"Set-off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the tale in Mr. Hope's second manner—the manner of The Prisoner of Zenda. Story for story, it falls a trifle sort of The Prisoner of Zenda. As a set-off, the telling is firmer, surer, more accomplished. In each an aimless, superficially cynical, but naturally amiable English gentleman finds himself casually involved in circumstances which appeal first to his sportsmanlike love of adventure, and so by degrees to his chivalry, his ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... two kinds of tabernacles, both are square and occupy the breadth of the buttress, the upper one is recessed in the body of the buttress, the lower one is open on three sides, and had small pillars at the front angles rising from the set-off and carrying the projecting canopy; the tops being finished with crocketed pinnacles. The east end is not so richly ornamented as the west; the window is a very fine one but not so large as the western one, and there are no niches on the sides nor ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... Melmottes in Bruton Street, her lover had been with her. The Melmottes of course knew of the engagement and quite approved of it. Madame Melmotte rather aspired to credit for having had so happy an affair arranged under her auspices. It was some set-off against Marie's unfortunate escapade. Mr Brehgert, therefore, had been allowed to come and go as he pleased, and on that morning he had pleased to come. They were sitting alone in some back room, and Brehgert was pressing for an early day. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... gallery. I found out the inn where the market-gardeners baited their horses; I made friends with one on 'em, and now, for a glass of gin a day, he brings me up in his cart on the top of the vegetables!' As a set-off to all this, we have now and then a spasmodic act of kindness: he rebukes Wilkie for talking about the fine effect of the snow falling while poor Lawrence's coffin was being lowered into the grave in the crypt of St. Paul's: he drives away the boys who injure his blackbirds: ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... As a set-off we append here a romantic story paraphrased from the Midrash Shir Hashirim. A certain Israelite of Sidon, having lived many years with his wife without being blessed with offspring, made up his mind to give her a bill of divorcement. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... is one of those who, by dint of long prayers, can possess themselves of widow's houses—he will quickly repair his losses. When he sustains any mishap, he and the other canters set it down as a debt against Heaven, and, by way of set-off, practise rogueries without compunction, till the they make the balance even, or incline it to the winning side. Enough of this for the present.—I must immediately shift my quarters; for, although I do ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... am, and although enjoying good digestive organs, I must have only one meal every day; but I find a set-off to that privation in my delightful sleep, and in the ease which I experience in writing down my thoughts without having recourse to paradox or sophism, which would be calculated to deceive myself even more than my readers, for I never could make up my mind to palm ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... importance, I shall enter into the particulars of it. I am moved, indeed, so to do, as it will afford the reader a very fair specimen of the general policy and mode of treatment shewn to the Indians by the American Government. Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States as a set-off against 500,000 dollars, claimed by the Americans for spoliations committed on her commerce. The white population of Florida is not very numerous even now; the census of 1830 gave 18,000 whites and 16,000 slaves, independent of the Florida Indians, or Seminoles. Seminoles ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... relations with Haydn, as we shall see later on, were at one time somewhat strained; but the years had softened his asperity, and this indirect tribute to his brother composer may readily be accepted as a set-off to some things that the biographer of the greater genius ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... are dying to hear what is really happening in Rome, so your own special envoy must send off her budget as a set-off against those official telegrams. 'Not a day with out a line,' so my letter will look like words shaken out of a literary pepper-box. Let me bring ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Democratic Party apprehended defeat from the opening of the canvass. As early as June 17, the Whigs had enormous mass meetings at Boston and Bunker Hill. The Democrats were not inert. The Governor of the State was a Democrat and there were those who had hopes of his re-election. In set-off of the great meeting of the 17th of June at Charlestown, the Democrats prepared for a similar meeting on Lexington Green, July 4. The concourse of people was large. Governor Morton was present and spoke. I there ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... latter, one knows what is called the world, and the other the streets of London. Is it possible that the very social democracy which here robs the novelist of so much romance, so much costume, so much antithesis of caste, so much in short that is purely external, will give him a set-off in making it easier for him to get at that element of universal humanity which neither of the two extremes of an aristocratic system, nor the salient and picturesque points of contrast between the two, can alone ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... As a set-off to this picture of moral chaos, it should be remembered that these people when called upon to die for their revolutionary faith did so with the greatest heroism. Nor is the picture true of all revolutionaries; ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... Later.—LARRIKIN is sleeping peacefully. His features—refined by the mental anxiety, and the almost monastic seclusion to which he has been lately subjected—are extremely pleasing, and even handsome, set-off as they are by the clean collar which he has put on in anticipation of his approaching doom. Before sinking into childlike slumber, he listened with evident pleasure to a banjo which was being played outside a public-house in the vicinity of the gaol. The banjoist is now being interviewed, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... immediately drew his knife and cut his throat. The Serawoolli thereupon called a palaver (or in European terms, brought an action) to recover damages for the loss of his beast, on which he set a high value. The defendant confessed he had killed the ass, but pleaded a SET-OFF, insisting that the loss he had sustained by the ravage in his corn was equal to the sum demanded for the animal. To ascertain this fact was the point at issue, and the learned advocates contrived to puzzle the cause in such a manner ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... As a set-off, however, let the stranger visit the gambling tables, which are numerous; the low balls, masked or other, occurring every night, for whites or quadroons, or both; let him visit the low bar-rooms, or even ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... oppression in their own persons, or who have themselves in their time been roughly handled. They love to see others quail before them, as they themselves would be ready to quail before those they hold in awe; and it is no small set-off against their own terrors to feel themselves in turn objects of terror to others. People of this sort are of course generally cowards and toadies, and in bullying they find the fullest gratification of their ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... for those fifty pounds Miss Pew had agreed to maintain and educate Ida Palliser during the space of three years, to give her the benefit of instruction from the masters who attended the school, and to befit her for the brilliant and lucrative career of governess in a gentleman's family. As a set-off against these advantages, Miss Pew had full liberty to exact what services she pleased from Miss Palliser, stopping short, as Miss Green had ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... done, it made no material addition to his reputation. His public, however, showed no falling-off in its enormous numbers; and what is said in one of his letters, noticeable for this touch of character, illustrates his anxiety to avoid any set-off from the disquiet that critical discourtesies might give. "I was ludicrously foiled here the other night in a resolution I have kept for twenty years not to know of any attack upon myself, by stumbling, before I could pick myself up, on a short extract in the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... or to unimportant particular ends. In the East Indies, Mahe de la Bourdonnais made a vigorous use of a small squadron to which no effectual resistance was offered by the British naval forces. He captured Madras (July 24-September 9, 1746), a set-off for Louisburg, for which it was exchanged at the close of the war. In the same year a British combined naval and military expedition to the coast of France—the first of a long series of similar ventures which in the end were derided as "breaking windows with guineas"—was carried out during ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the Venetian ladies amuse their leisure and show their adroitness in fitting a multitude of little pieces of ivory into a box of cedar-wood, which at the set-off seemed all too small to contain so many. In the same fashion I will pack ideas into your head that no one would have dreamed it could ever hold; and I will fill you with a new wisdom. I will show that, thinking to walk in the right way, you ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... knotty Wellington boots completed his costume, and made the wearer look as little like a seaman as need be. It appeared, nevertheless, that the individual in question was Mr. Ebenezer Wyse, my new sailing-master; so I accepted Captain C.'s strong recommendation as a set-off against the silk tartan; explained to the new comer the position he was to occupy on board, and gave orders for sailing in an hour. The multitudinous chain, moreover, so lavishly displayed, turned out to be an ornament of which Mr. Wyse might well be proud; and the following history of its acquisition ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... are they but the women, who, under the institution of monogamy have come off worse? Theirs is a dreadful fate: they are human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy. The women whose wretched position is here described are the inevitable set-off to the European lady with her arrogance and pretension. Polygamy is therefore a real benefit to the female sex if it is taken as a whole. And, from another point of view, there is no true reason why a man whose wife suffers from chronic illness, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the rough training of Eton or Westminster in those days; as, on the other hand, he might have profited by acquiring a livelier perception of the meaning of that virtue of fair-play, the appreciation of which is held to be a set-off against the brutalizing influences of our system of public education. As it was, Pope was condemned to a desultory education. He picked up some rudiments of learning from the family priest; he was sent to a school at Twyford, where he is said to have got ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... an arch trick on the part of the sultan, for he was indebted to the Landers in a considerable sum for some buttons, which he had purchased of them, and this butter affair was intended as a kind of set-off, as the sultan said he did not approve of paying for the butter out of his own pocket. On the 1st August, the sultan sent a messenger to inform them that they were at liberty to pay their respects, and take their farewell of him previously to their ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... unity of notion. It thus shows its superiority over the understanding, as a faculty subject to the conditions of a sensuous order. When we consider of what value it is to a rational being to be independent of natural laws, we see how much man finds in the liberty of sublime objects as a set-off against the checks of his cognitive faculty. Liberty, with all its drawbacks, is everywhere vastly more attractive to a noble soul than good social order without it—than society like a flock of sheep, or ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... or that they may talk in the hypothetical language, and work rule of three sums, as soon as they are born; but this is not probable; we cannot calculate on any corresponding advance in man's intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines. Some people may say that man's moral influence will suffice to rule them; but I cannot think it will ever be safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... cup violently. "Am I going to have my breakfast in peace? I don't want to be married at all. I don't want any of your Jewish men coming round to examine me as if! were a horse, and wanting to know how much money you'll give them as a set-off. Let me be! Let me be single! It's my business, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... opinion that the Sanskrit never was indigenous to any part of India, not even the most north-western; and there is an extension of this opinion which—rightly or wrongly—similarly excludes it from Persia. So much doubt should be relieved by the exhibition of some universally admitted fact as a set-off. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... was 'hardly the price of the frames, gentlemen.' Mr Pitt seems, unfortunately, to have been less sensible of the value of the collection than scrupulous of asking parliament for the money; and the opportunity was lost of redeeming the national character, by such a set-off against the republican dispersion of the noble collection of Charles I. This circumstance is well known; but it will probably be new to most of our readers to learn, that many of the best pictures which had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... resumed my grandfather. "A'm goin' to give ye a set-off. Your mither was always my fav'rite, for A never could agree with Aadam. A like ye fine yoursel'; there's nae noansense aboot ye; ye've a fine nayteral idee of builder's work; ye've been to France, where they tell me they're grand at the stuccy. A splendid thing for ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the sake of stepping forth from your work-table upon a soft lawn, or of looking out upon the old church steeple among the trees, while you hear nothing but bleating and chirping, you must expect some set-off against such advantages: and that set-off is the being among a small number of people, who are always busy looking into ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... eighty are reserved for the bank, and forty or so allowed to the player. Finally, take note that in Rome, Caput Mundi, and in Tuscany, Garden of Italy, Faro, Zecchinetto, Rossa e Nera were prohibited, as acknowledged pests of social existence and open death to honest customs,—as a set-off for which deprivation, the game of the Lottery is still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... except a loan of 100,000 l. from the Board of Works. Belfast is the 'linen capital' of the empire, as Manchester is the 'cotton capital.' The linen trade was fostered in its infancy there by Strafford, and encouraged by William III., as a set-off against the abolition of the woollen trade. The first spinning of flax by steam power was commenced in 1830, by the Messrs. Mulholland, who employ 2,000 hands, principally females. Mills have sprung up in every direction, and it is estimated ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... on that basis is highly rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational: it insists on caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all that, and to have emerged into the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... now lasted several hours, and neither side had gained any material advantage. Some junks had been sunk, and a good many Chinamen killed; but as a set-off against this, there could be no doubt that the brig had lost several men. Jack, too, observed that she now only fired when the junks pressed very close round her, and he could not but suspect that she was running short of ammunition. The evening was ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... word, leaving some of her friends in muslin on the garden chairs around to explain the difference between fishing with and without a float—a duty which they appeared to perform with true womanly relish as a set-off against the previous scoring of the pert maid from Mayfair, who had borne rather heavily upon them from a ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... called on him for the pay, he seemed surprised, and sed it had cost him two dollars and a half to hav the shuks hauld, and that I justly owd him a half a dollar. He were more bigger than I was, so I swallered my bile and sued him. His lawyer pled a set-off for haulin'. He pled that the shuks was unsound; that they was barred by limitashuns; that they didn't agree with his cow; and that he never got any shuks from me. He spoak about a hour, and allooded to me as a swindler about forty-five times. The bedevild jewry went out, and brot ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... providing for the payment will be presented, but give no intimation of any previous condition and annex none to the bill which they present. The account of dignity being thus declared by this demonstration to be settled, it can not be supposed that it will again be introduced as a set-off against an acknowledged pecuniary balance. Before I conclude my observations on this part of the subject it will be well to inquire in what light exceptions are taken to this part of the message, whether as a menace generally or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... kin to which the woman belongs claim a certain property in her even after she is married, and this partial proprietorship naturally implies a slight protecting influence; for it would clearly not be in every case easy for the homicidal male to find a sister ready to go out and be killed as a set-off to his murdered wife. We should not, it is true, overlook the fact that the customs of the Pitta-Pitta differ from those of many of the Australian tribes, in that exchange of sisters is not practised. Otherwise it would be tempting ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... taffrail, there yawned a mighty hole fringed with splintered deck-planking. The explosion had gutted after-hold, after-cabin, sail-locker, and laid all bare even to the stern-post. 'Twas a marvel the stern itself had not been blown out: but as a set-off against this mercy—and the most grievous of all, though as yet we had not discovered it—we had lost our rudder-head, and the rudder itself hung by a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... has told us at the bar of the House of Commons that he never made up any contingent accounts; and yet, as a set-off against this bribe, which he received for himself, and never intended to apply to the current use of the Company, he feigns and invents a claim upon them, namely, that he had, without any authority of the Company, squandered away in stationery and budgeros, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... myself, if I could get 'em. He can live in the castle if he likes, or go to the devil. O, and here is Mr. Archer; and I recommend him to take him in—a friend of mine—and Mr. Archer will pay, as I wrote. And I regard that in the light of a precious good thing for Holdaway, let me tell you, and a set-off against ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... set-off disaster hung over the expedition, as they afterwards remembered. To begin with, all the Brimley Bomefields were extremely unwell during the crossing, while the aunt enjoyed the sea air and made friends ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... introduced; and it is a question whether, so far as it is so, this handicraft ought not to be ruled by the same considerations as the fishing trade. The evils arising from long accounts in this trade and in fishing seem to point to the necessity of extending to these cases the prohibition of set-off contained in 5 of the existing Act and in 10 of the Bill now before Parliament. Another uggestion is, that a short prescription for such accounts should be introduced-say a prescription of three months, running from the date of the earliest ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... during the summer numbers of sedge-warblers have nested on and around the eyot; the cuckoo has been a regular visitor to the osier-bed in the early morning, probably with a view to laying its eggs in the sedge-warblers' nests. As a set-off to these early visits of the cuckoo, a nightjar has hunted round the islet for moths, both at dusk and during the night, when its note may often be heard. This is a fairly long list of interesting birds revisiting a portion ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... head and smiled deridingly. "How stupid! what a fool!" she sighed; "you have jade, and another person has gold to match with you, and if some one has 'cold' scent, haven't you any 'warm' scent as a set-off?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... After a little hesitation I told her all, and I am glad I did so. She found in her simple, womanly heart just the counsel that I needed. One feels that she is used to giving consolation. She possesses the secret of that feminine deftness which is the great set-off to feminine weakness. Weak? Yes, women perhaps are weak, yet less weak than we, the strong sex, for they can raise us to our feet. She called me, "My dear Monsieur Fabien," and there was balm in the very ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... manner, found himself attached to Therese by a powerful bond. As a set-off against his atrocious nights, he determined at least to be kept in blissful laziness, well fed, warmly clothed, and provided with the necessary cash in his pocket to satisfy his whims. At this price alone, would he consent to sleep with the ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... When the Dominican repudiation of the bond issue was published in England in 1872 a cash balance of $466,500 still remained to the credit of the Dominican government, but it was coolly pocketed by the principal agent, who claimed it as a set-off against alleged damages in connection with a concession he had near Samana. In the ten years of anarchy that followed in Santo Domingo no attempt was made to straighten out the matter. The bonds having gone into default in 1872 dropped lower and lower ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... not explained. Steevens' original note was superior to this, in so much that he quoted the words of these old poets, thereby giving his readers an opportunity of considering the justness of the deduction. The only set-off to this omission by Mr. Knight is the introduction of "ex pede Herculem," the merit of which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... especially in Miss Fosby, who was really a good creature,—and when in consultation with Cicely as to who, among the various people she knew, should be asked down to the Manor and who should not, she had selected them as a set-off to the younger, more flippant and casual of her list, and also because they were likely to be convenient personages to ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... company, which had been collected, received our hero as their captain and owner upon his arrival on board. There certainly was no small contrast between our hero's active slight figure and handsome person, set-off with a blue coat, something like the present yacht-club uniform, and that of his second in command, who waddled to the side to receive him. He was a very short man, with an uncommon protuberance of stomach, with shoulders and arms too ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... writers in the two languages in reference to their manifestation of humor. We have no fabulist like La Fontaine, no song-writer equal to Beranger; but then we do not think of citing our fables and songs as the highest examples of English humor. It would be easy to array a list of names as a set-off against that of Mr. Besant. But this is needless. Humor, in the sense in which the word is commonly understood, may almost be said to be a distinctive quality of English literature, which is pervaded by it in a far greater degree than that of any other people. It is a leading trait in all the great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one individual to each house. On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries and convents in the town were repeopled—with how much advantage as a set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away, and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen through the streets "whose tramp was like that of an army"—may be sufficiently ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... movement already alluded to as a set-off and, within certain boundaries at least, a counteractive of the degeneracy exhibited in the German character since the foundation of the present Imperial system. The rise and rapid growth of the Social Democratic movement is perhaps the most striking fact in the recent history of Germany. The ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... imminent danger of being overthrown by little Mary's mute demonstrations of affection, listened anxiously to every word the Doctor uttered; and, as soon as he had done, said that she must go back to the circus directly, and tell her husband the truth about all that had occurred, as a necessary set-off against the slanders that were sure to be spoken against ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... so readily the maxim that "the end justifies the means," and for plunging so determinedly into what cannot be considered their own business; but let those blame them who will, the good they accomplish may well be made a set-off for any evil they unwittingly cause; and the parable of the man who "fell among thieves," and the heartless wretches who "passed by on the other side," should make us a little slow in blaming the "good Samaritans" ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... it be said?—those who talk the most on such subjects are those who know the least. For those who have entered into the secret of the King are ever the most reticent on such matters. At the same time we may welcome this recent development, if only as a set-off against the Spiritualism and occultism which have played such havoc with souls during a space of over fifty years. The human soul, "naturally Christian," as Tertullian would say, is also naturally Divine in the sense that, as S. Augustine so often insists, no rest is possible ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... wondered that she and her nuns could spend such useless lives. She replied that although she and all good Catholics believe in the atonement of Christ, they also believe that works of piety in excess of what may be demanded of us, even if they are done in secret, are a set-off against the sins of the world. In this form the doctrine has not much to commend itself to me, and it is assumed that the nuns' works are pious. But in a sense it is true. "The very hairs of your head are all numbered." The fall of a grain of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... may have shown greater 'literary genius than Madame de Stael's, the Germans, though they have, in certain lines, had no superiors as producers of tales, have never produced a good novel yet.[19] Moreover, the guide-book element is a great set-off to the novel. It is not—or at any rate it is not necessarily—liable to the objections to "purpose," for it is ornamental and not structural. It takes a new and important and almost illimitably fresh province of nature and of art, which is a part of nature, to be its appanage. It would ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to this condition of dependence without a murmur. They had been accustomed, from father to son, to go in and out of the gates of Stone Farm, and do what was required of them, as dutifully as if they had been serfs of the land. As a set-off they allowed all their leaning toward the tragic, all the terrors of life and gloomy mysticism, to center round Stone Farm. They let the devil roam about there, play loo with the men for their souls, and ravish the women; and they took off their caps ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Terence chokes, then coughs solemnly, and finally, lowering the fan, shows himself preternaturally grave, as a set-off against ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... dress in five minutes and rush into school. At midday, when the monitors washed their hands for dinner, similar work had to be done, and again in the evening, when they washed their hands for supper. The only set-off to all this was that each monitor had been a basonite, and each basonite had a very good chance of becoming a monitor. But it was carrying the fagging system to far too great an extent, and the practice is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... abreast and at arm's length, marched up the length of the room to the dais, with measured steps, not too short and not too slow—a very effectively carried out piece of ceremony, for the principals suited their parts well. Lord Ampthill is exceptionally tall, he wore a blue Court coat, well set-off by the white knee-breeches and stockings; and Lady Ampthill is taller than other ladies and is very gracious. Perhaps you can make out in my sketch Lord Ampthill on the dais talking to some of the house party, and the tall lady on the right, talking to some ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... herself than if they had been what they professed to be. The rapt and impassioned attention which she was observed to bestow on his utterances on such occasions all but gained her the reputation of a saint, and was accepted as a sufficient set-off against the unhallowed affection which she could not help manifesting for the memory of her father. The judicious reluctance of the Caucasian ecclesiastics to inquire over-anxiously into the creeds and customs of the primitive Church was a great help to her; and another difficulty ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... gone at his audacity; but one horrid laugh exploded on the floor like a petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a lion. Nature, relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-off the biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon. He was like those stunted wide-mouthed pieces of ordnance we see on fortifications; more like a flower-pot than a cannon; but ods tympana how ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... don't like people livin' on the land. I have told him time and again that the place was ready to fall; but he said I couldn't expect him to lay out money on a house that he got no rent for. You see, Miss, I didn't pay any rent. I took low wages; and the bit of a hut was a sort of set-off again' what I was paid short of the other men. I couldn't afford to have it repaired, though I did what I could to patch and prop it. And now most like I shall be blamed for letting it be blew down, and shall have to live in half a ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... proclaiming, for the consolation of his friends, that my day in London was coming to an end, and that my banishment was practically a certainty. This was on the occasion of the Rhenish Musical Festival, which was held at that time. As a set-off against this I reaped great satisfaction from a scene which took place at the close of the eighth and last concert which I conducted—one of those strange scenes which now and again result from the long-suppressed emotion of those concerned. The members of the orchestra had ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... and that, too, after Keys swears he saw the assignment, as any one may see by reference to the files of papers; and Gen. Adams himself, in reply to the Sampson's ghost story, was the first man that raised the cry of toryism, and it was only by way of set-off, and never in seriousness, that it was bandied back at him. His effort is to make the impression that his enemies first made the charge of toryism and he drove them from that, then Sampson's ghost, he drove ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... at last. As Willis saw his confession consigned to Mohun's pocket-book, his avarice gave him courage to try one last effort to gain something by the transaction—a salve to his bruises—a set-off against the relicta non ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... women, whom their rank and sex gave them peculiar opportunities of portraying. But we can scarcely congratulate the country upon having found in them a substitute for learned and accomplished travellers of the other sex; or formed a set-off on the part of Great Britain, to the Humboldts, the Chateaubriands, and Lamartines ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Morand's, and when he had disclosed his message concerning the comtesse, the good Morand began to laugh. He told the count, that the previous evening this lady had sent for him; and, on going to her house, madame de Bearn, as a set-off against the inconveniences which might result to her from being the instrument of my presentation, had stipulated for certain compensations; such, for instance, as a sum of two hundred thousand ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... as he lighted another cigar, 'I fear my unexpected visitors have been troublesome. If as a set-off (excuse the legal phrase from a barrister-at-law) you would like to ask Tippins to tea, I pledge myself to make love ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... play-bill with "The White Slave of England" printed on it, evidently intended as a set-off against the dramatizing of "Uncle Tom" in London, at some of our penny theatres. Of course I went to see it, and never laughed more ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... with the rest, Mr Dennis dismissed that possibility from his thoughts as an idle chimera; arguing that the line of conduct he had adopted at Newgate, and the service he had rendered that day, would be more than a set-off against any evidence which might identify him as a member of the crowd. That any charge of companionship which might be made against him by those who were themselves in danger, would certainly go for nought. And that if any trivial indiscretion on his part should unluckily come out, the uncommon ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... strength of Prussia, and—with scarcely less indignation, but more contempt, censuring the selfish egotism of England in disregarding the due equilibrium of the European balance of power,—hinted at the necessity of annexing Belgium as a set-off ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was true; and I can only hope the recording angel jotted it down as a slight set-off against the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... smile, "but I should have had my own way then, and starved you shockingly. No talk then of 'little parties' and such like. But you must not now turn the tables against me, nor bring your L420 a year as a set-off to my L130." ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... studying their contents with frowning anxiety. "She's goin' to have the best there is!" he said. "There's a look in that lady's eyes that puts me in mind of Miss Hands; and take that with her bein' afflicted and all—I guess we'll give her a good set-off, hossy. I ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... forced the Yamen to grant a contract in favour of the Franco-Belgian company. The Yamen had a few days before explicitly promised the British minister that the contract should not be ratified without his having an opportunity of seeing it. As a penalty for this breach of faith, and as a set-off to the Franco-Belgian line, the British minister required the immediate grant of all the railway concessions for which British syndicates were then negotiating, and on terms not inferior to those granted to the Belgian line. In this way all the lines in the lower Yangtsze, as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... to seal the new alliance, in all sisterly freedom she gave me her hand, and did not appear to notice how long I kept it in the darkness. This was certainly a considerable set-off against the feeling of loneliness, and, if not quite content, I was at least more so. I wondered, among other things, if Irma's heart kept knocking in a choking kind of way against the bottom of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... I liked, there was a set-off for this: it was the absence of those stupid trade-regulations which in England, and on the continent of Europe, hamper so annoyingly the movement of commerce, and complicate so vexatiously the relations between employers and employed. Few of these relics of feudal-age ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... that Pierpoint should have indulged himself in this movement of passion, since undoubtedly it broke and disturbed the else uniform stream of public indignation, by investing the original aggressor with something like the character of an injured person; and therefore with some set-off to plead against his own wantonness of malice;—his malice might now assume the nobler aspect ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... rudeness by an official of any sort, in his relations to the public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civility is enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of service is accepted as a set-off to boorish ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of those on commando and others. I am in a position to state that the whole difference made amounted to two ounces of coffee and four ounces of sugar per week, and that even this distinction totally disappeared by the middle of March. As a set-off to this, the local Dutch Committee, in distributing some sixty cases of clothing, &c., sent out by the charitable, refused to give any help to the families of some who were not on commando, on the ground that these articles were for the benefit of ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that one boy, who was a coal-merchant's son, came as a set-off against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account, 'Exchange or Barter'—a name selected from the arithmetic book as expressing this arrangement. I heard that the table beer was a robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition. I heard ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... "As a set-off against these honours may be mentioned, the virulent and unceasing attacks of almost all the party scribblers of the day; but their abuse he shared in common with men, whose talents and virtues have outlived the malice ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... following the Bastille and Place Wagram omnibus to the Pointe Saint Eustache, where it always stopped for a time. But this was only a manoeuvre to enable her to get a better view of the fish-girl, who, as a set-off against the blind, retorted by covering her head and fish with large sheets of brown paper, on the pretext of warding off the rays of the setting sun. The advantage at present was on Lisa's side, for as the time for striking ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... are sufficiently enlightened upon the subject of the perspective which your friend enjoyed on the cars between Mantes and Pont-de-l'Arche, I will pass to another exercise, highly recommended in rhetorical treatises, and describe, by way of a set-off and contrast, the female monster that served as shadow to ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... circle of his applauders, should throw him inwards upon himself and his own principles with new earnestness and refreshed independence. Rousseau very soon made up his mind what the world was worth to him; and this, not as the ordinary sentimentalist or satirist does, by way of set-off against the indulgence of personal foibles, but from recognition of his own qualities, of the bounds set to our capacity of life, and of the limits of the world's power to satisfy us. "When my destiny threw me into the whirlpool of society," ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... hauled out of a slough by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth century, scarcely a Quarter Session passed without presentments from the grand jury against certain districts on account of the bad state of the roads, and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon them as a set-off against their bruises and ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... anxious, above all things, to catch up the ways of the other fellows, afraid, above all things, of being laughed at for his innocence, and elated at being taken up by one of the swells in the shape of an elder boy, and at first set-off wholly ignorant of the motive; exposed to suggestions about the functions of his own body which he has not the knowledge to rebut as the devil's lies—what wonder is it that so many boys, originally good and pure, fall ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... swore that no further legislation was necessary to protect it in the Territories. Well, his speeches in honors being easy, and he having sworn to it in the last Congress, I am inclined to take his oath in preference to his speeches, and one is a fair set-off against the other. Then, all the amendments being voted down, the Senate came to the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... annually diverts from wholesome and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable harm he does to the deserving, - dirtying the stream of true benevolence, and muddling the brains of foolish justices, with inability to ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... would, merely to bring me nearer to themselves, wish me to become poor; for which I should not thank them. I set great store by the esteem my riches command, Lucian. It is the only set-off I have ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... London by the Batavier steamer from Rotterdam." (London Markets Report, September 11.) Can any clever master of fractions calculate the effect of this importation on the Smithfield market, and the benefit thence accruing to the citizens of London as a set-off to the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... and the jolliest fellow in the world"—he adds this as a set-off against his nationality, which may, he evidently thinks, suggest secret societies, daggers, carbonari—"married my Aunt. The Chertons are also some sort of distant connection. At least they often stay with Madame. So that she'll be their ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... and the unprofitable client, he set-off being gulled on one side his ledger against being ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... the superiority of the Whig wits in literature; but against them all Scott is a more than sufficient set-off. The years of stress between Waterloo (1815) and the Reform Bill (1832) made Radicalism (fostered by economic causes, the enormous commercial and industrial growth, and the unequal distribution of its rewards) perhaps even more pronounced north than south of the Tweed. In 1820 "the Radical ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... doctrines that life itself is a monitor to cheerfulness and mirth. This is true: and it is only explainable on the ground that it is youth alone which can exult in its power of accumulating shadows and dwelling on the dark side—it is youth that revels in the possible as a set-off to its brightness and irresponsibility: it is youth that can delight in its own excess of shade, and can even dispense with sunshine—hugging to its heart the memory of its own often self-created distresses and conjuring up and, with ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in the Rocky Mountains are usually fearful and severe. There, snow storms form mountains for themselves, filling up the passes for weeks, even those which are low being impracticable either for man or beast. As a set-off to all this, the scenery is most grand provided the beholder is well housed. If the case is otherwise and he be doomed to combat these terrible storms, his situation is most critical. During the summer months the lofty peaks of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... a serious world, with all its folly - even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and it is a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields; and it is a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... a touch of reluctant admiration at such an outflow of eloquence; and then, by way of set-off, "I sec ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... case in country districts; if so, no payment will be called for, but a simple transfer in the banker's books will settle the transaction. If the check is paid into a different bank, it will not be presented for payment, but liquidated by set-off against other checks; and, in a state of circumstances favorable to a general extension of banking credits, a banker who has granted more credit, and has therefore more checks drawn on him, will also have more checks on other bankers paid to ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad—with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows. Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... middle of the night for the purpose of preventing it, I allow that it might have been pleaded as an excuse for their offence; but this was not so. It was an accident, that occurred to them when they were engaged in breaking the rules, and cannot be pleaded as a set-off against punishment. ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... gallant captain, putting a good face on it, sprang up and, passing his arm about her substantial waist, saluted her, after which, as a sort of set-off, he kissed Miss Tipping. ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... to injure the property, or is guilty of misconduct, he may remain answerable for the effect of such misconduct or injury, in the way of set-off against him.[155] ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... company that Riddell, the head classic of Willoughby, was invited to bask for a short time on the evening of the day before the appointment of the new captain. He had been there once before when his father and mother had come over to visit him. And even with their presence as a set-off, the evening had been one of the most awful experiences of his life. But now that he was to go all alone to partake of state tea with those two, this shy awkward boy felt about as cheerful as if he had been walking ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... satisfaction that the principle 'is daily obtaining converts' even among the most prejudiced classes; and he refers especially to a petition in which the clothiers of Gloucestershire[42] expressed their willingness to give up all restrictions. There was, indeed, an important set-off against this gain. The landowners were being pledged to protection. They had decided that in spite of the peace, the price of wheat must be kept up to 80s. a quarter. They would no longer be complimented as Adam Smith had complimented them on their ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the children; a matter that was at last compromised by an agreement under which the choice of the girls' names became her prerogative, and that of the boys' her husband's, who limited his field of selection to strict historical precedent as a set-off to Mrs. Chickerel's tendency to stray ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... medicaments, death which ever stared them in the face, and last, and worst of all, the risk of capture by some Christian foe, by whom they would be chained to the rowers' bench and taste of a bitterness absolutely unimaginable. As a set-off to this the man who aspired to lead must offer to his followers at least a record of success in small things; also he had to be something of an enthusiast, something of an orator, some one subtly persuasive. Against all the disagreeables of the strenuous life of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... streets of the cities in the south and some in the north are no better than mere lanes; and the crowds of people hustling through them fill them about full, and make you think the place is vastly more populous than it really is. As a set-off to this idea, you will wonder what has become of the women, for you rarely ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... it be charged against him that he ought to have known the proper accentuation of Niagara, it may be mentioned as a set-off that Sir Walter Scott, in dealing with his own country, mis-accentuated "Glenaladale," to say nothing of his having made of Roseneath an island. Another characteristic of the Traveller is the extraordinary choiceness and conciseness of the diction, which, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... after the French occupation, was restored to the English by an order from Paris, in accordance with the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly disappointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the acquisition of San Thome for France, as a set-off for the loss of Madras. The English at Fort St. George had information of his schemes, and, being in no way desirous of having aggressive Frenchmen for close neighbours, they forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make the Company a grant of 'Mylapore, alias St. Thome,' on condition ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... and they embody their feelings in the old conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The conventions have become obsolete, and if used at all, the poet himself is laughing ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... such work as "fitting the first set of iron loames," "fitting up shittles," and "making moddles," were 3s. 6d. a day; and he must, during the same time, have lived with his employer, who charged him as a set-off "14 weaks bord at 8s. per weak." He afterwards seems to have worked at piece-work in partnership with one Andrew Gamble supplying the materials as well as the workmanship for the looms and shuttles. His employer, Mr. George Dickinson, also seems to have ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Could those debates be ready to appear critically, their effect would be decisive. I beg of you to turn this subject in your mind. The arguments against it will be personal; those in favor of it moral; and something is required from you as a set-off against the sin of your retirement. Your favor of December the 29th came to hand January the 5th; seal sound. I pray you always to examine the seals of mine to you, and the strength of the impression. The suspicions against the government on this subject ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... remark, upon this abundant nomenclature of kindly expressions in the Scottish dialect, that it assumes an interesting position as taken in connection with the Scottish Life and Character, and as a set-off against a frequent short and grumpy manner. It indicates how often there must be a current of tenderness and affection in the Scottish heart, which is so frequently represented to be, like its climate, "stern and wild." There could not be such terms were the feelings they express ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... part of the prisoner's recriminatory charge, I shall close my observations on his demeanor, and defer my remarks on his complaint of our ingratitude until we come to consider his set-off of services. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to receive for arresting and carrying back every deserting employee aforesaid the sum of five dollars, and ten cents per mile from the place of arrest to the place of delivery, and these sums shall be held by the employer as a set-off for so much against the wages of said deserting employee; provided that said arrested party, after being so returned home, may appeal to a justice of the peace, or a member of the Board of Police, who shall summarily try whether said appellant ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Evening. I wanted to see the Statue on the Chelsea Embankment which I had not yet seen: and the old No. 5 of Cheyne Row, which I had not seen for five and twenty years. The Statue I thought very good, though looking somewhat small and ill set-off by its dingy surroundings. And No. 5 (now 24), which had cost her so much of her Life, one may say, to make habitable for him, now all neglected, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... James Blair, married Jane Morrison, daughter of — Morrison, Esq., and an heiress of the brave house of Ramsay, by which marriage the ancient and honorable families of Burgh, Blair, and Ramsay, were woven into one branch; and from this branch, indeed, from the first set-off of its united stem was born of this marriage, Margaret Blair, who dying in the year 1836, bequeathed the long-cherished scarf to Dr. Jefferson, the worthy husband of her beloved kinswoman—direct in the line of John Burgh, to whom it ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... only because she is drunken and idle, he knows no more of England than the Icelander in his sledge: if, on the other hand, he used the libel as a party warfare, he is still one of the "old set,"—and his "crowning carnage, Waterloo," with all its greatness, is but a poor set-off against the more lasting iniquities which he would visit upon his fellow-men. Anyhow, he cannot—he must not—escape from his opinion; we will nail him to it, as we would nail a weasel to a barn-door; "if Englishmen want competence, they must be drunken—they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... mouths. We said, and say, that there is a CERTAIN check to the rapacity and cruelty of men, in their desire of the good opinion of others. We never said that it was sufficient. Let Mr Mill show it to be insufficient. It is enough for us to prove that there is a set-off against the principle from which Mr Mill deduces the whole theory of government. The balance may be, and, we believe, will be, against despotism and the narrower forms of aristocracy. But what is this to the correctness ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... slightly fastened, came off with it, and brought all my hair down (of which, be it again remembered without vanity, that I had a very fine head) in loose disorderly ringlets, over my neck and shoulders, to the no unfavourable set-off ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... considerable re-enforcements commanded by leaders of experience, the English commenced, in October, 1428, the siege of Orleans. The approaches to the place were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one with another were constructed around the walls. As a set-off, the most valiant warriors of France, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the Marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men. Several ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... deny, and therefore did nothing; but one of the claimants, having expressed his discontent in a manner disrespectful to the Lieutenant-Governor, received 600 lashes, and six months in irons![129] Such atrocious neglect of the first principles of equity, is a sad set-off against the license of indiscriminate pardons. The Roman judge was a far better casuist: "For it seemeth to me unreasonable, to send a prisoner, and not withal to signify the crimes ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... going in search of employment, and that they had spent all their money. He, however, added that, as the sign of the Bull was a disgraceful daub for so respectable a house, he would have no objection to repaint it, as a set-off for what he and his companion had received. The landlord, who had long been wishing for a new sign (the one in question having passed through two generations), gladly accepted his terms, and Morland immediately went to work. The next ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... some set-off to our disappointment and long, tiring march of fifteen miles, Captain Sir Frederick Frankland, who had gone on to Joh'burg, as it is universally called, to buy what stores he could, turned up just before dinner, ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... port side had entered six of 18 pounds, and four of 9 pounds. By the official report of an inspection, made upon her arrival in Portland, it appears that her upper works and sides forward were torn to pieces.[190] In her mainmast alone were three 18-pound shot.[191] As a set-off to this principal damage received, she had to show only one 18-pound shot in the hull of the "Enterprise," one in the foremast, and one ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... voluntary act was performed it must be remembered that, on the 27th of November, the British and their allies had met with a serious repulse at Faisowah, through pressing too closely upon the retiring Ashantis; that this repulse was considered both by the Ashantis and by our native allies as a set-off against the failure of the attack on Abracampa; that the Houssa levy was in a state of panic, and no reliable information as to the position of the enemy was obtainable. It was under such circumstances that these two men advanced nearly sixteen miles into an (to them) unknown tract ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... Compensation. — N. compensation, equation; commutation; indemnification; compromise &c. 774 neutralization, nullification; counteraction &c. 179; reaction; measure for measure. retaliation &c. 718 equalization &c. 27; robbing Peter to pay Paul. set-off, offset; make-weight, casting-weight; counterpoise, ballast; indemnity, equivalent, quid pro,quo; bribe, hush money; amends &c. (atonement) 952; counterbalance, counterclaim; cross-debt, cross-demand. V. make compensation; compensate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "alcoholic liquors." MORTON, whose great ambition in life is to make people thoroughly comfortable, wants to close the Bar. SYDNEY HERBERT, making a rare appearance as spokesman for the Government on the Treasury Bench, pleads as a set-off against alleged evil example, the large consumption of "lemon squash," which he explains to the House is "a non-intoxicant." CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN sends thrill of apprehension through listening Senate by inquiring ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... that I did so, if it offends you. I had thought that forewarned was forearmed. After all it is no business of mine; if I have extra labour, as I shall have, I shall have extra experience; and that will be a fair set-off, even if the board of guardians don't vote me an extra remuneration, as they ought ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... be pardoned, I'm sure. Never do I mind such a gay set-off for the journey. For the gin-an'-water is a little addition beyond experience. The vittles, no doubt, you begged up at the Vicarage, sayin' you'd been a peck o' trouble to the family, but this was going to be ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of course), who can do a lot of things with flowers and plate glass. They are bringing her for the first time to-morrow, and it struck me that if I have YOU there already when they arrive—you'll come in your national costume by the way?—it will be a considerable set-off. Since his daughter was presented to the duchess at the opening of a bazaar, there has been no holding Pash; why he was ever elected Reader of the Books, I don't know. Er—we have had scoffers sometimes, but I trust I may ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... never thowt to coom down to dog-steealin', but if my comrade sees how it could be done to oblige a laady like yo'sen, I'm nut t' man to hod back, tho' it's a bad business I'm thinkin', an' three hundred rupees is a poor set-off again t' chance of them Damning Islands as ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... But the little cherub on the royal truck, which, according to Dibdin, is perched at that commanding altitude, especially to look out that squalls don't happen to Jack, came to console us in the—at other times unwelcome—shape of a deluge of rain. Thus we got ashore earlier, though, as a set-off against so much ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... By way of set-off to the imposition of income tax, which it should be noted was at the time said to be "temporary," Mr. Gladstone wiped out a capital debt of four millions, but it must be pointed out that, in the fifty years which have ensued, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... all dead, it is pleasant to know that Pan can be brought to life again for children by the study of Nature. Now that the wonders of the invisible world are closed, the little ones can have no better set-off than in the beauty and marvel of God's visible creation. Here also are food for the imagination and material for poetry. Whatever teaches a child to observe teaches him to think, and strengthens memory, a faculty which in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... dates and something about model cottages, and, though a baron ought to know a little more than that, still we'll count these feudal bagpipers and that ancestral hop-scotch performance as a kind of set-off to your credit. Suppose you just say a few words on the future of the Anglo-Saxon race. What you've learned from the papers will do, so long as ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... of set-off, however, to that gloomy spectacle, fresh rumours of French successes began to circulate. There was a report that Bazaine's army had annihilated the whole of Prince Frederick-Charles's cavalry, and, in particular, there was a most ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the jury was instructed to find for the plaintiffs the amount claimed by the papers given in evidence (viz, the official settlements), with interest thereon, is entirely without merit. There was no evidence to impeach the accounts stated, or to show set-off, release, or payment. The instruction was, therefore, in accordance with the legal effect of the evidence, and there were no disputed facts upon which the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... play-rooms, who are taking the waters—Lord Clarendon, Baron Rothschild, Prince Souvarof, and a few more—but the general run of guests is by no means remarkable for birth, wealth, or respectability; and we are shockingly off for ladies. As a set-off against this deficiency, it would seem that all the aged, broken-down courtesans of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin have agreed to make Wiesbaden their autumn rendezvous. Arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... not be once again the King's, and the Parliament under his feet? And, really, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King: it had spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's defeat in Cornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off, In the confidence of that victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford (Sept. 30), sending proclamations before him, and threatening a march upon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven (Oct. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... his possession until the loan was returned, when he had to give it back. The pledges here mentioned are antichretic, that is, such that they produce an income or return to the holder, which is a set-off against ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... opened the gravest doubts of Sumner's sanity. If war was his object, and Canada were worth it, Sumner's scheme showed genius, and Adams was ready to treat it seriously; but if he thought he could obtain Canada from England as a voluntary set-off to the Alabama Claims, he drivelled. On the point of fact, Adams was as peremptory as Sumner on the point of policy, but he could only wonder whether Mr. Fish would dare say it. When at last Mr. Fish did say it, a year later, Sumner publicly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... yet came he the same summer to Greenland; and with him had he a priest and teachers, and he took up his abode at Brattalid with his father Eirik. Thereafter did men call him Leif the Lucky; but Eirik, his father, said that the one thing was a set-off to the other: on the one hand was the saving of the ship's crew by Leif & on the other the bringing to Greenland of that 'juggler,' ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... same time that Patrick should have his portrait of the prince for a set-off to the face of his daughter. He craved the relief it would be to him to lay his colours on the prince for the sparkling amazement of one whom, according to Caroline's description, he could expect to feel with him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... embroidery looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great deal in the ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him—he knew that very well; on his first entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past benefits. He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation. It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another. And Casaubon had done a wrong ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... is contained in two moderate-sized houses, one of which is at this time without a tenant. It is a very comfortable house for a small family. Just the thing, I should say, for you. If you will move into this house, you shall have it rent free, as a set-off to the increased charge Fanny will be to you in future. The three hundred per annum will be paid as usual. How ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... diligentissimus paterfamilias suis rebus adhibet. [Footnote: D. 13, 6, 1 pr.] He could only use a thing for the purpose for which it was lent; he could not keep it beyond the time agreed upon, nor detain it as a set-off against any debt. He was bound to restore the article in the same condition as received, subject only to the deterioration arising from reasonable use, whether a horse, a house, or a carriage. And he was required to make good all injuries caused by his own fault or negligence. If the article ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... will be in New York this winter and your mother, too. What a blessing to have a mother with whom one can hold Christian communion! You need some trials as a set-off to it. You say few live up to what light they have; it is true; I think we get light just as fast as we are ready for it. At the same time I must own that I have not all the light I need. I am ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss |
