"Work off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are inevitable, 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 ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... of being orderly and well 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 ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Dost 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 wind from ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Legally entitled to act on the offensive, under certain circumstances, and to defend his and Mr. Simpson's property against all save those coming in the name of the law, there was an opportunity for him to work off some of the anger which he had found so difficult ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... the marshes of Gennevilliers. It had been a dyer's drying shed, and was nearly fifty feet long and more than thirty broad, with walls of board and plaster admitting the wind from every point of the compass. The place was let to him for three hundred francs. Summer was at hand; he would soon work off his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... singular dialogue, Paul is whispering to his mother, 'You may see him home if you like; I won't have anything more to do with him; he's in an awful temper. In the carriage he was kicking me all the time in the legs, to work off his fidgets, he said.' The young man himself had an unpleasant ring in his voice this evening, and in his charming face something set and hard, which his mother knew well, and noticed immediately on coming into the room. What is the matter? ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... one great mistake, for which we were thankful. As already mentioned, it was anticipated that they would send submarines to work off the United States coast immediately after the declaration of war by that country. Indeed we were expecting to hear of the presence of submarines in the West Atlantic throughout the whole of 1917. They did not appear there ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... 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 way, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... main subject of the interview was concerned, Claudia was well pleased with herself. Her indignation had responded very satisfactorily to her call upon it and had enabled her to work off on Eugene her resentment, not only for his own sins, but also for annoyances for which he could not fairly be held responsible. A patient lover must be a most valuable safety-valve. And although Eugene was not the most patient of his kind, Claudia ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... identical apple pies in her hands, which aunt Miriam had quietly said was for "her and Hugh," and though a pleasant savour of old times was about it, Fleda could not get up again the bright feeling with which she had come up the hill. There was a miserable misgiving at heart. It would work off ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... very comfortable 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 ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... boys need to work off some of their energy, and there's always a show they might ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... crackling fire and proceeded to broil some game they had killed, this and the eating which followed occupied perhaps an hour, during which Tom made frequent journeys to the little room, nominally for the purpose of cautioning the others to keep still, but really to work off some portion of his uneasiness, which was growing with every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... 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 ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... 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 ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the dish—you work the dish slanting from you. Presently the gold, if there was any 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 practically ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Magdalen in the "Descent from the Cross" at Antwerp (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 Amoureuse was ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to the coast," said Frank as they sat that evening round a camp-fire which had been lighted to keep away marauding lions, whose roars ever and anon shook the forest. At such times old Sikaso's eyes wandered longingly to his great war-axe. There is little doubt that he would have liked to work off his gloomy feelings by tackling a lion ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... And when the money was brought in, he made one Maaseiah the governor of the city, and Shaphan the scribe, and Joab the recorder, and Eliakim the high priest, curators of the temple, and of the charges contributed thereto; who made no delay, nor put the work off at all, but prepared architects, and whatsoever was proper for those repairs, and set closely about the work. So the temple was repaired by this means, and became a public demonstration of ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Siemens, proved a great aid to the cable-makers. These gutta-percha-covered wires were used for underground telegraphy both in England and on the Continent. Tests were made with such a cable for submarine work off Dover in 1849, and, proving successful, the first cable across the English Channel was laid the next year by John Watkins Brett. The cable was weighted with pieces of lead fastened on every hundred ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... his countryman. "Did I not tell you that I heard the captain say over and over again that these people are not savages? But what we do want is a breeze, so that we can work off the land—for how are a few men going to tow a heavy ship like this against a two-knot current? We could not move her." Then he called out, with a sneering inflection in his tones, "Come aft, comrades, and we shall drink to ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... 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 door—looked very pretty from the other ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... wouldn't put me forward always, and say it was my idea, and I had started the subscription; but he argued that I must sacrifice myself for the success of the Charity, just as I would at home, if I had to work off damaged pincushions or day before yesterday's violets at a bazaar. Of course, not being out, I've never sold anything at bazaars, but Victoria is continually doing it in the Season, and she makes quite a virtue of forcing perfect strangers ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... to write a Requiem Mass. We are sure now that it was Count Walsegg who wished to palm off the composition as one of his own. To Mozart, however, there was something uncanny in the whole matter, and he could not work off the suspicious dread that the death-music he was writing was an omen of his own end. Shortly before his father had died, Mozart had written him a letter begging him to be reconciled to death when it should come, and speaking of death as "this good and faithful friend of man," and adding: "I never ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... state of such torpid despondency that any summons to action, even the most painful, was a blessing. He had felt that the only chance of combating his sorrow, and preventing its obtaining full mastery over all his faculties, was to work off the sense of depression by hard study,—to battle against it with the arms of some engrossing occupation; but how could he spur himself up to study without an object?—and he was as far as ever from obtaining his father's consent to fitting himself for the bar, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... own careless, happy-go-lucky self came back again at intervals. He told me once, with a wistful sigh, that he thought of sending the children to school in the country—it would be better for them, he said, and would take a little work off dear Clara's shoulders; for never even to me was he disloyal to Clara. I encouraged him in the idea. He went on to say that the great difficulty in the way was... Clara. She was SO conscientious; she thought it her duty to look after the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... 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 letters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... man and a marrying man, but also a man milliner. When I could not dispose of my medicines, I tried mantillas, and in the course of my tour I sold the whole of Margaret's wares, faithfully remitting to her the money for the same. I think she would have put her whole stock of goods on me to work off in the same way; but I never gave her the opportunity to ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... windows, and found Mr. Fogo for the most part busied in peaceful carpentry, though with a mysterious trouble in his breast that at times drove him afield on venturous perambulations, or to his boat to work off by rowing his too-meditative fit. From these excursions he would return tired in body but in heart eased, and resume his humdrum life tranquilly enough; though Caleb was growing uneasy, and felt it necessary, more than once, to retire apart and "have ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was 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, and glowering at the very gates by the road as though ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... determination to give up Brill, and join Dick. I guess he was afraid Dick would have to shoulder the business alone. And by the way, Tom," went on the youngest Rover, earnestly, "somehow it doesn't seem just right to me that I should put all this work off ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... published for—I presume that means by—A. Bettesworth and J. Batley in Pater-noster-Row, London, England, in 1690. Basle, London, Boston, Madrid! The author seems to have had wandering on the brain. By the bye, Leon, with your features you could easily work off a fake as 'the Wandering Jew.' There's money in it—people will swallow anything in that ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... 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 his double burden, like trees in Java, bearing at once ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... 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, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 tease you into slugging him and the umpire will fire you. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... could work off any wooden money on her," admits Tessie. "Her grip on a dollar is sump'n fierce; that is, until it comes to settin' the stage for one ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Mantelish came out of the dope was to snap him back into trance and explain to him how he had once more been put under hypno control and used for her felonious ends by the First Lady of Tranest. They let him work off his rage while he was still under partial control. Then the Ermetyne woke ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... between the two countries, Italy and England, in the middle of the seventeenth century. The rude north, whose civilisation was all to come, concentrating all its intelligence in a violent effort to work off the ecclesiastical poison from its system, is brought into sharp contrast with the sweet south, whose civilisation is behind it, and whose intellect, after a severe struggle, has succumbed to the material force and organisation of ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... on needle, pull up a loop through 1st and 3d stitches of preceding row, take up the yarn, and draw through the 3 loops on the needle at once, chain 1 to close the cluster, * draw up a loop in same place with last and another in 3d stitch, work off as before and ...
— Handbook of Wool Knitting and Crochet • Anonymous
... "we've been kinder climbin' up for some days. Well, you go an' sleep it off. Do you good. I'll have my pipe, an' then I'll mog round an' see 'f I can't work off a few bottles ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... mimicked Mabel, "if one doesn't ask permission to go too often, and if one has no conditions to work off. Now, you see why Mistress Beatrice is obliged to languish at home while the man who invited her will no doubt have to invite some other girl, who is lucky enough to have ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... anybody about once in five years—Penny Green being long-lived—but was always ready and anxious to carry out. Indeed in the back room of his shop, the draper, Mr. Pinnock, had a coffin which he had been trying (as he said) "to work off" for twenty-two years. It represented Mr. Pinnock's single and disastrous essay in sharp business. Two and twenty years earlier Old Wirk had been not only dying but "as good as dead." Mr. Pinnock on a stock-replenishing excursion in Tidborough, had bought a coffin, at the undertaker's, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... To remain and work off his debt and sustain his family at the same time with the increasing pressure of the high cost of living holding him under, would have been an utter impossibility. The impending shock killed his partner, for he died before the crash came. The Too Sure Man has a burden in Lillooet ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... this person or this thing do seem disagreeable, or if this work, or even this little bit of obedience, be very tiresome, perhaps it may really be only a fancy of mine, and if I go to it with a good will, I may work off the notion;" or, "Perhaps I am cross to-day, let me take good care how I answer." And a little prayer in our hearts will be the best help of all. Self-command and goodness will not come by nature as we grow up, but we must work for ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... awfully good chap—but he's not going to marry Elizabeth. Told me he knew he wasn't the kind. And of course he isn't—must draw the line somewhere—hang it! But he's an awfully decent fellow. He's not going to push himself in where he isn't wanted. You let Elizabeth alone, Mummy—it'll work off. And of course we must be civil to him when he comes over—I should jolly well think we must—considering he ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seen that O'Ryan was in earnest, and what O'Ryan wanted he himself wanted even more strongly. He was not concerned greatly for O'Ryan's absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was on him, to have it out with himself. Gow Johnson was a philosopher. He was twenty years older than O'Ryan, and he had studied his friend as a pious ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the oatmeal and the sand. We tell him that there was never anything the matter with him at all. We express a hope that he will find that the castor-oil has done him good. A little castor-oil is an excellent thing at any time. And we also advise him, the next time he feels inclined to work off a sell on us or play any more of his pranks, to have a qualified medical man on the premises. Quain is evidently not good enough. He makes mistakes. We ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... 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 it. It flashed ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... the door blew out the ice valance and the next moment the tent closed on us like an umbrella. We would never have spread it again had not some of the drift settled round us, and so we were able to secure it after an hour or two. The air was full of thick drift, and to work off some of Taylor's energy I said we might climb the island ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of course, 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 ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national honor" 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 ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... had been in hopes 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
... of earth had yet been dug on the line of the Colonel's Railroad, and that the whole enterprise was one of those schemes well nigh impossible to finance, made no difference to Fitz. He never lost an opportunity to work off the securities whenever there was the slightest opening. The bonds, of course, had not been issued; they had never been printed, in fact. These details would come later,—whenever the capitalist or syndicate should begin to look into ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a parting 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, her natural shrewdness began ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pitching and 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
... 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 ...
— The Odyssey of Sam Meecham • Charles E. Fritch
... said Rupert, in a slightly wearied tone, "if you are going to rant and rave, I'll go out. My room is quite at your disposal, but I am not. I've got a headache. Why don't you go to a theatre or a music hall, and work off your superfluous energy there by clapping ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the answer was, "We would rather starve." And this 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... 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 what's ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... 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 ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... and if he too proudly accepted death that he might not submit to be pardoned for a pardonable fault, traits of similar imprudence and similar pride are not wanting in Caesar's history also. We may regret that this exuberant nature was not permitted to work off its follies and to preserve itself for the following generation so miserably poor in talents, and so rapidly falling a prey to the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... idiotic movements that incessantly ravage the land, because joining gives him a feeling of security, because it makes him a part of something larger and safer than he is himself, because it gives him a chance to work off steam without running any risk. The whole thinking of the country thus runs down the channel of mob emotion; there is no actual conflict of ideas, but only a succession of crazes. It is inconvenient to stand ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... 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 ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... better method could have been taken to work off his almost hysterical excitement, and presently he paused, panting and heated, chuckling after an abashed fashion as he encountered ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... 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 man her piece ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... their sails. The loss of life 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
... tomorrow evening and sleep aboard the ship, he 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
... Louise under her breath. "Your kid is almost as happy as you are, right now. Don't be shocked, there's a dear, or think I'm going to break my neck. Blue and I have just simply got to work off steam. You, Blue!" She leaned another ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... 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 party stamped and danced with infinite ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... 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 ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... and perhaps butter—but I don't know whether you can raise butter on a chicken-farm or not. He said the place could be had for three thousand dollars cash, and I sent the money. He began to raise chickens, and he made a detailed monthly report to me, whereby it appeared that he was able to work off his chickens on the Keokuk people at a dollar and a quarter a pair. But it also appeared that it cost a dollar and sixty cents to raise the pair. This did not seem to discourage Orion, and so I let it go. Meantime he was borrowing a hundred dollars per month ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... ground my way quickly through the snow, choosing the middle of the street, because it was less worn, and helped me better to work off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... at any rate. I'd rather do a day's charing than that. A good idea! Why shouldn't I turn charwoman? If Beatrice would let me clean out the schools every Saturday, instead of Mrs. Cass, and pay me the money, I'd work off the bill in time. I wonder if ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... to 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
... 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 ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... to work off his anxiety by an inspection of the scene of the disaster and a circumstantial explanation of the details to the young Delmars, who crowded round him and Mr. Godfrey, half awed, half delighted, and ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now. After Christmas plenty." Tom asserts that the deeper the pool in which the "mil-gar" is submerged the heavier and more continuous the downpour; but as heavy rain is not liked, only vindictive boys who have some spite to work off indulge in such wanton interference with the ordinary course of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... 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 of Honor on ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... the preparations, though she had very little idea of what to do. She wanted to be alone, and busy, to try and work off her vexation. Why could not she have welcomed poor bruised, hurt Irene, as Faith had done! She had followed her mood of the moment, thinking only of herself, and she had made an impression, left a feeling, that ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... low-cut shoe. Strange that a man's life may hinge on such a slight detail, but this fact enabled him to work off his right shoe and his sock. He extended his bare foot, and with his toes searched the pocket of the emissary for the key to the door. Finally ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... 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 ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... had been alone, how she would have flown at Glass-Eye, to work off her superabundant joy! It would have been a merciless fight, with slaps in the Mexican style! But a lady receiving her friends must set a good example. She contented herself with hustling Glass-Eye by word ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... what way is it your interest?-To get the work off our hands. We could settle with a dozen men nearly in the same time that we can with two or three; and if they would all come and get settled with in one or two days, that would be so much less trouble ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... 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 ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... enthusiasm, an attention which they scarcely appreciated when 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 ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... was no wager to make me hurry, and my main purpose in giving myself all the trouble that lay before me was to see things, I put my paddle down, and leaving Hugh to work off some of his youthful ardour for navigation, I gave myself up for awhile to the spell of this most charming stream. Its breadth and its depth were constantly changing, and in a truly remarkable manner. Now ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... again been to see me, but I had to work off my resentment against them both for the fit of real ill- humour their behaviour had caused me in the previous summer. This had happened when I expected the Bulows and the Schnorrs to stay with me together at Biebrich, and my warm interest ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... times I was sorely tempted to help him on with a good kick. It is so absurd to advance into the presence of savage royalty after the fashion of an Irishman driving a pig to market, for that is what we looked like, and the idea nearly made me burst out laughing then and there. I had to work off my dangerous tendency to unseemly merriment by blowing my nose, a proceeding which filled old Billali with horror, for he looked over his shoulder and made a ghastly face at me, and I heard him murmur, "Oh, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps was laid before the Board of Admiralty by 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 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... their good behavior are apt to get restless and nervous, all ready to fly off into some mischief or other. Dick Venner had his half-tamed horse with him to work off his suppressed life with. When the savage passion of his young blood came over him, he would fetch out the mustang, screaming and kicking as these amiable beasts are wont to do, strap the Spanish saddle tight to his back, vault into it, and, after getting away from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... "I must work off some of this steam or I shall burst," he said to himself, rolling and tumbling about in the very abandon of rapid convalescence: "It's hard work for me to play sick, but it must be done for the big prize that ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... freebooter had overlooked, besides committing more atrocities upon the population. At the end of another decade an army of Mahrattas took possession, and completed the spoilation by ripping the silver filigree-work off the ceiling of the Throne-room. Not long after this, yet another adventurer took a hand in the work of destruction, tortured the members of the imperial family, and put out the eyes of the helpless old emperor, Shah Alum. Here ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... vessel lift to the swelling wave, and smelt the salt pure breeze from off the 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 were fairly ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... commanded them to be tried by regularly appointed judges; he brought it about that a slave, whether male or female, was not to be sold to a slave-dealer or trainer for public shows without due cause; he did away with ergastula or workhouses, in which slaves guilty of offences were forced to work off their penalties in chains and were confined to filthy dungeons; and he modified the law previously existing to the extent that if a master was killed in his own house, the inquisition by torture could not be extended to the whole household, but to those only who, by proximity ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... it to be no accident. A burr does not easily work off the end of an axle. He had greased the old wagon just before he started for the store, and he knew he had replaced ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... 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
... be confessed, found a new joy in that new attack. It gave him a chance to work off his superabundant energy. The confined space of the cabin was in his favour. He blocked all attempts to encompass him, while his mighty arms did terrific execution, and when the finish came it showed the would-be revellers lying around in ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience and an anvil—I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand times. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can work off a conscience—at least so it will stay worked off; not that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in discovering where we were," said Rob, "but he fell down when he tried to work off the ghost screeches on us. We recognized them at once, and ran him down inside, ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... still love, and have a right to hear of her, I will indulge 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, who wear their purple ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... 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 had green growing up, mixing itself ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the rope dangled beneath his chin; his neck stung where the rope had galled him; but these were minor ills and freedom was a panacea. Later he would work off the halter as he alone knew how. The wind, swinging sharply to the north and the west, brought the fragrance of the forests on the slopes of the Eagles, and Alcatraz started on towards them. He would gladly have waited and rested where he was ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... 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 them; no one, that is, but poor little Mother again—who, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... 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 ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... no talent for nursing," Elsie answered with a half smile, "and that Prilla, mammy and Dinah are quite capable and I am very foolish to take the work off their hands." ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... the girls did so, for the recess was only over the week-end and lessons began again on Monday. Only those girls who lived very near to Briarwood made a real vacation of the first winter holiday. A good many used the time to make up lessons and work off "conditions." ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... looking at him now, fixedly, a frosty gleam in her gray eyes. She looked a moment, and her breast heaved. She swept the work off her lap with a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 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
... the last 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 stamped ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... he 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
... that the Tredegar Fire Brigade strike is settled. Patrons are asked to bear with the Brigade, who have promised to work off arrears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... keep a fellow shut up here for six months, going to meeting five times a week; you give him no chance to work off his natural spirits, and the devil in him will break out somewhere. It's putting a stopper in a volcano; if you don't allow a little fire and smoke, you're ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... at Mr. Scott's series of special meetings at Christmas time, but Jake, having been a boy himself, shook his head, and said it was likely just a spell he had taken with the cold weather, and it would work off when the summer came, like Joey's whooping-cough. But, strange to say, Tim went no more abroad with Davy Munn on lawless expeditions. Sawed-Off Wilmott and the young Lochinvar from Glenoro came regularly, on alternate evenings, to see Ella Anne Long, and never found ropes tied across ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... 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 as being the cause of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... truth in de Lord sight, dey has me settin up so straight to keep a eye on dem dat I can' never settle my mind on nothin. Dey won' let me keep nothin clean. Ain' no use to scrub none, I say. You see, cripple up like I is, I ain' able to get no work off nowhe' en I keeps dem while dey parents work out. Dey mammas have a job to cook out en dey brings dem here bout 6 o'clock in de mornin for me to see after till dey get home in de afternoon. Cose dey helps me along, but it takes ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... lie about themselves. I've had them try to work off bad money and worthless jewelry on me. Sometimes they try to make love to me and then steal back the money they have given me. That's the hard part, the lying and the pretence. All day I write the same lies over and over for the patent-medicine men and then at night I ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... 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 ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and plenty of champagne, and then they danced as though their lives depended on it. Why they did it? Oh, well, young people, rich and fashionable, bored by Sunday evening at home; they wanted to work off the week's idleness in two hours, so they danced. Not ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... faith in the greatness to which she had bound herself, she not only ordered well her small household, but drew herself up within the range of her husband's highest sympathy. She learned to read and write, and to work off his engravings. Nay, love became for her creative, endowed her with a new power, the vision and the faculty divine, and she presently learned to design with a spirit and a grace hardly to be distinguished from her husband's. No children came to make ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... 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
... to look at him; she could not bear that he should see her do so; it was enough to know that he was free—that he was there—that it was over. She did not want to see how it had changed him; and, half to set him at ease, half to work off her own excitement, she talked to her father, and told him of the little events of his absence till the meal was over; and, at half-past one, good nights were exchanged with Leonard, and the Doctor saw him to his room, then returned to his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge |
