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More "Knock off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... latter are a very convenient article for the manufacture of the most enchantingly primitive lanterns. Any one in want of a utensil of this kind has but to step to his cabin-door, take up a claret or champagne bottle, knock off the bottom, and dropping into the neck thereof, through the opening thus made, a candle, to have a most excellent lantern. And the beauty of it is, that, every time you wish to use such a thing, you can ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... be over. You can knock off, Jerry. Oh, except for one thing. Subject's name is Warren Dickens. Just for luck, get a complete dossier on him. I doubt if he's got a criminal or subversive ...
— Subversive • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the barn. "Now the game is for you to take this other can and knock my duck off. Then we both run, and if you get your can on the box ahead of me, I'm it, and I'll have to knock off ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... We are not men; I am Hermes, and this is Plutus; Zeus has sent us in answer to your prayers. So knock off work, take your fortune, and much ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... invitations to come in, the greatness of the sin of others that have been pardoned, and that the same God, through the same Christ, holdeth forth the same grace free as ever. If these be not thy meditations, thou wilt draw very heavily in the way to heaven, if thou do not give up all for lost, and so knock off from following any farther; therefore, I say, take heart in thy journey, and say to them that seek thy destruction, 'Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and bluishly white. Through the bars stretching of lean arms, incessant stretchings. The grins leap at the window, hands belonging to them catch hold, arms belonging to the hands stretch in my direction ... an instant; the new grins leap from behind and knock off the first grins which go down with a fragile crashing like glass smashed: hands wither and break, arms streak out of ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... and did not begin until after the others, having stopped to whisper to him through the grate, that door was the first open, and that man was the first out. As they dragged him into the gallery to knock off his irons, he fell down among them, a mere heap of chains, and was carried out in that state on men's shoulders, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... up into the trees to eat them, and we used frequently to beg George to try his luck at shooting the brutes. However, it must be said to the credit of both kinds of flies that they have one good habit—they "knock off" work at the approach of the cool of evening, thus giving you a chance to bathe as well ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to drink ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Advising the toilers that he was going to do a little private searching, based on a "deduction" that had come to him while he was at home, he ambled off in the direction of Power House Gulley. Half an hour later he reappeared and instructed the crowd to knock off work. He had found the letter just where he ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... nature or of art, rocks, caves, or mountains, in ruined castles and abbeys, or ancient but still flourishing cathedrals, the same invariable love of pilfering and mutilating is to be found: some knock off a nose or a finger, others deface a frieze or a mullion from sheer love of havoc, others chip off some unmeaning fragment as a relique or object of curiosity; but the most general taste seems to be that of carving names or initials, and some of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and I'm tryin' to grow up 'spectable. I haven't been to Tony Pastor's, or the Old Bowery, for ever so long. I'd rather save up my money to support me in my old age. When my hair gets gray, I'm goin' to knock off blackin' boots, and go into some light, genteel employment, such as keepin' an apple-stand, or disseminatin' pea-nuts ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... very expensive business, but under the existing law, made as the scrutiny would be in the borough itself, it would cost but little; and that little, should he be successful, would fall on the shoulders of Mr. Browborough. Should he knock off eight votes and lose none himself, he would be member for Tankerville. He knew that many votes had been given for Browborough which, if the truth were known of them, would be knocked off; and he did not know that the same could be ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... is true enough, Galleygo; but take my advice, and knock off with the ale for to-night. Can you tell me how the land lies, with the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her. How well she's looking! Not been well yourself, Deacon? I'm sorry to hear that. What's the—dyspepsia again? that's bad. Have you tried the light diet I recommended? Well, I would, if I were in your place. I'd knock off two or three pounds of your usual diet, and get a bicycle—yes, you could. A cousin of mine in New York weighed three hundred pounds before he got his bicycle; had one made to order, of course, special weight; now he weighs a hundred and seventy-five, ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... and not a minute longer," answered Mike; "that is, barrin' fifteen minutes at tin in the mornin' and three in the afternoon, whin they knock off for a bite and a drink up at me place on the corner. They go up and ate up me free lunch and soak in about a pint of whisky at ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... river islands," Billy interpolated. "Richer in hell, but looks too much like hard work. It'll do for those that's stuck on hard work—God knows, they's nothin' here to induce a fellow to knock off ever for a bit of play. No fishin', no huntin', nothin' but work. I'd work myself, if ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... "Might knock off going to church, and save the money we give in collections!" suggested Percy flippantly. "It must tot up to quite a decent sum in the course of a year, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... plundered. One of them, a fellow of about thirty, in a hairy cap, black coat, dirty yellow breeches, and dirty white top-boots, who was the most obstreperous of them all, at last came up to the old chap who disliked South Welshmen and tried to knock off his hat, swearing that he would stand by Sir Watkin; he, however, met a Tartar. The enemy of the South Welsh, like all crusty people, had lots of mettle, and with the stick which he held in his hand forthwith aimed ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... wait for us in the shade," said her husband. "We'll knock off for the day when we reach that dolerite dike above the waterhole.—If you are ready, Ashton, we'll ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... place?" Knowing that there were nothing like fifty righteous men in Sodom, the Lord promptly acceded to Abraham's-request; so promptly indeed that Abraham smelt a rat, and determined to drive a closer bargain. So he asked the Lord to knock off five. "Very well," was the reply, "if I find forty-five righteous men I'll spare the city." Abraham was still suspicious. He knew that Jehovah loved a bit of destruction, and was not easily moved when he had once made up his mind to indulge ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... ought not to be allowed. If other men of action, if other sportsmen and pleasure-seekers and travellers and wandering free-lances were able to sit down in any cosmopolitan cafe in Cairo or Stamboul and knock off immortal verses in the style of Byron —verses with no "philosophy" for us to expound, no technique for us to analyse, no "message" for us to interpret, no aesthetic subtleties for us to unravel, no mystical orientation for us to track ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and there through the diggings, swapping remarks with the better disposed, until the men began to knock off work. Then we returned ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap them with clothesline,—that cotton line on one of the trunks,—and knock off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... on the 23rd; imagine us there until September 4th, when we sailed for Fakarava, which we reached on the 9th, after a very difficult and dangerous passage among these isles. Tuesday, we shall leave for Taiti, where I shall knock off and do some necessary work ashore. It looks pretty bald in the atlas; not in fact; nor I trust in the 130 odd pages of diary which I have just been looking up for these dates: the interest, indeed, has ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Partington, as he bowed himself out. "If that's the truth, I'll try writing for juveniles. I'll sit right down to-night and knock off a short story about 'Tommy and the Huckleberry-tree.' I don't know whether huckleberries grow on trees or on huckles, but that will make the tale all the more interesting. If they don't grow on trees people will regard the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring in the sombre stuff that the occasion required, and to bring into the house the other sombre preparations. "And now," said Miss Jenny, "having knocked off my rosy-cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my white-cheeked self." This referred to her making her own dress which at last was done, in time for the simple service, the arrangements for which were of her own planning. The service ended, and the solitary dressmaker having returned ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... drawing was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is valueless;—I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever caricature of his school-master or make a lifelike sketch of his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... a small room, up a crooked and narrow stairs. Nothing was as large as the furniture. How to get it out was a conundrum. One of the survivors suggested to the farmer to knock off the roof of the house, and take it out that way. But he wouldn't hear of it. Finally, the cart was driven under the eaves, and while "those whose past services had endeared them to their countrymen" ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... there are one or two more bits of waste that I mean to clear for you before I knock off work," the old man answered cheerfully, and light shone ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... deal to settle for. Mrs. Cowperwood would never give me a divorce; she has no reason to. If I should clean up in the way I hope to—if I should make a million—I wouldn't mind knocking off now. I don't expect to work all my days. I have always planned to knock off at thirty-five. I'll have enough by that time. Then I want to travel. It will only be a few more years now. If you were free—if your father and mother were dead"—curiously she did not wince at this practical reference—"it ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... at last; "time to knock off. I've put a few small plants in your bag for you; better put them in in the ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... picture of the garden across the road. He has seen one made by Ross with a magnifying lens in it so good that you can see the moustaches of the Boches in it from the bottom of your trench. The noise is getting so beastly I must knock off and read 'Punch.' ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... turn out and pump the ship dry; and after a great deal of grumbling, and much show of disinclination, I at length succeeded in getting them on deck, and persuading them to man the pumps. They pumped steadily until it was time to knock off for breakfast, when we sounded the well, and found a depth of ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... right. I first adopt my point of view and subsequently prove it. Obviously, this is where the pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory classes, I suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have, of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open forever, and a little while ago, I telegraphed down and took ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sharpen the file, which is often necessary after passing through the "skin" of the glass, put it in a vice so that the point just protrudes clear of the jaws. Then, using a bit of waste iron as an intermediary anvil or punch, knock off the least bit from the point, so as to expose a fresh natural surface. The same result may be brought about by the use of a pair ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... begin to wear head-cloths when they are adopting Hinduism. The Gondi fashion was formerly prevalent in Chhattisgarh. Some sanctity attaches to the turban, probably because it is the covering of the head. To knock off a man's turban is a great insult, and if it drops off or he lets it fall, it is a very ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... pleasant thought. I saw nothing of the captain, but heard him shouting orders to the men engaged tinkering at the paddle-wheel. The overseer gave me a hat which added little to my personal appearance, and by the time we were called to knock off for the noon meal, I was thoroughly tired, and disgusted, feeling as much a roustabout as ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... take Steve with me as far as that in the hackney-coach, and get him measured. Then he can be back here again by the time you knock off for dinner, and will then put on his slops and get ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... Lithuania. He owned immense forests and he loved Feodor Feodorovitch* as a brother, for they had played together all through their childhood, and once he had saved him from a bear that was just about to crush his skull as one might knock off a hat. General Trebassof's father was governor of Courlande at that time, by the grace of God and the Little Father. Thaddeus, who was just thirteen years old, killed the bear with a single stroke of his boar-spear, and just in time. Close ties were knit between the two families by this occurrence, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house, to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. From beginning to end they have the excitement ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... "Knock off my head with little apples," he declared emphatically, striking the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, "if those two men ever escape me! I'll stay here to get them if it takes the rest of my natural life, and if I don't get them, then I promise you I'll live unnaturally ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... ways. Suppose Slocum has a lot of unfinished contracts on hand,—he always has fat contracts,—and the men was to knock off work. That would be kind ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Checkers that crowded that I had to ask him and the other gentleman to go into my own room, and what does he say but, "Mrs. Diggles, I will give you twenty pound for that cupboard of yourn, once you knock off the feet and the curly bit on the top." Law, how the gentle-folk do know about sech things: that was exactly what my vather he paid the twenty-five shillings for. But how could I give him my cupboard for twenty pound when I had promised it to my nephew? When I'm taken, that ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Government's wise and Parmenter's chest is dumped into its strong box—that is, as much as is left after the officials get their own flippers out. Now, my idea is for you people to do the searching, and, when the jewels is found, me and Bill will take half and youn's half. Then we all can knock off work, and ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... there very much what it was at home. "I am in a regular ferocious excitement with the Chimes; get up at seven; have a cold bath before breakfast; and blaze away, wrathful and red-hot, until three o'clock or so, when I usually knock off (unless it rains) for the day. I am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some affinity to that of truth and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the wicked, but it is hard work." His entire discomfort under sound interruptions ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... deal of confusion on board; the crew were labouring at the pumps, but in anything but an energetic manner; some would suddenly knock off, and halloa and bawl at their shipmates to come and help them, but it was often long before their places were taken. On looking aloft he saw, too, that the masts were wounded in several places, and though ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Time to knock off work," he said, "and we've got pretty near everything on board. Now, be sure you are all here by six in the morning. Tide will begin to run out at eight, and I don't want to lose ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... attempted to be traced. I will frankly own to you, that, of all pulpits, throughout Normandy, or in Paris—as yet examined by me—I have seen none which approaches to THIS; so rich, varied, and elaborate are its sculptured ornaments.[212] The Revolutionists could only contrive to knock off the figure which was upon the top of the canopy, with other contiguous ornaments; all of which might ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... have not learnt to chew have to work without stopping from morning to night. And this is the reason why Santals learn to chew tobacco when they are alive; for it is of no use to merely smoke a huka: in the next world we shall not be allowed to knock off work in order to smoke. In the next world also it is very difficult to get water to drink. There are frogs who stand on guard and drive away any who comes to the water to drink; and so when Satals die we send drinking vessels with them ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... fair play with the early apples, the Old Squire had made a rule that none of us should shake the trees, or knock off apples with poles or clubs. So we all had equal chances to secure those apples which fell off, and the prospect of finding them beneath the trees was a great premium on early rising in the months ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... he said, "about a score of masons have been working in the prison, repairing the roof and doing up some of the cells. Cell number 129, the one next yours, is empty, and there are no bars on the window; the masons go through that cell and that window to get on to the roof. They knock off work soon after six o'clock. The gate-keeper knows them all, but he does not always look closely at their faces when they go by, and you might perhaps be able ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... if you're ready, boys, we'll just waltz down to Thompson's and pack up the shanty. He's out of it by this time, I reckon. You might as well be perspiring to some purpose over there as gaspin' under this tree. We won't go back to work this afternoon, but knock off now, and call it half a day. Come! Hump yourselves, gentlemen. Are you ready? ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... a fool. There's nothing wrong with your heart. All our family have had hearts like steam-engines. Probably you have been feeling a sort of burning. Knock off cigars and that ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... should be lighter than 13-1/2 oz., which is the normal weight for ladies. Myself, I prefer and always play with a 14-oz., and hold that unless there is a weakness of the wrist, or some personal reason why the player should knock off the extra half-ounce, this weight is the best for ladies to use. I like my racket slightly weighted in the head, but I think most players prefer one evenly balanced. The latter may be recommended to ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... "'Pull his beard,' 'Knock off his turban,' and such like impertinences were hurled at me. But, taking no heed of these, I again addressed the patel, raising my voice so ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... two years," he said, indifferently, turning to knock off the end of his cigarette. "That doesn't matter." Then, as his eyes caught her face, a sudden animation sprang into his. He drew his chair nearer to her and threw away his cigarette. "Look here, Daphne, don't let's waste time. We shall never see each other again, and there are ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an hour's hard work to knock off the chains of the slaves. The greater portion of them were Christians—Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, and French, who had been captured in various raids by the corsairs; and among them were the crew of the ship that had been overhauled ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... was being examined during the trial, Sir John Holker, the Attorney-General, asked, "How long did it take you to knock off that 'Nocturne'?" ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... off a rough sketch of it on the back of one of my visiting cards. I ought to have it somewhere about me now. (Searching himself.) Ah, I thought so! (Handing a vague little scrawl to CULCHARD, who examines it with the deepest interest.) I knock off quite a number of these while I'm abroad like this. Send 'em in letters to relatives at home—gives them a notion of the place. They are—ar—kind enough to value them. (CULCHARD makes a complimentary mumble.) Yes, I'm a very rapid sketcher. Put me with regular artists, and give us half an ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to 'knock off the horns,' as it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warrior. The original nomination of the chiefs also always ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... troublous life of which his gravestone spoke. And little Elsie, whose eyes were very sharp, and her observant qualities of the quickest, found something which Ned at first pronounced to be only a bit of old iron, incrusted with earth; but Elsie persisted to knock off some of the earth that seemed to have incrusted it, and discovered a key. The children ran with their prize to the grim Doctor, who took it between his thumb and finger, turned it over and over, and then proceeded to rub it with a chemical substance which soon ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to maturity, bring to perfection; perfect, complete; elaborate. do, execute, make; go through, get through; work out, enact; bring about, bring to bear, bring to pass, bring through, bring to a head. despatch, dispatch; knock off, finish off, polish off; make short work of; dispose of, set at rest; perform, discharge, fulfill, realize; put in practice, put in force; carry out, carry into effect, carry into execution; make good; be as good as one's word. do thoroughly, not do ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... being ruthlessly slaughtered. The worst of it was, that though Williams had succeeded in freeing many of them from the heavy chains with which they were secured together in the schooner's hold, most of them still wore heavy fetters on their ankles. These we now proceeded to knock off as fast as we could, afterwards pitching the poor wretches overboard— with scant ceremony, I fear—to take their chances of being able to reach the shore. And during all this the Spaniards never ceased firing upon us for an instant; so there we were in the midst ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... of the catastrophe is a drug addict and that he is located nearby. We know he has no scruples, for the man who warned us undoubtedly was killed. And I'm convinced those extremely short wave bands hold the secret. Let's knock off for the day. We look like ghosts. To-morrow morning you and June get what equipment you need from across the river. I'll stay here on guard. You'd better raid a drug-store and get some more of our life-saver, too. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... also felt his position,—the position of the male who stalks forth from the herd and stands the silent challenger. He was young, and vain of his manhood in the usual innocent way that led him to carry the chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off; and he placed himself before Daphne with the understanding that if they were discovered, there would be trouble. Her father was a violent man, and the circumstances were not such that any Kentucky father would overlook them. But with his inward seriousness, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming, or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray of cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a change. They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like so many zebras—all of them chiefs, of course—and then they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a young hemlock, from the spot which my lightnings struck in the last Fever-Moon. Let it be not more than ten seasons old—straight, well-grown, a finely-proportioned trunk, with thriving branches, full of cones, and with leaves of dark green. Knock off the cones, and bring them, together with the trunk and leaves, to the bottom of the hill Wecheganawaw, when the sun of the morning is tinging the eastern clouds with his brightness. Burn them in a fire made of the dry branches of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... being finished, the two older Bunker boys let the smaller children play with it, and throw snowballs at it, trying to knock off the old hat, and Laddie and Russ started ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... just thrown down their spade and rake, and had agreed to knock off, and they now ran across to the outside of the strip of sand, which had by ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... before he must give the seller of produce one rupee less. Now let me take the business with which, as a planter, I am most familiar. I have roughly estimated the total value of the coffee annually produced in Mysore at L870,000, and if, for the sake of even numbers, we knock off L70,000, a 7 per cent. export duty on this will amount to L56,000, and if the Government could raise, as it proposes, the rupee to 1s. 6d., L168,000 a year would be the price that the measure would entail on a portion of the inhabitants of the native state of Mysore on this single ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... style in the least," said Clovis; "merely reverse the sentiment and keep to the inane phraseology of the thing. If you'll do the body of the song I'll knock off the refrain, which is the thing that principally matters, I believe. I shall charge half-shares in the royalties, and throw in my silence as to your guilty secret. In the eyes of the world you shall still be the man who has devoted ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... you late this evening. Yes, one of the local attorneys for your friends came in and we figured everything up. He thought that if this office would throw off a certain per cent. of its expense, and Reed would knock off the interest, his clients would consent to a settlement. I told him to go right back and tell his people that as long as they thought that way, it would only cost them one hundred and forty dollars every twenty-four hours." ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... autumn he wrote to Henslow: "I have not been very well of late, with an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart, and my doctors urge me STRONGLY to knock off all work, and go and live in the country for a few weeks." He accordingly took a holiday of about a month at Shrewsbury and Maer, and paid a visit in the Isle of Wight. It was, I believe, during this visit, at Mr. Wedgwood's ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Triggvison, "lest I knock off your helmet. The man who taught you the use of the sword might have been better employed, for in truth he has taught ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Mother Meraut, with spirit. "I guess our soldiers don't knock off work every time a gun goes off or a few Germans come in sight! It would be a shame if we could not follow ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... green with vineyards in the middle or latter end of May; not a yard of available land is lost. When the shoots are about three feet long and have shown the embryo bunches, a number of men enter the vineyard with switches and knock off the tender ends of the runners, which in a gentler method of cultivation would be picked off with the finger and thumb-nail. Sometimes goats are turned in to nibble off the shoots in order to save labour, and at the same time to feed the animals; ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Moorish saddle with its high-peaked cantle and crupper, and its catch-and-carry stirrups. We took a calesa, as I have said. To my dying day I shall not forget that vehicle of torture. But it may be necessary to tell what is a calesa. Procure a broken-down hansom, knock off the driver's seat, paint the body and wheels the colour of a roulette-table at a racecourse, stud the hood with brass nails of the pattern of those employed to beautify genteel coffins, remove the cushions, and replace them with a wisp of straw, smash the springs, and put swing-leathers ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... posteriors arter you. Rise up like men, arouse yourselves like freemen, and elect me to the legislatur', and I'll lead on the small but patriotic band, I'll put the big wigs through their facins, I'll make 'em shake in their shoes, I'll knock off your chains and make you free.' Well, the goneys fall tu and elect him, and he desarts right away, with balls, rifle, powder, horn and all. HE PROMISED ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... say that Fairfax Fairfax was in one of his further tobacco fields when the good news was brought to him, and that after giving orders that all the darkies should knock off work and take a holiday, in his haste and excitement he jumped down from his horse and ran all the way to the house. I give the story only for what it is worth. But if it is true, it is the first case of a man of that name and family ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Gail Clarenden," Rex drawled, carelessly. "A boy of your brains had ought to be born in Boston. Jondo and I can't agree about him. His name, he says, is Santan. There's one 'n' too many. If you knock off the last one it makes him Santa—'holy'; but if you knock out the middle it's Satan. We don't knock out the same 'n', ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... when you get to the top," Dave said. "Find some place where you can get a clear view all round, and then lie down. Choose a bit of shade, if you can find it. When we knock off work and have had a bit of grub, I will come up ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... she breezes in again and tries to get them to knock off an hour early so she can take them to the country club for tea, but they refuse this, so she makes little putty statues of them both and drove a few nails where they would do no good and upset a bucket of paste and leaned a two-hundred-dollar lace thing against a varnished wall to the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "You had best knock off your allowance of spirits, till your wounds have healed up, lad. I will tell the second mate to serve you out ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... with a malicious grin. "I didn't knock off work to carry bricks. Yous married me, an' ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... have seemed like the end of the world. You can imagine the people—old men with turbans undone, veiled women, crying babies—tumbling out of the little bird-cage houses and down the narrow streets. Off went the minaret, as you would knock off an icicle, from the mosque on the hill. The mosque by the water-front went down in a cloud of dust, and up from the dust, from a petrol shell, shot a geyser of fire. Stones came rumbling down from the old square tower, which had stood since the days ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... question, and talked it over with Henderson and the boatswain, it seemed that if it could not be completed beforehand, it would really be better on the whole to defer it until after the gale had blown over; I, therefore, gave the order to knock off work and get supper and a rest. Two minutes later the decks were deserted, save by myself, and I was bracing myself up to keep a lookout as ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... C. Seitz of New York. Here we find The Standard's little joke about Whistler paying his costs in the action—apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say—"But he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'—or perhaps he might try his hand at a Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue?—and a week's labour will set all square." Then there is this priceless revelation of his art when questioning his class in Paris. ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... knock off, old man," he told Simmons. "I don't think there'll be anything more doing to-night; and it doesn't matter if there is. Tell your other man to jot down anything from that sending, if any comes. Now," he turned to Hallowell, "I want to see your ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... overwhelmed again by the enormity of his solitude, and it looked as if it were going to turn into another of those periods when he sat with the gun in his hand, sobbing and swearing in a violent muddle of self-pity and helpless fury. He decided to knock off the lamenting and get good and drunk instead. And he would make it a drunk to top all drunks ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... have gone to-night and brought home beer and comforted yourselves getting fuddled. That's so, you know, and it wouldn't be right. It's just that sort of thing "—she added softly—"that stops us seeing how it is the little ones die when they shouldn't. If everybody would knock off drinking for ten years, everybody, we'd have everything straightened out by then and nobody would ever want to go ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... all too tired for further effort to-day," Charley agreed, "but we must get an early start in the morning. We will get some boughs for beds, have supper, and knock off for the day." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... me too much money, son, for the sand and gravel. You ought to knock off five or ten cents per yard and give me exclusive right ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... "The planet is very low in radiation from mineral deposits, and the atmosphere seems to shield out most of the solar output. Any little dose of radiation might knock off these critters." ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... "Enough of this. Switch off that cursed gramophone. Get up off the deck. Mop that ink up and square off the table-cloth. Knock off scrapping, you three hooligans." ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... I'll get you away from her. Keep quiet. Don't talk any more now. Just pick up the pears in your apron, that I knock off this tree." ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them, when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. "A set of horrid ruffians," Whiffler said,—"and his life wouldn't be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... which to knock off the rough frame of boards that almost formed a box around the package, and Ruth ran for the shears to cut the ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the coast and let him sniff around for one. I'd like the best in the world to sell about three thousand beeves, and we never had fatter ones than we have to-day. If we can make a sale, it'll keep us busy all the fore part of the summer. So both you fellows knock off any day you want to and go up to the city. And go horseback, for this ranch don't give Bethel & Oxenford's stages any more ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... then he ran directly into the myriads of wild pigeons. Here was food for an army, and he quickly secured plenty of it. The danger of the rifle report was gone, as he had nothing to do but take a stick and knock off a bough as many of the pigeons as he wished. Then he hastened back to the cabin with his welcome burden. Paul still slept, and it pleased Henry to give him a surprise. He kindled the fire afresh, cleaned two of the youngest, fattest, and tenderest of the pigeons, ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... amount to do before I could knock off, so, stopping for a moment to mix myself a well-earned whisky-and-water, I switched on the two electric head-lights which McMurtrie had provided as a means of illumination. With the aid of these I continued my labours for ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... was, an' I groaned, an' groaned, an' shook my handes, an' then I thowt, 'Mubbe I may be goun wrong way.' So I groaned to the Lard to stop the snow. Then I on'y ran this way an' that way, an' groaned for snow to knock off.[I] I knowed we was driftun mubbe a twenty leagues a day, and anyways I wanted to be doun what I could, keepun up over th' Ice so well as I could, Noofundland-ways, an' I might come to somethun,—to a schooner or somethun; anyways I'd get up so near as I could. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... departure of Morris, caught in the slips off Saunders's next over for a chanceless hundred and five, did not disturb him. All nervousness had left him. He felt equal to the situation. Burgess came in, and began to hit out as if he meant to knock off the runs. The bowling became a shade loose. Twice he was given full tosses to leg, which he hit to the terrace bank. Half-past six chimed, and two hundred and fifty went up on the telegraph board. Burgess continued ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... fearing to allow himself to see what this really meant. He passed one hand over his cheek and along the side of his head, the fingers dancing. "Hum!" he muttered, looking vaguely about him, "this is bad. I mustn't let this get the better of me now. I'll knock off for to-day, take a little ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... could find among several that had been blown down by the wind. At 3 feet from the ground its circumference is 57 feet 9 inches; at 134 feet, 17 feet 5 inches; the extreme length 245 feet.... As it was impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the report of my gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives. They appeared anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they seemed satisfied and sat down ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... your foot down, it sinks into the decaying substance,—into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are not trodden through, yet plain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... he ride on after he had told the others to "knock off," working himself harder than he could ask them to work, riding late to look at the water holes or find a new pasture in some of the little mountain valleys or to bring in a fresh string of saddle horses for the morrow's riding. So now, as darkness gathered, he ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... 'roun', he did, en feel on de mantel-shelf, en feel, en feel, twel he come ter ole Brer Rabbit money-pus. Ef he want so light wid he han'," Uncle Remus went on, glancing quizzically at the child, "he'd a knock off de pollygollic vial w'at ole Miss Rabbit put up dar. But nummine! Brer Wolf, he feel, en feel, twel he come ter de money-pus, en he grab dat, he did, en he des flew'd ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... in plow time. Some women made rails. When it was cold and raining they spun and wove in the house. The men cut wood under a shed or side the barn so it knock off the wind. Mars Tom Williams had 12 grown men and women. I was too little to count but I heard my folks call am over by name and number more times en I got fingers and toes. He would hire ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish mackerel for ME," said Demorest gravely. "The fact is, that last bottle of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a fair man, even to Huns. When Germany pays an indemnity of L2,000,000,000 I think we might knock off a tenner or so because the KAISER has done so much to beautify our banks. Once they were cold cheerless places. A suspicion of an overdraft always swept through them. Now I love to go to the bank and see the beautiful ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... his orderly, Ranth, came into the room. "Find Lieutenant Praed for me," the colonel ordered crisply. Then, turning to Lance, he said: "You'd better knock off a few hours' ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... than those of the sterner sex. In poetry, my minstrel, yes; in reality, bosh. Where are your women conjurors? You say that their brain is not strong enough to second their manual advantage, but that they can "knock off" a pretty water-colour or oil study of flowers, or a graphic caricature! Caricature, indeed! Perhaps no one has seen more caricatures than I have, but I have never seen a caricature by a woman. If women have a failing, it is lack ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... 'I tell you what, you'd do well to knock off a few of your expeditions to Stapleton. You know you wouldn't go there once a month if it wasn't out of bounds. You'll be a prefect next term. I should wait till then, if ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... around nearly all our watering-places is the horse-racing business. We all admire the horse. There needs to be a redistribution of coronets among the brute creation. For ages the lion has been called the king of beasts. I knock off its coronet and put the crown upon the horse, in every way nobler, whether in shape or spirit or sagacity or intelligence or affection or usefulness. He is semi-human, and knows how to reason on a ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... and wait for us in the shade," said her husband. "We'll knock off for the day when we reach that dolerite dike above the waterhole.—If you are ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... suppose such entertainments will continue to exist. They are a good deal cheaper than balls or dinners, and you can "knock off" ever so many people at the ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... the table which would better have been left in the oven and it was not that he was stingy with the provisions, but just that the cook had not looked after them. On the other hand, he was ready to knock off something from the price and did not refuse to trust a man's word for payment—he was a good man and a genial host. In talking, in entertaining, he was lavish, too; he would sometimes chatter away over the samovar till his listeners pricked up ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... been working in the prison, repairing the roof and doing up some of the cells. Cell number 129, the one next yours, is empty, and there are no bars on the window; the masons go through that cell and that window to get on to the roof. They knock off work soon after six o'clock. The gate-keeper knows them all, but he does not always look closely at their faces when they go by, and you might perhaps be able to go ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was young I sho could knock off de work. I cummulated 80 acres land in Lee County. I paid $900 for it, got in debt and had let it fur 'bout ($247.50) Two hundred forty-seven and a half dollars. All I got outen it. I had a bad crop and had a little provision ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... play with the early apples, the Old Squire had made a rule that none of us should shake the trees, or knock off apples with poles or clubs. So we all had equal chances to secure those apples which fell off, and the prospect of finding them beneath the trees was a great premium on early rising in the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... to this critical stage of important Bill knew all about it. Every line of its 342 Clauses must be familiar to every man present; otherwise how could he lay his hand on his heart, and say, "Aye," when COURTNEY asked him should he knock off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... it pretty well. Anybody'd think you were innocent as a lamb. But it won't work, Joseph—it won't work, I tell you. I've got a duty to perform, and I'm going to do it; and I pledge you my word, if you and Dingus don't knock off now, I'll arrest you and send you up for ten years as sure as death. I'm ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... she came round, blaze went our carronades and long—gun in succession, with goodwill and good aim, and down came his foretop—sail on the cap, with all the superincumbent spars and gear; the head of the topmast had been shot away. The men instinctively cheered. "That will do; now knock off, my boys, and let us run for it. Keep her awav again; ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... substance,—into the heart of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... too tired for further effort to-day," Charley agreed, "but we must get an early start in the morning. We will get some boughs for beds, have supper, and knock off for ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... once surrounded by a score of pirogues, the largest of which contained twenty-five men. The latter sought to appropriate everything within their reach, buoys, flags, the hinges of the rudder, which they tried to knock off. They only returned to the shore after a four-pounder had been ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... "Had you said them morning and night, and not have been afraid of our messmates laughing at you, you would have known how to say them even while you are hard at work. I don't think God would be well pleased if we all were to knock off, and go down on our knees to pray and ask Him for help while we were neglecting to ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... And one thing led to another until, by easy stages, they had arrived at the point where she was saying that she didn't know if he was aware of it, but if he didn't knock off starchy foods and do exercises every morning, he would be getting as fat as a pig, and he was talking about this modern habit of girls putting make-up on their faces, of which he had always disapproved. This continued for a while, and then there was a loud pop and the air was full of mangled ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... infinite are on equal terms, worthy to gaze on one another, each from his own throne. But where many men are, how small both humanity and infinitude become, how much they have to knock off each other, in order to fit in together! Each soul wants so much room to expand that in a crowd it needs must wait for gaps through which to thrust a little craning piece of a ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... enough to meet Jimmy Rabbit, who was always very friendly toward him. And as soon as he had inquired about Jimmy Rabbit's health (they had not seen each other since the previous fall, you know), Jolly related how he had seen Johnnie Green knock off the head of the man ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... diary Newman alludes to Lord Congleton). Once, in travelling by canal near Marseilles, Newman found the level of the canal-boat was "dangerously high, from the arches. Once we had a narrow escape. There was a sudden cry of 'A bas!' We turned and saw we were rapidly nearing an arch which would knock off our heads. The horses kept at a short canter. Old Mrs. C. was sitting quietly on deck, wholly absorbed, and never dreaming that the sailors could be calling to her. Miss C. was sitting on a box, fast asleep. Several of us rushed at once towards them, and pulled them off their seats ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... The origin of this name is to be found in the Danish kaempe, a warrior, and the reason for its being so called is to be found in the game which children in most parts of the kingdom play with the flower-stalks of the plantain, by endeavouring to knock off the heads of each other's mimic weapons. Again, as Mr. Friend points out, the birch would take us back to the primeval forests of India, and among the multitudinous instances of names traceable to far-off countries may be mentioned the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... from soon after eleven A.M. until five P.M., when the men began to get disheartened from seeing no signs whatever of land, and I ordered my boat's crew to knock off pulling for a little, and in Mr. Walker's boat, which was about a mile astern, they did the same. In twenty minutes time I made my crew again take to their oars, but the other boat did not in this instance ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Timon, don't throw. We are not men; I am Hermes, and this is Plutus; Zeus has sent us in answer to your prayers. So knock off work, take your fortune, and much good ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... my friend,' I replied, in a mild tone, and as unruffled as a basin of water that has been out of a December night; 'you'll knock off the dinner things, and I'm ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Clarenden," Rex drawled, carelessly. "A boy of your brains had ought to be born in Boston. Jondo and I can't agree about him. His name, he says, is Santan. There's one 'n' too many. If you knock off the last one it makes him Santa—'holy'; but if you knock out the middle it's Satan. We don't knock out the same 'n', ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... had spoken she went out and closed all the gates from without. David stretched himself and cried: "Bread and wine, the Lord liveth!" and began to knock off the heads of the men of war. He beheaded them so that the bodies flew over the walls and the heads remained lying in the court. And he laid hold of Holbaschi, and tore out his teeth and drove them into his brow like nails. And he ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... wishes, Mr. Nelson at once wrote to Captain Suckling. The latter wrote back without delay: "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... take your axe an' knock off them boards. The posts'll go too, give 'em a chance. They're pretty ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... good-looking young chap. Dresses kind of sporty. He's a great jollier. You have to know him a while to find out that he means business. Well, he came 'round and saw I was feeling pretty tired, so he asked me to knock off for a week and go fishing with him. I did, and it was the hardest work I ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... convicted of insuring his vessels to a large amount, and then setting fire to them, his property was confiscated by the government, and he was sentenced to work for life in chains. It is said that he has offered a million rupees to any man who will knock off his irons. His son carries on the business at Bombay, and it was reported that a vessel was always lying at Sincapore ready to receive him in case he should effect his escape; but of this there does not appear to be the slightest chance, as he is particularly watched ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... tornado was upon them; over went the ship; down, down she heeled. The seething water rushed in at her ports. Shrieks and cries arose from the unhappy negroes confined below. Jack and Needham's first impulse was to knock off the hatches, and a few blacks sprang on deck before the sea ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... look. "I won't bother fixing that at all. Call Happy and Bud back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap them with clothesline,—that cotton line on one of the trunks,—and knock off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... let's go into the woods and knock down the dry branches of trees. It's fine sport to walk about in the forest and knock off the branches with a stick. And when you shout "Ho-ho-ho!" the echo from the ravine answers back "Ho-ho-ho!" Do ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... mickle,' as we Scotch say," answered Tony cheerfully. "However, twenty-seven dollars is a mere trifle to a young man like you. Come, if you'll pay me to-night, I'll knock off the sixty cents." ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... calf? He said the calf was such a suckcess that he didn't leave any milk for the family and that while the calf was growin' fat the children was growin' poor. In my opinion you're about fat enough for the present. Le's stick to the job till four o'clock. Then we'll knock off for refreshments." ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... God will come to me, He knock off chains, He set me free, Den take me up on high. Den Indian sing His praises blest, And lub and praise Him wid de rest, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... people who thought if the thing was going up the flue on Sunday there was no use of advertising any more, and we refused twenty dollars' worth more because we thought if that was the last paper we were going to get out we might as well knock off work Friday and Saturday and go and catch a string of perch. The people have been fooled about this thing enough, and the first man that comes around with any more ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... with an air of studied unconcern, as if he would rather like a dozen more men to knock off work. The two men walk out, but the epidemic does not spread, and several take the lesson home ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... faculty; my drawing was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is valueless;—I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever caricature of his school-master or make a lifelike sketch of his favourite horse on the barn door ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... of tone and a complacent look backward at the patch of turned soil. "And 'might have been workin' yet but the children singin' their hymn yonder"—with a jerk of his thumb towards the wall that hid the school building—"warned me 'twas time to knock off for dinner." ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... dashed off a rough sketch of it on the back of one of my visiting cards. I ought to have it somewhere about me now. (Searching himself.) Ah, I thought so! (Handing a vague little scrawl to CULCHARD, who examines it with the deepest interest.) I knock off quite a number of these while I'm abroad like this. Send 'em in letters to relatives at home—gives them a notion of the place. They are—ar—kind enough to value them. (CULCHARD makes a complimentary mumble.) Yes, I'm a very rapid sketcher. Put me with regular artists, and give ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... been all his life into the Liverpool trade and had got well fixed, so far as cash were consarned; and so when he came for to be seventy or seventy-two years old he were persuaded for to knock off for a full due and spend the balance of his life ashore. Goin' up to some place in Connecticut, he buys hisself a place there and settles down. Well, for a time he were all right, a-fixin' up his house, a-buildin' new ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... view and subsequently prove it. Obviously, this is where the pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory classes, I suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have, of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open forever, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... have been pardoned, and that the same God, through the same Christ, holdeth forth the same grace free as ever. If these be not thy meditations, thou wilt draw very heavily in the way to heaven, if thou do not give up all for lost, and so knock off from following any farther; therefore, I say, take heart in thy journey, and say to them that seek thy destruction, 'Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... worked at these defences are worthy of record. On pitch-dark nights in pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant "click, ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... am not i' the vein,' or I could knock off a stanza or three for the Ode, that might answer the purpose better.[26] At all events, I must see the lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind's manuscript already. Has any one seen or judged of them? that is the criterion by which I will abide—only give me a fair ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... time she got there, and she screamed and fought like a fury against the men who held her back when she would have plunged into the midst of it. It took but a minute for one or two men to burst through the flimsy wall with axes, to rescue the burning box and knock off the lid. It was a sight to see when the contents were handed to her. She knelt, wept, prayed, counted over bill after bill of smoking, steaming greenbacks, until suddenly recalled to her senses ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... that in the side of the biscuit-box. I was puzzled how to deal with them. I could not enlarge the openings without a great deal of labour. On account of the situation of the two boxes, it was not possible to knock off another board. I should have to cut the hole wider with my knife; and this, for the same reason, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... I said. "The bill for those mirrors was only L98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash. I'm learning to be a business ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... an inquiring glance at the newcomer, introduced him, abruptly: "Son, this here's Roarin' Mike O'Reilly, from over on the Tanana. He's our new stenographer, an' while he goes an' gits on his reg'lar clothes, you an' me an' the Injun will knock off fer noon, an' go over ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Which one was it? Did he knock off the first two-Kroner or the second? Ha, ha, ha! That's the best I've ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... still a certain amount to do before I could knock off, so, stopping for a moment to mix myself a well-earned whisky-and-water, I switched on the two electric head-lights which McMurtrie had provided as a means of illumination. With the aid of these I continued ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... for the week. Now the way to figure out how much the porteer ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill by two, then you divide it by twenty-seven, and then you knock off half a mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four. Twenty-seven into eighty-four goes about three times, and half from three leaves two and a half. ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... you’ve forgiven me—” I began, kicking the gate to knock off the snow, and taking the key ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... yet," explains Captain Blaikie to his subalterns, in reply to Bobby Little's expressions of impatience. "It's this way. We start by 'isolating' a section of the enemy's line, and pound it with artillery for about forty-eight hours. Then the guns knock off, and the people in front rush the German first-line trenches. After that they push on to their second and third lines; and if they can capture and hold them—well, that's where the fun comes in. We go for all we are worth through the gaps the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... voyage home, a pair of wheel-ropes from strips of green hide, great quantities of spun-yarn, and everything else that could be made between decks. It being now midwinter and in high latitude, the nights were very long, so that we were not turned-to until seven in the morning, and were obliged to knock off at five in the evening, when we got supper; which gave us nearly three hours before eight bells, at which ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... be a very expensive business, but under the existing law, made as the scrutiny would be in the borough itself, it would cost but little; and that little, should he be successful, would fall on the shoulders of Mr. Browborough. Should he knock off eight votes and lose none himself, he would be member for Tankerville. He knew that many votes had been given for Browborough which, if the truth were known of them, would be knocked off; and he did not know that the same could be said of any one of those by which ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... a number of trifling matters which never occupy attention but when there is a lack of something better to employ it; for instance, he would knock off the top of an egg-shell at a single stroke of his fork; he therefore always ate eggs when he dined in public, and the Parisians who came on Sundays to see the King dine, returned home less struck with his fine figure than ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and brought home beer and comforted yourselves getting fuddled. That's so, you know, and it wouldn't be right. It's just that sort of thing "—she added softly—"that stops us seeing how it is the little ones die when they shouldn't. If everybody would knock off drinking for ten years, everybody, we'd have everything straightened out by then and nobody would ever want to go ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... At eight sharp in the morning I started out after clothes. I worked energetically all day. I swear I walked forty miles. I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes. I did not even knock off work for dinner. And at six in the afternoon, after ten hours of unremitting and depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt, while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and, moreover, was showing all the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... yes, I see her. How well she's looking! Not been well yourself, Deacon? I'm sorry to hear that. What's the—dyspepsia again? that's bad. Have you tried the light diet I recommended? Well, I would, if I were in your place. I'd knock off two or three pounds of your usual diet, and get a bicycle—yes, you could. A cousin of mine in New York weighed three hundred pounds before he got his bicycle; had one made to order, of course, special weight; now he weighs a hundred and seventy-five, and is as active ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... a fire all the afternoon," he said. "But the light is getting bad, isn't it? Fisher and I will have to knock off. Are you two going for a walk? We'll come, too, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Suppose Slocum has a lot of unfinished contracts on hand,—he always has fat contracts,—and the men was to knock off work. That would be kind of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... surprised when Casey told her, at the end of the first week, to knock off three days on account of gas. She and the little girl came to his camp next day and brought Casey a loaf of light bread and interrupted him in the act of shaving. The little woman looked at the two burros and at the mule, measured ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Mrs. Cowperwood would never give me a divorce; she has no reason to. If I should clean up in the way I hope to—if I should make a million—I wouldn't mind knocking off now. I don't expect to work all my days. I have always planned to knock off at thirty-five. I'll have enough by that time. Then I want to travel. It will only be a few more years now. If you were free—if your father and mother were dead"—curiously she did not wince at this practical reference—"it would ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid than the rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house, to knock off the faucets, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the nearest junk dealer. With the money thus procured they buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley. From beginning ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... was much pleased when I did. I now resolved that I would clear the path of the rocks, that he might be able to follow me down the whole way, for he had grown so much that I found him too heavy to carry. It occupied me a week before I could roll away and remove the smaller rocks, and knock off others with the axe, but I finished it at last, and was pleased to find that the animal followed me right down and plunged into the water. He had not been down since I had made the wall of rock to keep the fish in, and as soon as he was in, he dived and came out with ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time, which will raise the wind again. I know what the public wants, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Paul, xxxv. Fleta, 'an anonymous work drawn up in the thirteenth century to assist landowners in managing their estates' says, the reeve 'shall rise early, and have the ploughs yoked, and then walk in the fields to see that all is right and note if the men be idle, or if they knock off work before the day's task is ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... frightened; Miss Sylvia won't die, nor you neither." He took her hand. "It may knock off a few dozen prisoners or so. They are pretty close packed ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... put on the Judge's horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff knock off two slaves to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... when to go. So we went, and it seemed to me that the Duke put more real enthusiasm into his good-bye than into his welcome. It was half-past five. He had been at work since eight. And perhaps it was fancy, but there seemed to be rising into his bland Italian eye a determination to knock off and take ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... remarked, "the whole familia[12] will be in fetters if Mamercus has his way much longer. Knock off those chains. Tell the wretches they are to remain unshackled only so long as they behave. Give them three skins to-night from which to drink their master's health. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... contralto, David; the old men, two basses; as for the tenor, he would be, of course, Suzannah's husband. There would be a superb entrance for him upon his return from the army, 'cavatina guerriera con cori'. Oh! that terrible Gerfaut! the wolves must have devoured him. If he were here, we would knock off the thing between our fruit ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... along the various avenues. Women, also, like camp followers, took the same direction in crowds. They were thus divided into separate gangs, apparently to take each avenue in their progress, and make a clean sweep. The factories and workshops were visited, and the men compelled to knock off work and join them, while the proprietors were threatened with the destruction of their property, if they made any opposition. The separate crowds were thus swelled at almost every step, and armed with sticks, and clubs, and every conceivable weapon they could lay hands on, they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... young Reuben. "Ye've bin a-settin' there shakin' yer head like a old owl since I turned into the road. It be time to knock off." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Benassis, there are one or two more bits of waste that I mean to clear for you before I knock off work," the old man answered cheerfully, and light shone in his ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... morning, headed by their band and the German tri-colour flag. In the afternoon there are sports; and in the evening continuous dancing in a large marquee. One of the chief sports of the afternoon is "Shooting at the Eagle" with a cross-bow, and trying to knock off the crown or sceptre from the effigy of a bird, crowned with an eagle and holding a sceptre, stuck up on the top of a high pole. The crown or the sceptre represents a high prize, and each feather struck off represents a prize ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... carry the sail: at need, we may possibly coax the contrivance into carrying a studding-sail also. We have sticks for no more, though we'll endeavour to get up something aft, out of the spare spars obtained from the store-ship. You may knock off at four bells, Mr. Leach, and let the poor fellows have their Saturday's night in peace. It is a misfortune enough to be dismasted, without ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... I could have a good long talk with you, my dear old boy, on this and a hundred other subjects; but I can't. And now I must knock off for to-night, as the Doctor has just sent ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... night work were beguiled, until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring in the sombre stuff that the occasion required, and to bring into the house the other sombre preparations. "And now," said Miss Jenny, "having knocked off my rosy-cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my white-cheeked self." This referred to her making her own dress which at last was done, in time for the simple service, the arrangements for which were of her own planning. The service ended, and the solitary dressmaker having returned to her ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler, a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings both light and music, when has it ever visited you? ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... cried Ada, with a malicious grin. "I didn't knock off work to carry bricks. Yous married me, an' ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... might recognize me was not a pleasant thought. I saw nothing of the captain, but heard him shouting orders to the men engaged tinkering at the paddle-wheel. The overseer gave me a hat which added little to my personal appearance, and by the time we were called to knock off for the noon meal, I was thoroughly tired, and disgusted, feeling as much a roustabout ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... slighting word about Mr. Crittenden. He couldn't have, very well, since they neither of them had ever laid eyes on him. But Vincent never needed words to convey impressions into other people's minds. He had a thousand other ways better than words. Vincent could be silent, knock off the ashes from his cigarette, recross his legs, and lean back in his chair in a manner that slammed an impression into your head as though he had yelled it ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... step of your way through this miniature forest of vegetation, by the labour of your arms and the weight of your body. Tangled branches and thorny bushes press against you in front and behind, meet over your head, knock off your cap, flap in your face, twist about your legs, and tear your coat skirts; so obstructing you in every conceivable manner and in every conceivable direction, that they seem possessed with a living power of opposition, and commissioned by some evil genius of Fairy ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the signorine do that?" she crowed triumphantly. "I can knock off a man's hat or black his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... it in seven volumes, which are already written, but it will reach, I think, to nine." "If you have two still to write, I shall not expect to see the book before spring." "You may: let me once get back to Abbotsford, and I'll soon knock off those two fellows." To this I had nothing to say, although I thought such a tour de force in writing might better suit ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... mistake arose," said William gently; "you don't have to do anything—except put both arms around my neck and—be careful not to knock off my glasses." ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown." ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... the stuff we are working in," said the professor. "Anyhow, we've done enough for to-day. We'll load the lead carboys on the Wondership and then knock off. I don't want ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... into her chair with her ear strained toward the porch below. For a long time there was no sound. Then she heard the noise of heavy boots—a tapping of the toes against the pillars, to knock off the snow, and then the slow creaking of soles across the frozen boards. She started up. "It is some one else," she cried, wringing her hands. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... and hungry and thirsty," said the Frenchman. "Let us knock off. We have made good progress. No use opening the main-deck hatch to-night: the vessel is cold enough even when ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... has managed his estate well, and that the plantation is before us looking very healthy and full of fruit waiting to be picked. The question arises: How shall we gather it? Shall we shake the tree? Cacao pods do not fall off the tree even when over-ripe. Shall we knock off or pluck the pods? To do so would make a scar on the trunk of the tree, and these wounds are dangerous in tropical climates, as they are often attacked by canker. A sharp machete or cutlass is used to cut off the pods which grow on the lower part of the ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... Andy's opinion of him as a sneak was known to every boy in Bloomsbury; nor did the party most interested seem to care to knock off the chip aggressive Andy had long ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... departure, laughing away apologies, he left behind him a most favorable impression. Detective McCorquodale departed next with a real cigar between his teeth and a feeling of satisfaction in the recognition that he was no longer a "blithering idiot." Stiles was told to "knock off for the day and go fishin'," and accepted Podmore's five-dollar bill only when it was forced ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... word for you late this evening. Yes, one of the local attorneys for your friends came in and we figured everything up. He thought that if this office would throw off a certain per cent. of its expense, and Reed would knock off the interest, his clients would consent to a settlement. I told him to go right back and tell his people that as long as they thought that way, it would only cost them one hundred and forty dollars every twenty-four hours." The lawyer was back within twenty minutes, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... summer, an' they kept them probin' around all over the neighborhood; but though they found enough stuff to about pay expenses, they couldn't get back on the main track. Both the Eastern capitalists showed up along toward fall to see what was doin', an' when it came time to knock off work, they tried to get me to repeat ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... unless you like to depend on steam; then you might knock off half-a-dozen, but you'd save nothing; coals at the depots abroad are very dear. Better trust to your sails and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... Could you find out who they are? Nothing is more surprising than the ignorance in which I find all Lady Hervey's descendants about her. Most of them never heard her maiden name. It reminds one of Walpole writing to George Montagu, to tell him who his grandmother was! I am anxious to knock off this task whilst what little I know of it is fresh in my recollection; for I foresee that much of the entertainment of the work must depend on the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... forgot what you and your uncle said to me, and I'm tryin' to grow up 'spectable. I haven't been to Tony Pastor's, or the Old Bowery, for ever so long. I'd rather save up my money to support me in my old age. When my hair gets gray, I'm goin' to knock off blackin' boots, and go into some light, genteel employment, such as keepin' an apple-stand, or disseminatin' pea-nuts among ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... have said I possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without which all is valueless;—I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off a clever caricature of his school-master or make a lifelike sketch of his favourite horse on the barn door ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... You can knock off now," began the husky voice, when Jim, glancing up from his phonograph, beheld Katrina in her rose-laden hat, leaning far over the wall. If he had stopped to reflect, he might have ignored the vision, for he was but man, and the vision a guilelessly pretty one, but he did not stop to ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... lucky enough to meet Jimmy Rabbit, who was always very friendly toward him. And as soon as he had inquired about Jimmy Rabbit's health (they had not seen each other since the previous fall, you know), Jolly related how he had seen Johnnie Green knock off the head of the ...
— The Tale of Jolly Robin • Arthur Scott Bailey
... away joyously to do George's bidding, hailing his comrades aloft to "knock off work and come shark-fishing, all you sea-dogs aloft there," as soon as he had placed a sufficiently respectful distance between himself and his skipper. There is no sport or pastime in which sailors will engage more eagerly than in the attempt ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Pine. "He'd know a war-party, sure. It's war with us, anyhow, and there isn't but one thing to be done. The men must knock off from the house, and come right down and block this 'ere opening with logs and rocks. We can make the best kind of a rifle-pit. Only leave room for one man, or for one hoss at a time, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... the catastrophe is a drug addict and that he is located nearby. We know he has no scruples, for the man who warned us undoubtedly was killed. And I'm convinced those extremely short wave bands hold the secret. Let's knock off for the day. We look like ghosts. To-morrow morning you and June get what equipment you need from across the river. I'll stay here on guard. You'd better raid a drug-store and get some more of our life-saver, too. It's ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... thing to omit to leave cards upon a hostess, and quite another to stare her in the face when she bows to you in the street. It's one thing to omit sending a man a piece of your bridescake, and quite another to knock off his hat in the street. Rude, oh, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... the tudder end o' the ledge. We was both sitooated, as the sayin' is, so I couldn't pass the bear an' he couldn't pass me. I had fired my gun an' missed him. When I tried to pass by he riz up an' growled an' when he tried to pass me I swung my gun a-tryin' to knock off his head. An' so we had it fer about an hour, nip an' tuck, an' ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... the Colonel. "I was just going to knock off. I can give you twenty, and then I shall have fifteen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to stakes, and their hands tied. "Unfortunate travellers," said he to them, "wretched victims, who only expected the moment of an approaching cruel death, give thanks to heaven, which has this day delivered you by my means. I have slain the black by whom you were to be devoured, and am come to knock off your chains." The prisoners hearing these words, gave a shout of mingled joy and surprise. Codadad and the lady began to unbind them; and as soon as any of them were loose, they helped to take off the fetters from the rest; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... it? Did he knock off the first two-Kroner or the second? Ha, ha, ha! That's the best I've ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... once wrote to Captain Suckling. The latter wrote back without delay: "What has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action, a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for him ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... stories. He was the greatest timber-merchant in Lithuania. He owned immense forests and he loved Feodor Feodorovitch* as a brother, for they had played together all through their childhood, and once he had saved him from a bear that was just about to crush his skull as one might knock off a hat. General Trebassof's father was governor of Courlande at that time, by the grace of God and the Little Father. Thaddeus, who was just thirteen years old, killed the bear with a single stroke of his boar-spear, and just in time. Close ties were knit between the two families by this occurrence, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the embryo architects termed the crucial night of labour. Since the previous evening, the whole studio, some sixty pupils, had been shut up there; those who had no designs to exhibit—'the niggers,' as they were called remaining to help the others, the competitors who, being behind time, had to knock off the work of a week in a dozen hours. Already, at midnight, they had stuffed themselves with brawn, saveloys, and similar viands, washed down with cheap wine. Towards one o'clock they had secured the company of ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... to-night and brought home beer and comforted yourselves getting fuddled. That's so, you know, and it wouldn't be right. It's just that sort of thing "—she added softly—"that stops us seeing how it is the little ones die when they shouldn't. If everybody would knock off drinking for ten years, everybody, we'd have everything straightened out by then and nobody would ever want to ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... over which the water washed heavily at times—and called all hands to turn out and pump the ship dry; and after a great deal of grumbling, and much show of disinclination, I at length succeeded in getting them on deck, and persuading them to man the pumps. They pumped steadily until it was time to knock off for breakfast, when we sounded the well, and found a ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... beating them off. But he might as well have fought tigers, unless he could knock off, with cruel aim, the one hanging to his arm. It was no time to mince matters, and Joel, only careful to avoid the face, struck a terrible ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... a certain amount to do before I could knock off, so, stopping for a moment to mix myself a well-earned whisky-and-water, I switched on the two electric head-lights which McMurtrie had provided as a means of illumination. With the aid of these I continued my labours for perhaps another hour and a half, at the end of which time I began to ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Jack started to place those cans which had not been upset, in a row. For a short time there was an industrious quartette engaged in the labor of reconstruction. When Paul finally gave the signal to knock off work the furnace room really looked much better than old Peter was in the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... armed, and did not begin until after the others, having stopped to whisper to him through the grate, that door was the first open, and that man was the first out. As they dragged him into the gallery to knock off his irons, he fell down among them, a mere heap of chains, and was carried out in that state on men's shoulders, with ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... always regarded the alarm-clock as the most hateful of all the inventions of capitalists to enslave the poor. Jake had strange ideas of capitalists, none stranger than that they are luxurious persons who sleep late and knock off work early. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... not i' the vein,' or I could knock off a stanza or three for the Ode, that might answer the purpose better.[26] At all events, I must see the lines again first, as there be two I have altered in my mind's manuscript already. Has any one seen or judged ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with lower and sheet (spare) anchors stowed. To let go a stockless anchor (fig. 9) the cable or capstan holder C is unscrewed, and in practice it is found desirable to knock off the bottle screw-slip A, allowing the weight of the anchor to be taken by the inner slip A' (Blake's stopper). Stern, stream and kedge anchors are usually stowed with special davits. A portable anchor suitable for small yachts is the invention of Mr Louis Moore; the shank ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a word of what you've heard! It can do no good, but only harm. If they get to know't, they'll knock off work—every one o' 'em—and then we must all either roast or drown. Let 'em go on with the raft—maybe there'll be time enough yet. Almighty grant that there may be, Willim! For all that, 'tan't no harm to try and save ourselves ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... work." And my revered father, as soon as the spade had been handed to him, began digging away with right goodwill, filling the baskets, which were carried up to the embankment. He soon became so interested in the work that he was as unwilling to knock off as ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... desperate job called for immediate attention. The men engaged in transferring the cargo from the barges to the steamer wanted to knock off work for the night; but the offer of double pay persuaded them to stick to it, and they worked with such good will that by midnight every bale was safely below hatches in the Fanny. Crawford then instructed the shipping agent to be off in the tug at break of day, giving him letters ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... you that he had esprit and imagination; otherwise, not. It is of the English as a nation, however, that I make my broad and sweeping assertion, one that was fixed in my mind yesterday, when I saw a well-dressed and well-educated Englishman deliberately pick up a stone, knock off the head of a figure carved on a sarcophagus, found in one of those newly-discovered tombs on the Via Latina, and put the broken head in his pocket.... What man, with one grain of esprit or imagination in his head, would mutilate a work of ancient art, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... best in the world to sell about three thousand beeves, and we never had fatter ones than we have to-day. If we can make a sale, it'll keep us busy all the fore part of the summer. So both you fellows knock off any day you want to and go up to the city. And go horseback, for this ranch don't give Bethel & Oxenford's stages ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... the banker thoughtfully. "I know Rod and how he must take it, though he only shrugs. It's gall and wormwood to him. He's up against a hard proposition, as we all know; if he is half-sick, I wonder if the proposition isn't going to be too much for him? Can't you advise him, persuade him to knock off for a couple of weeks and clear out? Get into a city somewhere and forget his work. Why, it's the most pitiful thing in the world to see a man like ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... running after a bad one. If Dauriat declines to pay you for your Marguerites, you can make him come to you, and meekly and humbly implore you to take two thousand francs for them. If you have the ability, and knock off two or three articles that threaten to spoil some of Dauriat's speculations, or to ruin a book on which he counts, you will see him come climbing up your stairs like a clematis, and always at the door of your dwelling. As for your novel, the booksellers who would show you more or ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... GARDINER. Knock off his cap there, some of you about him! See there be others that can use their hands. Thou art ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... is very low in radiation from mineral deposits, and the atmosphere seems to shield out most of the solar output. Any little dose of radiation might knock off these critters." ...
— The Planet with No Nightmare • Jim Harmon
... Gallery when, at the base of the Irving Memorial, from each side he was fiercely attacked. A young man of eminently respectable appearance kicked his legs from under him, and another of equally impeccable exterior made an honest effort to knock off his head. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... get any supper that night. Not a man could have eaten a bite. Miller made him knock off along in the shank of the evening, as he had done enough for any one day. The next morning after breakfast he fell to at the bear sign once more. Miller rolled a barrel of flour into the kitchen from the ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness at its base at A, but at the other end you will mark off upon it the diameter c, d, which you intend it to have at the summit; you will then take your mallet and chisel, and working from c and d you will roughly knock off the corners, shaded in the figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure described by the inside lines in A and the outside lines in B; you then proceed to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave your finished shaft of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a day, and not a minute longer," answered Mike; "that is, barrin' fifteen minutes at tin in the mornin' and three in the afternoon, whin they knock off for a bite and a drink up at me place on the corner. They go up and ate up me free lunch and soak in about a pint of whisky ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the beginning," said Gillibloom, "I will show you how it is done. The first three of you there by the acorn must run at me and knock off my cap." ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... in the long run," remarked the other easily, "to keep open house and go everywhere. Thank Heaven, the uncle is liberal! I admit we have been going at rather a pace lately. But, then, I can knock off a couple of pictures as soon as I have a little time, which will raise the wind again. I know what the public ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... projected from the throwing-stick forms as effectual a weapon as the bow and arrow, whilst at the same time it is much less liable to be injured, and it possesses over the bow and arrow the advantage of being useful to poke out kangaroo-rats and opossums from hollow trees, to knock off gum from high branches, to pull down the cones from the Banksia trees, and for many ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... here and there through the diggings, swapping remarks with the better disposed, until the men began to knock off work. Then we returned through ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... sleep, Brer Wolf, he crope 'roun', he did, en feel on de mantel-shelf, en feel, en feel, twel he come ter ole Brer Rabbit money-pus. Ef he want so light wid he han'," Uncle Remus went on, glancing quizzically at the child, "he'd a knock off de pollygollic vial w'at ole Miss Rabbit put up dar. But nummine! Brer Wolf, he feel, en feel, twel he come ter de money-pus, en he grab dat, he did, en he des flew'd ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the sort of old Jinnee to bring him a whole covey of rocs in an aviary about ten times the size of the Crystal Palace. However, he does understand now that I can't take anything more from him, and he isn't offended either, so that's all settled. Now I can set to work and knock off these ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... quantities of spun-yarn, and everything else that could be made between decks. It being now midwinter and in high latitude, the nights were very long, so that we were not turned-to until seven in the morning, and were obliged to knock off at five in the evening, when we got supper; which gave us nearly three hours before eight bells, at which time ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... all. Call Happy and Bud back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap them with clothesline,—that cotton line on one of the trunks,—and knock off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... I, in my sprightliest manner, which rouses up most people, "here's to your health and dear little Ruth's: and may you live to knock off the cobwebs from every bottle in under the arch. Uncle Reuben, your life and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... fire all the afternoon," he said. "But the light is getting bad, isn't it? Fisher and I will have to knock off. Are you two going for a walk? We'll come, too, if you are, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Billy interpolated. "Richer in hell, but looks too much like hard work. It'll do for those that's stuck on hard work—God knows, they's nothin' here to induce a fellow to knock off ever for a bit of play. No fishin', no huntin', nothin' but work. I'd work myself, if I had to ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of the Fort, Capt. Smith had the prisoners released from the guardhouse, and compelling a blacksmith to knock off their irons, left the Fort with them and returned to Conococheaque. "This, Capt. Smith says, was the first British fort in America, taken by what ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of oak or pine. The leafy boughs and twigs of the underbrush enlace themselves before you, so that you must stoop your head to pass under, or thrust yourself through amain, while they sweep against your face, and perhaps knock off your hat. There are rocks mossy and slippery; sometimes you stagger, with a great rustling of branches, against a clump of bushes, and into the midst of it. From end to end of all this tangled shade goes a pathway scarcely worn, for the leaves are not trodden through, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... elaborate system, in which there is precious little of either principle or honesty. We can and we MUST "run the machine" (to use another of their vulgar expressions) with them, until we get a chance to knock off the useless wheels and thingumbobs, and scour the whole concern, inside and out. Perhaps the men themselves would like to do this, if they only knew how: men have so little talent for cleaning-up. But when it comes to making ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... apologies, he left behind him a most favorable impression. Detective McCorquodale departed next with a real cigar between his teeth and a feeling of satisfaction in the recognition that he was no longer a "blithering idiot." Stiles was told to "knock off for the day and go fishin'," and accepted Podmore's five-dollar bill only when ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... any of them to knock them out. Those Me's and FW's just sprout out of the ground as we go along." Allison frowned and shook his head. "If we could spot the fields, we could send out separate missions ahead of a raid and knock off those fields." ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... is that our carpenter came first, though the exact sequence is unimportant. He was not exclusively a carpenter, being also a farmer during a considerable portion of the year. He would have to knock off, now and then, he said, to look after his corn and potatoes, while his assistant, it appeared, served in the double capacity of helper ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... extra saved from each week," he said eagerly. "You can do it if you've time. Boiling water poured into the morning teapot for evenings, and knock off your bit of bacon, and—well, there's lots of ways, sir, and women is wonderful folk for managing, the best ones. Where it's thought and trouble they'll do it, and they'd be using strength too if they'd got it, but some of ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... as before he must give the seller of produce one rupee less. Now let me take the business with which, as a planter, I am most familiar. I have roughly estimated the total value of the coffee annually produced in Mysore at L870,000, and if, for the sake of even numbers, we knock off L70,000, a 7 per cent. export duty on this will amount to L56,000, and if the Government could raise, as it proposes, the rupee to 1s. 6d., L168,000 a year would be the price that the measure would entail on a portion of the inhabitants of the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... make it some plausible to put it acrost on Jennie. I'm afraid I kind of over-played my hand a little when I let her in on this, but—damn it! I felt kind of sorry for the girl even if it was her own fool fault gettin' into this jack-pot. I thought maybe a woman could kind of knock off the rough edges a little. Well, here goes!" He knocked sharply, and it was a very grave-faced cowboy who stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "I've be'n doin' quite some feelin' out of the public pulse, as the feller says, an' the way things looks from here, the pilgrim ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... was all right, but where Sister Ada keeps hers I cannot tell. Howbeit, Sister Joan has one. Now, Sister Annora, if you will bring yours—And see here, these brushes have a few bristles left—this is a poor set-out, though. It'll do to knock off spiders. Now, Sister Margaret, fetch that long ladder by the garden door. Sister Annot, you had better go up,—you are the lightest of us, and I am not altogether clear about that ladder, but it is the only one we have. Well-a-day! if I were Pr—Catch ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... they naturally resented the proposed innovation. Mr. Smith-Barry and others came to Mr. Ponsonby's assistance, and, endeavouring to settle the thing by arbitration, proposed that the landlord should knock off L22,000 of arrears, should make reductions of 24 to 34 per cent. in the rents, and make the tenants absolute owners in 49 years. This was not good enough. Judge Gibson thought it "extravagantly generous," but the Tipperary folks resented Mr. Smith-Barry's connection with such a disgracefully tyrannical ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... nights in pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant "click, click, click" of the ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... diamonds —and then they came to him, and—told him to sign a promise to keep that foreman to the end of the season, or till he was through with the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition, under penalty of having them all knock off. Mr. Dryfoos smelled a mouse, but he couldn't tell where the mouse was; he saw that they did have him, and he signed, of course. There wasn't anything really against the fellow, anyway; he was a first-rate man, and he did his duty ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... passed, and passed somehow—I got word that they that I knew of was making a try to see if I couldn't be let out when I'd done twelve years. My regular sentence was fifteen, and little enough too. Anyhow, they knock off a year or two from most of the long-sentence men's time, if they've behaved themselves well in gaol, and can show a ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Fool," I said, "knock off and come for a day's gossip. I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of lunacy about you. Let's go to Staines and paddle ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... it the rest will quit your line. Your traps won't show one catch. There's only one time to use it and that's after you've bait trapped and trail trapped till only the wisest are left. Then shoot the whole range full of poison; get it all out at once and knock off all you can. Then take your poison up and quit! You hear me,—quit! Then they'll sort of halfway forget before another year and you can spring it again. But I'm a-telling you the facts,—if you leave poison scattered round loose for six months you'll see coyotes increasing ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... cloth-case, or that in the side of the biscuit-box. I was puzzled how to deal with them. I could not enlarge the openings without a great deal of labour. On account of the situation of the two boxes, it was not possible to knock off another board. I should have to cut the hole wider with my knife; and this, for the same reason, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... "knock off scrubbing clothes" was given, and then all hands of the watch "turned to" and scrubbed decks, scoured the gratings and companion-way ladders with sand and canvas, brass work was polished, paint work wiped ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler, a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings both ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... accomplish, achieve, compass, consummate, hammer out; bring to maturity, bring to perfection; perfect, complete; elaborate. do, execute, make; go through, get through; work out, enact; bring about, bring to bear, bring to pass, bring through, bring to a head. despatch, dispatch; knock off, finish off, polish off; make short work of; dispose of, set at rest; perform, discharge, fulfill, realize; put in practice, put in force; carry out, carry into effect, carry into execution; make good; be as good as one's word. do ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... spoken she went out and closed all the gates from without. David stretched himself and cried: "Bread and wine, the Lord liveth!" and began to knock off the heads of the men of war. He beheaded them so that the bodies flew over the walls and the heads remained lying in the court. And he laid hold of Holbaschi, and tore out his teeth and drove them into his brow like nails. And he bent his lance till ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... meadow-russet. These were the apples that the boys were going to gather. They soon got ready, and began to walk along the path towards the meadow. Two of them drew the wagon, and the others carried long poles to knock off the apples with. ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... work is worth twice as much as mine; this would make L108. I have had two shockingly bad years of it pecuniarily speaking, and am therefore in that phase of extravagance which straitened means have always produced in me. Knock off 8% as a sort of agent's commission to me for starting you on the job and finding you a theme. This leaves L100. I will pay you L100 down on your contracting to supply me within three months with a mechanically possible, i.e., ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... he said. "Well hit, sir! I've always said that anyone with a little pluck can knock off that lefthand man you think so much of. He 'comes in' a bit, but he bowls a shocking bad length. Here I am dawdling. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have been the sort of knight that nobody could knock off, you know. An' I'd have wandered about on my faithful charger, fighting all sorts of caddish barons, and caitiffs, an' slaying giants; an' I'd have rescued lovely ladies from castles grim—though I wouldn't have put my arm round ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... Suzannah; contralto, David; the old men, two basses; as for the tenor, he would be, of course, Suzannah's husband. There would be a superb entrance for him upon his return from the army, 'cavatina guerriera con cori'. Oh! that terrible Gerfaut! the wolves must have devoured him. If he were here, we would knock off the thing between ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... beguiled, until enough of smart dolls had gone forth to bring in the sombre stuff that the occasion required, and to bring into the house the other sombre preparations. "And now," said Miss Jenny, "having knocked off my rosy-cheeked young friends, I'll knock off my white-cheeked self." This referred to her making her own dress which at last was done, in time for the simple service, the arrangements for which were of her own planning. The service ended, and the solitary dressmaker having returned to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Hellenic freedom, you are doing something that ought not to be allowed. If other men of action, if other sportsmen and pleasure-seekers and travellers and wandering free-lances were able to sit down in any cosmopolitan cafe in Cairo or Stamboul and knock off immortal verses in the style of Byron —verses with no "philosophy" for us to expound, no technique for us to analyse, no "message" for us to interpret, no aesthetic subtleties for us to unravel, no mystical orientation for us to track out, what is there left ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... last; "time to knock off. I've put a few small plants in your bag for you; better put them in in the ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... lost over fifteen dollars' worth of advertising last week from people who thought if the thing was going up the flue on Sunday there was no use of advertising any more, and we refused twenty dollars' worth more because we thought if that was the last paper we were going to get out we might as knock off work Friday and Saturday and go and catch a string of perch. The people have been fooled about this thing enough, and the first man that comes around with any more ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... replying L1, received the rejoinder, "I'll give you 15s?" He would think the man a joker of a very feeble description. Yet this may often be done in Western America. Even when there is no "war" the agents have a certain margin to veer and haul on in their commission, and will often knock off a little sooner than allow a rival line to get the passenger. Besides, it frequently happens that there may be a secret cutting of rates without an open war. My own experience, when I came down from Sonoma County in the autumn of 1886, meaning to return to England, will give ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... their knives, but it was too late. The tornado was upon them; over went the ship; down, down she heeled. The seething water rushed in at her ports. Shrieks and cries arose from the unhappy negroes confined below. Jack and Needham's first impulse was to knock off the hatches, and a few blacks sprang on deck before the sea ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... are all too tired for further effort to-day," Charley agreed, "but we must get an early start in the morning. We will get some boughs for beds, have supper, and knock off for the day." ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his life into the Liverpool trade and had got well fixed, so far as cash were consarned; and so when he came for to be seventy or seventy-two years old he were persuaded for to knock off for a full due and spend the balance of his life ashore. Goin' up to some place in Connecticut, he buys hisself a place there and settles down. Well, for a time he were all right, a-fixin' up his house, a-buildin' new barns and hen-coops and fences and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... as the Neofeuhrer goes over to converse with his crew. "It is our big chance," I whisper. "You watch how they run this tub for the next few minutes. Then when I cough three times you be ready. I do not know how much powder it will take to knock off the big bug as he is half human. Once I blow this insect powder at the same time as the purifying blast is to take place, you two be ready to jump Agrodyte. I noticed that a small purple light flashes on over the monitor just before that stuff turns loose. It is a warning ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown." ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... began to come off, some swimming, others in canoes. Some cocoanuts were thrown into one of the boats, and cloths and other articles were given in return. This induced more to venture alongside, when they proved themselves to be most daring thieves; some attempted to knock off the rings from the rudder, others tried to tear away the fly of the ensign, and a bold effort was made to run away with the buoys. A musketoon fired over their heads had the effect of driving them off. Even here there was an exception to the rule. An old man continually came off ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... the one who figured things out. You'd be first target. Haney and Mike and me—we'd be hard to knock off in a crowd in Bootstrap. But you and her headed off by y'selves. Mike figured you mightn't ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... arouse yourselves like freemen, and elect me to the legislatur', and I'll lead on the small but patriotic band, I'll put the big wigs through their facins, I'll make 'em shake in their shoes, I'll knock off your chains and make you free.' Well, the goneys fall tu and elect him, and he desarts right away, with balls, rifle, powder, horn and all. HE ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... I did not knock off work until midnight. On occasion I worked eighteen and twenty hours on a stretch. Once I worked at my machine for thirty-six consecutive hours. And there were weeks on end when I never knocked off work earlier than eleven ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... throw. We are not men; I am Hermes, and this is Plutus; Zeus has sent us in answer to your prayers. So knock off work, take your fortune, and much good may ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... or races have thought that the life and qualities were centred in the whole head, not merely in the brain. And this is the reason why Hindus will not appear abroad with the head bare, why it is a deadly insult to knock off a man's turban, and why turbans or other head-gear were often exchanged as a solemn pledge of friendship. The superstition against walking under a ladder may have originally been based on some idea of its being derogatory or dangerous to the head, though not, of course, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... found the level of the canal-boat was "dangerously high, from the arches. Once we had a narrow escape. There was a sudden cry of 'A bas!' We turned and saw we were rapidly nearing an arch which would knock off our heads. The horses kept at a short canter. Old Mrs. C. was sitting quietly on deck, wholly absorbed, and never dreaming that the sailors could be calling to her. Miss C. was sitting on a box, fast asleep. Several of us rushed at once towards them, and pulled them off their seats on to the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Perhaps had he suspected what was happening back at Columbia Heights his prompt oblivion in slumber would not have taken place, though Paul was a philosopher in his way. Helen was with friends and "she'd knock off crying when she found she had to; ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Mrs. Weight here to-night? ah! yes, I see her. How well she's looking! Not been well yourself, Deacon? I'm sorry to hear that. What's the—dyspepsia again? that's bad. Have you tried the light diet I recommended? Well, I would, if I were in your place. I'd knock off two or three pounds of your usual diet, and get a bicycle—yes, you could. A cousin of mine in New York weighed three hundred pounds before he got his bicycle; had one made to order, of course, special weight; now he weighs a hundred and seventy-five, and is as active ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... Ada, with a malicious grin. "I didn't knock off work to carry bricks. Yous married me, an' ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... a stream, and it is astonishing how large a quantity of "dirt" those who have the knack of doing it well and quickly can knock off in the course of the day. To do this, however, requires great manual dexterity, and much gold is lost by careless washing. A man once extracted ten pounds weight of the precious metal from a heap of soil which his mate ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... sure. The smell is distinctly stronger in the forepeak than it is in the forecastle, yet not strong enough to lead to the belief that it is anything serious. Still, it must be attended to at once. So I shall knock off the men, call them aft, and speak to them before doing anything, or we shall have a panic among them. Then I shall have the fore-hatch opened, and proceed to make a proper examination of the cargo. Mr Priest," he continued, calling to the chief mate, "knock the men off for ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... the order through me," replied Foster, pointing to the soldiers, "and it will be your highest wisdom to obey without question. Knock off his irons," he added, turning ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... striking distance of the swinging sacks, the exercise was directed by two commands, "On guard!" and "Point!" the first of which was supposed to knock off the enemy's thrust, and the second to drive the bayonet home into his vitals, after which, without command, there must be a ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Willy. "Had you said them morning and night, and not have been afraid of our messmates laughing at you, you would have known how to say them even while you are hard at work. I don't think God would be well pleased if we all were to knock off, and go down on our knees to pray and ask Him for help while we were neglecting ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... wise, Gail Clarenden," Rex drawled, carelessly. "A boy of your brains had ought to be born in Boston. Jondo and I can't agree about him. His name, he says, is Santan. There's one 'n' too many. If you knock off the last one it makes him Santa—'holy'; but if you knock out the middle it's Satan. We don't knock out the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... him!" cried Hogan to his principal. "Nixt toime he thries to hit ye, knock off his head ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... afforded them, as to withhold those Influences from them! We cry to thee, O God of all Grace, That thou wouldest not Suffer them to continue in the Gall of Bitterness and Bond of Iniquity, and in the Possession of the Devil. Oh! Knock off the Chains of Death which are upon their Souls; Oh! Snatch the prey out of the Hands of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... as he bowed himself out. "If that's the truth, I'll try writing for juveniles. I'll sit right down to-night and knock off a short story about 'Tommy and the Huckleberry-tree.' I don't know whether huckleberries grow on trees or on huckles, but that will make the tale all the more interesting. If they don't grow on trees people will regard ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... was put on the Judge's horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff knock off two slaves ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... take it from me, that is not her notion of a honeymoon. In April or May, the sun shining, the air balmy—when, after carrying up to her a load or two of bricks, and a hod or two of mortar, we could knock off work for a few minutes without fear of the whole house being swept away into the next street—could sit side by side on the top of a wall, our legs dangling down, and peck and morsel together; after which I could ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... motion wi' this cap on a bayonet," said 'Enery; "then knock off, case the Boshies ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... entertainments will continue to exist. They are a good deal cheaper than balls or dinners, and you can "knock off" ever so many people at the ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... your life accordin' to your own dope, cheer up. But when you get up to the top where you can look down at all these other guys tryin' to sidestep the banana peels of life and climb up with you, knock off thinkin' what a big guy you are for a minute and give ten minutes to thinkin' what a tough time you had gettin' there. Give five minutes more to ruminatin' on how long the mob remembers a loser and you'll find it the best sixteen minutes you ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... they maligned her, Resolved to reform and be kinder; "If, when pettish," she said, "I should knock off your head, Won't you give me some ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... she said sharply, "so long as you've done nothing wrong. Pull yourself together, Mr. Langham. Why don't you knock off the drink, and ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... the subject. I thought I should get rid of it in seven volumes, which are already written, but it will reach, I think, to nine." "If you have two still to write, I shall not expect to see the book before spring." "You may: let me once get back to Abbotsford, and I'll soon knock off those two fellows." To this I had nothing to say, although I thought such a tour de force in writing might better suit invention ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Fairish had been suffering from neurasthenia and a weak heart brought on by too much smoking. It appears that he had consulted, within the last two months, two leading specialists of Harley Street about his health. One of these gentlemen, Sir Winterton Maire, ordered him to knock off all work and all smoking for at least three months. He will give evidence to this effect at the inquest. Mr. Parrish disregarded these orders as he was wishful to put through his scheme for Hornaway's before taking ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... in his own way, and now failure was inevitable. He had bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them, when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. "A set of horrid ruffians," Whiffler said,—"and his life wouldn't be safe many ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the office, Daylight dropped into a bookstore and bought a grammar; and for a solid hour, his feet up on the desk, he toiled through its pages. "Knock off my head with little apples if the girl ain't right," he communed aloud at the end of the session. For the first time it struck him that there was something about his stenographer. He had accepted her up to then, as a female creature and a bit of office furnishing. But now, having demonstrated ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance. Tell Harry to knock off ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... over the last four chapters, which I haven't polished yet. You know what's what. Slash and cut as much as you please. I'll knock off at tea. By-by." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... would still be gnawing under 83.3 per cent. injustice. Being broke again, we could sleep under a hedge, which was not so bad, though the cold would sap an undue portion of what we had eaten. But the morrow was Sunday, on which we could do no work, though our silly stomachs would not knock off on that account. Here, then, was the problem: how to get three meals on Sunday, and two on Monday (for we could not make another "sub" till ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... afternoon. Dave and Pinter were feeling tired, and were just deciding to knock off work for that day when they heard a scuffling in the direction of the different shafts, and both Jim and Kullers dropped down and bundled in in a great hurry. Jim chuckled in a silly way, as if there was something funny, and Kullers ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... a good-looking young chap. Dresses kind of sporty. He's a great jollier. You have to know him a while to find out that he means business. Well, he came 'round and saw I was feeling pretty tired, so he asked me to knock off for a week and go fishing with him. I did, and it was the ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... he must retreat to his own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a new matrimonial alliance in some other. The women were the great power among the clans as everywhere else. They did not hesitate, when occasion required, to "knock off the horns," so it was technically called, from the head of a chief and send him back to the ranks of the warriors. The original nomination of the chiefs, also, always ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... into the dry-goods store and took a seat on one of the little revolving stools. A woman was buying some woolen goods for a dress. It was worth twenty-seven cents a yard, the clerk said, but he would knock off two cents if she took ten yards. It looked warm, and Mrs. Markham wished she could afford it ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... petition. A scrutiny used to be a very expensive business, but under the existing law, made as the scrutiny would be in the borough itself, it would cost but little; and that little, should he be successful, would fall on the shoulders of Mr. Browborough. Should he knock off eight votes and lose none himself, he would be member for Tankerville. He knew that many votes had been given for Browborough which, if the truth were known of them, would be knocked off; and he did not know ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... then, let me tell you. He said that if you pushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... box—that is, as much as is left after the officials get their own flippers out. Now, my idea is for you people to do the searching, and, when the jewels is found, me and Bill will take half and youn's half. Then we all can knock off work, and live respectable." ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... "Let's knock off foolin'!" he cried. "I say, where'd you get that machine, Kentie? Where'd you get it? And for the sake o' goodness ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... an effort to partake of its delights. So, when Miss Lucinda indued herself with her brown linen sack and sun-bonnet to go and weed her carrot-patch, she was arrested on the way by a loud grunting and scrambling in Piggy's quarter, and found to her distress that he had contrived to knock off the upper board from his pen. She had no hammer at hand; so she seized a large stone that lay near by and pounded at the board till the twice-tinkling bell recalled her to the house, and as soon as she had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... well, since they neither of them had ever laid eyes on him. But Vincent never needed words to convey impressions into other people's minds. He had a thousand other ways better than words. Vincent could be silent, knock off the ashes from his cigarette, recross his legs, and lean back in his chair in a manner that slammed an impression into your head as though he had ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... "I will knock off," I said, so I used my spade as a ladder and climbed out of the ditch. Being very thirsty, I walked down through the marshy valley to the clump of alders which grows along the creek. I followed a cow-path ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... who thought if the thing was going up the flue on Sunday there was no use of advertising any more, and we refused twenty dollars' worth more because we thought if that was the last paper we were going to get out we might as well knock off work Friday and Saturday and go and catch a string of perch. The people have been fooled about this thing enough, and the first man that comes around with any more ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... motive for work is hunger, their sole encouragement the flying visits of foreigners. Their work is always done in a hurry; they knock off a copy in a week, and when it is ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... there would be a great deal to settle for. Mrs. Cowperwood would never give me a divorce; she has no reason to. If I should clean up in the way I hope to—if I should make a million—I wouldn't mind knocking off now. I don't expect to work all my days. I have always planned to knock off at thirty-five. I'll have enough by that time. Then I want to travel. It will only be a few more years now. If you were free—if your father and mother were dead"—curiously she did not wince at this practical reference—"it would be a ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... climb if possible to the very top of the tree. Captain Suckling was written to. "What," said he in his answer, "has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea?—But let him come; and the first time we go into action, a cannon-ball may knock off his head, and ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... tell you what, you'd do well to knock off a few of your expeditions to Stapleton. You know you wouldn't go there once a month if it wasn't out of bounds. You'll be a prefect next term. I should wait till ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... somewhere, and get busy taking your forty winks. At eleven-ten we'll give you the foot, and take your places. Jack left me his little watch, so we could tell how time goes; but sure, you can hear the clock in the church steeple knock off the hours. And for the last time, listen to me; not one wink must any sentry take while on duty. Sleeping on post is the most terrible thing you can do. They shoot soldiers in war time who betray their trust that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... thus for an hour, by which time they had excavated a hole some three feet deep in the centre, and I had actually, with great reluctance, given the word to knock off, when Barr, driving his pick deep into the ground, where he intended to leave it that night, struck upon ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... working in the prison, repairing the roof and doing up some of the cells. Cell number 129, the one next yours, is empty, and there are no bars on the window; the masons go through that cell and that window to get on to the roof. They knock off work soon after six o'clock. The gate-keeper knows them all, but he does not always look closely at their faces when they go by, and you might perhaps be able to go ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was not a pleasant thought. I saw nothing of the captain, but heard him shouting orders to the men engaged tinkering at the paddle-wheel. The overseer gave me a hat which added little to my personal appearance, and by the time we were called to knock off for the noon meal, I was thoroughly tired, and disgusted, feeling as much a ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
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