The crews competed to cut the most timber.
I'll be going along, doing my starving-writer thing, free from the shackles of 'The Tube'; and, suddenly, my inspiration will die. Just gone, yoinked like a plug.
Talk him down, the rule book went. Calm him, get him secured. Easier said than done. Crane had talked down a would-be jumper standing on a support cable of the George Washington Bridge.
Now if the debtor pleads that I do not know the law but I will comply with whatever the thingmen think lawful, he [the creditor] must summon him before the thing after five nights, at the shortest, and five times five at the longest, if he knows when the thing is to meet; […] it is then the duty of the thingmen to decide the matter and to award him his money.