"Off and on" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and very little else to speak of," replied Austin, laughing. "I'm always reading, off and on, without much system, you know. But if I'm rather desultory I always enjoy reading, because books give me so many new ideas, and it's delightful to have always something fresh to ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... 30 men. She manned us with twelve men, Spaniards, French, Germans and Americans, and carried us towards the Florida coast. Being arrived on the coast nearly opposite to Havana, the privateer went in shore to reconnoitre, and our ship lay off and on. Next morning she returned with two small vessels, a schooner and sloop. We then all four steered over the reef towards the small islands, and on Tuesday afternoon were brought to anchor in a little harbour formed by the Florida isles ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... re-delivered the anti-coercion speech which he has been making off and on for the last forty years. Mr. DEVLIN was a little more up-to-date, for he introduced a reference to the Belfast riots and drew from the CHIEF SECRETARY an assurance that the Bill would be as applicable to Ulster as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... it all ship-shape and proper yet," said Mr. Benn, slowly, "but it's in my mind's eye. It's been there off and on like for ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... right, things do change, especially the weather. That night, unexpectedly, for when I turned in the sky seemed quite serene, there came a terrible rain long before it was due, which lasted off and on for three whole days and continued intermittently for an indefinite period. Needless to say the river, which it would have been so easy to cross on this particular evening, by the morning was a raging torrent, and so remained ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... came in from the street to listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly brute—well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose, and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "Eh bien, Pilleux—you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's acceptance of the elemental facts of life—it was raw, that hymn of his! ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the buckskin steed, not as my own property, however, but as a government horse that I could ride. I gave him the name of "Buckskin Joe," and he proved to be a good second Brigham. That horse I rode off and on during the summers of 1869, '70, '71, and '72, and he was the horse that the Grand Duke Alexis rode on ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... here's Lot Number Three, a likely young nigger who answers to the name of Sam Brown. Not much to look at, but will make a good field hand, if looked after right and kept away from liquor; used to workin', when in the chain gang, where he's been, off and on, since he was ten years old. Amount of fine an' costs thirty-seven dollars an' a half. A musical nigger, too, who plays the banjo, an' sings jus' like a—like a blackbird. What am I bid for this ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... was spent standing off and on; and at day-break the next morning, I steered for the N.W., or lee-side of the island; and as we stood round its S. or S.W. part, we saw it every where guarded by a reef of coral rock, extending, in some places, a full mile from the land, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... in it, but I thought that if a man had one, it was apt to trouble him a little off and on—especially if the one he had was one of these left-over ones. "If you had one of these consciences—I mean the kind of conscience that pretends to belong to you, and acts as if it belonged to some one else," ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... years or more. Of those in one place of service for three or more years, five remained four years; two, four years and a half; nine, five years; three, six years; four, seven years; two, eight years; one, twelve years; three, fifteen years, and one, "eighteen years off and on;" in all, a total of thirty in 802 cases that were in one place of ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... in thickets and stroll among woods, to obey the impulse of the moment, and to prate or be silent, just as my humour prompted me. All this I loved more than to go to and fro in the same path, and at stated hours to look off and on a book, to read just as much and of such a kind, to stand up and be seated, just as another thought proper to direct. I hated to be classed, cribbed, rebuked, and feruled at the pleasure of one who, as it seemed to me, knew no guide in his rewards but caprice, and no ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... and now leaving us, and so off and on, is even more terrible than total darkness; and a sort of uncertain sounds are, when the necessary dispositions concur, more ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and his braves rode so fast that it was a good while afore I cotched up, and found that he hadn't the younker with him. Then, in course, I turned back and found that yer had flopped so much, off and on yer trail, that there was a good deal of trouble to ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... to a city once. I never saw a town bigger'n Lumberville. I've never seen a play, but I've read of 'em in the magazines. It must be wonderful; they say they have wharves and real ships coming up to the wharf, and people getting off and on. How do ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the day when Major Duplay went to Fairholme, the two sat together in the garden after dinner. It was nine o'clock, a close still night, with dark clouds now and then slowly moving off and on to the face of a moon nearly full. They had been silent for some minutes, sipping coffee. Cecily pointed to the row of windows in the ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... moment or two. Sixth Avenue was a deserted highway, on which red and green lights blinked off and on in the usual routine, signaling to drivers who were non-existent. There were vistas of deserted streets and avenues. There were some few living things—policemen in uniform, standing in pairs and larger groups, all concentrated in an area covering no more than twenty ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... this," began Tammock, putting a red doit of peat into the bowl of his pipe and squinting down at it with one eye shut to see that it glowed. "I had been payin' my respects to Tibby up at the Hilltap off and on ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... little in the course of the administration so far to encourage a man to shake off old party ties and try to make men better. He desires to say that after conversing with a large number of the purest men, men who have been in both political parties off and on for years and yet have never been corrupted by office, men who have left convention after convention in years past because those conventions were corrupt and endorsed other men than themselves for office, he finds that your appointment of Cabinet officers will only please two ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... "see, here are the keys. They slip off and on this spring swivel; the old man always wore them there. The key of that door; the key of the iron chamber; the key of the steel chest. Gentlemen, I shall remove the keys. Mr Capel, they are yours, now. ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... reflect on your specialty, but you never did see a case of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and keep her there suffering so that I've had to give her aspirin a hundred times and even morphin by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on for five years she's had ten, and sometimes fifteen grains of veronal at midnight, nights when she couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves, then I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I think in forty- five years practicing medicine a man ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... been decided that all were to take part in the race—consequently all were bent on losing not one moment of practice. They swam, off and on, for the whole morning—occasionally throwing themselves upon the mossy bank, to rest and get their breath, then going at it again with renewed ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... of November there had been a smell of smoke in the air from the early morning. The marsh up north was afire—as it had been off and on for a matter of twenty-odd years. The fire consumes on the surface everything that will burn; the ground cools down, a new vegetation springs up, and nobody would suspect—as there is nothing to indicate—that only a few feet below the heat lingers, ready to leap up again ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... lie deep beside the wharves of Huelva and Palos; but although Huelva still has a trade the tides bring nothing to Palos, and take nothing away with them again. From La Rabida now you can no longer see, as Columbus saw, fleets of caravels lying-to and standing off and on outside the bar waiting for the flood tide; only a few poor boats fishing for tunny in the empty sunny waters, or the smoke of a steamer standing on her course for the Guadalquiver ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... whispered rumors off and on that the young king was dead these many years, but not even in whispers did the men of Lutha dare voice the name of him whom they believed had caused his death. For lesser things they had seen their friends and neighbors ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... straightway. An evil enough place it looked, perilously narrow and with mighty seas that broke in thunderous spray to right and left of it; insomuch that heedful of Adam's warning (and all too late) I was minded to bear up and stand away, plying off and on, until the waves should have moderated. But in my folly I had sailed too near and now, swept onward by some current, the boat, responding no more to her helm, was borne on at ever-increasing speed. So thus helpless and at mercy of the seas ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... accepted this ring as a pledge of amity, and had worn it ever since—by his earnest request—until it had become as familiar to her finger as the one beside it. But now she kept looking at it, and taking it off and on ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... since presently, if things went well or if they did not go well, he must privily give a designated signal for the benefit of a Gulwing underling, a lesser member of the mob, who was already on hand, standing off and on in the offing. Sitting there Marr was well protected from the view of persons passing through, bound to or from the grill room, the desk or the elevators. This also was as it should be. Better still, he was practically out of sight of those who might approach ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... it is my very thought," says he. "You see, I have just been set on shore here by a very honest man, whose name I cannot remember, and who is to stand off and on for me till morning, at some danger to himself; and, to be clear with you, I am a little concerned lest it should be at some to me. I have saved my life so often, Mr. ——, I forget your name, which is a very ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... J. Ryan, better known as Father Ryan, are unambitious. The poet modestly wished to call them only verses; and, as he tells us, they "were written at random,—off and on, here, there, anywhere,—just as the mood came, with little of study and less of art, and always in a hurry." His poems do not exhibit a painstaking, polished art. They are largely emotional outpourings of a heart that readily found expression in fluent, melodious ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... ought to know something about Rooshia, seein' I've lived there, off and on, this fifteen year and more; and if a young man was to come to me and ax me where's the best place for a workin' man to git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!" Why so? says ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... will coil on the strings at the top to the spindle, pull down the pencil handle quickly, and then the machine will spin round. Work the handle in this way up and down, like a pump, the cord will alternately run off and on to the spindle, and the machine will continue to whirl round, first one way and then the other, until the pearl-shell, or whatever it ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... him the paper—he had it some place, though he very seldom opened any of his exchanges. He evidently bore Mr. Steadman no ill-will for his plain talk two weeks ago. With some difficulty he found it, with its wrapper still intact. It was a loose wrapper, which slipped off and on easily. Mr. Steadman remarked carelessly that there was an editorial in it to which his attention had been drawn, on hearing which Mr. Driggs turned his head and winked ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... response, "that's diff'rent. She's at home. She works when I tell her—if she chooses," Mrs. Collins concluded with a chuckle, for Lizzie had dropped her broom and was sitting in the middle of the floor pulling Honey-Sweet's shoes and stockings off and on. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... sympathy which his tongue, intimidated by her manner, dared not give. But his hand also refused to obey him. The clasp was strictly ceremonious. As she was drawing the heavy latch of the door he forced himself to say, "I'm in Brighton sometimes, off and on. Now I know where you are, I must look ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... time, Secesh," is the answer; as though it were observed, ooo-ooo-sp't! "I leave for New York again to-morrow; but shall be off and on again in Bumsteadville until midsummer, when I go to Egypt, Illinois, to be an engineer on a railroad. The stamps left me by my father are all in the stock of that road, and the Mr. BUMSTEAD whom you saw to-night ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... voice suddenly rang at her. "Off and on! Why, my good woman, it's just two days you could have worn ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... of a rocket company, and some sappers and miners. This expedition left Kingston on the 4th of May, and arrived off Oswego about noon on the day following. It was then however, blowing a gale of wind, from the northwest, and it was considered expedient to keep off and on the port, until the weather calmed. It was the morning of the 6th, before a landing could be effected, when about one hundred and forty men, under Colonel Fischer, and two hundred seamen, under Captain Mulcaster, Royal Navy, were sent ashore, in the face of a heavy fire of grape and round shot ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... dinner on earth. It ranked with the best and the others were in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night, almost everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Every one who was any one in the town could be seen there off and on. It was perfectly respectable. A man might take his wife and ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... if our friends suspect you?" said Crossthwaite. "Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and the Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? Though Sandy is too kind-hearted to tell you, you ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... had just got a new key to the situation. So that threat about America could serve a double purpose? He was now more than ever convinced that Ferdinand Lind was merely playing off and on with him until this money question should be settled; and that he had been resolved all the time that his daughter should not marry. He was ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... every day for ten years. I heard your mother had engaged her to go in the new house; she'll take the upper hand of us all. Your grandfather, Mr. John Morgeson, is willing to part with her; tired of her, I spose. She has been housekeeping there, off and on, these thirty years. She's fifty, if she is a day, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... were set in order, and that the wind increased towards night, we plied off and on, till day (13th November), at what time our Captain sent in ELLIS HIXOM, who had then charge of his pinnace, to search out some harbour along the coast; who having found out a little one, some ten or twelve leagues to the east of Santa Marta, where in sounding he had good ground and sufficient ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... upon a strong staff. It sustained him without a break through that period, great as was the strain to which it was subjected. But early in the latter year the prop gave way, and the pioneer was prostrated by a severe fit of sickness. It lasted off and on for quite two years. His activity the first year was seriously crippled, though at no time, owing to his indomitable will, could he be said to have been rendered completely hors de combat. Almost the whole of 1836 he spent with his wife's family in Brooklyn, where his first child was born. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Ralph purchased a guide-book for twenty-five cents. He studied it off and on the entire afternoon, walking around in the meantime. Before he retired that night at the hotel, he had taken in the city from Fourteenth ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... Livingstone, pressing upon his departing guest in the hall the usual whiskey and soda, found it necessary instead to give him another kind of support, and to put him immediately and authoritatively to bed. Lindsay was very well content to submit; he confessed to fever off and on for four and five days past, and while the world went round the pivotal staircase, as Dr. Livingstone gave him an elbow up, he was indistinctly convinced that the house of a friend was better than a shelf at the club. The next evening's meeting saw his place empty under the window ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of your Common Sense Medical Advisers, and found it worth five times what I gave for it; I have helped others to get it and the "Medical Discovery" and "Favorite Prescription" have brought relief to many through me I use the "Prescription" off and on; it has given me strength; I think I should have been an invalid ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Pardee Butler preached politics, and I said that if ever I heard him begin to preach politics, I was going to get right up in meeting, and ask him to show his Scripture for preaching politics. Now I've been hearing him preach, off and on, for twenty years, and I've never got up in meeting yet, for I've never heard him preach ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... accident? It is, indeed, somewhat extraordinary that in the perpetual permutations of international politics the Hohenzollerns have never gone astray into the path of enlightenment. They have been in alliance with almost everybody off and on; with France, with England, with Austria, with Russia. Can any one candidly say that they have left on any one of these people the faintest impress of progress or liberation? Prussia was the enemy of the French monarchy, but a worse enemy of the French Revolution. Prussia had been ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... 'testimonies of study,' the design for his Thesis, and the designs produced during the examination itself—all these peopled his brain; but they were in order; they were under control; they were his slaves. For four and a half hours, off and on, he had admirably displayed the reality of his knowledge, and then he was sent into a fresh room to meet a fresh examiner. There he stood in the room alone with his designs for a small provincial town hall—a key-plan, several one-eighth scale-plans, a piece of half-inch detail, and two rough ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Good Hope. The tradition of seamen was that a Dutch skipper, irritated with a foul wind, swore by donner and blitzen, that he would beat into Table Bay in spite of God or man, and that, foundering with the wicked oath on his lips, he has ever since been working off and on near the Cape. The term is now extended to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... workin' with him, off and on, pretty much the hull time since he come; and he says he ha'n't begun to know ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... All day, off and on, now fewer and now more, the fools sat about the west end of my house and across the river, waiting for the show, whatever that was—fire to come down from heaven, I suppose, and consume me, bones and baggage. But by evening, like real islanders, they had wearied of the business, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sir George never spoke a word. Incredible as it may seem, however, he was continually, off and on, trying his hardest to think of some Sunday lesson to give his child. Many of those that knew the boy, regarded him as a sort of idiot, drawing the conclusion from Gibbie's practical honesty and his too evident love for his kind: it was incredible that a child should be poor, unselfish, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... going some," returned Griffin nonchalantly, as she started up the stair again, dragging the board after her. "The March Hare originated it back in the dark ages, and we've been doing it off and on—when the authorities ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... it, off and on, for over a month, and I can't seem to get any farther. I'm up against a snag now, ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... large as can be grasped in the hand, and about a pound in weight; the whole to be fenced round with a skirting of iron to prevent scattering. The mere standing on these will come to precisely the same thing as if for a certain portion of the day the horse were, off and on, stepping along a stony road; whilst being curried or when fidgeted by flies he will be forced to use his hoofs just as much as if he were walking. Nor is it the hoofs merely, but a surface so strewn with stones will tend to harden the ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... La Fleur, raising her hand. "Tell your mistress to get you a French coffee-pot, and if you don't know how to use it, I'll come and teach you. I shall be here off and on as long as Mrs. Drane stops in this house." And then, seating herself, La Fleur proceeded to put Molly through an elementary domestic ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... one of my strange fits, again, that overcame me," he said. "You know, Dick, that I have been subject to them, off and on, as far back in my life as I can remember. They come upon me without previous warning or apparent cause, sometimes in the form of extraordinarily vivid dreams, and sometimes as more or less vague memories, awakened by ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... another way. You know how impressed Orientals are by a fine beard. Years and years ago, I remember, the grave Abdullah, the great trader of Sambir, unable to repress signs of astonishment and admiration at the first sight of that imposing beard. And it's very well known that Bamtz lived on Abdullah off and on for several years. It was a unique beard, and so was the bearer of the same. A unique loafer. He made a fine art of it, or rather a sort of craft and mystery. One can understand a fellow living by cadging ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... flag for indifferent landing—hove up, put ye vessel under snug sail and stood off and on during night—at 4 P.M. Phillip's Island bore north distant 6 miles. A boat came along, into which we delivered a ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... pen-wipers will be once more charitably sold. The new purchasers, in their turn, will accurately imitate the dispositions of your lady wife. In short, Sir, the whole affair is a cycle of operations. The tea-cosies and pen-wipers are merely counters; they come off and on again like a stage army; and year after year people pretend to buy and pretend to sell them, with a vivacity that seems to indicate a talent for the stage. But in the course of these illusory manoeuvres, a great deal of money is given in charity, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with her cousins, staying with them days at a time. One of these cousins, now eighty-eight years of age, writes: "When Clara was seven years of age she was a very pleasant child, always eager to help someone. She lived with us, off and on, until she was twelve years old, when we moved to Michigan. She was as much at home with us as in her own home and we were sorry to ...
— Clara A. Swain, M.D. • Mrs. Robert Hoskins
... a scene as this evening. Derschau, Schwerin, Buddenbrock, Rochow, Flanz were present. We had been about an hour in the Red Room [languidly doing our tobacco off and on], when he [the King] had us shifted into the Little Room: drove out the servants; and cried, looking fixedly at me: 'No, I cannot endure it any longer! ES STOSSET MIR DAS HERZ AB,' cried he, breaking into German: 'It crushes the heart out of me; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... typewritten copies of things for the faculty, put on dress braids (that's how I met the B's), mend stockings, and wait on table off and on when some one's maid leaves suddenly. We thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for regular table-waiting; but I don't know. The other ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... off and on, sir," growled James. "I don't think he's hurt. Seems to me like what the doctor ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... time I ever, in my own experience, heard that word which rhymes to glove and comes as easily off and on (on some hands!)—it was from a man of whose attentions to another woman I was at that time her confidante. I was bound so to silence for her sake, that I could not even speak the scorn that was in me—and in fact my uppermost feeling was a sort of horror ... a terror—for ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... reason to believe exactly true. The English last year carried on a very valuable whale fishery on the coasts of Brazil, off the River Plate in South America, in the latitude 35 south, from thence to 40, just on the edge of soundings, off and on, about the longitude 65 from London. They have this year about seventeen vessels in the fishery, which have all sailed in the months of September and October. All the officers and almost all the men belonging to those seventeen vessels are Americans, from Nantucket and Cape Cod ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... daughter to be alone at the clearing, it was arranged that she should accompany him. They travelled by the Girondin to Hull, and coming on to London, put up at the Peveril. Mr. Coburn had been occupied off and on during the four days they had remained there, but the evenings they had spent together in amusements. On the night of the murder, Mr. Coburn was to have left for Hull to return to France by the Girondin, his daughter going by an earlier train to Eastbourne, where she was to have spent ten days with ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... hand trembled a little. Knowles's sharp eyes darted from one to the other; then, with a smothered growl, he shook himself, and rushed headlong into the old battle which he and the schoolmaster had been waging now, off and on, some six years. That was a fight, I can tell you! None of your shallow, polite clashing of modern theories,—no talk of your Jeffersonian Democracy, your high-bred Federalism! They took hold of the matter by the roots, clear at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... scraps with his fellows off and on ever since he could remember; but his first real fight came when he was twelve. He had had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of the returns from some freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and as words ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... could see was badly mauled, the smaller ship dodged round and round her, and off and on, plugging her as fast as the guns could be ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Jud Clark, all right," she said. "I knew him all his life, off and on. But I wish I hadn't screamed. I don't believe he killed Lucas, and I never will. I ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... coincidence of the present position of the ice with that which it occupied a little later in the year 1819. The whole body of it seemed to cling to the western shore, as if held there by some strong attraction, forbidding, for the present, any access to it. We now stood off and on, in the hope that a southerly breeze, which had just sprung up, might serve to open us a channel. In the evening the wind gradually freshened, and before midnight had increased to a strong gale, which blew with considerable violence for ten hours, obliging ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... royal exile in Rome, and was appointed secretary for Scotland. With Lochiel and others, Murray formed a Jacobite association in his native country. Negotiations were begun with the French court, which hung off and on, as did the English Jacobites. They would rise, if France supplied men, money, and arms. France would do this if sufficiently assured of support in England. The king had no enthusiasm for the enterprise. He was weary of promises and of leaning on that broken reed, Louis XV. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... down the river and stood, off and on, near its entrance. Will was delighted with the bright sea, dotted with ships and fishing craft. The sun was shining, and there was just enough wind to send the smack along briskly through the water, without ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... and the large expectations they secretly cherished of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably returned to Gen. Boswell's office as poor as he went. He was the inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not worth patenting, and his years had been ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... been resolving I won't, off and on, these ten years," said St. Clare; "but I haven't, some how, got clear. Have you got clear of all ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... after the surrender people was passing from the War and for two years off and on somebody come along going home. Some rode and some had a cane or stick walking. Mother was cooking a pot of shoulder meat. Them blue soldiers come by and et it up. I didn't get any I know that. They cleaned us out. Father ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Twelve sheets composed in a week!" And thus short-tone poems, or a long piece, such as the "Humoreske," of irregular form, were the result. Now that was not the way in which he composed his two sonatas. He was two years, off and on, at work on the first, in F sharp minor (Op. 11), and eight on the other, in G minor (Op. 22). One may therefore conclude that the fetters of form were a source of trouble to him. And he can scarcely have felt very enthusiastic over his task; in 1839, after both sonatas were completed, he ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... in addressed like that, and as you've been using part of the name I am willing to assume you're legally entitled to the rest of it. It clears up a point that off and on has troubled me considerable. I can only ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... exhaustion. It appears too that the young doctor, finding me there a short while after, carried me out and laid me on the ground with my head against the hut. He never admitted this: for I had been attending upon him, off and on, since his arrival, and that he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accounted for. But I cannot believe (as certainly I do not remember) that of my own motion I crawled outside the hut and stretched myself on the frozen ground, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... takes a good while, sometimes, but I don't fall down very often when there's enough money in it to make the game worth the candle. I've been two years, off and on, trying to locate Mortsen: and now that I've found him, he is where he can't be extradited. All the same, I'll bet you five to one he goes back with me in the next steamer—what? Have a new smoke. No? Then let's go and turn in; it's getting ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... things can be arranged—in a day or two, at farthest—you will go to sea for a three months' cruise, touching here, at the end of it, for your captain. Let me hear a good report of you, now, when you come back. At present, you will continue lying off and on the harbour. I will send you fresh provisions as soon as I can get them. There: I've nothing more to say; go forward to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was approached by a man whom he had known off and on for years, a man who was employed by you in connection with shipyard inquiries. He was informed that this man was still employed by you for the same purpose ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... belonging to the submarines got chased, and the Arethusa and Fearless went back to look after it. We presently heard a hot action astern, so the captain in command of the flotilla turned us around and we went back to help. But they had driven the enemy off and on our arrival told us to 'form up' on ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Captain Nicholson. "We'll stand off and on near where I place the shore line till we have daylight enough to see what we are about. Anyhow, I don't suppose there will be any lights, or if there are, they will likely be misplaced, to lure somebody ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... "Off and on in the summer time," said Augusta. "Of course he could not take much of the duty, because he had a clergyman's throat. I think it a great pity that he should have ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... climbed up beside the farmer and stretched her hand back to greet Willie. Willie took it rather timidly. He did not quite 'savvy' (as he expressed it to himself); his fiancee's friend was very simply attired, infinitely more simply than Nettie herself. Nettie had told him that her friend was 'off and on'(a vague and rather obscure qualification of the statement) in the same line as herself—namely, Court and high-class dressmaking. Yet there was a difference ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... what had become of the absentees. Without waiting for the signal, the Tritonia got under way, and under full sail, with a fresh breeze, stood out of the harbor. The other vessels followed her soon after, the principal intending to lay off and on till ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... order him to make all sail for Burlington, and see what old Carroway is up to. You be off for Whitby, and as far as Teesmouth, looking into every cove you pass. I shall stand off and on from this to Scarborough, and as far as Filey. Short measures, mind, if you come across them. If I nab that fellow Lyth, I shall go near to hanging him as a felon outlaw. His trick is a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... with Carson off and on about twelve years, but I never saw him appear to enjoy himself better than he did that night. After the Indians had gone, Uncle Kit imitated each one of us as he said we looked when the Indians first appeared in sight. He had some in the act of running and others trying to hide ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... looked confused—"I wanted to say that I am on the country-club committee to welcome English golfers, and I'll be away this week off and on. And—and whenever you want me to I'll try to keep under cover for a bit.... I think I do appreciate your telling me the truth last night more than anything else that has ever happened to me; there was something so stoically splendid about ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Fig. 92. Telegraph keys are merely pieces of apparatus by which the circuit can be conveniently and rapidly opened or closed at the will of the operator. An ordinary push-button may be used to turn off and on the current, but it is not so convenient as a "key." Fig. 92 shows a side view of a simple key. C is a metal strip about 3/4 in. wide and 4 or 5 in. long. At the left end it is fastened to the base with a screw, A. Another screw, X, serves as one binding-post. Y is another screw binding-post. W ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John
... Lieutenant ——, as he descended the companion way, after giving some orders on deck; "a regular gale this, by Jupiter; but we are spinning away ten knots, off and on." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... three months and better since that poor coffin was put under ground, and I declare I feel quite queer and lonesome without it. But business goes on quite well and brisk. Poor kind Peebles's man! he is off and on; almost always about the house, doing some kind job or other. He is a very decent body; but, I don't know how it is, I'm not to say comfortable. There's a sad noise with my sister's family. You know I never could bear children. My late husband, that's gone, was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... sir; off and on for the first week he was quite hisself at times; but for the last three days he hasn't known any one, and has talked and jabbered a deal, and has been ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... off and on, for a matter of two months, and have settled down to an unexhilarating but salutary routine. Each dawn we "stand to arms," and peer morosely over the parapet, watching the grey grass turn slowly to green, while snipers' bullets buzz over our heads. Each ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... from the table, and, going into a corner, fidgeted with the electric switches, turning certain additional lights off and on. ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... to be Japan. The country consisted of a double range of mountains; it abounded with wood, and had a pleasing variety of hills and dales. They saw the smoke of several towns, and many houses near the shore, in pleasant and cultivated situations. They stood off and on, according as the weather permitted them, till the 28th in the afternoon, when they lost sight of the land, and from its breaking off so suddenly, they conjectured that what they had before seen was a cluster of islands, lying off the ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... had her heart history too,—one of a different kind. She had "kept company" with David Milliken for a little matter of twenty years, off and on, and Miss Avilda had expected at various times to lose her friend and helpmate; but fear of this calamity had at length been quite put to rest by the fourth and final rupture of the bond, five ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... reserved till the moment of parting a supreme expression of good-will. When he had got a hand of Lydia's and one of Staniford's in each of his, with his wrists crossed, he said, "Now, I ain't one to tack round, and stand off and on a great deal, but what I want to say is just this: the Aroostook sails next week, and if you two are a mind to go back in her, the ship's yours, as I said to Miss Blood, here,—I mean Mis' Staniford; well, I hain't had much time to ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... innumerable band of spies who lived at that time in the service of the Austrian government. She was not a very clever woman, I am inclined to think, but she had been clever enough to induce a high official to fall in love with her, and by keeping this high official hanging off and on she had contrived to obtain promotion in her abominable calling far beyond her intellectual deserts. Brunow, it seemed, had known her for a year or two, but I learned afterwards that he had made no guess as to her real ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... of years ago I should think," Bobby answered. "Somebody brought him to the club. I've forgotten who. Carlos was working for a big Panama importing firm. He was trying to interest this chap in the New York end. I saw him off and on after that and got to like him for his quiet manner and a queer, dry wit he had in those days. Two or three months ago he—he seemed to fit into my humour, and we became pretty chummy as you know. Even after last night I hate to believe he's ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... hath drown'd his tongue in sack: for my part, the sea cannot drown me; I swam, ere I could recover the shore, five-and-thirty leagues, off and on, by this light.—Thou shalt be my lieutenant, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour; then at length he subsided, finding, I suppose, that one German baker, however infuriated, was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck. By the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... me before the ship sailed, I took leave of my Australian friend, gave him my last messages for Maryborough and Majorca, and went on board. I was wakened up about midnight by the noise of the anchor coming up; and, in a few minutes more, we were off and on our way to Honolulu up ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... the island of Ulietea, which lies S.W. by W. distant seven or eight leagues from Huaheine, and at half an hour after six in the evening we were within three leagues of the shore, on the eastern side. We stood off and on all night, and when the day broke the next morning, we stood in for the shore: We soon after discovered an opening in the reef which lies before the island, within which Tupia told us there was a good harbour. I did not, however, implicitly take his word; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... old woman," said Lady Anne, with very bright eyes. The doctor's visit had been an ordeal to her. "I have had the pain off and on for the last few months, but I assured myself that it was merely indigestion, which mimics so many things. I am glad my common-sense came to the rescue at last. Do you think I shall go off suddenly, or shall I have to lie, panting, like those poor creatures I've ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... that's sure; and I've got a notion he did. I've heard him talk about this cross off and on—it's been a good deal in his mind—and maybe he was a little out of his head. But ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... to a stop, and a number of passengers were getting off and on. Link Merwell darted into the midst of the crowd, and mounting one of the ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... From time to time I went down to the edge of the wood; but there was no change in the pavilion, and not a human creature was seen all day upon the links. The schooner in the offing was the one touch of life within my range of vision. She, apparently with no set object, stood off and on or lay to, hour after hour; but as the evening deepened, she drew steadily nearer. I became more convinced that she carried Northmour and his friends, and that they would probably come ashore after dark; not only because ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enough to make Bill chuckle. His mother said that the Major spoiled Bill. And in his secret heart Bill knew that there were times, off and on, say a few times every week, when the Major gave him treats that he would never have been able to coax from his mother. The little car for instance. His mother had declared that it was a crazy thing to give a boy twelve years old, no matter how tall and well grown he was, but the Major ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... was kept in a breathless state by the marvellous agility and skill of the gauzy lady who drove four horses at once, leaped through hoops, over banners and bars, sprang off and on at full speed, and seemed to enjoy it all so much it was impossible to believe that there could be any danger or exertion in it. Then two girls flew about on the trapeze, and walked on a tight rope, causing Bab to feel that she had at last found her sphere; for, young ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... of course," cried Vavasour; "but is that all? Let me give him that glove," which Cecil had been absently pulling off and on. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... all night; but at eight o'clock, as we were steering S.S.E. we saw a light ahead. Not knowing but it might be on some low detached isle, dangerous to approach while dark, we hauled the wind, and spent the night standing off and on, or rather driving to and fro; for we had ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... near Wilmington, Ohio, by John O. Wattles in 1841. He devoted most of his time to lecturing on Woman's Rights, The Sin of Slavery, The Temperance Reform and Peace. I heard him on all these subjects, off and on, till 1844, when we were married.... Seventy-nine summers with their clouds and sunshine, make it fitting I should greet you by letter rather than personal presence. May the cause never falter ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... tropics, I think you told me?" he said to Evadne, with exaggerated preciseness. "Ah! now, I have been, off and on, several times. The heat is very trying. I knew a lady, the wife of a Colonial Governor, who used to be so overcome by it that she was obliged to undo all her things, let them slip to the ground, and step out of them, leaving them looking like a great cheese. She told me so herself, I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... intention to anchor at Ambolou Island; but the wind died away before we reached it, and I determined to stand off and on all night. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... and pouring out the coffee; "I have a very particular gentleman-friend what's been keeping company with me for nearly a year, off and on." ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... seemed to have received all on board that she expected in the shape of passengers, but still stood off and on for some reason until the breaking day began to tinge the mountain tops beyond Anapa; when a last boat with five persons, one of whom was a female, came down to the clipper which was thrown in the wind's eye long enough ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... him go. Together with Rabbit, and the Mexican woman down El Paso way whom John had mentioned, but of whom Dad never had spoken, and no telling how many more scattered around the country, Dad seemed to be laying the groundwork for a lively roundup one of his days. He said he'd been marrying women off and on for forty years. His easy plan seemed to be just to take one that pleased his capricious temper wherever he found her, without regard to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... ever been there? Well, son, I was there off and on for about ten years, when the government first opened up the land, and you could travel for miles without ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... question of religion," said Meldon. "It's temperament. I don't suppose you understand what that means; but the fact is, that an Englishwoman wouldn't marry a man who hadn't been making love to her off and on for at least a week. If he hadn't got her thoroughly accustomed to his occasionally squeezing her hand, and offering to pick flowers for her, and picking up anything she dropped about, and— But I needn't go into details. The fact is, that if he hadn't made love to her pretty ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... standing off and on our vehicle for some time, with the signal for speaking set in his inquisitive countenance. I hailed him as Mr. Coffin; for Cooper has made Long Tom the legitimate father of all Nantucketers. He hove to, and gave us information about his home. There was a picnic, or some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... particular. Many were the rash vows he made that he would never think of her more—that he would tear her from his heart—that he would show her that he was no whining lover, no easy dupe, to be whiffled off and on, the sport ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... found among the records of antiquity, are the remains of an apostolic Father. He tells us, in his preface, that the subject has been before him "for nearly thirty years;" and that, during this period, it has "engaged his attention off and on in the intervals of other literary pursuits and official duties." Many, we apprehend, will feel that the result is not equal to such a vast expenditure of time and labour; and will concur with friends who, as he informs us, have ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... the slaves with food and water. As, however, the sea was breaking more heavily over the fore-deck than anywhere else, the utmost care had to be exercised in opening the fore-scuttle, a favourable opportunity having to be watched for, and the hatch whipped off and on again in a moment. Very little air, therefore, was obtainable from that source, and none whatever from elsewhere; the blacks, therefore, were dying below like rotten sheep, of suffocation, as was reported by those who came up from time to time after attending to the most ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the water's edge, looking huge and barren across the sea. We sped onward past Guantanamo Bay, where we saw the little picket-ships of the fleet; and in the afternoon we sighted Santiago Harbor, with the great war-ships standing off and on in front of it, gray and ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... their coming by a great sea that tumbles in on the shore for some time before they come, and by a black sky in the north-west. Upon these signs ships either get up their anchors, or slip their cables and put to sea, and ply off and on till the weather is over. Sometimes they are forced to do so 2 or 3 times before they can take in their lading; which it is hard to do here in the fairest weather: and for fresh water they send, as I have said, to Santa ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... the three occasions, and finished off at ten o'clock far less exhausted than I frequently am. Still, I scarcely got into my rooms before the giddiness came on in my head very badly, and continued off and on until ten the next morning. I can't account for it. It may be my stomach, or it may have something to do with the rocking of the steamer on Friday night. It may be what the doctors fear, my overtaxed brain, or it may be something else. Whatever it ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... brothers in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies exposed to wind; the snow falls off and on from October to May, and sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, on this wild September day, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expect me to retract!" cried Joseph, impetuously. "Never will I retract what I have said or done, for I act from conviction, and conviction does not slip off and on like a glove! But let us speak no more on this subject. If your holiness will write down your canonical objections to my proceedings against the church, I will lay them before my theologians for examination. My chancellor shall reply to them ministerially, and the correspondence ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... there are a great many of us who will not take the only way to secure that—viz. to do the actions which He commands, and to abstain from those which He forbids. Popular Christianity is a very easy-fitting garment; it is like an old shoe that you can slip off and on without any difficulty. But a religion which does not put up a strong barrier between you and many of your inclinations in not worth anything. The mark of a message from God is that it restrains and coerces and forbids and commands. And ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... takin' on 't down from time to time and allowin' of me to wear it as much as two or three minutes sometimes. The linin' was pea-green; and I've often thought since it was a leetle too fine for the tother part, which was seal-skin, and wore tolerable bare,—I havin' wore it, not off and on, but steady on, from the time I left off my bunnet that was made of the end of my cradle-quilt; but I didn't calculate it was too fine then, and I made a pint o' standin' on a chair afore the lookin'-glass, or else afore the winder towards your 'us, all the whilst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the first night after we took this hellion. I'd stood the wheel most of the afternoon—off and on, that is, because she sails herself uncommonly well. Just put her on a reach, you know, and she carries it ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... ain't good at telling a story, Mistress Martin,' I said; 'but here is Master Ned's letter. When you have read that maybe I can answer questions as to matters of which he may not have written. I will stand off and on in the garden, ma'am, and then you can read it comfortable like indoors, and hail me when you have got to the bottom of it.' It was not many minutes before one of your sisters called me in. They had all been crying, and ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... "Off and on—nasty sort of twinges. If I trusted myself with a carpenter, I'd let you give me a check-up. Well, let's cut this short. What I was going to say ... let's see ... oh, since Timmy seldom pays any attention to the dog, why does the dog stick ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan |
