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Odds and ends   /ɑdz ənd ɛndz/   Listen
Odds and ends

noun
1.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Odds and ends" Quotes from Famous Books



... you tomorrow at Vespers. That will be the better plan, and less hurtful to us both. Nor must you chide me, beloved, because I have written you a letter like this (reading it through, I see it to be all odds and ends); for I am an old man now, dear Barbara, and an uneducated one. Little learning had I in my youth, and things refuse to fix themselves in my brain when I try to learn them anew. No, I am not skilled in letter-writing, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... use cutting it shorter, for it always is kept cut short; the only way is to thin it, that is, cutting lumps out here and there down to the roots. Thinning does make less of it; but when it grows again it is very difficult to keep tidy, which makes Jael say she "never see such a head, it's all odds and ends," and sometimes she adds—"inside and out." Margery can ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... was almost the worst of all, with its odds and ends of things. "Other girls have silver-backed hair-brushes!" wailed Rose one night, regarding her old one with a ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... rocker, formed part of the furnishings in the court. In one corner was a mass of articles, the case of a ship's chronometer, the horn of a phonograph, some tin tubes of different lengths, and other odds and ends, which could not ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... I was staying, is about the wildest-looking place one can well imagine in Europe. The habitations of the peasants are made of reed and straw; the hay-ricks are mere slovenly heaps, partially thatched; the fences are made up of odds and ends. As for order, the whole place might have been strewn with the debris of a whirlwind and not have looked worse. As a natural consequence of all this slatternly disorder, fire is no uncommon occurrence; and when a fire begins, it seldom stops till it has licked the whole place clean—a ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... her a ring, and the other day I found it, tossed into a drawer full of odds and ends. I haven't seen it lately; she ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... to that repository of all odds and ends, the shed back of the barn, and selected a number of boards left over when the fence was built; with these and some nails he made a trough to carry the water down the hill, placing them one end upon another in forked stakes, and after two days of hard work ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... apartment, a sort of lumber-room, devoted now to wornout and broken furniture and odds and ends of house furnishing goods, was still another acquaintance—Ned Nestor. The patrol leader had met the two lost boys at Culebra, in the company of Harvey Chester and his son, Tony, and had spent enough time with the party to learn that Pedro, the ex-servant of the Shaw home, had been ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... square hole in the ceiling, at present closed by a clap-door in no way dissimilar to the trap-doors on a theatre stage. I climbed into this garret, which is at present used as a store-room for agricultural odds and ends. At harvest-time, however, it is inhabited—full to overflowing. A few decades ago as many as fifty labourers engaged for the harvest had to be housed in the farm out-houses on beds of straw. There was no help for it, and men and women had to congregate in ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... windows you would have guessed at the shabby thrift behind them without setting foot in the dreary place. What could those wall-cupboards contain but stale scraps of food, chipped earthenware, corks used over and over again indefinitely, soiled table-linen, odds and ends that could descend but one step lower into the dust-heap, and all the squalid necessities of a ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... hastily stripping himself of his coat, and any odds and ends of attire he deemed superfluous. "One moment, Hartledon; only one moment," ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... opportunities for promoting and securing their own happiness. Time should be made the most of. Stray moments, saved and improved, may yield many brilliant results. It is astonishing how much can be done by using up the odds and ends of time in leisure hours. We must be prompt to catch the minutes as they fly, and make them yield the treasures they contain, or they will be lost to us forever. "In youth the hours are golden, in mature years they are silvern, in old age they are ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... indeed, that Peggy had a genius for designing and posing pretty, graceful pictures. With a few yards of muslin and a basket, or such odds and ends of rubbish as horrified Esther's tidy soul to behold, she achieved marvels in the way of fancy costumes, and transformed the placid Mellicent into a dozen different characters: Ophelia, crowned with flowers; Marguerite, pulling the petals of a daisy; Hebe, bearing a basket of ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... colors. Your eyes sparkle at the prize; but, alas! the first energetic pull leaves in your hand a piece about four inches long, and a quantity of dangling ends and rough knots convince you that you have nothing to hope in that quarter. A second plunge brings up a handful of odds and ends, strong pieces clumsy and rough, coarse red quill-cord, delicate two-colored bits far too short, cotton twine breaking at a touch, fine long pieces hopelessly tangled together, so that not even an end is visible. The more you twitch at the loops, the more desperate ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... upholstered in wool-work, and framed family portraits solicited notice. Should anyone marvel as to what becomes of the rubbish and relics belonging to houses whose contents have been scattered, after several generations—trifles that survived wrecked fortunes, odds and ends which, for sacred reasons, people had clung to till the last, let them repair to the "Market"—the relics are there, lying on unresponsive cobble stones, a pitiful spectacle, handled, despised, and cast aside—the precious hoarded ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... issued. It contains St Ives, and practically completes the edition; but Mr Stevenson's widow and Mr Sydney Colvin, who are acting as his executor and his editor, have gratuitously given to the subscribers to this Edinburgh Edition a twenty-eighth volume, consisting of various odds and ends not hitherto made public. Of this, 'A New Form of Intermittent Light for Lighthouses' and 'The Thermal Influence of Forests,' recall the period of his engineering and scientific training; and the interesting ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black

... it has occurred to me why should not I begin the New Year by keeping a regular diary? What I do write are merely fragments of memoirs with passing events briefly alluded to, and the odds and ends collected from different sources recorded and commented on. It is not the first time I have had thoughts of keeping a more regular journal, in which not only my doings should be noted down and my goings, but which would also preserve ...
— 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

... few minutes afterwards she was in her own nursery, kissing her children, and teaching the elder one to say something about papa. But, even as she taught him, the tears stood in her eyes, and the little fellow knew that everything was not right. And there she sat till about two, doing little odds and ends of things for the children, and allowing that occupation to stand as an excuse to her for not commencing her letter. But then there remained only two hours to her, and it might be that the letter would be difficult in the writing—would ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... house and the cooking, but how could Uncle Matthew and himself expect to escape from it? Uncle Matthew had more hope than he had, for Uncle Matthew sometimes balanced the books for Uncle William, and did odds and ends about the shop. He would write out the accounts in a very neat hand and would deliver them, too. But John made no efforts at all. He was the complete idler, living on his Uncle's bounty, and ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... room, which meant putting the chairs against the wall, and piling all the odds and ends into a corner and partly hiding them with the big leather arm-chair that Father used to sit in ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... Sunday, while Pinkey was frying some odds and ends in the pan to freshen them up for breakfast, Mrs Partridge, who was finishing a novelette in bed, heard a determined knock on the door. It was only eight o'clock. She called Pinkey, and ran to the window in surprise. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... upon the porch of the old adobe. A smell of paint tainted the air, and some shavings and odds and ends of lumber betrayed a recent visit from the carpenter. The house, in short, had been placed in thorough repair. A young woman with fifty thousand dollars in her own right can afford to spend a ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... imagination the potentiality at least of performing any miracle, however marvelous, however incredible, according to our ordinary standards? As to the decoration of the story, that is a mingling which I venture to think somewhat ingenious of odds and ends of folk lore and witch lore with pure inventions of my own. Some years later I was amused to receive a letter from a gentleman who was, if I remember, a schoolmaster somewhere in Malaya. This gentleman, an earnest student ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... however. Two four-wheeled cabs were standing at the front door and the cabman assisted by Edward were putting trunks on top of them. They were servants' trunks and Cook was already inside the first cab which was filled with paper parcels and odds and ends. Even as her mistress watched Emma got in carrying a sedate band-box. She was the house-parlourmaid and a sedate person. The first cab drove away as soon as its door was closed and the cabman mounted to his seat. Louisa looking wholly unprofessional without her nurse's cap and apron and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... happy walk home that was for Tiny and the fisherman! As he left the little chapel at Fellness, a basket, well filled with the odds and ends left from the tea-meeting, had been handed to Coomber to take home, and Peters whispered, as he went out: "I've heard of another job for yer, so be along in good time in the morning, mate." To describe Mrs. Coomber's joy, when her husband ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie

... however, and the two desperadoes clinched and never let up until they had minced each other into such insignificant odds and ends that neither was able to distinguish his own remnants from those of his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... odds and ends," the wub said absently, staring around the room. "A nice apartment you have here, Captain. You keep it quite neat. I respect life-forms that are tidy. Some Martian birds are quite tidy. They throw things out of their ...
— Beyond Lies the Wub • Philip Kindred Dick

... western purlieus of London, not unvisited by that old sense of some great ineffable beauty, concealed by the dim and dingy veils of grey interminable streets. Once, on a day of heavy rain he went to the 'box-room,' and began to turn over the papers in the old hair trunk—scraps and odds and ends of family history, some of them in his father's handwriting, others in faded ink, and there were a few ancient pocket-books, filled with manuscript of a still earlier time, and in these the ink was glossier and blacker than any writing fluids ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... their sluice boxes, these were the tools. He took the axe first, and having tied Lovin Child to the leg of his bunk for safety's sake, he went out and cut down four young oaks behind the cabin, lopped off the branches and brought them in for chair legs. He emptied a dynamite box of odds and ends, scrubbed it out and left it to dry while he mounted the four legs, with braces of the green oak and a skeleton frame on top. Then he knocked one end out of the box, padded the edges of the box with burlap, and set Lovin Child in his ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... here almost a week. I occupy two very pleasant rooms. My painting-room is a vast and rather bare apartment, with a very good southern light. I have decked it out with a few old prints and sketches, and have already grown very fond of it. When I had disposed my artistic odds and ends in as picturesque a fashion as possible, I called in my hosts. The Captain looked about silently for some moments, and then inquired hopefully if I had ever tried my hand at a ship. On learning that I had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... where I had found food and water abundant; numerous caves, with mural paintings; quiet seas, and gorgeous vegetation. Yamba willingly consented to accompany me, and one day I set off on the sea once more, my faithful wife by my side, carrying her net full of odds and ends, and I with my bow and arrows, tomahawk, and stiletto; the two latter carried in my belt. I hoped to come across a ship down among the islands, for my natives told me that several had passed while I ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... a day when—for the first time in his life—Lancelot inspected his wardrobe, and hunted together his odds and ends of jewelry. From this significant task he was aroused by hearing Mrs. Leadbatter coughing ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill

... Brace.—What is the origin of this word, and whence came the thing? It must originally have had a use and a meaning, before it became a haven of rest for hyacinth-glasses, china monsters, Bohemian glass vases, and a thousand nick-nacks and odds and ends of drawing-room {303} furniture, as it now is with us. It had, no doubt, some real work to do before it became what we ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... traveller. He was grey and grizzled, but well fed, and he wore a Cardigan jacket, brown moleskin trousers, blucher boots, and socks, all of which were mended with rough patches. His knife and tobacco, his odds and ends, and his purse, containing 14 1/2d., were still intact, while across his shoulder was a swag, and the fingers of his right hand had tightly closed round the handle of his old black billy-can, in ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... use the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in the corners and sides of the rafts, and keying them. In another apartment they were making fence-slats, such as stand all over New England, out of odds and ends,—and it may be that I saw where the picket-fence behind which I dwell at home came from. I was surprised to find a boy collecting the long edgings of boards as fast as cut off, and thrusting them down a hopper, where they were ground up beneath the mill, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... were told that Mr Longchamps was at home. Then they waited, paralysed with undescribed emotions, in a large room with books and swords and glass bookcases with rotten-looking odds and ends in them. Mr Longchamps was a collector. That means he stuck to anything, no matter how ugly and silly, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... disorder prevailed all through the house: all the doors were open, and from where she stood in the kitchen she could see the bed she shared with Elsie, with its heterogeneous heap of coverings. The sitting-room contained nothing but a collection of odds and ends of rubbish which belonged to Charley—his 'things' as he called them—bits of wood, string and rope; one wheel of a perambulator, a top, an iron hoop and so on. Through the other door was visible the dilapidated bedstead that had been used by the old people, with a similar lot of bedclothes to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... of that sort," through a medley of odds and ends, the Quiet Stockman scanned titles and dipped here and there into unknown worlds, and Dan coming ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... told with icy dignity that the boy would take him ashore in the cook's lurky. No greater insult could have been offered to an officer. The Consul at that time was Walter Maynard, a charming man whom I knew well years afterwards. Although I only heard odds and ends of what transpired, I feel sure the advice given was in the mate's interests, and made him see his objection from another point of view. He did not take kindly to bringing the labourers off, but he sullenly commenced from that ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman

... David, who was not on his knees after all, but down on his nose, prostrate Orientally. The fact is, Lucy, among her other qualities, good and bad, was a born housewife, and solicitously careful of certain odds and ends called property. She found she had dropped one of her gloves in the garden, and she came back in a state of disproportionate uneasiness to find it, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Professor Macon was away a large part of the time; yet, as he was constantly sending home cases of specimens, she was usually kept nearly as busy as before. But one day, sitting at her desk with only a few unimportant odds and ends of work before her, her thoughts drifted away, and soon formed themselves into words and sentences which seemed clamoring for definite expression. She seized her pen and some blank paper, setting them down as rapidly as possible, and before she quite ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... folk, used to the luxuries of the east, I dare say that office would have seemed mean enough. But the men had been so long away from leather chairs, hair-cloth sofa, wall mirror, wine decanter and other odds and ends which furnish a gentleman's living apartments that the very memory of such things had faded, and that small room, with its old-country air, seemed the vestibule to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... on board and explained to Bernhardi and von Bulow the horrors of war, and if they did not listen to you, you would, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin lead them off with all the other disagreeable odds and ends, submarines and Zeppelins, to an island, way, way out in the ocean, where they would have to stay until they promised to be ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... no one could eat another bite, Mother and Grandmother folded up the cloth and put the sandwiches left over in one box. All the odds and ends were put down on a paper plate for Bruce to eat, and then Grandpa dug a hole in the ground and he and Sunny Boy buried ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White

... into a miniature Crewe. The great workshops that had grown with the line were equipped with diverse and elaborate machines. Plant of all kinds purchased in Cairo or requisitioned from England, with odds and ends collected from Ishmail's scrap heaps, filled the depots with an extraordinary variety of stores. Foundries, lathes, dynamos, steam-hammers, hydraulic presses, cupola furnaces, screw-cutting machines, and drills had been set up and were in continual work. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... found—odds and ends—and crammed into the swivel up to the muzzle: and, in another minute, its "cargo of notions" was crashing into the poop-windows, silencing the fire from thence ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... matted and shiny, covering his ears and falling about his shoulders, he was scarcely an attractive-looking person. Besides, he had lost an eye; and its empty socket irresistibly drew your gaze—an abhorrent vacuum. His clothes would be the odds and ends of students' offcasts, in the last stages of disintegration. He had a chronic stoop; always aimed his surviving eye obliquely at you, from a bent head; and walked with a sort of hang-dog shuffle ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... were shooting up from the out-buildings at the farther end, the place where I had first seen the woman. Some agreed plan must have been acted on, and Ivery was destroying all traces of his infamous yellow powder. Even now the concierge with her odds and ends of belongings would be slipping out to some refuge in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... the great circular brooms of a monstrous sweeper shot forth streams of brown water and melting snow. Then she went on, casting glances at the windows of small stores, and finally stopped before a little shop, dark and uninviting, whose soiled glass front revealed odds and ends of old jewelry, watches, optical goods and bric-a-brac that had a sordid aspect. She had long ago noticed the ancient sign disposed behind the panes. It ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... however, is to be observed, in the country of the Loire, in every one who carries a key. It is true that at Langeais there is no great occasion to indulge in the tourist's weak- ness of dawdling; for the apartments, though they contain many curious odds and ends of, antiquity, are not of first-rate interest. They are cold and musty, indeed, with that touching smell of old furniture, as all apartments should be through which the insatiate American wanders in the rear of a bored domestic, pausing to stare at a faded tapestry or to read the name ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... a bit," he answered. "Mr. Groves is real pleased with me. He says I am a steady lad, and he often sets me to cast up accounts for him, and do little odds and ends of jobs. He says he has always railed against the School Board, but sometimes, when he sees how tidy I can write, and how well I can read and spell, he's ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... of it out of the corner of my eye and saw that it was drenched with blood. By the time that he had removed the bandage, gently clipping away, with a pair of scissors, the hair that stuck to it here and there, Burroughs, the assistant surgeon, had turned up with hot water and a number of odds and ends, and Wilson took the sponge in his ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... Goswell Street and so transferred his abode to very good old-fashioned and comfortable quarters, to wit, the George and Vulture Tavern and Hotel, George Yard, Lombard Street, and forthwith sent Sam to settle the little matters of rent and such-like trifles and to bring back his little odds and ends from Goswell Street. This done they shortly left the tavern for Dingley Dell, where they had a royal Christmas time. That the tavern appealed to Mr. Pickwick as ideal for the entertainment of friends is incidentally revealed in the record that after ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... no case of disappearance. In every one of the fourteen rooms were the unmistakable signs of a deliberate removal. Discarded stuff was mixed with the odds and ends of packing case materials, a scattered collection of temporary nails, a half-finished but never used box ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... barn at the Briars Uncle Tucker was at work rooting up the foundations upon which had been built his lifetime of lordship over his fields. In the middle of the floor was a great pile of odds and ends of old harness, empty grease cans, broken tools, and scraps of iron. Along one side of the floor stood the pathetically-patched old implements that told the tale of patient saving of every cent even at the cost of much greater labor to the fast weakening old back and shoulders. A new plow-shaft ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... led the way out into the yard; and there, indeed, amid an indescribable litter of timber—wreckwood in balks and boards, worthless lengths of deck-planking, knees, and transoms, stem-pieces and stern-posts, and other odds and ends of bygone craft, condemned spars, barrel-staves, packing-cases—a boat reposed on the stocks; but such a boat as might make a sane man doubt his eyesight. The Elder stared at her slowly, incapable of speech; stared and pulled out a bandanna handkerchief and slowly wiped the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Lady Augusta. What's Lady Augusta to you? Any odds and ends that I may owe, have nothing to do with Lady Augusta. Look here, Simms, I'll pay ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... down over the edge of the couch, and the revolver was on the floor where he dropped it. There was his finger marks on it all right and no one else's. The gun is there," pointing to a table, among miscellaneous odds and ends, "and nobody touched it. The door was locked from inside and so was the window of the bedroom. They tell me he always slept with the door ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... such heavy weather of it. He was even so busy that little odds and ends of his work were turned over to David, crusts for which the latter was as grateful as the Lazaruses always have been. But this suggested ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... be your motto,— Little things bring weal or woe; Save the odds and ends, my children, Some one wants them, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... surprised that a middle-aged couple, not very strong, or very good walkers, the lady loaded with a basket containing two bottles of wine and a metal drinking-cup, and the gentleman carrying a heavy knapsack, filled with all sorts of odds and ends, strapped to his shoulders, should set off on a seven-mile walk, jump over a wall, run up a hillside, and yet feel in very good trim to enjoy a sunset view. This peculiar state of things ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... and the Bear charged on that instead. One sweep of his paw and the canvas tent was down and torn. Whack! and tins went flying this way. Whisk! and flour-sacks went that. Rip! and the flour went off like smoke. Slap—crack! and a boxful of odds and ends was scattered into the fire. Whack! and a bagful of cartridges was tumbled after it. Whang! and the water-pail was crushed. Pat-pat-pat! and all the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton

... at—was, I reasoned, in its special, its guarded objectivity. This objectivity, in turn, when achieving its ideal, came from the imposed absence of that "going behind," to compass explanations and amplifications, to drag out odds and ends from the "mere" storyteller's great property-shop of aids to illusion: a resource under denial of which it was equally perplexing and delightful, for a change, to proceed. Everything, for that matter, becomes interesting from the moment ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... with his arms full of buffalo chips, filled the stove full, and touched a match to them. On each side of the stove was a blanket, which on being raised proved to conceal little cupboards devoted to various odds and ends. One contained books and magazines, a whip or two, and several pairs of spurs, and in the other were to be found the dishes from which the inmates had eaten breakfast, all neatly washed and put away. Tom was surprised at the air of neatness ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon

... might please you, my friend showed me an official memo., which he had just received from one of his officers in command of an outlying detachment, and of course of the odds and ends of British personnel adhering thereto: cooks, guards, etc. The memo. ran as follows, and it repays careful study and thinking out; I give you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... shape of glittering, polished, or bright-coloured objects. Every door-sill is a cabinet of curiosities where the collector gathers smooth pebbles, variegated shells, empty snail-shells, parrot's feathers, bones that have come to look like sticks of ivory. The odds and ends mislaid by man find a home in the bird's museum, where we see pipe-stems, metal buttons, strips of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room; the silver taper-stand which the young advocate bought for her with his first fee; a row of small packets inscribed by her hand, and containing the hair of such of her children as had died before her; and more odds and ends of a like sort—pathetic tokens of a love which bound together for a little while here on earth, and binds together for evermore in ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Philip Firmin walked into this room, and sat down in the chair opposite. In the novel of "Pendennis," written ten years ago, there is an account of a certain Costigan, whom I had invented (as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern parlor one night—and this Costigan came into the room alive—the very man:—the most remarkable resemblance of the printed sketches of the man, of the rude drawings in which I had depicted him. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... any problem beyond financing his thirst at the tavern, where presently ingenuity, though it expressed itself with a silver tongue, failed him, and he realized that the river's spent floods had left him stranded with those other odds and ends of worthless drift that ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... she said she thought the U. S. C. could do anything it set out to do, but that there would be countless odds and ends that would ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith

... even on Earth the building of a hyperspace transmitter was a long, slow job, with all the materials they needed and all the special tools and equipment. Here we'll have to do everything by hand and for materials we have only broken and burned-out odds and ends. It will take about fifty years—it can't ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... minutes, until Tucker had got over his chagrin about the guns. But we managed to get in smooth water again, and when we were through I had taken a fair order from him, and much of it was for little odds and ends that paid us a good profit. I bade him good-day with a feeling of gratitude, and assured him ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... Frida wore at her christening. She was the first one; bless you, and you think at the time it's something wonderful. Oh dear!"—she sighed and laid the doll back in the cupboard in which the clean pillowcases and Frida's and her Sunday hats were together with all kinds of odds and ends—"how time flies. ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... No, I leave you something more precious than gold—the sense of a great kindness. But I've a little gold left. Bring me those trinkets." I placed on the bed before him several articles of jewellery, relics of early foppery: his watch and chain, of great value, a locket and seal, some odds and ends of goldsmith's work. He trifled with them feebly for some moments, murmuring various names and dates associated with them. At last, looking up with clearer interest, "What has become," ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James

... which is bad wood for working as it splits and twists on drying; the rest is converted into deals, battens, and boards. The outside slab pieces are made into staves for barrels, while the general odds and ends that remain behind are used as fuel for engines, steamboats, or private house consumption in Finland, where coal being practically unknown, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... name of the firm of Messrs Fulke, Warner & Murchison was painted on the windows also; it could be seen from any part of the market square, which lay, with the town hall in the middle, immediately below. During four days in the week the market square was empty. Odds and ends of straw and paper blew about it; an occasional pedestrian crossed it diagonally for the short cut to the post-office; the town hall rose in the middle, and defied you to take your mind off the ugliness of municipal institutions. On the other days it was a scene of activity. Farmers' wagons, with ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... take the other way back. Passing between two booths, they came out at the back of the rows, where it was comparatively quiet. It gave them greater space to move, but it was not pleasant walking. Every now and then they came across piles of dingy straw, or a bundle of old rags, or odds and ends of soiled draperies, which had become almost too worn out to use, or wooden cases which had seen many journeys, and were overflowing with shavings and paper. This was indeed a contrast to the life and brightness on the ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... is clean swept, spick and span as a toy town; Bordeaux is coquettish as her charming Bordelaise; Nantes, certainly, is not particularly careful of appearances. But Marseilles is dirty, unswept, littered from end to end; you might suppose that every householder had just moved, leaving their odds and ends in the streets, if, indeed, these beautifully-shaded walks can be so called. The city in its development has laid out alleys and boulevards instead of merely making ways, with the result that in spite of brilliant sky and burning sun, coolness and shadow are ever to be had. The ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... for the interior, in order to witness the national festivities, nothing remained but the purgatory of preparation, the squabbling about the hire of horses, the purchase of odds and ends for convenience on the road, for no such thing as a canteen is to be had at Belgrade. Some persons recommended my hiring a Turkish Araba; but as this is practicable only on the regularly constructed roads, I should have lost the sight of the most picturesque regions, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... nor would you discover it again if you searched all London, with the whole police at your back. Besides, Dawson is not the only person in the house for whom the law is hunting—there are a score others whom I have no desire to give up to the gallows—hid among the odds and ends of the house, as snug as plums in a pudding. God forbid that I should betray them, and for nothing too! No, your honour, the only plan I can think of is the one I proposed; if you do not approve of it, and it certainly is open to exception, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... His mere book-knowledge was not much to boast of, though early in life he must have received a fair education. He had a smattering of the ancient classics, sufficient, perhaps, to startle the unlearned. If he had not read them, he had read about them; and at various odds and ends of his life he had picked up acquaintance with the popular standard modern writers. But literature with him was the smallest stripe in the party-coloured ball. Still it was astonishing how far and wide the Comedian could spread ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... moment he stood there, looking around at the familiar and dainty objects in the room which he had pictured in his mind's eye a million times in that brief month; at the piano,—closed and unused of late; at the pictures and statuettes, and the quaint little odds and ends in the way of "what-nots," book-stands, tables, and chairs; at the broad and inviting lounge with its beautiful covering and soft pillows, and the bear-skin rugs at the foot; at the rich silk and bamboo screen of Japanese handiwork that kept the chilling draught from the piano or work-table ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... metal for the oil consumed by the lights. A whole year's stock of oil, or about 1100 gallons, is stored in these tanks. Here also is a small carpenter's bench and tool-box, besides an endless variety of odds and ends,—such as paint-pots, brushes, flags, waste for cleaning ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... she worried me. Her odds and ends of conversation pecked at me like a small bird. She told me a riddle which filled me with nausea, and finally a limerick which I had heard three times ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold

... must be done by the proper officials. I thought it might be interesting to attend to securing this special permit myself instead of sending the dvornik (the yard porter), whose duties comprise as many odds and ends as those of the prime ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... animal warily, reluctant to keep such a nervous creature standing in the traces. If one is prompt one feels impatient and fretful whilst watching one's more tardy fellows. Wilson and Meares hang about ready to help with odds and ends. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... General Paget. Rumours galore. We are going to Cape Town with the prisoners; to Harrismith; to Winberg; to the Transvaal on another campaign, etc. Definite orders came to move the next morning. In the evening an unusual flood of odds and ends of rations was poured on us; flour, a little biscuit, a little fat for cooking, diminutive hot potatoes, a taste of goose, commandeered the same day by the mounted gunners, a little butter from the same source, besides the usual sugar, cooked meat, and tea. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... curious and eccentric a taste in clothes? No woman was to be seen in the garden-paths; a man, in a butler's apron and a silk skullcap, came and went, his arms piled high with gowns and scarves, and all manner of strange odds and ends. Each morning some new assortment of garments met our wondering eyes. Sometimes it was a collection of Empire embroidered costumes that were hung out on the line; faded fleur-de-lis, sprigs of dainty lilies and roses, gold-embossed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... of the room. He ate a lonely meal, not of the lobster—he kept that for another occasion—but one made up of cold scraps from the pantry. He wandered uneasily about the premises, quieted Job's wails for the time by a gift of eatable odds and ends tossed into the boathouse, smoked, tried to read, and, when it grew dusk, lit the lamps in the towers. At last he walked to the closed door of his helper's ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... commencing with fennel and ending with sage, and are capable of wide application. In one case which came under my observation, the cook made a celery-flavored stew of some meat scraps. Not being wholly consumed, the surviving debris appeared a day or two later, in company with other odds and ends, as the chief actor in a meat pie flavored with parsley. Alas, a left-over again! "Never mind," mused the cook; and no one who partook of the succeeding stew discovered the lurking parsley and its overpowered progenitor, the celery, under the effectual ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... recognized people, so long forgotten that I no longer knew their names. Their faces alone lived in me. In my mother's letters I saw again the old servants, the shape of our house and the little insignificant odds and ends which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... introduced, she had been sleepless night after night. Though this sleeplessness had passed away, she still took a nerve tonic to brace her through her work; and this was the case with another folder. The mothers of both these girls urged them to return to week work. But this was of poor quality—odds and ends—and the girls disliked it, and persisted ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt

... Poor feller! He had lived on odds and ends for several days, eatin' crackers that had bin turned over by revelers in the bread ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne

... old Asquith says." For the next few days Bill was seen in close communion with a fellow Australian. They went about the trenches picking up bits of wood, nails, mirrors, and other odds and ends. These were carried into the little hole of the inventive genius, and there all gradually saw the growth of a wonderful invention. It wasn't Bill's idea exactly. He was simply the managing director, who stimulated ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... of the feast, whirled him round with such a splendid send that bench and trestle, tankards and flagons, chairs and cloths and candelabras all went down into thundering chaos with him, and the envoy only stayed when his sacred person came to harbour amongst the westral odds and ends, the soiled linen, and dirty ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... and apartment, there lives the concierge in a box of a room generally, containing a huge feather-bed and furnished with a variety of things left by departing tenants to this faithful guardian of the gate. Many of these small rooms resemble the den of an antiquary with their odds and ends from the studios—old swords, plaster casts, sketches and discarded furniture—until the place is quite full. Yet it is kept neat and clean by madame, who sews all day and talks to her cat and to every one who passes into the court-yard. ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... which it was intended. Between the church and the hill, and almost adjoining it, is the farmhouse, where the church keys are kept—a relic of Alciston Grange (once the property of Battle Abbey)—with odds and ends of its past life still visible, and a flourishing fig-tree at the back, heavy with fruit when I saw it under a September sun. The front of the house looks due east, across a valley of corn, to Berwick church, on a corresponding ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... affair, with a small loft overhead, for the storage of extra oars and odds and ends of boat lumber. Up into the loft went the two boys and opened the tiny window at either end—-thus letting in some needed fresh air. Then they took the rank-smelling flour paste and poured half of the stuff into an old paint can ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill

... sitting up with her back to the wall, pressed her hands to her temples and tried to think. She could not. For the moment the strain had broken her, and her mind ran only on trifles—her wardrobe, a hundred small odds and ends of personal property left behind ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... plan is extremely simple. It consists of two rooms, oblong, and generally of the same size—one to live in, the other to sleep in—for the great majority of the squatters' hovels have no upstair rooms. At one end there is a small shed for odds and ends. This shed used to be built with an oven, but now scarcely any labourers bake their own bread, but buy of the baker. The walls of the cottage having been carried up some six feet, or six feet six—just a little higher than a man's head—the next process is to construct the roof, which is ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... said I, "is in an awful muddle about all sorts of things that are going on in this town. So I should esteem it a favour if you would tell me at once any odds and ends of gossip you may pick up. They may ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... and whose mind was a magazine of amusing information; an excellent musical critic, who was not afraid to criticise Sybil's singing; a connoisseur in bric-a-brac, who laughed at Madeleine's display of odds and ends, and occasionally brought her a Persian plate or a bit of embroidery, which he said was good and would do her credit. This old sinner believed in everything that was perverse and wicked, but he accepted the prejudices of Anglo-Saxon society, and was too clever ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams



Words linked to "Odds and ends" :   motley, hodgepodge, mishmash, potpourri, smorgasbord, mixture, assortment, miscellany, miscellanea, mixed bag, variety, salmagundi



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