversations as too much of a good thing; but he realized that his answering the Murnan's questions helped work off the obligation he owed the government for the eighty light-years' transportation it had given him, the opportunity he'd been given to earn this hundred acres with five years' work, and the interest-free loans that had put up ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... myself in saying something more. That something shall be what I said to myself then, as I promenaded to and fro,—that bodily exercise was one of my safety-valves in those times,—in the endeavor to work off so much of my superfluous animation as to be in a state to sit down and paint again; and thus I spake: "I must have had before me an uncommonly fine specimen of a class whose existence I have conjectured before, but by no means including all the wealthy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... to play I'm a porpoise. I've simply GOT to. Come on, Wheedles, nothing else will work off my pent-up excitement," cried Polly, diving off the float to tumble and turn over and over in the water very like the fish she named, for Polly's training with Captain Pennell during the winter ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... is just what I need to work off my surplus energy," declared Tabitha enthusiastically. "May we take some crackers to ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... mastering both himself and Lorimer, he threw himself into his work with a feverish intensity which astounded Arlt and roused his audiences to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. Thayer took his new honors quietly, however. In his secret heart, he knew that this had been the simplest way to work off his stored-up emotions, and he reached New York, early in November, with a greater reputation and steadier nerves than he had even dared ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... for all you know. Better wait till the money's in your hand before you run into extravagance piling up debts for us to work off later. I guess it's a true saying that if you put a beggar on horseback, he'll ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... big one, too!" cried Andy, as he rushed up to fairly embrace both his cousins. Then, to work off some of his high spirits, the acrobatic youth turned ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... work off the hollow, mirthless laugh dodge on me," I said, "because it won't do. You're a blackguard, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the boat-house, but Ben kept piling on wood and raking out the coals with an iron bar, as if the heat and light were still insufficient, when in fact he thought nothing of either, but was making desperate efforts to work off the anxieties that had beset him like so many hounds, ever since his ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... Now don't figure to yourself a romantic Hotspur of a fellow rushing into hell because heaven's gate was shut on him. At nineteen Hugh Guinness drank and fought and gambled, as other ill-managed boys do to work off the rank fever of blood. Unfortunately—" he stopped, and then added in a lower voice, quickly, "he made a mistake while the fever was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various |
