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More "Bluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... information about the A. R. U. convention. One day there was a meeting in which a committee of the Pullman strikers set forth their case. At the close of that meeting the great boycott had been declared. "Mere bluff," said the newspapers. But the managers of the railroads "got together." Some of them had already cut the wage lists on their roads. They did not feel sure that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... from next morning's breakfast the Meadowcrofts sat next to us. Hilda was on one side of me; Lady Meadowcroft on the other; and beyond her again, bluff Yorkshire Sir Ivor, with his cold, hard, honest blue North Country eyes, and his dignified, pompous English, breaking down at times into a North Country colloquialism. They talked chiefly to each other. Acting on Hilda's instructions, I took care not to engage in conversation with our "exclusive" ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... for fear. He could bluff his way out of this accusation, discredit the searchers, and make his position permanently secure. Possibly it was even better this way. He looked scornfully at the two men who moved ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... his game of bluff a safe one, for his claims were just, and diplomacy was derelict, or there would have been no utility in the demonstration. But the futility of the Greek threats was most conspicuously shown, for not a battalion ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... arising out of the Boxer trouble, from the greed of the great powers of Europe. One of his greatest achievements was in proclaiming the open door for China and securing the acquiescence of the great powers. It was a bluff on his part, because he never could have had the active support of the United States, but he made his proposition with a confidence which carried the belief that he had no doubt on that subject. He was fortunately dealing with governments who did not understand the United ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... many miles wide. Then they bend to the south-west, and, abutting upon the lower Tapajos, merge into the bluffs which form the terrace margin of that river valley. The next high land on the north side is Obidos, a bluff, 56 ft. above the river, backed by low hills. From Serpa, nearly opposite the river Madeira, to near the mouth of the Rio Negro, the banks are low, until approaching Manaos, they are rolling hills; but from the Negro, for 600 m. as far up as the village of Canaria, at the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... him. The most sporting characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers, fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers, cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible to have speech of, the Dead Boxer. Not a word was spoken that day, except with reference to him, nor a conversation introduced, ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... then radiated out from the villages, and every cottage was built with an eye to the military necessities of the whole, so that the defence might make a stand at all points, and might finally centre upon the stone manor-house and the mill. Now at every bluff and hill near the villages might be seen the gleam of the muskets of the watchers, for it was known that the scalping parties of the Five Nations were out, and none could tell where the blow would fall, ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of bad paper, eh? Come now, didn't you cash a check on the Cotton Exchange Bank for about six hundred dollars when there was only fifteen on deposit? Don't try to bluff me. I know your sort. Lucky if you ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... and what a breadth she 151has; why she's fit for any seas; and if the Arrow ever shoots past her, I'll forfeit every shot in my lockers." "Avast there! master Horace," said our master at the helm, who was an old Cowes pilot, and as bluff as a Deal sea-boat; "the Pearl is a noble sailer; but a bird can't fly without wings, nor a ship run thirteen knots an hour without a good stiff breeze. If the light winds prevail, the Arrow will have the advantage, particularly now ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... they were by their heavy oil skins, their progress was slow, although the water barely reached their knees. The Three Brothers was bumping when they reached her and clambered on board over the bluff sides, sticky with ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... was his dinner saved for him and warmed up in the oven. Mendel sat studying from an unwieldy folio which he held on his lap by the fireside and bent over. When Daniel had done supper and was standing yawning and stretching himself, Mendel said suddenly as if trying to bluff him: ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Colonel Claus, in his bluff way, "you all make great merit of risking property and life in this wretched teapot tempest; you all take credit for unchaining the Mohawks. But you give them no credit. What have the Iroquois to gain by aiding us? Why do they dig up the hatchet, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... few circumstances of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... a past master, Mr. Parker," he said, "in the accomplishment that, I believe, in your country goes by the name of bluff; but there are limits, you know. I shall have to ask you and your daughter and Mr. Walmsley here to accompany me at once to Bow Street. And," he added, suddenly leaning across the table, "move your right hand, please! Don't make a disturbance—for ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... in the position of attention is "chest lifted; and arched." There should be a stretch upward at the waist. The position should give the impression of a man as proud of himself as he can be. This is a bluff which works, not only by making a good first impression on others, but by causing the man himself to live up ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... warring in that relentless spirit, no one who is blessed with the ordinary amount of reasoning power looks for mercy even if it be promised. And Uncle Billy Rhodes did well to run his bluff down there in the willows ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... "You needn't try to bluff me," said Bagley. "I've been on to your game for a good while. You can fool some of the people, but you can't fool me. I'm too old a friend, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of all "steps" taken before and thereafter, the English have everywhere had important losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the "German bluff." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... wisdom, held out a five-franc piece, but the driver shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. He saw that the moment had come to bluster so he descended from his box fully prepared to carry out his bluff. He started in to abuse the two Americans whom in his ignorance ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... was limitless prairie straight on in front of me. I walked for days, and slept at night wherever I could find a bluff. I could hear the little grasses whispering when I lay half-awake, and it was comforting to know that there were leagues and leagues of them between me and the city. I drove a team for a farmer most of that season. Then I went on to a track that they were strengthening and straightening ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... madness. They kept a close watch over him; and at last Bowling Green, one of the most devoted friends Lincoln then had, took him home to his little log cabin, half a mile north of New Salem, under the brow of a big bluff. Here, under the loving care of Green and his good wife Nancy, Lincoln remained until he was once ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... the bluff overlooking Williamsport. Imboden's artillery had the exact range and were pouring shell into the position where the brigade was ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... of smoke rising, and knowing it to be from the cabin of some negro, he blew a merry blast on his bugle. Before the clear notes had faded from the morning air, a venerable darkey with whitened head and slightly bent, though walking without the assistance of a cane, appeared on the bluff overlooking the river. He raised his eyes to the eastern horizon, as though to determine the weather probabilities, and then he scanned the river up and down. He failed to see Boyton at first, and another blast was given on the bugle. Slowly, and with evidences of some fear, the old darkey ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... of strangled at this, too. He finally manages to say that he tried to read Shakespere once but it was too fine print. The old liar! He wouldn't read a line of Shakespere in letters a foot high. It just showed that he, too, was trying to bluff along with the rest of 'em on ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... "Bah! It's all bluff!" cried a voice. "They know that by holding out they can get what they want. They'd cave in directly if we showed a ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... wears gloves and looks afraid of soiling his hands. Dudley had his mother to support, and looked about bravely for work. But no work was to be had. He tried everything, as it seemed, until at last he asked stern old Mr. Bluff, who owned half a dozen ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... was tenanted by half a dozen rough farmers, rendered savage and morose by incessantly imbibing alcohol; and by the proprietor of the tavern, a bluff man, with a portly paunch, a hard gray eye, and a stern Caledonian lip. He welcomed me without much frankness or cordiality, and I sank into a wooden settle, eyed by the surly guests of mine host, and the subject of sundry muttered remarks. ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... was against all precedent to go to sea without looking at the ship, Bush and I appointed ourselves an examining committee for the party, and walked down to the wharf where she lay. The captain, a bluff Americanised German, met us at the gangway and guided us through the little brig from stem to stern. Our limited marine experience would not have qualified us to pass an ex cathedra judgment upon the seaworthiness of a mud-scow; but Bush, with characteristic impudence and versatility of talent, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... this, me and the Sweet Caps Kid has been sojourning in that favored metropolis which is bounded on one side by a loud Sound and on the other by a steep Bluff, and is doing her constant best at all times to live up to the surroundings. Needless to say, I refer to little Noo Yawk, the original haunt of the come-on and the native habitat of the sure thing, where the jays bite freely and the woods are full of ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... would do in Congress, but would not make much of a fist at farming, and then called my attention to his corn and buckwheat and other crops, and said that was a marsh, but he underdrained it with tile, and found spring-water flowing out of the bluff, and found he could get a five-foot fall, and with pumps of a given dimension, a water-dam could throw water back eighty rods to his house, and eighty feet above it. 'But,' said he, in his jocularly, impressive manner, 'I did my surveying before ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... presented by J. Watts de Peyster to the monument association, we discovered a blue bird's nest containing four eggs. This gun was at one time a part of the armament of a British vessel. The vessel becoming disabled, the gun was then mounted on wheels and placed on a bluff at Ticonderoga, where it was captured by the Americans. Right glad we were that the place knows no harsher sound than the soft, melodious warble of the bluebird and cherry carol of the robin. We thought how glorious the time when all monuments may be not merely grim reminders ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... avowed purpose of lynching them. But fortunately, the objects of their vengeance had escaped from town. Foiled in their purpose, the rioters repaired to the shantee where the murder was committed, and precipitated it over the bluff. The military of the city were ordered out to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... was held under restraint until six o'clock. "It's my intention to follow him within an hour," said the foreman, as the boy rounded a bluff and disappeared. "He can build the fire as well as any one, and we'll return before midnight. That'll give the doctor the last minute and ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... several houses not very far away on the bluff along the river, and after a few inquiries, a white family was found that very kindly gave Miss Campbell shelter ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... visible in clusters upon the sides and tops of the hills which tower above the Mandingo capital. "The fires which were visible in the different nests of these unfortunates, threw a glare upon the bold peaks and bluff promontories of granite rock by which they were surrounded, and produced a picturesque and somewhat awful appearance." The inhabitants of these wild regions were clothed in the spoils of the chace, and subsisted chiefly on wild fruits, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... big family party. They're rather nice to me. I go walking with Aunt Josephine. I don't understand why I'm sandwiched in between Havens and Aunt Josephine. Otherwise the arrangement is neat. There is a veranda outside our windows. We sit upon it. Aunt Josephine is a great bluff, but she's clever. She's never napping. I've tried to pump her. Miss Crozier is harmless. She doesn't care. Havens never takes his eyes off Mrs. W. when they are together. She looks at him a good bit, too. They don't pay much attention to me. Aunt Josephine's husband is very old ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon

... a challenge, I'll take it!" Then he added; and his face went hot as her own: "As to the freebooters of the Western Wilderness ripping the bowels out of public property out here, I'll accept that challenge, too! We'll put up a bluff ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... were probably not afterwards often repeated; for example, the meeting of officers on the picket-lines, who had communications with each other, because they were freemasons. In September, the Confederates fell back from Munson's Hill, and on October 21st the battle at Poolsville, or Ball's Bluff, took place, in which, out of 1,800 Federals engaged, over one-third were killed, wounded or missing. The Fifteenth Massachusetts regiment suffered heavily. Colonel Devens, afterwards major-general and attorney-general, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of an old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... was the son of a bluff but good-hearted old marquis who was not very successful in bringing up his family. Young Mirabeau had been so immoral and unruly that his father had repeatedly obtained lettres de cachet from the king in order that prison bars ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... respective streams, born to what destiny who shall tell? Watatic, and the neighboring hills in this State and in New Hampshire, are a continuation of the same elevated range on which we were standing. But that New Hampshire bluff,—that promontory of a State,—lowering day and night on this our State of Massachusetts, will longest haunt ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... Sarah replied. "As a matter of fact, that was rather a bluff. His mother is so afraid of his starting in some business where they'll get him to put some money in, that she has agreed to allow him a couple of thousand a year until he comes in for his property, on condition that he clears out of the ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... pillars—his native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility. For he was increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism. He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost. There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... fatal mistake to be too candid even with those who were all right—not to look and to talk prosperous, not at least to pretend that one had beautiful sales. To listen to her you would have thought the profession of letters a wonderful game of bluff. Wherever one's idea began it ended somehow in inspired paragraphs in the newspapers. "I pretend, I assure you, that you are going off like wildfire—I can at least do that for you!" she often declared, prevented as she ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... suddenly and rolled away, wrapped in pale and splendid mystery; it broke for us as we were upon the edge of a bluff. For some moments we had been listening to the ever-recurring sob of the sea. There at our feet curled the huge breakers, shouldering the cliff as if they would hurl it from its foundation. A little further on in the gloaming was the last hill of all; from ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... worthy Julot came at last to say the babe was born. "I'd like to chuck it in the Seine," he sourly snarled, "and yet I guess I'll have to let it live, because of Gigolette." I only laughed, for sure I saw his spite was all a bluff, And he was prouder than a prince behind his manner gruff. Yet every day he'd blast the brat with curses deep and grim, And swear to me that Gigolette no longer thought of him. And then one night he dropped the mask; his eyes were sick with dread, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... and fifty years, off and on—ever since, in fact, the press-masters of bluff King Hal denuded the Dorset coast of fishermen and drove the starving women of that region to sea in quest of food [Footnote: State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII.: Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545.]—the press-gang had been laboriously teaching English housewives this very ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... not really until the time of bluff King Hal that lace became an article of fashion, when during the life of the last of his unfortunate queens he permits "the importation of all manner of gold and silver fringes, or otherwise, with all new 'gentillesses' of what facyion or value, for ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... extremes of Clack's Island presented a steep, rocky bluff, thinly covered with small trees. I ascended the steep head, which rose to an elevation of a hundred and eighty feet above the sea. I found simply the plants of the main, namely, Mimusops parvifolia, Br.; Hoya nivea, Cunningham manuscript; Acacia plectocarpa, Cunningham ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... the British navy, he was for some time on the coast of the North American colonies, then in a state of revolution, and passed the winter of 1782 in the city of New York. He is still borne in lively recollection by many of the elder inhabitants of that city, as a fine bluff boy of sixteen: frank, cheery, and affable; and there are anecdotes still told of his frolicsome pranks on shipboard. Among these, is the story of a rough, though favourite, nautical joke, which he played off upon a sailor boy, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... the two valleys stood an enormous building, half manorial, half monastic in appearance. The shore formed, at this point, for an extent of several hundred feet, a bluff whose edge plunged vertically into the river. The chateau and its outbuildings rested upon this solid base. The principal house was a large parallelogram of very old construction, but which had evidently been almost entirely rebuilt at the beginning of ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... the knight, "that our host of the Trysting-tree, or the jolly Friar, his chaplain, heard this thy ditty in praise of our bluff yeoman." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... most frequently described is that known as the Basket trick, which is in my opinion the chef d'oeuvre of the Indian Jadoo-wallah. It is a wonderful bluff ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... by the residents of the village to fall forward from a skiff into the water and go down with uplifted hands. I could not learn that he rose at all after the first submersion. Two men were standing near a bluff which overlooked the bay, and after an instant's delay in deciding that an accident had occurred, they ran over an uneven and undulating pasture for a distance of two hundred and fifty paces to the shore. One of them, after a quick decision not to swim out to where the young man had fallen in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... his party's nomination; and it was here he took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... time to play, Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... a little gray-pebbled path wound back to where a house stood, nearly hidden in a grove of trees, upon a bluff directly overlooking ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... quick glance toward me. "That is easily explained; we turned the corner of the bluff instead. This is the old road to Jonesboro, and has been used very little since the new road was opened. I chose it because I thought I would be less likely to ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... Tories understand the sort of people they have to deal with; they know that although their bodies are the bodies of grown men, their minds are the minds of little children. That is why it has been possible to deceive and bluff and rob them for so long. But your party persists in regarding them as rational beings, and that's where you make a mistake—you're simply wasting ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... You are simply too charming. No doubt you'll be modern enough (Though the speed of the world is alarming) To win with a delicate bluff, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... tradition of the country, had actually been performed by his Satanic majesty, who, after flying for some leagues with the morsel in his mouth, becoming weary, dropped it in the vicinity of Cashel, where it may now be seen in the shape of a bold bluff hill, crowned with the ruins of a stately edifice, probably built ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... Petersburg, it was his policy to have every man, both in the army and navy, employed, in order to draw off as many as possible from General Lee's forces at Petersburg. Accordingly, for the purpose of capturing Rainbow Bluff, the fleet composed of the United States steamers Wyalusing, Otsego, General Berry, Bazeley, Valley City, Chicopee, tug Belle, and the picket launch No. 5, weighed anchor at 5 p.m., December 9, 1864, and proceeded up the Roanoke river, with Commander W. H. Macomb on board the Wyalusing leading, ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... and the following one at Ball's Bluff, it was evident that both soldiers and officers would have to be created, and that we were without a military commander competent to direct so vast a war. This led to the formation by Congress of ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... abroad. You sang St. Paul, that night, you may remember, and afterwards I advised you to go into grand opera. A fellow with a voice like yours can't expect to have any secrets of his own." Bobby paused; then he added thoughtfully, "Life is bound to be a good deal of a bluff for us all." ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... sad picture it is which we thus obtain of merrie England in the good old times of bluff King Hal, wanting altogether in the couleur de rose with which it is tinted by its latest historian Mr Froude, who is ably taken to task on this subject by a recent writer in the Westminster Review, whose conclusions, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... watch for Posy, as her mother described her; and whenever the form of a grown-up girl darkened the doorway, she held her breath to listen if Mrs Blossom called her by that pet name. Mr George also was very good to Meg in his bluff way, and bought her a pair of nearly new shoes with his first week's wages, over and above the threepence a day which he paid her. With Mrs Blossom she held many a conversation about the lost girl, who had grown ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton

... Officers of the garrison, bluff sea-captains, spinning yarns of iceberg and floe, soldiers and traders, made up the rest of the company. Among the white men was one eager face,—that of Samuel Hearne, who was to explore the interior and now scanned the birch-bark drawings ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... a blame bad bargain," commented the rancher, with unruffled good humor. "I was figuring that I might help you. I thought you were a hobo after my chickens, or trying to bluff me into a free meal this morning. If you'd asked straight for it, I'd have ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... quite as much amused at this account of Moonshine's as I was myself, but he put on a bluff look. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... of his new life was the friendship of the bluff, cantankerous, but kind-hearted contractor, his sunny daughter, the manly foreman, and the talkative Murphy. Of Tressa he had so many glowing things to write in his letters to his wife that Helen threatened to rush north in self-defence. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... savages, I informed Dingaan bluntly that my object in visiting him was to demand the surrender of the white 'ntombozaan whom he held in captivity, I saw at once that, for some reason which I could not then guess, he was very greatly perturbed. But, like the savage he was, he also attempted to "bluff", so that the matter soon resolved itself into a "bluffing match" between us, in which, although I did not know it, I held the advantage. First the king indignantly denied all knowledge of the girl for whom I was then seeking; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... back. It didn't seem worth while making any plea for myself. You see, I was young and had serious streaks all through me. So when she told me that she had written home again, and was going back—was going to leave me, I didn't see that it was only a bluff. I didn't see that she was really only waiting to forgive me, if I gave her a chance. I started downtown to the building and loan office, wondering when she would leave, and if there was anything I could do to make her change her mind. I must repeat ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... instinctively distrusted him, and sneaked away through the woods and up a rocky bluff where ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton

... suddenly, in sharp, crisp tones, that sounded painfully harsh after the old man's broken cries, "Captain, there's a little game of cards called 'Bluff,' and it's an excellent amusement if you don't get caught at it. We shan't have to go any further with the search for clues in this case; but I think I shall have to ask you, my friend, a few little questions in private, and in the interests of a ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... George Court held the office as long as his grandfather before him. He was a man of the bluff and hearty sort, thoroughly typical of old Wednesbury, of Dutch build, yet commanding presence, in language more forcible than polite, and not restrained in the use of his strong language even by the presence ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... by Mahan to be the most important of the Caribbean Sea for strategic purposes. In 1740-1745 a fortification called Nuestra Senora de los Angeles was erected at the entrance; it is still standing, on a steep bluff overlooking the sea, and is one of the most picturesque of the old fortifications of the island. On the 11th of May 1898 a force from two vessels of the United States fleet under Admiral Schley, searching for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... BOYS: You ought to know by this time that you are not wanted in this part of the country. Advise you to sell out and skip. If you stay your lives will be made a hell on earth, and we have the stuff that will do it. This is no bluff, as you will find out if you disregard this word of friendly warning. You will be given a short time to sell your stock, then git. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... is my witness, sar, I was ready to die, and there was a moment when I thought that the time had come and Martha was calling me; but Tobias suddenly walked away to the top of the bluff and called out to the Susan B. that was just running up her sails. At his word, they put out a boat for him, and, while he waited, he came down the hill towards me and the dog that stood growling over you; and for sure, I thought it was the end. But he said: ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... conscience of the party. He was joined on this occasion by Edward D. Baker [Footnote: Afterwards senator from Oregon, and as colonel of the 71st Pennsylvania (called the 1st California) killed at Ball's Bluff.] and some others, who protested against ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... of our affection; she is also constructed by definition, 'If it were not too awful a thing to say of anybody, she meant well'—the whole phrase gives exactly Christina's stature. Alethea Pontifex is really a bluff; but the bluff succeeds, largely because, having experience of Christina, we dare not call it. Mrs Jupp is triumphantly complete; there are even moments when she seems as great as Mrs Quickly. The novels that contain three such women (or two if we reckon the uncertain Alethea, ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... of summoning the officers who were to form the court-martial was imposed on Murat. But when this bluff, hearty soldier received this order, he exclaimed: "What! are they trying to soil my uniform! I will not allow it! Let him appoint them himself if he wants to." But a second and more imperious mandate compelled ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... found in its vicinity, when it was first discovered and surveyed by Captain Cook. To the southward again of this magnificent sheet of water, where it will be recollected it was the original intention, though afterwards judiciously abandoned, to found the capital of this colony, you behold the high bluff range of hills that stretch away towards the five islands, and likewise indicate the trending of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... both being here? Are you going to be sensible and work in with me and divvy up later on, or are you going to risk spoiling everything by trying to hog the whole thing? I'll be square with you. It isn't as if there was any use in trying to bluff each other. We're both here for the same thing. You want to get hold of that powder stuff, that Partridgite, and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the utmost fearlessness in bringing to justice and transportation the four ringleaders in the attack on the mill. He had now returned, and one day as he rode over Rushedge Moore from Stilbro' market with a bluff neighbour, he unbosomed himself of the reason why he had remained thus ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... was Lome Riddle; a big bluff chap with a promising moustache, encouraged by private, tuition. "Come along there, Haviland," he exclaimed, "a nob like you should be one of the 'boys!'" These fellows don't know what life is—but to think of a man of muscle going back ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... he paid for? That force has been ten days at least turning the east of the Mar Mountains, a week at least on our own side of the frontier. Where were Osbourne's wits? Will it be believed, the column at Lone Bluff is again short of ammunition? This old man of the sea, whom all the world knows to be an ass and whom we can prove to be a coward, is apparently a peculator also. If we were to die to-morrow, the word Osbourne would be found engraven backside ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... imagine her becoming attached to such a man as Holcroft had been described to be. Her uncompromising principle had entered but slightly into his calculations, and so, under the spur of anger and selfishness, he had easily entered upon a game of bluff He knew well enough that he had no claim upon Alida, yet it was in harmony with his false heart to try to make her think so. He had no serious intention of harming Holcroft—he would be afraid to attempt this—but if he could so work on Alida's fears as to induce her to leave her husband, ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... general manager. The tug sheered off and put on speed, while Wimperley and the rest held their breath as they skirted the straining boom that inclosed the raft. Presently the high, sharp bow turned shoreward, steam was cut off and the tug made fast to the sheer side of a little bluff that rose ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... before, Sylvester Bascom practically owns this house. It does not belong to the church property. The Episcopals made a big bluff at buying it years ago, and made a very small payment in cash; Bascom took a mortgage for the rest. The interest was paid regularly for a while, and then payments began to fall off. As you have reason to know, Bascom is a generous and kind-hearted man, who would not for the world ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... the English Channel. Yet we feel sure that at some time in the past it was a mighty stream, and that its waters surged along over a bed at least two hundred feet higher than now. In proof of this fact we still find, at different places along the chalky bluff, stretches of old gravel banks, laid down there by the river, "reaching sometimes as high as two hundred feet above the present water level, although their usual elevation does not ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... and, having completed the preliminary commonplaces, said, as he hurled the core with an energetic sweep of his arm into the ocean at the base of the little bluff ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... that they were following a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up— up— up they went until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw himself ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... many times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory residence was on a bluff on California Street. Their windows looked down on a lot of Chinese houses—"tin-can houses," they were called—small wooden shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and Mark would look down on these houses, waiting until all the Chinamen were ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... 1802. On coming within five miles of the shore at eleven o'clock, we found it to be low and mostly sandy; and that the bluff head, which had been taken for the north end of an island, was part of a ridge of hills rising at Cape Schanck. We then bore away westward, in order to trace the land round the head of the ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... to the Captain of the Hydrographer, the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored tolerance—good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had combative red-gold hair. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... circulars would satisfy anybody that black was white, and the free trial was a sure bait. I don't know why 'tis, but if you offered the smallpox free, there'd be a barrel of victims waiting in line to come down with it. Brown rigged up a little shanty on the bluff in front of the "Old Home," and filled it full of barometers and thermometers and chronometers and charts, and put Beriah and Eben inside to look wise and make b'lieve do something. That was the office of "The South Shore Weather Bureau," ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... see that," said the bluff skipper. "It'd do him good to be six months aboard my vessel under me. I'd make another man of him. Ah, you may laugh, my young sharper. You think I'm a quiet, good-tempered sort of an old chap, but a ship's captain has to be a bit ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... enthusiasm; now he seemed to have no thought that was not selfish and mean, now imagination rapt him to a glow of heart-felt patriotism. The good and the bad both stood him in stead, and hope reigned in his camp. But all hung in the balance, for Sir Winterton was tall and handsome, bluff and hearty, a good landlord, a good sportsman, a good man, a neighbour to the town and a friend to half of it. And the great cry did not seem ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... tarry hat, The way he swore, the way he spat, A certain quality of manner, Alarming like the pirate's banner - Something that did not seem to suit all - Something, O call it bluff, not brutal - Something at least, howe'er it's called, Made Robin ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... course I didn't believe a word of that! It was just a bluff to keep from seeming to need anything. So I smiled at her and said, 'That's all right, but suppose something happens this evening so he doesn't get here. I guess you'd better take the six sous—they ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... said he, "caterpillars are past-masters of bluff. Look at the hawkmoths, fat, flabby, bloated things, with curly tails. Most of them fling their heads back, arch their necks, and play at being snakes. Some grow eyes upon them, not real eyes, but ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... hands, ready to lower the sails at a moment's notice; the oars were got out, prepared for any emergency. The boats glided on. Instead of the tumbling, hissing waters through which they had lately passed, all was calm and smooth. On the right was a high bluff, with a reef running out from it. On the left the land was more level, but everywhere covered with low, stunted trees; while the shores on either hand were fringed with black, rugged rocks, and ahead rose ranges of hills, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... prosperous-looking man of forty-odd, a typical product of country politics. His manner was carefully bluff and hearty and characterized by a sort of bonhommie that was useful in impressing voters with the fact that he was a pretty good fellow, his close-set eyes sparkled with intelligence that his low brow defined as cunning rather than wisdom, and there were puffy semicircles beneath them that told ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... glory of the sunset heaven On land and water lay; On the steep hills of Agawam, On cape, and bluff, and bay. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the very peak of the ridge now, and the hill sloped smoothly down before them to the bluff which bounded Quitter Creek. Far down, a tiny black speck in the coulee-bottom, they could see Wooden Shoes riding along the creek-bank, scouting for water. From the way he rode, and from the fact that camp was nowhere in sight, Pink guessed shrewdly that his ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... our operations the welcome news was made public that four more fish like the present one would fill us bung-up, and that we should then, after a brief visit to the Bluff, start direct for home. This announcement, though expected for some time past, gave an amazing fillip to everybody's interest in the work. The strange spectacle was witnessed of all hands being anxious to quit a snug harbour ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... worth while to illustrate our meaning by an instance or two, to show that, far from being hypercritical, our canon of criticism is extremely indulgent, and that we never take the bluff and surly objection—it cannot be!—until the improbability has reached the core of the matter. In the first story, "The Birth Mark," we raise no objection to the author, because he invents a chemistry of his own, and supposes his hero in possession of marvellous secrets which enable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... Oh, I've got you, my friend, got you foul!" said Cleek in reply. "All but ruined by the failure of the gold reefs and the milling and mining companies last autumn, weren't you, and have been playing a bluff game and living on your credit ever since? A pretty little scheme you two beauties hatched up between you to get the old duchess into your clutches, to rob her of the Siva stones, and to have Mrs. Glossop and your ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... I say—"Dat's von very hard case; Can tree jacks beat four kings und some ace? Ven ve hafn't de card Ve must bluff britty hard, Or shoost trow down our ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who had developed a bluff, straightforward ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... prosperous, too, and shopkeepers, farmers, and all were well off; there was plenty of bread and meat for all, and the foreign nations were afraid to go to war with us. So the English people, on the whole, loved "Bluff King Hal," as they called him, and did not think much about his many wickednesses, or care how many heads he cut off. He died in the year 1547. The changes in his time are generally called the beginning ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... southward, or higher up the River than Philipsburg, a military line or chain of posts; going from Stollhofen, a boggy hamlet on the Rhine, with cunning indentations, and learned concatenation of bog and bluff, up into the inaccessibilities,—LINES OF STOLLHOFEN, the name of it,—which well-devised barrier did good service for certain years. It was not till, I think, the fourth year of their existence, year 1707, that Villars, the same ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had been wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terrible storm long ago; he would show us where the bathing was pleasant and safe; he would tell us of the best place for fishing, and probably show us the high bluff a little back from the beach from which the Indian maiden leaped to escape the tomahawk of her enraged lover, and then he would be almost sure to tell us of the secluded spot where it was said Captain Kidd and his pirates once buried a lot ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... his sister along the footpath of a bluff, which as children they had often climbed; while the carriage made a long detour in order to reach the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... water, and thus leave the dogs at the end of the trail at a point far removed from his real entrance into it. When they had reached the pond, Jack bade the boy head to the boat. This they found moored under a bluff, and Gabe, pointing upward, said the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... easy way is that of protective resemblance pure and simple, where the animal's colour, form, or attitude becomes like that of its habitat. In which case the animal becomes one with its environment and thus is enabled to go about unnoticed by its enemies or by its prey. The other way is that of bluff, and it includes all inoffensive animals which are capable of assuming attitudes and colours that terrify and frighten. The colours in some cases are really of warning pattern, yet they cannot be considered mimetic ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... Edward, through many a distant place, Had wandering pass'd, a thoughtless ranger; And, cheer'd by a smile from beauty's face, Had laugh'd at the frowning face of danger. Fearless Ned, Careless Ned, Never with foreign dames was a stranger; And huff, Bluff, He laugh'd at ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... Breede's letters, and was again interrupted, this time by Markham, Breede's confidential secretary. Markham's approach to Bean was emphatically footed, as that of a man unable to imagine ice being thin under his feet. He was bluff and open, where Tully lurked behind his "not impossibles." He was even jovial now. He ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... says I. "You're makin' the bluff that you want to scatter deeds of kindness; but when I point one out, right under your nose, you beef about it like you was bein' frisked for your watch. A hot idea of bein' an angel of mercy you've got, ain't you? Honest now, in your whole career, was you ever guilty of wastin' a kind word, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... the summit, Bet and Kit were almost hysterical from laughing. Bet put the gun down gingerly. "I wonder what I would have done, if they had called my bluff!" she exclaimed. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... the boat to Bluff Point; and the shore was so elevated here, that the skipper stood farther out into the lake so that he might not lose the wind. The Goldwing behaved so well, that Dory was beginning to have a great deal of confidence ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... crossed the plain in the teeth of the howling drift, and cautiously approached the bluff referred to by Roy, and from ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... thinking of a painful clash in the parish. It came on this wise. Our rector was one day called to attend the funeral of a little child but a few weeks old, the daughter of neighbors of ours. The father was a big-bodied, big-hearted, big-voiced, successful man of business, well liked for his bluff cordiality and generosity, who went to church because his wife went. The mother was a sweet, kindly, delicate woman, the daughter of a clergyman, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... the Virginian, with entire ease. For he also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. "You'd ought to write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and you would have the ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... wouldn't put it that way," Cub replied; "but I don't like to see anybody make a bluff at anything and not make good. Now, we've started out with a glorious bluff at some very clever rascality, and it looks as if it's going to prove to be just an ordinary ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... Truly sledging in such weather is great. Mounts Discovery and Morning, which we gradually closed, looked fine in the general panorama of mountains. We are now nearly abreast the north end of the Bluff. We all came up to camp together this morning: it looked like a meet of the hounds, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... and startling; relieved of strain, the springs snapped and whined, there was a violent oscillation of the back, a shudder convulsed the thing, and it sprang after him, much as a tame rabbit thumps its feet upon the ground in an effort to bluff a kitten. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... and mid tea-cups! Stupendous change, let us tell you, worthy friend, who never yet set sail where sharks and other strange sea-cattle bob their noses above the brine,—who never lived forty days in the bowels of a ship, unable to hold your head up to the captain's bluff "good morning" or the steward's cheery "good night." Sir Philip Sidney discourses of a riding-master he encountered in Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have known ancient mariners expatiate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... Lucien with a bluff German heartiness that concealed his dangerous subtlety; "well, so you have made your peace with Mme. d'Espard; she is delighted with you, and we all know," he added, looking round the group, "how difficult it is ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... started to walk up the beach; but she did not get far. There was a private dock running out beyond low-water mark just below the very first bungalow. She saw several men coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands. This must be Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... Hills where thirty-five years ago there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to guess how much big game remains ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... in more leisurely fashion now, and soon reached the foot of a high grassy bluff on the left-hand side of the river. They climbed the steep slope here, and so weary were they that that night they did not put up the tents at all, but lay down, each wrapped in his blanket, as soon as they had ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... death. The first victim of the war, Colonel Ellsworth, was a personal friend, and his murder was a personal affliction. There were others that came near to him. Colonel E. D. Baker, an old friend and neighbor of Lincoln, the man who had introduced him at his inaugural, was killed at Ball's Bluff Oct. 21, 1861. Baker's personal courage made him conspicuous and marked him out as a special target for the enemy's aim. While gallantly leading a charge, he fell, pierced almost simultaneously by four bullets. It fell upon Lincoln like the death of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... river, still swollen by melting mountain snow, was a hundred feet from the stockade gate, and on its bank stood the log cavalry stables. Below, a scant half mile away, were the only trees visible, a scraggly grove of cottonwoods, while down the face of the bluff and across the flat ran the slender ribbon of trail. Monotonous, unchanging, it was a desolate picture to watch day after day in ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... ran up sharply in a minute bluff, with the soft outline of underlying chalk, covered with small thorn-thickets; and it was all encircled with small, close woods, where we heard the pheasants scamper. We found an old, slow, bovine man, with a cheerful face, who readily threw aside some ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as sea island cotton. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... described with such gusto Queen Elizabeth's five days' stay at Cambridge, what wouldst thou not have given, hadst thou lived in the reign of Victoria, to have been in her train this night? Shades more formidable of good Queen Bess herself, Bluff King Hal, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and that other unhappy Margaret of Anjou, what would you have said of this simple ramble? In truth it was a scene from the world of romance, even without the music and the lady at the lattice. An ideal Queen and an ideal Prince, a thin disguise ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... graymarie, he can, on a spring night, just as the moon has entered her last quarter, and the first note from the belfry of the chapel in the frith has proclaimed the arrival of midnight, take his stand upon Blentford's Bluff and peer into the dark and sombre depths of Kinder, when he will hear the hooting of the barn owl on Anna rocks, the unearthly screech of the landrail as he ploughs his way through the unmown grass in search of his mate, the scream of the curlew and chatter ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet

... and extending thence to the north of Arras. Probably the Germans imagined that this extension had weakened our lines at Ypres; and on 8 February they began a bombardment which developed into a fierce struggle for Hooge and The Bluff on the Ypres-Commines Canal. The ground lost was mostly recovered by counter-attacks on 2 and 27 March and 3 April, but it could not all be held against further German attacks later in the month. Similarly some gains on the Vimy Ridge in the middle of May were lost again on the 21st, and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... Flat Rock, keeping his prisoner covered as carefully as he could the while. But, though Keller came down the steep bluff with infinite pains, the rough going offered a chance of escape to one so reckless as Weaver, of which he made not the least attempt to avail himself. Instead, he smiled cynically and waited with his hand in the air, as bidden. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... the volunteers, and of that number I was one, were sent on through Huntsville so as to get on the Indians in another direction. After we passed Huntsville, we struck the Tennessee River at Melton's Bluff. The river is here about two miles wide, and has so rough a bottom in many places as to be dangerous. At this place we left some of the horses with their feet held fast in the crevices of the rocks; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and the cliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. The trade-wind moving in the fans made a ceaseless noise of summer rain; and from time to time, with the sound of a sudden and distant drum-beat, the surf would burst ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... termed, in nautical parlance, an "hermaphrodite brig," of about one hundred and fifty tons burden; and had been engaged, for some twelve or fifteen years, in the West India trade. This vessel could not with propriety be regarded as a model of grace and beauty, but gloried in bluff bows, a flat bottom, and a high quarter-deck; carried a large cargo for her tonnage, and moved heavily and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... up in the hills," said the former, knowing that one bluff was as good as another. Skookum growled and sniffed at the enemy's legs. The prisoner made a quick ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... uphill. The meadow through which we were passing sloped to an oaken fence, stoutly constructed to save the cattle from a perilous fall. For on its farther side the ground fell away sheer, so that at this point a bluff formed one high wall of the sunken road for which we were making. The Thatcher, I remembered, stood immediately opposite to the rough grass-grown steps, hewn years ago for the convenience of such passengers as we. There was ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... pushed forward bravely toward an ice-wall that stretched across the top of the bay from one high shore to the other. This wall of ice, a precipitous bluff or palisade, is computed to be from two hundred to five hundred feet in height. It is certainly nowhere less than two hundred, but most of it far nearer five hundred feet above sea level, rising directly out of it, overhanging it, and chilling the air perceptibly. Picking our ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... till the 10th. On the morning of that day, we were preparing to send some of the people in search of our two gentlemen, when we perceived two large canoes, full of Indians, coming toward the vessel: they were of the Chinook village, which was situated at the foot of a bluff on the north side of the river, and were bringing back Messrs. M'Dougal and Stuart. We made known to these gentlemen the report we had heard on the 8th from the natives, and they informed us that it had been in fact well founded; that on the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... about the whole business," said he. "Once or twice I asked Bill or Gabe about it, but I never could get any satisfaction. I sometimes think carrying that message was only a bluff, and that the Germans were merely trying to test out Bill and Gabe, to see if they could not get them ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... probably, has yielded more than the farm and immediate neighborhood of Dr. C. C. Abbott (heretofore referred to), at Trenton, New Jersey. This farm occupies a bluff and wide meadows facing the Delaware River. It was a location unexcelled in advantages for the mild-mannered, sunshine-loving Leni-Lenape. On the dry high ground they could build their lodges underneath great trees and find themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... lost all spirit of fun in the contest, even to Slivers, who strove, however, to see it through in a bluff, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... against Lady Jane Grey, almost before the ink was dry with which he had solemnly registered his name to serve her, has long ago been numbered amongst the things that were. The archers of Mile-end, with their chains of gold, have departed: the spot on which the tent stood, where bluff Hal regaled himself after having witnessed their sports, is now covered with mean-looking houses: as one has said, "the poetry of ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... thoughtful man in command—it wanted dash and bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a success—a brilliant, blinding success—but it stuck at the very moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... But the squire's bluff florid face was pinched with anxiety, and worn with the effort of being deaf to the footsteps of fate as he said these words which ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... changed for the better as anyone could wish. The arrogance was gone. In its place was something better—a sure-footed confidence in his ability to talk—and this was a confidence based on real ability—not on bluff. He was no longer nervous and irritable—and in fact, before leaving, he had won his way into the hearts of his associates to the extent that all were sorry when he left and felt that they had made the acquaintance of a ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... and chill. It was rainin. The only persons there when I entered was a fine bluff old gentleman who was talking in a excited manner to a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne

... voice on the bluff March gale; We severed have been too long, But now we are done with a worn-out tale— The tale of an ancient wrong— And our friendship shall last long as love doth last and be ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan

... thereafter, the English have everywhere had important losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the "German bluff." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... and became Giddings's partner. He was sent to the United States Senate in 1851 as an antislavery Whig, and he continued to stand four-square for freedom there during nearly twenty years. He was frank, bluff, even harsh in his speech and manner, but kind at heart, and it is told of him that once when he discovered a wretched neighbor robbing his corn crib, he moved out of sight that the man might not know he had been caught in the misdeed to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat plausible, had impressed him. Once again I was gripped by the uneasy feeling that Sam had an unsuspected card to play. This might be bluff, but it ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... sobs, hurried out into the gloom, into the descending floods, toward the rushing torrents—drenched to the skin, on she passed toward the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find the waters rushing along high above and beyond the place where it had been. Then she thought of the great bluff rising to the west of her home and extending southward toward the railroad track, and she determined to ascend it and reach the bridge over this barrier to the waters. Need I recount how she struggled on and up through the thick oak undergrowth, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of hope and also a sort of pride. His eyes scanned the horizon with a glance of defiance; he listened for sounds in the air. It was now nine o'clock; the moon was beginning to cast its light upon the margin of the forest and to illumine the little bluff on which they stood. The position struck him as dangerous and he left it, fearful of being seen. But no suspicious noise troubled the peace of the beautiful valley encircled on this side by the forest of Nodesme. Marthe, exhausted and trembling, was awaiting some explanation of their ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... Bluff King Harry had no thought of doing anything else. The doubt which shook the souls of some of his followers, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a merry party at mess that night. General Sir Reginald Bassett was a man of the bluff soldierly order who knew how to command respect from his inferiors while at the same time he set them at their ease. There was no pomp and circumstance about him, yet in the whole of the Indian Empire there ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... British sons, arouse! And all who stand to Freedom's cause, While sing of the impending wars, And England's bluff old Charley. I'll tell how British seamen brave, Of Russian foes will clear the wave, Old England's credit for to save, Led on by ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... all. I have quite as snug a cove, near the creek bluff at Clawbonny, and will build a house for you there, you shall not tell from a ship's cabin; that would be ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... offer of a smaller sum the Count would possibly bluff. But to a Knight of Industry, as he knew the Count to be, a certain thousand pounds would be a great temptation. And after all to a wealthy Englishwoman what was a ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... the Rajah," he said half-musingly. "In fact, I know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of calling an 'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way to the front. If the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff bluff on the part of the C. G. R. it will be quite as well for us if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the continent—and well out of ordinary ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... swirling into deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going further up-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score in the deep ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national abuse of November. We know him well—and though we admit at once that he is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... common English spring flowers, besides more useful things, potatoes, etc. The river was about two hundred yards broad just here, and though it foamed below us, we could also see it stretching away in the distance almost like a lake, till a great bluff hid it from our eyes. Overhead the trees were alive with flocks of wild pigeons, ka-kas, parroquets, and other birds, chattering and twittering incessantly and as we stood on the steep bank and looked down, I don't think a minute passed without a brace of wild ducks flying past, grey, blue, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... dangers and hardships of the wilderness and the river, it seemed as if we had reached the end of our journey, though we were over two thousand miles from the Atlantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the Ambiyacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. Excepting Mr. Hauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two or three other whites, the inhabitants are Indians of the Orejones and Yagua tribes. The exportations are hammocks, sarsaparilla, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... which ran below the doctor's house. The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, and its shadow lay ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... were setting, and said he was going in to town to see some friends; and as he starts off he laughs an' says, 'This don't look as if I was afraid of seeing people, does it?' but Dad says it was just bluff that made him do it, and Dad thinks that if he hadn't said what he did, this Mr. Carleton wouldn't have left his room ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... the old farmer, so gruff and bluff-looking—with his stout square figure, his weather-beaten face, short grey hair, and dark bushy eyebrows—to the slight and graceful child, her aristocratic beauty set off by exactly the same style of paraphernalia that had adorned the ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... Ellen would have found in either case difficulty about obtaining employment, because she did not belong to the union, if for no other reason. At Briggs's she encountered the proprietor himself in the office, and he dismissed her with a bluff, almost brutal, peremptoriness which hurt her cruelly, although she held up her head high as she left. Briggs turned to a foreman who was standing by before she was well ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... persons to whom these sums marked "debt of honour" are due.' His reply came quickly, and was a little aggressive; he thought this might be a good time to make a bluff: ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... the waves, which rise with incredible celerity before the gales. The slow ships of commerce, indeed, are often days in traversing the distance between one port and another, for they wait for the wind to blow abaft, and being heavy, deeply laden, built broad and flat-bottomed for shallows, and bluff at the bows, they drift like logs of timber. In canoes the hunters, indeed, sometimes pass swiftly from one place to another, venturing farther out to sea than the ships. They could pass yet more quickly were it not ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... there was Kenny, grinning contemptuously at us. He'd called our bluff and won out. Now the shoe was ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long

... eye encountered a head and shoulders portrait of his father, Sir George Sinclair: an honest, bluff, unimaginative face: yet suddenly, arrestingly, it commanded his attention. Checking his walk, he stood regarding it: and his heart went out to the kindly old man in a quite unusual wave of sympathetic understanding. He saw ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... know men to-day who spend every dollar they earn for drink, and eat nothing but free lunches, handed out with their drinks. That was what was the matter with me. All I wanted was drink. The young man had called my bluff, and I had nothing to show but lies. I sat there wondering how I was going to get out of this hole. I was looking at the man and he at me, when the little good that was in me cropped out, and looking him square in the eye I said, "Young fellow, I've lied to you. I could not eat the ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... followed Mr. Gilroy and Yhon across the mouth of the Marion River, and rounded Woods' Point. Across Boulder Bay, to Bluff Point, they paddled, and carefully rounding this point they entered Outlet Bay. Then the usual route was taken up the bay until they reached ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... brooks the first thin blooms of the asters began to show, like a veil of blown smoke. In open patches, on the hillsides the goldenrod burned orange and the fireweed spread its washes of violet pink. Somewhere in the top of a tall poplar, crowning the summit of a glaring white bluff, a locust twanged incessantly its strident string. Mysteriously, imperceptibly, without sound and without warning, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... links were being joined together in the chain of evidence against O'Reilly, the man who had followed Angel into the Limited—the man against whom Clo had presently to try her wits. What concerned her most was that her first attempt at bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... help was a serious one. The schoolhouse was placed on the edge of a bluff where the ground dropped suddenly many feet, and strangely enough, all the windows were on that side, so that no one could climb out of a window, and, what was worse, those inside could not attract attention if any one should pass. The windows ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... was a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism which goes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted the stairs quietly but rapidly, evidently ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... could neither tell the commonly accepted truth out of respect to the deceased, nor lies out of regard to morality. However, one favorable point in the character of the deceased, upon which people were agreed, was his geniality and bluff heartiness of good-humor. That the minister so enlarged and displayed to the light of admiration that he almost made of it the aureole of a saint. He was obliged then to take refuge in the broad ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... man of moderate stature, who had lost the sight of one eye. The other, being covered with a green shade, gave him an ill look. His manner, however, was hearty, and showed a bluff, off-hand cordiality, as he welcomed the party to the hospitalities of the Travellers' Rest. He was familiarly called "Larry," by Fletcher, who greeted him like ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... speed on foot, that they might, if possible, catch an early glimpse of him. The most sporting characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers, fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers, cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible to have speech of, the Dead Boxer. Not a word was spoken that day, except with reference to him, nor a conversation ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... rocky bluff on the coast of Lanai there is a cave whose only entrance is through the vortex of a whirlpool. Its floor gradually rises from the water, and is the home of crabs, polypi, sting-rays, and other noisome creatures ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... day he never again went near that particular meadow; neither, though for days he called to her in his loneliness, did he search any more for the mother who had so suddenly disappeared out of his life. Standing on the edge of a bluff, in the fading sunset, he would thrust his head and neck out straight and bellow his sonorous appeal. Then he would stop and listen long for an answer. And as he called, evening after evening in vain, a deeper, surer tone came into his voice, a more self-reliant, masterful ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... working she heard the tramp of a horse's hoofs, and looking up saw the big bluff Squire riding toward her. The big Squire was very fond of children, and whenever he rode near the little white cottage he stopped to have a word with Mary. He was old and bald-headed, and he had side-whiskers that were very red in color and very short and stubby; but there was ever ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... the north a long chain of lofty rugged cliffs mark the bearing of the shore in that direction, and turning southwards, the spectator beholds, seven or eight miles distant, the spacious harbour of Botany Bay, beyond which a high bluff range of hills extends along to the south in the direction towards Illawarra. Westward one vast forest is to be seen, varied only by occasional openings which cultivation and the axe have made on the tops of some of the highest ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... get along with my boy," said the bluff city merchant. "Of one thing you may be assured, your scholarship won't be severely taxed in educating him. Walter is a pretty good boy, but he ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... as I have since learnt, had the conscience to contend that we left the ship sooner than was necessary, and have suffered themselves to be sued for the sums they had severally insured. It was a little after midday when we reached the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves. Our dress, appearance, language, and the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives, and the liveliest ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... Porte that the naval and military authorities in this country had expressed the opinion that successful attack upon the Dardanelles was virtually impracticable, and that H.M. Government had endorsed this view. Tell the Turk that, and our trump card was gone. We could then no longer bluff the Ottoman Government in the event of war with feints of operations against the Straits—the very course which I believe would have been adopted in 1914-1915, had the Admiralty War Staff and the General Staff considered the question together without Cabinet ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... difficult to see how German statesmen regarded the situation? Russia, in their eyes, was playing a game of bluff, and strong measures against her were in the interest of Germany. But, though under no illusion as to German preparations, M. Sazonof offered on July 30 to stop all military preparations if Austria 'would eliminate from her ultimatum to Servia points which violate ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... began in his harsh lawyer's voice, "don't think for a moment you can bluff me. These men have their orders and at the first show of violence I have told them to shoot you dead. Now regarding this claim, formerly known as the Old Juan, you have no legal right to the same. In the first ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... Loudly, wildly, the rude sounds assaulted the stillness until the quiet seemed hopelessly shattered by the din. Softly, tamely, the sounds drifted away in the clear distance; through groves of live oak, thickets of greasewood, juniper, manzanita and sage; into canyon and wash; from bluff and ledge; along slope and spur and shoulder; over ridge and saddle and peak; fainting, dying—the impotent sounds of man's passing sank into the stillness and were lost. When the team halted for a brief rest it was in a moment as if the silence had never been broken. Grim, awful, the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... for Duperre to bluff, but they would, I felt convinced, eventually be found. The police, not content with searching the personal belongings of my friend, took up the floor-boards, and even stripped some paper from the wall and carefully examined every article of furniture. Afterwards they went to my room at the ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... the morning when the dancers, bent on getting something to eat, adjourned the dancing for half an hour. And it was at this moment that Jack Kearns suggested poker. Jack Kearns was a big, bluff-featured man, who, along with Bettles, had made the disastrous attempt to found a post on the head-reaches of the Koyokuk, far inside the Arctic Circle. After that, Kearns had fallen back on his posts at Forty Mile and Sixty Mile and changed the direction of his ventures by sending ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... flats. A large portion of the flats was formerly of little value, in consequence of being kept wet by a shallow stream which ran through, it, and which, together with several springs that issue from the sandy bluff on the south side of the flats, kept the ground marshy, and unfit for cultivation. By deepening the channel of the stream, and conducting most of the springs into it, many acres, which were formerly almost worthless, have been made worth 125 dollars per acre. They have also, by deepening the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... interstate he lapped up flattery like a thirsty pup, but his bluff was that it was only for the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... trans-Mississippi country, and effectually barring the free navigation of the river. Both the cities named were strongly fortified, but Vicksburg, on the east bank, by its natural situation on a bluff two hundred feet high, rising almost out of the stream, was unassailable from the river front. Farragut had, indeed, in midsummer passed up and down before it with little damage from its fire; but, in return, his own guns could no ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... expect to go away next week. Of course, it may be another bluff, but somehow I think we really are going now, as we have been fitted out with a "field service-dressing," a packet containing two bandages and safety pins, which we have to sew into the right-hand bottom corner of our tunics. We have also been given our active service pay book, a little account ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... intimated, the mariners on the shore who watched her movements shook their heads in distrust as they communed among themselves, in very indifferent Italian, concerning her destination and object. This observation, with its accompanying discourse, occurred on the rocky bluff above the town of Porto Ferrajo, in the Island of Elba, a spot that has since become so renowned as the capital of the mimic dominion of Napoleon. Indeed, the very dwelling which was subsequently used by ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Butler, whom I remember as a child of seven wearing a blue leather belt with a brass buckle, and hated and envied by all the boys on account of it. He was a nephew of General Ben Butler and fought gallantly at Ball's Bluff and in several other actions of the Civil War. He is dead, long and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... On coming within five miles of the shore at eleven o'clock, we found it to be low and mostly sandy; and that the bluff head, which had been taken for the north end of an island, was part of a ridge of hills rising at Cape Schanck. We then bore away westward, in order to trace the land round the head of ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... lest in the delay the Indians should have accomplished their object. When she reached her horse, she found near by a heap of dead and struggling buffalo, which in their headlong race had run over the bluff front of the boulder. When she resumed her gallop she observed that the great amplitude of rich grasses was like unto a ploughed field. The herbage had been literally crushed into mire, and this the innumerable hoofs had churned up with the soft rich ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... on his other side, looking at the shores that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar when he saw Mount Vernon on its imposing bluff; unfamiliar because no domes or obelisks were to be seen; no airfield, and no Pentagon. But the sweet green land itself was there, holding out its welcoming and individual scent of fields and rich ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... Jim. "That's the way I like to hear you talk. And don't you let Sim Dobley, or either of the Lascalla Brothers, bluff you. I'm running this show, not them! If they make any trouble you ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... with his pistol a spruce partridge (grouse); it was the first seen by us on the trip. Together with a yellowlegs George had shot, it seasoned a pot of pea soup. We camped that night on a bluff, barren point, and Hubbard named it "Partridge Point" in bonour ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... along the top of the low chalk downs which bound my southern horizon. Its name is a corruption of the word Mary—Mary's way—for there was an ancient shrine of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary that stood on the broad low bluff still known as Chapel Hill, where the downs sink into the well-watered plain. No trace of the shrine exists, and it is not known where it stood. Perhaps its walls have been built into the little irregular pile of farm-buildings which stands close to where the way ends. In a field ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on, he reached the Strait of Camsoke [Footnote: Camsoke means, "There is a high bluff on the opposite side of the river."—S. T. Rand.] (M.), or Canso, and to cross over again sang the song which wins the whales, and one of these rising, carried him to the opposite shore. Thence he made the circle of Oona-mah-gik, keeping round ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... somewhat limited, and if possible I knew less of the difficult and narrow exit from Bolinas Bay than I did of Captain Booden. So with great trepidation I jammed the helm hard down, and the obedient little Lively Polly fell off easily, and we were over the bar and gliding gently along under the steep bluff of the Mesa, whose rocky edge, rising sheer from the beach and crowned with dry grass, rose far above the pennon of the little schooner. I did not intend to deceive Captain Booden, but being anxious to work my way down to San Francisco, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... 115 What of the woman? Mrs. Launce speaks for herself. The game of cross-bluff. An invitation bluntly refused. The turn of the prisoners. On the surface. "You are eager for death." The mystery of the Launces. "You are the Countess of Denby!" "Save your denials for use before a German court." Dave invited on deck. "You ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... held a shot-gun in his hand and, presenting it at me, swore he would kill me if I dared to proceed any further. My foreman, who knew him well, warned me to be careful; there seemed no doubt that he meant what he said; he was too mad to dispute with, and so! well, his bluff, if it were a bluff, carried the day and I ordered the mares to be turned loose. As it turned out afterwards it was well I did so, as further legal complications would have resulted. But as I began to think of and remember the time that had been spent and the amount of hard work in ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... new to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy, when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with her faded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... superior wisdom, held out a five-franc piece, but the driver shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. He saw that the moment had come to bluster so he descended from his box fully prepared to carry out his bluff. He started in to abuse the two Americans whom in his ignorance he ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the light. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... Western stuff, you'll have to let me weed out some of these Main Street cowboys that Clements wished on to me, and go out in the sagebrush and round up some that ain't all hair hatbands and high-heeled boots and bluff. I've got to have some whites to fill the foreground, if I give up the Injuns; or else I quit Western stuff altogether. I've been stalling along and keeping the best of the bucks in the foreground, and letting these said riders lope in and out of scenes and pile off and go to shooting ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... attempts to gratify it, the skill, the consummate hypocrisy with which he played on the credulity of honest folk, and his flagrant employment of that weapon known and recognised to-day in the most exalted spheres by the expressive name of "bluff." He is remarkable, too, for his mirth and high spirits, his genial buffoonery; the merry murderer is ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... This was pure bluff, as Dave, being under twenty-one, had no right to make an arrest, even as a citizen. But he saw that he had the Greek scared, and he resolved to push his ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... bluff me," said Bagley. "I've been on to your game for a good while. You can fool some of the people, but you can't fool me. I'm too old a ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... westward to the sea, which is eating them fast away, the steamer runs in through a deep crack, a pistol-shot in width. On the east side a strange section of gray lava and ash is gnawn into caves. On the right, a bluff rock of black lava dips sheer into water several fathoms deep; and you anchor at once inside an irregular group of craters, having passed through a gap in one of their sides, which has probably been torn out by a lava ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... an hour, connecting and disconnecting, testing and listening and testing still again, before the right wire fell under his thumb. Then he listened intently, with a little start, for he knew he was reading an operator whose bluff, heavy, staccato "send" was as familiar to his long-practiced ear as a well-known face would be to ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... strange girl, had kept well in under the shadow of the bluff, and could not have been seen; and when he saw the man confront the girl, he moved rapidly forward, and gained a point near enough to overhear the ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... jutting spur of a bluff a horde of shadows sweep forth upon the open prairie towards the trail on which the solitary rider has disappeared. Here and there among them swift gleams, like silver streaks, are plainly seen, as the moonbeams glint on armlet or bracelet, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... funny," laughed Merriwell. "Why, you were eager to hammer Thornton, and the fellow was afraid you would, for all the bluff he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... you're right and there's no time for argument. But when you said political exigency you said a whole lot—and we'll let this particular skunk cabbage go under that name. Don't try that law-and-order and state-authority bluff with me in such a case as this is. You're right in with the bunch and you know just as well as I do what the game is this time. Probably those folks outside there don't know what they want, but they do know that something is wrong! Something is almighty wrong when elected servants are ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... make me forget that this is your mother's house, you're going the right way to do it," he said between his teeth. "And I don't want any of your bluff. Miss Shepstone thinks she saw you at the Comedy to-night; she'll probably write to you or try to see you in the morning, and you've got to be out of London by then—do ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... by enemy troops does not look at its best; but the fact that it was under such conditions when I first knew Swakopmund makes no important difference. The place in its essentials must always be the same. If ever there was a work of bluff Swakopmund is that thing. One fancies the German commercial expert, a Government official, or, maybe, a representative of the ubiquitous Woermann, Brock & Co., looking along this ferocious and awful coast for a spot to found a town that should appear on the maps and be esteemed ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... him, swimming into the grotto with a bottle-full at a time. "And behold us arrived, gentlemen!" said he, as he brought the boat skillfully around in front of the small semicircular opening at the base of the lofty bluff. We lie flat on the bottom of the boat, and complete the immersion of that part of our clothing which the driving torrents of rain had spared. The wave of destiny rises with us upon its breast—sinks, and we are inside of ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... this the ridge east of Michikamau. Hungry all the time. Down to 40 lbs. of flour, 8 lbs. tea, about 20 lbs. pea meal, a bit of sugar, bacon, baking powder and dried apple, just a bit of rice. Saw mountains ahead from a bluff just below our evening camp. River runs north apparently; it must therefore be Low's Northwest River I think. Mountains look high and rugged, 10 to 25 miles away. Ought to get good view of country from there, and get caribou and bear. Moccasins ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... climbing and struggling, we were brought to bay, tired out. Half an hour's rest and some refreshing wild strawberries prepared us for such another stage. Then an hour more of this terrible strain made us drop again for rest. Another hour, and before noon, hot and jaded, we came out upon a low bluff overhanging the river, and stopped for lunch. The guide, apparently fresh and unwearied, cut a sheet of birch bark for tinder, lit a fire as defence against mosquitos, and in sixty seconds was snoring. We were not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... all right," said Miller, "but it was a woman's idea of a bluff, and it didn't go. She told us that before we urged her brother on to fight, we should have found out that he has spent the last five years in Paris, and that he's the gilt-edged pistol-shot of the salle d'armes in the Rue Scribe, that he can ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... don't I." The constable was beginning to enjoy himself. "If I was you I should drop the bluff and own I was fair caught. If you was to ask me, I should say you didn't look like a married man at all. We'll see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various

... from one hundred and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used in lowering the party down steep declivities which are too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way. One must have a steel hook, on another rope—a very useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope, hand over hand—being always particular to try and forget that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling till he arrives in some part ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... quoth Ben, "not new, but news enow; A strange sail in the offing."—"Sail! and how? What! could you make her out? It cannot be; I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea." "Belike," said Ben, "you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watched to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."—"When the Sun declined Where lay she? had she anchored?"—"No, but still 510 She bore down on us, till the wind ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... noise like breaking down again. Don't, Peter. I've gone on a bluff all my life. I'm a rotten sentimentalist at heart— soft as smashed grapes. It's my devil. If you break down, I'll ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... of the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of the wind in the pine-tops. The broad piazzas ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... many other sensible Englishmen, was a bluff, hearty sort of man, with a keen eye for the practical side of life and an equally keen enjoyment of every other, and it was not five minutes before he had located in his round head the precise standing and qualifications of every ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... him! I knew it was her right along. He tried to throw a bluff it was some swell. I'll bet he paid good for ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley

... as bluff an old sea-dog as ever flattened in a jib-sheet, "and that's the craft, as I'm a thinkin', Mr. Green. She had an animal for a figure-head, and that craft has an animal, as well as I can judge, at ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... except under strong compulsion, and still does battle in the streets of Corry with the four thousand, who have not yet found time to get out the stumps of the hastily felled trees, to "improve" a wild water-course that dashes down from the bluff and crosses the main street between a tailor's shop and a restaurant, or even to trample to death the wildwood ferns and forest flowers which linger on its margin. When the Coriolanians have attended to these little matters, their city will look even newer than at present. Then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... reception were wholly unwarranted; for it was generously enjoyed for its shrewd and vastly suggestive ideas on religion and heaven as popularly taught nowadays from the pulpits. This book is full of a keen and bluff common sense, cannily expressed in the words of an old sea-captain whom Mark Twain had known intimately. It is only another link in the chain of evidence which goes to prove that Mark Twain had thought long and deeply upon the problematical nature of a future life. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... special charge of him. The General in question was not accustomed to nice ethnic distinctions, and grouped all of the representatives from Continental Europe under the comprehensive title of "Dutchmen." When the attache in question came to say farewell, the General responded with a bluff heartiness, in which perhaps the note of sincerity was more conspicuous than that of entire good breeding: "Well, good-by; sorry you're going; which are you anyhow—the German ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... King of Hearts how gruff The monarch stands, how square, how bluff! When our eighth Harry rul'd this land, Just like this King did Harry stand; And just so amorous, sweet, and willing, As this Queen stands, stood ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of games, from tag and jumping rope, to blindman's bluff and hide-and-seek. Snap was made to do a number of tricks, much to the amusement of the teachers and children. Danny Rugg, and some of the older boys, got up a small baseball game, and then Danny, with one or two chums, went off in a deeper part of the woods. Bert heard one of the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... We colored folks had to make it here to Pine Bluff to the county band. If the Rebels kotch ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... round from the south to the northwest, and we went to High Bluff, a point on the north edge, where some rocks are piled up above the evergreens, to get a view of the sunset. In every direction the mountains were clear, and a view was obtained of the vast horizon and the hills and lowlands of several States—a continental prospect, scarcely anywhere else equaled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and the other naval writers began to refer to everything President Wilson did as a "bluff." When Col. E. M. House came to Berlin early in 1916, he tried to impress the officials with the fact that Mr. Wilson was not only not bluffing, but that the American people would support him in whatever he did in dealing ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... lady immediately set off for the cow-house. As she entered there was a scuttling of juniors, who sought safety behind the partition. Raymonde stared for a moment aghast, then whispered to Ardiune: "Bluff it out!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... morning that those very savages rode out on the plains in a roundabout way, so as to get in advance of the Cheyennes, and then had hidden themselves on the top of a bluff overlooking the trail they knew the Cheyennes to be following, and had fired upon them as they passed below, killing two and wounding a number of others. You can see how treacherous these Indians are, and how very far from noble is their method of ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... still out of sight ahead, yet every moment seemed to bring them closer upon their heels. At every bend of the tortuous trail the leader's eye was strained to see the dust-cloud rising ahead. But jutting point and rolling shoulder of bluff or hill-side ever interposed. Drummond had just glanced at his watch for perhaps the twentieth time since daybreak and was replacing it in his pocket when an exclamation ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... that the main object of the Yuen-nan provincial government in employing two American engineers, who at the present moment (August, 1910) are surveying a route from Yuen-nan-fu to the Yangtze, is merely official bluff. It is preferable to pay two men a monthly stipend if the official "face" can be preserved and the Chinese dogged official procrastination be maintained, rather than to allow foreigners to come in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... sentimentality, which goes to make up the character of the American people. The power of the Union was therefore underestimated by us, and the high-spirited utterances of American youthful strength were more disapproved of than was necessary, because they were interpreted as mere "bluff" and arrogance. We never sufficiently allowed for the fact that the Americans are very "emotional"—that is to say, that they are easily carried away by their feelings and then become uncertain. Political surprises in the United ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... a very poor man, and a very brave one. He never knew what wealth was. His mind was always greater than his fortune; and it is the mind that makes the man rich or poor, happy or miserable. Johnson's gruff and bluff exterior covered a manly and noble nature. He had early known poverty and debt, and wished himself clear of both. When at college, his feet appeared through his shoes, but he was too poor to buy new ones. His head was full of learning, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... turtle—was immediately killed. To us, after the transit of the Andes and the dangers and hardships of the wilderness and the river, it seemed as if we had reached the end of our journey, though we were over two thousand miles from the Atlantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the Ambiyacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. Excepting Mr. Hauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two or three other whites, the inhabitants are Indians of the Orejones and Yagua tribes. The exportations are hammocks, sarsaparilla, palo de cruz, and urari. Palo de cruz is ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... described a half-circle round the bank hidden a few feet below the muddy water. Then he steamed slowly seawards, keeping the windmill full astern and the beacon on his port quarter. When the beacon was bearing southeast he rang the engine-room bell. The steamer, hardly moving before, stopped dead, its bluff nose turned to the wind and the rustling waves. Then Captain Petersen held up his hand to the first mate, who was on the high forecastle, and the anchor splashed over. The Olaf was anchored at the head ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... Scarcely more than a cable's length from the ship appeared a ledge of rocks over which the waves were washing with sullen roars, while the log hove overboard showed me that there was a strong current setting towards a high rocky bluff land dead to leeward of us. Towards it the ship was surely though slowly dragging her anchor. One thing only could save us. We must without delay get sail on her. We tried to weigh the anchor, but soon abandoned the attempt as hopeless. I called the officers ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... he so anxious to be off? After all, he, the Big Man, found it a pleasant place, after the wearisome life from hotel to hotel. He liked the boys; they were kind to him, and looked after his moral and spiritual welfare with bluff but affectionate solicitude. It is true, one was always hungry, and only ten and a half hours' sleep was a refinement of cruelty unworthy of a great institution. But it was pleasant running over to the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... off Yenangyaung. There are sandy cliffs here, riddled with holes made by blue rock-pigeons (?)—more shooting going a-begging! And there is a bungalow on a sandy bluff, and picturesque native craft lie along the sandy shore, altogether rather a sandy place. The oil works don't show from the river very much[27]. The Jacobs' party get off here. Mr Jacobs manages this particular ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... the second day a broad valley opened on the plain before them, and in the sunset Bucks saw, winding like a silver thread far up toward the mountains, the great stream about which he had already heard so much. Camp was pitched on a high bluff that commanded the valley in both directions for many miles, and after supper Scott and Bucks ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... States and Mexico broke out. Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the war. He looked upon it as unnecessary and unjust. Volunteers were called for. John J. Hardin, who lost his life in that war, and Edward D. Baker, who was killed at Ball's Bluff during our Civil War—both Whigs—were engaged in raising regiments. Meetings were held and speeches made. At one of them, after Baker and others had spoken, Lincoln, who was in the audience, was called for, and the call was repeated until at last he ascended the platform. He thanked ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... singin' stopped . . . Seemed as if my heart just flopped; For I'd learned to love the boy With his gilt-edged line of joy, With his glorious gift of bluff, With his splendid fightin' stuff. Sing on, lad, and play the game! O dear God! . . . no singin' came, But there surged to me instead — Silence, silence, deep and dread; Till I shuddered, tried to pray, Said: "He's maybe ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... bulging, colorless eyes of Penton. Henty blushed, but his gaze was unwavering. The dogs barked uproariously, scampering to and fro like rats. Mrs. Penton, from the manager's office, tried to quiet them, but they seemed bent on carrying out the bluff they had started, imitating in that respect their ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... From the bluff at Memphis we look across the river, where along the western shore stretch the forests of Crittenden County, Arkansas, and Marion, about fourteen miles from Memphis, is the county-seat. The story ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... the ironbound enclosure labeled "CASHIER" at McLaughlin & Perkins, Inc., so long, that the messenger boys had dubbed him the "cage man." To them he had become something of a bluff. Skinner's pet abomination was cigarettes, and whenever one of these miniatures in uniform chanced to offend that way, he would turn and frown down upon the culprit. The first time he did this to Mickey, the "littlest" messenger boy of the district, who was burning the stub of a ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... had the inevitable tea in the foreign settlement, known as the Bluff. Most of these houses are of the vintage of fifty years ago and range in rental from $125 to $150, unfurnished, the tenant having to install his own plumbing if he wishes such a luxury. We wanted to know why some better arrangement was not made and were reminded of the law that does not ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer

... passed between a rocky island and a high bluff or headland, did the harbor of Acapulco unfold, so cleverly was it fashioned. Like a huge basin it was, scooped from the cliffy shore, as if a giant shark had taken out a big bite. So steep were the whitish cliffs, that several small vessels were lying right under them. A dazzling beach ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin

... dogs, which had hitherto been kept in hand, were now loosed, and with a shout the men rushed forward both on the bluffs in the centre and along the low land skirting the rivers on either side. Soon the wolves came pouring down from the wooded bluff, and engaged in a furious conflict with the dogs. As the men ran up, a few of the wolves in their desperation charged them and endeavoured to break through, but the great majority, cowed by the clamour and fierce assault, crouched to ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... after him. You'll think it strange that after his gang were about to kill Mr. Gledware in the prairie, that he should come to ask him to act as witness against another man. That's what Mr. Gledware told him. But Red Kimball answered that it was all a bluff—they had never dreamed of shooting ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... the same, changed, journey'd considerable,) Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion, By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay'd, Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers, Smiling and pleas'd with palpable intent to stay, She's here, install'd amid ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... fifty years, off and on—ever since, in fact, the press-masters of bluff King Hal denuded the Dorset coast of fishermen and drove the starving women of that region to sea in quest of food [Footnote: State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII.: Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545.]—the press-gang had been laboriously ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... being entangled with it. But it was Scott's soldiers that I was talking of, and I was saying that there is nothing theatrical, no posing, no heroics (the thing of all others which the hero abominates), but just the short bluff word and the simple manly ways, with every expression and metaphor drawn from within his natural range of thought. What a pity it is that he, with his keen appreciation of the soldier, gave us so little of those soldiers who were his own contemporaries—the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... A bluff, soldierly-appearing man of middle age entered the room: a bearded man of harsh visage, yet with an eye in which justice sat enthroned. He looked about the room with an air of dawning relief; and when two villainous-looking rascals followed ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge

... natives she was tall and fair; masses of golden hair encircled her oval face and clustered over her blue eyes. Who was she? Whence came she? None could answer. By degrees some of the boldest of the youths approached, but their bluff manners seemed to displease her; though unaccustomed to rebuffs they retired. One, however, among them fared differently. Jean Letocq, a member of the family to which the hero belonged who near this very spot discovered the sleeping troops of the Grand Sarrazin, was admired and beloved ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... the boat were quite different from Garman. I knew they would take a bluff, or I'd never have let you pull your gun. If you had done the same here there would have been shooting or else you'd have had to put your gun away and back down. It's one thing to pull a gun on a bunch of river rats, and ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... reckon that's only a bluff. It's my idea the headquarters of this gang are right in these mountains, somewhere. Pete thinks so, too. That's why he set the pool as the meeting place. There's an old trail he knows and he wants to strike it, you agreeing of course," he ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... blackened and weather-beaten ribs of a great ship which had been wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terrible storm long ago; he would show us where the bathing was pleasant and safe; he would tell us of the best place for fishing, and probably show us the high bluff a little back from the beach from which the Indian maiden leaped to escape the tomahawk of her enraged lover, and then he would be almost sure to tell us of the secluded spot where it was said Captain Kidd and his pirates once buried a ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... opera was due to many causes. Some liked it for its barely veiled allusions on politicians. "Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, alias Bob Booty," was very obviously intended for Walpole and his "dear charmers" for his wife and Molly Skerrett. It may well be believed that the song, "How happy could I be with either" brought down the house; ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... a reason for that too; and, like my point, it is a good one. But do not ask me for it to-night. To-morrow I will tell you everything. But it will have to be in the place I have mentioned. Will you come to the bluff where the ruins are one-half hour before sunset? Please, be exact as to the time. You will see why, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... where the mocason tracks had been seen on the preceding day. The men on horse back, all got safely off; but those on foot were less fortunate. The Indians having occupied the pass both above and below, the footmen had no chance of escape but in crossing the river and ascending a steep bluff, on its opposite side. In attempting this several lost their lives. John McLain was killed about thirty yards from the brow of the hill.—James Ralston, when a little farther up it, and James Crouch was wounded after having nearly reached its summit, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... said, was about seventeen years old, and big and strong of his age. He played well at all games where pluck wasn't much wanted, and managed generally to keep up appearances where it was; and having a bluff, off-hand manner, which passed for heartiness, and considerable powers of being pleasant when he liked, went down with the school in general for a good fellow enough. Even in the School-house, by dint of his command ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... desperate determination to make the most of them. To give effect to their operations, they secured an immediate and ample interval for exasperating popular feeling against Ministers and their abominable proposition! But it was all in vain. There was a bluff English frankness about the Minister that mightily pleased the country, exciting a sympathy in every right-thinking Englishman. Here was no humbug of any sort, no obtaining of money under false pretences. At ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... Long Island. Close by they were rallied in time to make a stand at Harlem Plains. On the hills in the extreme northern part of the park are still to be seen the remains of a series of earthworks, which have been carefully turfed over, and on one of these heights, known as The Bluff, is an old stone structure said to have been used as a block-house or magazine during the war of 1812-15. A small part of the "old Boston Road" is still to be seen in this portion of the park, and in the distance a view is to be obtained of the High Bridge, the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing, creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says the ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... add fuel to the flame, pour oil on the fire, oleum addere camino[Lat]. explode; let fly, fly off; discharge, detonate, set off, detonize[obs3], fulminate. Adj. violent, vehement; warm; acute, sharp; rough, rude, ungentle, bluff, boisterous, wild; brusque, abrupt, waspish; impetuous; rampant. turbulent; disorderly; blustering, raging &c. v.; troublous[obs3], riotous; tumultuary[obs3], tumultuous; obstreperous, uproarious; extravagant; unmitigated; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... "Oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "We never turn loose on anything but the surface of things. Why, if any one started in really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most of our best ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... woman's name And guards her from all thoughtless jeers; If he is glad to play life's game And not risk all to get the cheers; If he disdains to win by bluff And scorns to gain by shady tricks, I hold that he is good enough ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... Just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called, so must the knight-leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes of the world. Here was the President, suddenly elevated to the position of a world leader with the almost pathetic trust of the peoples of the world. Here was the champion of ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... lynching them. But fortunately, the objects of their vengeance had escaped from town. Foiled in their purpose, the rioters repaired to the shantee where the murder was committed, and precipitated it over the bluff. The military of the city were ordered out to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Pay; to be called Captain, noble Captain, to show, to cock and look big, and bluff as I do: to be bow'd to thus as we pass, to domineer and beat our Soldiers: Fight, quoth a, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... must have been hard places all along, for to learn every crook and turn and stump and snag and bluff and bar and sounding of that twelve hundred miles of mighty, shifting water was a gigantic task. Mark Twain tells us how, when he was getting along pretty well, his chief one day turned on him ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine

... a big bluff chap with a promising moustache, encouraged by private, tuition. "Come along there, Haviland," he exclaimed, "a nob like you should be one of the 'boys!'" These fellows don't know what life is—but to think of a man of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... "It's a pretty big bluff," murmured Jeff, leaning back in his chair and mopping a perspiring brow. "Phew-w. but it's hot in here! I expect to see several of those crazy dances go all to pieces on our account. That Highland Fling! Mind you ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... back, and you won't take a rebuff; Your trouble is that you don't know when you have had enough— Don't give in. If Fate should down you, just get up and take another cuff; You may bank on it that there is no philosophy like bluff And grin. ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service

... league with the doctors,' was his bluff greeting, as he held a hand to the young man and inspected him with a look of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... would say in his bluff way, "you 'll not be absolutely obliged to die an old maid. If we can't find anything better for you, there 's always Jack. As long as he does n't take to some other girl, you can fall back on him as a last chance. He 'd be glad to take you to get ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... took me there that evening, and I saw "Hyder Ali." Never, never in my life before did I dream that dramatic art, poetry, and mimesis could attain to such ideal splendour. And then a sailor came on the stage and sang "Harry Bluff," and when he came to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... harbors: Bluefields, Corinto, El Bluff, Puerto Cabezas, Puerto Sandino, Rama, San ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... I. "You're makin' the bluff that you want to scatter deeds of kindness; but when I point one out, right under your nose, you beef about it like you was bein' frisked for your watch. A hot idea of bein' an angel of mercy you've got, ain't you? Honest now, in your whole career, was you ever guilty of wastin' ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... positively attempted to induce the War Office to take up his work with him. There remains a confidential letter from Major-General Volleyfire to the Earl of Frogs. "The man's a crank and a bounder to boot," says the Major-General in his bluff, sensible, army way, and so left it open for the Japanese to secure, as they subsequently did, the priority in this side of warfare—a priority they still to our great ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... damp and chill. It was rainin. The only persons there when I entered was a fine bluff old gentleman who was talking in a excited manner to ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne

... gaining the face of the bluff, our friends found themselves in the presence of some twenty more guerillas, who were gathered about fires, cooking and eating strips of meat from a recently butchered steer. Their horses were picketed close at hand, and beyond them grazed a herd of small ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... it ere the morning Rolls the fog from strait and bluff; Where the offing crimsons eastward There is ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman

... toward me. "How do you excuse yourself for your ignorance in matters where you're always professionally making such a bluff of knowledge? After all the marriages you have brought about in literature, can you say positively and specifically how they are brought about ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors

... the surrender of the white 'ntombozaan whom he held in captivity, I saw at once that, for some reason which I could not then guess, he was very greatly perturbed. But, like the savage he was, he also attempted to "bluff", so that the matter soon resolved itself into a "bluffing match" between us, in which, although I did not know it, I held the advantage. First the king indignantly denied all knowledge of the girl for whom I was then seeking; then, when I not only insisted ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... disguised and labelled with sweet summer titles, was only a nine days' wonder when the Birkenholts had come to London, but the approaching tournament at Westminster on the Whitsun holiday was the great excitement to the whole population, for, with all its faults, the Court of bluff King Hal was thoroughly genial, and every one, gentle and simple, might participate in ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... England fleet was commanded by Sir William Phips, a bluff, short-tempered sailor. He sailed up the St. Lawrence and anchored a ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... care a damn. I feel like those fellows over in Russia, the revolutionist chaps I met, who didn't know if they'd croak in a month and didn't care one way or the other. But as a matter of fact," he added, "I think this time it's mainly bluff. They wanted to get us away from the crowd and keep us away while they broke the strike. Now that it's over you'll probably find they'll let us all off with light sentences. Of course the murder charge can't ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... brief coughing fit, looked up at the man behind the bar,—a great thick-necked fellow with a mien of authority, and yet with a certain bluff honesty expressed about his eyes and lips. This man, whose air of proprietorship convinced Blake that he could be none other than P. Gibbs, had first looked sneeringly at the ten cents, but had shown some small sign of pity on hearing the ominous cough of the attenuated ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... a man ought to get on in the world, I think, for after all it is self-confidence and "bluffing" that seems to succeed most. However down in the world you are, however bad your "hand," you only have to "bluff" a little to make it all right. There are many foolish people in the world ready to be your dupes, and luckily they never think of asking to "see" you. Even the best of us try it on a little; we strive ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... not captured; the battle was lost to all except the black soldiers; they, with their terrible loss, had won and conquered a much greater and stronger battery than that upon the bluff. Nature seems to have selected the place and appointed the time for the negro to prove his manhood and to disarm the prejudice that at one time prompted the white troops to insult and assault the negro soldiers in New Orleans. It was all forgotten and they mingled together that day on terms of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... crossed the firm face of Major Lightfoot. "Don't try to bluff me," he said quietly but sternly; "for it won't work. I see very clearly that you fellows have never been in Fleming County, nor do I think you have ever been in Kentucky at all, for the matter of that. You certainly talk more like ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... who owns a car generally possesses an average amount of intelligence and likes to have it recognized and respected. Your questioning and examination will either show the customer that you know your business and know what should be done, or it will convince him that you are merely putting up a bluff to ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... was in human shape, and Manabozho was pressing him hard. At a distance he saw a very high bluff of rocks jutting out into a lake, and he ran for the foot of the precipice which was abrupt and elevated. As he came near, to his surprise and great relief, the Manito of the rock opened his door and told Grasshopper to come in. The door was no ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... time drew on towards the Sieur Rudel's home-coming, and ever the twain looked out across the sea for the black boats to round the bluff and take the beach—Joceliande from her balcony, Solita from the window of her little chamber in the tower; and each night the princess gave orders to light a beacon on the highest headland that the wayfarers might steer safely down that ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... every variety of fight, from the ordered attacks of squadrons under control, to single ship affairs, every turn of which depended on the second's decision of the men concerned; endurance to the hopeless end; bluff and cunning; reckless advance and red-hot flight; clear vision and as much of blank bewilderment as the Senior Service permits its children to indulge in. That is not much. When a destroyer who has been dodging enemy torpedoes and gun-fire in the dark realises about midnight ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... for a dead pigeon that fell off towards the bottom of a wooded bluff in some thick bunches of chapparal, I heard the quick boof! boof! of the hoofs of a bounding deer. I did not see that animal. An instant later, in rounding a heavy growth of bushes, I saw a magnificent buck grazing on the tender ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... found and practised in Nippon. On the beach at Kamakura at times can be found straw chaplets with gaudy cloth attached to the centre; a copper coin, and rice offering are accompaniments. Or such will be found at the crossroads of town or village, or on the Yokohama Bluff. Or in times of epidemic in numbers they are laid on the wayside shrine of the god of measles or other disease. The latter disposition conveys its own warning; the others are majinai or charms by which it is hoped to transfer the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... not to be detained and was half way up the little iron ladder before Bill Sheehan had recovered his balance. "Come back," he cried, poising a bit of coal in his hand, "or I'll bring you back." This bluff did not disturb Jim who was now on top of ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... applicant as he. Those staring crowds on the shore were now left far behind, seen dimly clustering like swallows on eaves; while the passengers' attention was soon drawn away to the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers on the Missouri shore, or the bluff-looking Missourians and towering Kentuckians among the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... half a mile north of New Salem, just under the bluff, still stands, but long since ceased to be a dwelling-house, and is now a tumble-down old stable. Here Lincoln was a frequent boarder, especially during the period of his closest application to the study of the law. Stretched out on the cellar door of his cabin, reading a book, he met for the first ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... reaching the place, due to an unreliable railroad passing by at the end of the town, and to the little street cars which came and went at irregular intervals, reassured him. He could picture himself alone on the bluff, sufficiently far away to prevent the Parisian throngs from reaching him, and yet near enough to the capital to confirm him in his solitude. And he felt that in not entirely closing the way, there was a chance that he would not be assailed by a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... surprise reserved for Goyder was at Lake Torrens, where he found the water quite fresh. He described the Lake as stretching from fifteen to twenty miles to the north-west, with a water horizon, with an extensive bay forming to the southward; while to the north, a bluff headland and perpendicular cliffs were clearly to be discerned with the telescope. From the appearance of the flood-marks, Goyder came to the conclusion that there was little or no rise and fall in the lake, drawing the natural conclusion that its size was such ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... best view of the village. It is all about him, and for the most part below him. At night the lights in the houses show only here and there through the trees, but those on the beaches and at sea shine out plainly. The brilliant yellow gleam a mile away is from the Orham lighthouse on the bluff. The smaller white dot marks the light on Baker's Beach. The tiny red speck in the distance, that goes and comes again, is the flash-light at Setuckit Point, and the twinkle on the horizon to the south is the beacon of the lightship on ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... you may be hep to her little scheme; I don't believe it, but I know that, if you are, you won't let me suffer for it. And finally, in the senility of my dotage I conned myself into believing I could bluff it out; at the worst, I could prove my innocence easily enough. But what I didn't take into consideration was that I was laying myself open to arrest for impersonating an agent of the Government. When I woke up to that fact, the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... the chiefs are said to have brought with them. These Gaelic herders, perhaps in negligible numbers, were in the Yadkin Valley before 1730, possibly even ten years earlier. In 1739 Neil MacNeill of Kintyre brought over a shipload of Gaels to rejoin his kinsman, Hector MacNeill, called Bluff Hector from his residence near the bluffs at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville. Some of these immigrants went on to the Yadkin, we are told, to unite with others of their clan who had been for some time in that district. The exact time of the first Highlander on the ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... Uncle Chris in the bluff, genial way which, in his younger days, had charmed many a five-pound note out of the pockets of his fellow-men and many a soft glance out of the eyes of their sisters, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... American colonies, then in a state of revolution, and passed the winter of 1782 in the city of New York. He is still borne in lively recollection by many of the elder inhabitants of that city, as a fine bluff boy of sixteen: frank, cheery, and affable; and there are anecdotes still told of his frolicsome pranks on shipboard. Among these, is the story of a rough, though favourite, nautical joke, which he played off upon a sailor boy, in cutting down his hammock ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... not hitherto heard or imagined)—we achieved little progress. She rang, ere long, for aid; which arrived in the shape of a "maitresse," who had been partly educated in an Irish convent, and was esteemed a perfect adept in the English language. A bluff little personage this maitresse was—Labassecourienne from top to toe: and how she did slaughter the speech of Albion! However, I told her a plain tale, which she translated. I told her how I had left my own country, intent ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... suggestion and started to walk up the beach; but she did not get far. There was a private dock running out beyond low-water mark just below the very first bungalow. She saw several men coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands. This must be Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... tortoise-shell sidecombs and bunches of dry curls, who always dressed in shiny black silk and whose only ornament was her mother's hair set in a breastpin; or it was his father by whom she must sit when he came over in his gig—a bluff, hearty man who generally wore a red waistcoat with big bone buttons and high boots with ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... cleared the pis'kun walls and came toward her. "Come," he said, taking hold of her arm. "No, no!" she replied pulling back. "But you said if the buffalo would jump over, you would marry one; see, the pis'kun is filled." And without more talk he led her up over the bluff, and out on to ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... faint and feeble on the face of the affianced young lady, who isn't playing her part as a person with ancestors ought to play it. She bounced her old beau and took unto herself a new one, and what I can't understand is, having done it, why she doesn't carry it off with a rip-roaring bluff that might fool even herself for a while. But Elizabeth isn't that sort. Everybody is talking about how miserable she looks. I'm afraid I put the beau idea in her head, and the idea has got her in a hole and she doesn't know how to get out of it. I wish Billy was ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... you are perpetually reminded of the favorite national game of "Poker." In this, a player holding a very bad hand against a good one, may possibly "bluff" his adversary down, and win the stakes, if he only has confidence enough to go on piling up the money, so as to make his own weakness appear strength. That audacity answers often happily enough, especially with the timid and inexperienced, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of an old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the sea was ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... omnipotence was to be run out of public life without cause assigned. All this while there was rumour and counter-rumour about Mr O'Brien's return. The Dillonites up to the last moment believed we were playing a game of bluff and went on right merrily with their preparations for making a clean sweep of every man who was "suspect" of possessing an independent mind. Then on one winter's night, shortly before the election writs were issued, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... "bluff Ben Wade" of Ohio, an old-time anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a stout friend and foe. Another conspicuous radical was Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in New Hampshire, went West early ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... regarded at first with lofty contempt, but when she found they enabled her to run by her protector's side she was delighted. It was necessary to stop often and rest long, so our travelers made slow progress; but at noon, climbing a bluff which overlooked the river for miles in either direction, Pierre was delighted to find himself within two or three miles of the mouth. He marked, moreover, a short cut by which, taking advantage of the curve in the main ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts

... said, "is not like ecarte or baccarat. It is a study of character, a matching of minds, a thing we call bluff, we Americans. These poor Marquesans must have some fun. Let him do it! No harm can come of it. It is far to Paris, where ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... courteously contented itself in insisting on plucking out the heart of the journalistic mystery. All attempts at evasion and humor were vain—here was the ruthless reality of war. It was the mailed Prussian eagle against the bluff American bird of the same species, and the unequal contest was soon ended when Major Nikolai, Chief of Division III. of the Great General Staff, stood up very straight and dignified and said: "I am a German officer. What German violated his duty? I ask you as a ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... strong boy, well accustomed to taking responsibilities upon himself. He had never been afraid of anything and this perhaps had given him more than the average boy's good opinion of himself. Nothing could have appealed to him more subtly than this man's bluff, curt flattery. He was being met man to man by a man of the world. No boy is proof against the compliment that he is a man, to be dealt with as a man and equal of older, more experienced men. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... shape, and Manabozho was pressing him hard. At a distance he saw a very high bluff of rocks jutting out into a lake, and he ran for the foot of the precipice which was abrupt and elevated. As he came near, to his surprise and great relief, the Manito of the rock opened his door and told Grasshopper ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... lay a vessel of about 300 tons burden, with bluff, rounded bows sitting high up out of the water, a long, straight waist, and a bridge and cluster of ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... at night, and a horror seized the others, as they thought that he had been overtaken and killed by hostile Indians. Day after day the woods were scoured in the hope of finding the missing companion, but it seemed vain. A fort was erected for the protection of the party on a high bluff, and named for the lost hunter, Prudhomme. At last they met some Chickasaw Indians, and messages of amity were exchanged through them with the people of their village, not far distant. Soon afterwards Prudhomme was discovered, half-dead from exposure, for ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... am directed by the General Com'dg to say that he deems it advisable that you should move your Hd. Qrs. higher up the river, say in the vicinity of Webber's Falls or Pheasant Bluff. He is desirous that you should be somewhere near the Council when that body meets, so that any attempt of the enemy to interfere with their deliberations may be thwarted by you."—DUVAL to Cooper, April 22, 1863, Confederate Records, chap. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... notice was taken of the request. His command was, however, continually reinforced by new regiments, and he found occupation in organizing and disciplining them. General Polk meanwhile was busy fortifying Columbus, where the river-bank rises to a high bluff, until the bluff was faced and crowned with massive earthworks, armed with one hundred and forty-two pieces of artillery, mostly thirty-two and sixty-four pounders. At the same time heavy defensive works commanding the river were erected below at Island No. ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... the Wilsons at Beverly Farms was on a bluff overlooking the sea. It was reached by a long avenue winding through pines mingled with birches and rowan trees; and stood in a clearing where all the day and all the night the sound of the waves on the cliff answered the whispering of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... their characteristics, the sincerity of their belief is the most striking. In Ohio, when one of the preachers of these "Smithite" Mormons was conducting me through the many-storied temple, still standing huge and gray on Kirtland Bluff, he laid his hand on a pile of copies of the Book of Mormon, saying solemnly, "Sister, here is the solidest thing in religion that you'll find anywhere." I bought the "solidest" thing for fifty cents, and do not advise the same outlay to others. The prophet's life is more marvellous ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... from, as the Yankees say." He smiled, "that is, if the old fox does not stop these drafts. If he does, I'll stop him!" he swore. And yet, he was troubled at heart. "I know Alixe Delavigne will call me back and pay me well. How did she find out about my bold bluff to Johnstone? Some servant may have overheard, and she is a deep one. She may even have ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... an American class now passing away, had sent his son to the State University instead of to an expensive Eastern college because of his carefully avowed attitude of bluff acceptance of a place among the plain people of the region. The presence of Jermain, Jr., in the classrooms of the State University had been capital for many a swelling phrase on his father's part—"What's good enough for the farmers' boys of my State is good enough ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... the different stations." He stretched himself with an assumption of ease. Then suddenly he sat bolt upright and a peculiar expression came into his eyes. Tresler detected the half smile and the side glance in his own direction. "Yes," he went on, composedly enough now, "partic'larly Willow Bluff." ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... proposal. By a system of secret service peculiar to these traders, the amount of the last offer is easily discovered, and the new bidder "sees that" (if I may be permitted to amuse myself with the phraseology of the Mississippi bluff-player) and "goes" a few ticals "better." There are always several enterprising Stars of the Harem ready to vary the monotony by engaging in this unromantic business; and the agitation among the "sealed" sisterhood, though by no means boisterous, is lively, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... Lillian admitted, drawing a deep breath, as the girl vanished. "I didn't think she had bravado enough to bluff ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... very new to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy, when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... The bluff, bold men of Runnymede Are with ye still in times like these; The shades of England's mighty dead, Your cloud ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... a very dangerous game, seldom worth the risk, and it involves, even for its occasional success, a very just estimate of your opponents. Remember that you cannot bluff even ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel

... be of about a thousand tons burden, colored a mixed brown and dingy gray, which, as they drew near, was shown as the action of iron rust on black and lead-colored paint. Here and there were outlines of painted ports. Under the stump of a shattered bowsprit projected from between bluff bows a weather-worn figurehead, representing the god of the sea. Above on the bows were wooden-stocked anchors stowed inboard, and aft on the quarters were iron davits with blocks intact—but no falls. In a few of the dead-eyes in the channels could ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... reading, then," says Vernabelle; and Cousin Egbert kind of strangled at this, too. He finally manages to say that he tried to read Shakespere once but it was too fine print. The old liar! He wouldn't read a line of Shakespere in letters a foot high. It just showed that he, too, was trying to bluff along with the rest of 'em on ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff." ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... not, however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of which Cora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowd that crossed the harbor in the Stazy to land at a roughly built dock under the high bluff of the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... "you must assume that he has no intention of building, that he is only making an elaborate bluff. How do you know but that he wants to get this right of way and charter so that he can blackmail you and your concerns, not merely once, but year after year? You'd gladly pay him several hundred thousand a year not to use his charter and right of ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... of the poet's kindred are given. The nearest in blood are the nephews, General Charles Russell Lowell, killed at Winchester, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, at Seven Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, at Ball's Bluff. Another relative was the heroic Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who fell in the assault on ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... will deserve it," Violet said, and was introducing me, but he said Johnnie had done him that honour. He has been talking of Captain Martindale (calling him Arthur), and telling curious things he has seen in Ireland. He is very amusing, bluff, and odd, but as if he was a distinguished person. Now I see that Violet is altered, and grown older—he seems to have such respect for, and confidence in her; and she so womanly and self-possessed, entering into his clever talk as Matilda would, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... know, you can't bluff him forever. You're sure to slip up sooner or later. And, anyway, I'm not at all sure that it isn't ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... them, but lovely enough to hold the glance of old and young. Unlike the natives she was tall and fair; masses of golden hair encircled her oval face and clustered over her blue eyes. Who was she? Whence came she? None could answer. By degrees some of the boldest of the youths approached, but their bluff manners seemed to displease her; though unaccustomed to rebuffs they retired. One, however, among them fared differently. Jean Letocq, a member of the family to which the hero belonged who near this very spot discovered the sleeping troops ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... I wonder whether he is in earnest about the divorce this time, or whether the whole scene was just bluff, ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... where one is. It has a spring by it, too, which is a good thing, for drinking this swamp and creek water will make us all sick. I was all through here on a camp-hunt once, and I remember a place on the other side of the river where two big hollow trees stand right together on top of a sort of bluff. About fifty yards further down the river there is a spring, just under the bluff. We must find the place if we can, to-night, and to do it we must first get across the river. It's so low now we can easily wade it, I think, and Judie can be ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... Lady Webling spread their hands and drew up their shoulders in surrender and gave up hope of bluff. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... sentences of the bluff fisherman, as in their racy vernacular they were blithely given utterance to by the manly voice of the Reader, seemed to supply a fitting introduction to the drama, as though from the lips of a Yarmouth Chorus. Scarcely had the social carouse there in the old boat, on that memorable ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... he said was that scarlet women like Emma Goldman were better than a C. E. girl, and that he hoped his students would bluff the course and flunk it, and that we could find booze at Jamaica Mills, and a few little things like that. That's all. Sure! That's the sort of thing we came here to study." The senior was buttoning his raincoat with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... a typical Spanish soldier of the period, bluff and hearty, but exceedingly courteous in manner, with, according to his own account, a profound respect and admiration for the English, so far as his knowledge of them extended, yet George quickly came to the conclusion that the good man was suffering ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... and Doctors, yet unborn; Or justly mad to Moloch's burning fane Devote the choicest children of his brain. 190 Judge for yourself; and as you find report. Of wit as freely as of beef or port. Zounds! shall a pert or bluff important wight, Whose brain is fanciless, whose blood is white; A mumbling ape of taste; prescribe us laws 195 To try the poets, for no better cause Than that he boasts per ann. ten thousand clear, Yelps in ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... no answer, but something to bluff me off. I saw he was unwilling to speak out, and that it was a mere effort to button up and evade the subject. So to draw him out, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... uninvited and you've said too much," Doctor Hosmer stated in cold even tones. "You may be the town magnate, but you're only a ruffian and a crook after all. You can't bluff or bully us. More than that, you've insulted my daughter and me beyond any future reparation. As for your son, he got less than he deserved." He turned to the rancher. "You came just in time, it seems. Please see ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... for believing that not only animals here and there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed, even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for instance, as cause a whole herd of buffalos to rush over a bluff, and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity of panic, fear—of superstition, as I should call it—is greatest in those animals, the dog and the horse for instance, which have the most rapid ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... opponent, but it was more of an attempt to cover up his real intention rather than to land effectively. Well he knew that his best and quickest chance to end the fight lay in his ability to kick the other man insensible, and so he tried to fool and disarm Max by a bluff attack. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... For a little way above the dam the waters lay still and deep, with patches of long mosses, vines and rushes, waving in its quiet clearness—forming shadowy dens for lusty trout, while the open places—shining fields and lanes—reflected, as a mirror, the steep green-clad bluff, and the trees that bent far over until their drooping branches touched the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... uneven, jagged, craggy, rugged, cragged, scraggy; rude, inurbane, burly, unrefined, discourteous, uncivil, blunt, bluff, brusque, austere, abrupt, gruff, boorish, uncourtly; boisterous, tumultuous, tempestuous, stormy; harsh, hard, severe, inclement, drastic, violent; harsh, grating, raucous, discordant, inharmonious; unkempt, disheveled, shaggy; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the "German bluff." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... spread it on the ironing-board before her mother. "Fifteen o' them every month! See the pictures that's on it, of the two grand old men. See the fine chin-whiskers on His Nibs here! Ain't it a pity he can't write his name, Ma, and him President of the Bank, and just has to make a bluff at it like this. Sure, and isn't that enough to drive any girl out to teach school, to see to it that bank presidents get a chance to learn to write. Bank presidents always come from the country; I'll be having a row of them at Purple Springs—I'm sure. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... know he was fond of quoting those incomparable poets, Homer, at great length, and that he was prominent in the 'papyrus-craze.' Indeed, he inspired Society with a love of something more than mere pleasure, a love of the 'humaner delights.' He was a giver of tone. At his coming, the bluff, disgusting ways of the Tom and Jerry period gave way to those florid graces that are still ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... "God!" he muttered presently, "what nights I've had! I've killed many men in my time, but those two—I hated framing up all that business on you fellows next day—those tracks and the bill-folder, and all that useless chasing for a week, but it seemed to me to be the only plausible bluff I could run on you, under the circumstances. Now, are there any more things you don't understand? Any questions you'd ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... tempest's strength and fury. The lightning now came not only in ragged blazes and long ripping lines of light, but in bursts and shocks, and in bomb-like balls, exploding with elemental detonations. Balls of this tense surcharged essence rolled out over the comb of the bluff, fell upon the shadows of the water, and seemed to bound from crest to white-capped crest, till at last they split and burst asunder like some ominous missiles from engines ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... route you're going,' I interrupts,' 'cause I believe I'll stay and bluff it through, rather than sneak for it, though neither proposition don't appeal to me. I may get raised out before the draw, but the percentage is just as strong agin your ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... thought that was not selfish and mean, now imagination rapt him to a glow of heart-felt patriotism. The good and the bad both stood him in stead, and hope reigned in his camp. But all hung in the balance, for Sir Winterton was tall and handsome, bluff and hearty, a good landlord, a good sportsman, a good man, a neighbour to the town and a friend to half of it. And the great cry did not seem like ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... the country would impute it to a justified caution, and would maintain against the city that intangible moral quarantine which is so disastrous to its victim. Throughout, Hal Surtaine in his editorial columns had vigorously maintained that the President would come. It was mostly "bluff." He had nothing ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was a vessel of renown. No blustering liner, no fussy tug, no squattering steamer, she; but a bluff-bowed, smartly painted, trim-built sailing barge, plying chiefly from the lower reaches of the Thames to ports west of Dover. She had no equal of her class, at any point of sailing, and certainly her Master, Mr. Joseph Pigg, was ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... us to the spot. We passed occasional water-holes, that reminded us also of the West, and a few cattle. Two or three lonely farm-houses loomed up in the distance, like ships at sea. We halted our rattle-trap on a bluff covered with thick green turf. On the edge of this bluff, forty feet above the beach, is Siasconset, looking southward over the ocean,—no land between it and Porto Rico. It is only a fishing village; but if there were many like it, the conventional ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... names in which the letter "K" is prominent. Why "K" should be so humorous, I can't imagine. The name of Keokuk, however, belonged to a splendid Indian chief who was friendly to the early settlers and saved them from massacre. The monument over his bones in the park, on the high bluff there, now commands one of the noblest views in the world, a great lake formed in the Mississippi River by a dam which is as beautiful as if the Greeks had built it. It was, in fact, built by a thousand Greeks who camped there for years. As an engineering achievement it rivals the Assouan dam ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... some eight months after reaching there I received a message from my old friend Clarke, saying, "if I had improved any in my commercial work he would give me a job at seventy dollars per month." I hadn't improved much, but as this world is two-thirds bluff, I made mine, and said I'd come, trusting to luck to be ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... again, coming boldly into the light, and no more shots were fired at them. They ran up the slope to the crest of the bluff, leaped over a fresh earthwork, and fell among a crowd of soldiers in blue. Dick quickly raised himself to his feet, and saw soldiers about him, many of them wounded, all of them weary and drawn. Others were hard ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... there's no time for argument. But when you said political exigency you said a whole lot—and we'll let this particular skunk cabbage go under that name. Don't try that law-and-order and state-authority bluff with me in such a case as this is. You're right in with the bunch and you know just as well as I do what the game is this time. Probably those folks outside there don't know what they want, but they do know that something is wrong! Something is almighty wrong ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... that, for your plain, bluff letter, you should get such gibberish! Mention me to Mrs. Hawthorne and to the children, and so, good-by to you, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... rocks every day, and he has no idea how many tons the six families of Patmos heaved at and after the goats. When they weren't going headfirst into barrels of water they were chewing something not meant to be chewed. Casey asserts that it is all a bluff about goats eating tin cans. They don't. He says they never touched a can all the while he had them. He says devastated Patmos wished they would, and leave the two-dollar lace curtains alone, and clotheslines and water barrels and baggage. He says many a party drove off with ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... "Just Prussian bluff," growled Tom. "They think it will brace up Fritz, and that we'll think it's all over but the shouting ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... relative importance of the dramatic fund, and the members of the council had no wish to be accused of "forcing" any unfair demands. So, as Jack had foreseen, his nominations were allowed to stand and the next afternoon, forty-eight laughing, shouting boys reported to Bill McCormack, bluff and kindly member of the Eastshore Common Council who would, in a larger municipality, have been called "Streets and Highways Commissioner" or by ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... slopes. It is also seen that the shape of the contours gives an accurate idea of the form of the island. The contours in Fig. 6 give an exact representation not only of the general form of the island, the two peaks, O and B, the stream, M-N, the Saddle, M, the water shed from F to H, and steep bluff at K, but they also give the slopes of the ground at all points. From this we see that the slopes are directly proportional to the nearness of the contours—that is, the nearer the contours on a map are to one another, the steeper is the slope, and the farther the contours ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... river, and being joined by other bands, a concerted and deliberate attack was next made on Fort Ridgely. Like too many of our frontier forts, it is a fort only in name. Situated on a projecting spur of the river bluff, it is almost completely encircled by deep and wooded ravines, the edges of which are within a stone's throw of the buildings. A long, two story stone building with an ell, standing in the centre, and a number of log and frame houses ranged around it in an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the wood in the box and stood up. His bluff, kind gaze swept the little room affectionately. He took off the stove-lid and poked together the few coals that glowed beneath. "That's all right," he said. "She'll heat up quick." He thrust in some light sticks ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee

... could not afford to let his people think that he was afraid. The man who, dwelling alone among Malays in an unsettled country, shows the slightest trace of fear, signs his own death-warrant. No people are more susceptible to 'bluff,' and, given a truculent bearing, and a sufficiency of bravado, a coward may pass for a brave man in many ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... I'm not bluffing, Abel. There's nothing to bluff about. What's your father done to you? You must have some reason for ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... neighbouring clans, or else crossed over to Holland to keep their hands in there till fortune favoured them once more at home. The old castle, with its rambling towers, and walls, and buttresses was a sort of rallying-point for all the pugnacious spirits of the time, and its bluff walls showed many a scar and many a dint where hostile guns had played upon them, not, you may be ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... good humour and peals of burly oaths which might have suited "Garagantua's mouth" and satisfied the requirements of Hotspur, appeals in a ruder fashion to the survival of the same sympathies on which Shakespeare with a finer instinct as evidently relied; the popular estimate of the bluff and brawny tyrant "who broke the bonds of Rome" was not yet that of later historians, though doubtless neither was it that of the writer or writers who would champion him to the utterance. Perhaps the opposite verdicts given by the instinct of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... him silently, hanging down her head, and refusing to answer the questions he put in his kind, bluff way. Some great sorrow evidently weighed upon her, and she refused to be comforted. When, however, Kariades presented her to his wife, and said, 'This shall be our daughter,' the child opened her mouth ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world fancies as I walked the place; I imagined tragedies, intrigues, serenades, escaladoes, Oliver's Roundheads battering the towers, or bluff Hal's Beefeaters pricking over the plain before the castle. I was then courting a certain young lady (madam, your ladyship's eyes had no need of spectacles then, and on the brow above them there was never a wrinkle or a silver hair), and I remember I wrote a ream of romantic description, under ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gone Mary read Miss Mason's letter for the third time, and again the cold touch of fear assailed her. She took a camp stool and sat by the edge of the bluff for a long time, watching the water. Then she went indoors again ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... the hill I was on, and meandering along through this valley from the west I could trace the course of the Finke by its timber for some miles. To the east a mass of high and jumbled hills appeared, and one bluff-faced mount was more conspicuous than the rest. Nearer to me, and almost under my feet, was the gorge through which the river passes, and it appears to be the only pass through this chain. I approached the precipice overlooking the gorge, and found the channel ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... "I hope it is only a bluff," he replied, "made to scare us so we will consent to giving up the submarine, which they have no right to confiscate. But these fellows look ugly enough for anything," ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... English,—just as a railway-train running at forty miles an hour is more liable to accident than one proceeding at twenty. Besides, Americans have not learned to live as these new circumstances require. The New Man is a clipper-ship, that can run out of sight of land while one of the old bluff-bowed, round-ribbed craft is creeping out of port; but, from the very nature of his superiorities, he is apt to be shorter-lived, and more likely to spring a leak in the strain of a storm. He demands nicer navigation. It will not do for him to beat over sand-bars. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... than either of that pair in the habit of showing themselves," muttered Benson, as the first two names crossed his thoughts. "I wonder whether I could get the least bit of an inkling by going to the jail and talking with Gaston? If I could bluff him into telling me anything, it might be so much gained. I might catch him off his guard, if I could ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... Agatha's engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... observed with astonishment that they were following a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up— up— up they went until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... gap in the willows admits a current of air a ripple starts to rush straight across, but is met by another returning, which has been repulsed from the bluff bow of a moored boat, and the two cross and run through each other. As the level of the stream now slightly rises and again falls, the jagged top of a large stone by the shore alternately appears above, or ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... himself for any work whatsoever. He paced back and forth the length of his room; walked up and down the cloister surrounding the patio; wandered out around the garden, and even as far off as the bluff, a mile from the mission, from which could be seen the beach below, white with foam from the inrushing waves. It was many days before he ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... opened the lever for the river to rush through, he had felt as though ice—cold liquid flowed in his veins, not blood; and all day he had been like that. He had moved much as one in a dream, and he had felt for the first time in his life that he was not ready to bluff creation. He had always faced things down, as long as it could be done; and when it could not, he had retreated, with the comment that no man was wise who took gruel when he needn't. He was now face to face with his greatest problem. One thing was clear—they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... alarming, since in the scanty population of the region few of its denizens are unknown to each other, at least by sight. The tone of satire, the gleam of enjoyment in his keen blue eye, were not reassuring to the object of his ridicule. He was tall and somewhat portly, and he had a bluff and offhand manner, which, however, served not so much to intimate his good-will toward you as his abounding good-humor with himself. He was a man of most arbitrary temper, one could readily judge, not only from his own aspect and manner, but ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... hill, for the night, in the woods. We never sleep much, for it was 'most as light as day, and the smell of smoke was terrible. We could see people runnin' in certain parts of Columbia, sometimes. Next mornin' we look over the city from the bluff and only a few houses was standin' and hundreds of tumble-down chimneys and the whole town ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... at St. Johns, Newfoundland—a bold bluff overlooking the sea—a group of men worked for several days, first in the little stone house at the brink of the bluff, setting up some electric apparatus; and later, on the flat ground nearby, the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... humility. For he was increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism. He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost. There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, of initiative and of thought. Only once or twice, during the course ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... put up a fight, Kit, it would have been a good deal more interesting," said Calvert, "but you always were one of the biggest cowards that ever made a bluff at being a bad man. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... the expert. "Either that or he set it that way merely for what we might call a 'bluff,' to throw any casual intruder off the track. Your father might ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... had joined his command and heard of the state of affairs in Utah, he said in his characteristic bluff manner: “I am ordered there, and I will winter in the valley or in hell!” Before he reached the portals of the territory, however, his services again being demanded in Kansas, Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, then at Fort Leavenworth, was appointed to the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... plays always are," grumbled Willett, who played bluff fathers in musical comedy. "A few years ago, they would have been scared to death of putting on a show with a crook as hero. Now, it seems to me the public doesn't want anything else. Not that they know what they DO want," ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... childish interest. She began herself to watch for Posy, as her mother described her; and whenever the form of a grown-up girl darkened the doorway, she held her breath to listen if Mrs Blossom called her by that pet name. Mr George also was very good to Meg in his bluff way, and bought her a pair of nearly new shoes with his first week's wages, over and above the threepence a day which he paid her. With Mrs Blossom she held many a conversation about the lost girl, who had grown up wicked, and was therefore worse than dead; and before long Mr George observed ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton

... hearts of the Pelasgian wanderers must have bounded when their exploring prows pushed into this nook, which offered them shelter from all winds that blow! It was a site to gladden the eyes of those builders of cities. Up above them, the bluff rock waiting for the layers of huge stones,—the eastern nook of the port more perfectly protected than the southern, which receives more or less the swell from the northerly winds, and whose inner shore of hard sand tempted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... very optimistic view of the situation, thinks the movement may be to assure a retreat by some route other than by a return through Belgium. General Cherfils says: "This rush of the German right wing upon Paris is the last bluff of terrorism of the last German Emperor! The Kaiser thought that he could frighten us and induce France to make peace. After which he would be free to return with ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... good this morning, Mr. Cox. When do you think I called you up last night? When could it have been if not after my sister broke her confidence to tell me? Why do you think all of a sudden last night I seen your bluff through about Gerber? It was because I knew I had you where you needed me, Charley—I never would have dragged you down the other way in a million years, but when I knew I had you where you needed me—why, from that minute, honey, you didn't have a ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... snipes lose the benefit of our company! The salt water, and all who live on it, are to be avoided by a wise man, Mr. Van Staats, except as they both serve to cheapen freight and to render trade brisk. You'll thank me for this care, niece of mine, when you reach the bluff, cool as a package of furs free from moth, and fresh and beautiful as a Holland tulip, with the dew ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... have known Jondo, with his bluff manner and sunny smile and daring spirit, to feel the force, of these brave sad words. I felt intuitively that I had laid bare a wound of his ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... you may not do. This is a school of manners, you know!" One of the men, Rose by name, laughed—a pleasant musical laugh. "I remember," he said, "that when I was a boy at Eton, my excellent but very bluff and rough old tutor called upon us, and was so much taken up with being hearty, that he knocked over the coal-scuttle, and didn't let anyone get a word in; and when he went off in a sort of whirlwind, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... know how to advertise—how to keep my name before the country, and how to make men say, whenever they hear it: 'There's a shrewd, honest fellow.' That and the people it brings me, in flocks, are my stock in trade. Honesty's a bluff with most of the big respectables; under cover of their respectability, of their 'old and honored names,' of their social connections, of their church-going and that, they do ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... enemies was very painful to Cynthia, and she wanted to know who they were that she might show them a proper contempt if she met them. Lem Hallowell brushed aside the subject with his usual bluff humor, and pinched her cheek and told her not to trouble her head; Amanda Hatch dwelt upon the inherent weakness in the human race, and the Rev. Mr. Satterlee faced the question once, during a history lesson. The nation's heroes came into inevitable comparison with Jethro ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Cattle and sheep live out-of-doors, and support themselves all the year round in the Shasta Valley on the north as constantly as in Los Angeles or any other of the southern counties. The seasons are a little later north than south, but the difference is slight; and as far north as Red Bluff, in the interior, they begin their harvest earlier than in Monterey County, far south but on the coast. Snow rarely lies on the ground in the northern counties more than a day. The best varieties of the foreign ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... conspicuous "bluff" trench may cause the enemy to waste much ammunition, and draw fire ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton

... a popular tradition. Castel-Cuille stands upon a bluff rock in the pretty valley of Saint-Amans, about a league from Agen. The castle was of considerable importance many centuries ago, while the English occupied Guienne; but it is now in ruins, though the village near it still exists. In a cottage, at the foot of the rock, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... grind it, to save injury to my mill. The wheat belongs to the neighborhood." "Where is there another mill?" "About three miles down the creek." Off our forager rode. He saw that money nor begging would prevail to get bread and determined on a bluff. The next mill had soldiers claiming all the wheat, but some of it was in boxes or bins. He called the miller out, and offered to pay for a couple of bushels. "It is not mine, said the miller, it belongs to people around here, but I had better take even Confederate money ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little

... would have been taken for a madman. This terrible speech was understood, and Darius withdrew to his own country with what speed he could. Substitute a letter for these symbols and the more threatening it was the less terror it would inspire; it would have been merely a piece of bluff, to which Darius ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... disturb her, Mac," he said in a low voice. "Let's keep up the bluff of being busy. We can put ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... sad time was the English ambassador, Mitchell; a bluff, shrewd, hearty man, for whom the king had conceived a close friendship. He had accompanied Frederick from the time he left Berlin, and had even been near him on the battlefields; and it was in no small degree due to his despatches and correspondence that we have obtained so close ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty

... after the events related in the last chapter the bluff-bowed French coasting steamer, Admiral Dupont, dropped anchor in the shallow roadstead off the steamy harbor of Fort Assini on the far-famed Ivory Coast. A few days before, the boys had left Sierra Leone and engaged quarters on the cockroach-infested little craft for the voyage down ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... as cogently about ironclads and torpedoes as about the wrongs of the natives of Lazistan, the necessity of upholding the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and of circumventing the dark and crooked wiles of Russian diplomacy. Altogether Augustus Charles Hobart was a remarkable man—bluff, bold, dashing, and somewhat dogged. There was in his composition something of the mediaeval "condottiere," and a good deal more of that Dugald Dalgetty whom Scott drew. Gustavus Adolphus would ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... all about this stuff, all there is to know. I know the folks, all of them, who can supply me. They wouldn't trade with your folks. They wouldn't trade with a soul but me. This is simple fact, and no sort of bluff. But the whole point is that I—I wish an outfit ready to face anything the North can hand me, with the confidence of the folks who know the source, have been chasing for it fourteen years and failed, while ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Northern New Zealand, especially since we learn that much which goes to the South Island and elsewhere is shipped direct from Whangaroa, Hokianga, the Kaipara, and other ports in the north. The road along the river front, here, is shortly brought up abruptly at the base of a lofty bluff, whereon is a church and other buildings, near the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... the morning, on swift, high-bred horses, they rode side by side along the river's towering bluff and laughed in sheer joy at their foolish happiness. In the waning afternoon, hand in hand, they walked the sunlit fields and paused at dusk to hear the songs of slaves. The happiness of lovers is contagious. It sets the hearts ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... handsome, let them be left, as I have been, in feeble health in oppressive hot weather, with a sick baby in arms, and two or three other little ones in the nursery, and not a servant in the whole house to do a single turn. Then, if they could see my good old Aunt Frankie coming with her honest, bluff, black face, her long, strong arms, her chest as big and stout as a barrel, and her hilarious, hearty laugh, perfectly delighted to take one's washing and do it at a fair price, they would appreciate the beauty ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... June, 1769, the figure of a stalwart, broad shouldered man could have been seen standing on the wild and rugged promontory which rears its rocky bluff high above the Ohio river, at a point near the mouth of Wheeling Creek. He was alone save for the companionship of a deerhound that crouched at his feet. As he leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the glorious scene that stretched before him, a ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... have bluffed your way through ticklish situations; that I know. You are looking back on troubles past and gone; Now, turn the tables, and as you have fought and won before, Just BLUFF YOURSELF to keep on holding on! (Try it once.) Just bluff YOURSELF to keep ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... and skill as a pugilist and cudgel-player. He was member of a well-known and highly respectable English family, who had done all in their power to keep him from disgracing their name by his disreputable propensities. In dress and manner he affected the plain bluff Englishman, wore a blue coat, beaver gloves (or none at all), and a hat broad in the brim, spoke of all foreigners with supreme contempt, and of himself as honest Tom Ringwood. This lip honesty and assumed bluntness were a standing joke with ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... well, too, for I'd got half way through the soup before I notices anything the matter with it. My guess was that it tasted scorchy. I glances around at Vee, and finds she's just makin' a bluff at eatin' hers. Doris and Westy ain't even doin' that, and when I drops my spoon Doris signals to take it away. Which Cyril does, movin' as solemn and dignified as if he was usherin' at a funeral. Then there's a stage wait for three or four minutes before ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... pretty piece of bluff. Boy Woodburn, in spite of her anger, marked it down to the credit side of the lad's account. When he was collared, Albert Edward kept his head. That would help him one day when he was caught in a squeeze in a big race and had ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... Dolly, well knowing that the bluff chap was really talking roughly to hide his glad emotion at ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... his party reached the junction of the San Juan with the Colorado, they might have found a large number of ancient dwellings in the cliffs not far away from where Bluff City now stands. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... a shallow cup of treeless land to a further bound of wooded hill, ending towards the north in a bare bluff of down shining steep under the moon. They were in shadow, and so was most of the wide dip of land before them; but through a gap to their right, beyond the wood, the moonbeams poured, and the farms nestling under the opposite ridge, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... defeat in such a fight is a step toward victory, taken in the right spirit. In the end you will come out ahead. The power of the biggest boss is like chaff in your hands. You can see his finish. And he knows it. Hence, even he will treat you with respect. However he try to bluff you, he is the one who is afraid. The ink was not dry upon Bishop Potter's arraignment of Tammany bestiality before Richard Croker was offering to sacrifice his most faithful henchmen as the price of peace; and he would have done it had the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... Clare,— These tales were told, you know, In French, five hundred years ago, By old Sir John, whose heart's delight Was lady sweet and valiant knight. A hundred years went by, and then A great lord told the tales again, When bluff King Hal desired his folk To read them in the tongue they spoke. Last, I myself among them took What I loved best and made this book. Great, lesser, less—these writers three Worked for the days they could not see, And certes, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... "You mean well, boy, but you don't understand, and if you plot with Mayne to bluff me, I'll surely break you both. Now go and see if the president's men have arrived. Then you can tell Mayne to rig his derricks and ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... I'll help you out. I'll go up with you, and if that fellow or any other man wants to bluff you, I'll check enough out of the bank for you to cover whatever he or his friends may ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... type who escapes the shafts of ridicule. It was kindly fun, which, while viewing him as a white swan in a flock of black ones, recognized him as a swan, and this was as much as he could expect. To pass in the crowd was all he asked for, even when he only passed on bluff. If he couldn't wholly hide the bluff he could keep it from being flagrantly obtrusive; and toward that end an office ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... make a second one. Frankly, I do not know what to think of your story. It may be true, or it may not. But speaking from a police point of view, we have mighty little to go on if we arrest Benson. If he likes to bluff us we may find ourselves in an awkward position. Nobody saw him ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... prevent more than a passing glimpse. Quat is an old British word for wood, and refers to a wide stretch of woodland once included in the great Morfe Forest; and ford to an adjoining passage of the river—one, half a mile higher up, being still called Danes' Ford. On a bluff headland, rising perpendicularly 100 feet above the Severn, close by, the hardy Northerners, who thus left their name in connection with the Severn, established themselves in 896, when driven by Alfred from the Thames; and on the same projecting rock, defended on the land side by a trench cut in ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall

... gentler manners and more guarded speech. But those were less refined and cultured times than these in which we live; and the rough, uncurbed nature of "Kinge Henrye the viii. of Most Famous Memorye," as the old chronicles term the "bluff King Hal," reappeared to a noticeable extent in the person of his second child, the daughter of ill-fated Anne Boleyn—"my ladye's grace" the Princess Elizabeth ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... heeded the disagreeable fellow, who had no intimate friends in the group. Most of the company were pressing round Heinz Schorlin with jests and questions, but bluff Count von Montfort warmly clasped Els's hand, while he apologised for the bold jest of his young daughter who, in spite ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... must win his party's nomination; and it was here he took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to mar their brows or a moment lost in weighing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... travelling which obtain among our locomotive nation, this said vehicle, the canal-boat, is the most absolutely prosaic and inglorious. There is something picturesque, nay, almost sublime, in the lordly march of your well-built, high-bred steamboat. Go take your stand on some overhanging bluff, where the blue Ohio winds its thread of silver, or the sturdy Mississippi tears its path through unbroken forests, and it will do your heart good to see the gallant boat walking the waters with unbroken and powerful tread, and, like some fabled monster of the wave, breathing fire and making ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... can bluff them, or maybe they'll string along for a while," he said. "Anyhow, now that they've agreed to take me and my notes in place of the cure we're fresh out of, I've got to be on that shuttle when it goes back to their ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey

... and the case of poor Ben set forth in strong colors, several, who would not dream of going themselves, were busy in talking it up to others, who, they thought, might be tempted to accept it; and, at length, a Boston boy, a harum-scarum lad, a great favorite, Harry May, whom we called Harry Bluff, and who did not care what country or ship he was in, if he had clothes enough and money enough,— partly from pity for Ben, and partly from the thought he should have "cruising money'' for the rest of his stay,— came forward, and offered to go and "sling ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... air-shaft—that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... from the Redmen on the bluff slackened and grew silent. The ammunition was exhausted. There was a movement in the group of braves. Crazy Horse and Bald Coyote turned to Four Hair-Brushes, who sat his steed Atalanta, last winner of the last Grand National, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything. To play blindman's bluff? He ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... ape-man held his heavy spear; but he had no intention of pitting his puny weapon against seven lions; yet he stood there growling and roaring and the lions did likewise. It was purely an exhibition of jungle bluff. Each was trying to frighten off the other. Neither wished to turn back and give way, nor did either at first desire to precipitate an encounter. The lions were fed sufficiently so as not to be goaded by pangs of hunger and as for Tarzan he seldom ate the meat of the carnivores; ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and away she went down stream, rolling as if scudding in a gale, and, for a moment, under no command whatever. There lay another danger ahead, or it would be better to say astern, for the brig was drifting stern foremost; and that was in an eddy under a bluff, which bluff lies at an angle in the reach, where it is no uncommon thing for craft to be cast ashore, after they have passed all the more imposing and more visible dangers above. It was in escaping this danger, and in recovering the command of his vessel, that ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... road, a prey to very great disturbance of mind. The patience—humbleness even—of Betts's manner struck a pang to the young man's heart. The farm director was generally a man of bluff, outspoken address, quick-tempered, and not at all accustomed to mince his words. What Newbury perceived was a man only half persuaded by his own position; determined to cling to it, yet unable to justify it, because, in truth, the ideas put up against him ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be around again," said the captain in his bluff, cheery way; "Ma'amselle Labesse has crossed with me many times, and though she usually succumbs for two or three days, she is a good sailor after that. She is passionately fond of music, too, and when she is about again you young people must ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... do not," was the vigorous reply. "I think they have been playing a huge game of bluff on us. That's why I am so worried about this trip. I wouldn't mind betting you the best dinner you ever ate at Delmonico's or at your English Savoy that that box with the broken seals they all got so excited about doesn't contain a ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... cave hermitages and halls. The caves are in a wooded and rugged ravine about 3 1/2 m. from the village. Along the bottom of the ravine runs the river Wagura, a mountain stream, which forces its way into the valley over a bluff on the east, and forms in its descent a beautiful waterfall, or rather series of waterfalls, 200 ft. high, the sound of which must have been constantly audible to the dwellers in the caves. These are about thirty in number, excavated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Hudson's Bay Company was astounded to find the French at Rupert's River. Now he knew what had allured the Indians from the bay, but he hardly relished finding foreigners in possession of his own fort. The situation required delicate tact. Governor Bayly was a bluff tradesman with an insular dislike of Frenchmen and Catholics common in England at a time when bigoted fanaticism ran riot. King Charles was on friendly terms with France. Therefore, the Jesuit's passport must ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... miles were made in distance. When le Bourdon again landed, which he did shortly before the sun set, he calculated his distance from the mouth of the Kalamazoo to be rather more than a hundred miles. His principal object was to ascend a bluff and to take a look at the coast, in order to examine it for canoes. This his glass enabled him to do with some accuracy, and when he rejoined the party, he was rejoiced to have it in his power to report that the coast was clear. After refreshing themselves, the canoes were again brought together, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... drew his breath in and puffed it out between his sentences, in his bluff way; but his eyes were kind, as he sat looking at the young girl over ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... up in a rough school. It would take all night to name half the jobs he's had a hand in, mostly of a shady nature, in every quarter of the seven seas: gun running, pearl poaching, what not—even a little slaving, I suspect, in his early days. He's a pompous old bluff in repose, but nobody's fool, and a bad actor when his mad is up. He tells me he fell in with the Delorme a long time ago, while acting as personal escort for a fugitive South American potentate who crossed the borders ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... of pretty Digby runs close to the water. The bluff is crowned by a grassy sward and a row of well-grown trees, with a driveway between these and the buildings on ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... is itself suggestive of rich romance and reminiscent of bold adventure. The smugglers, the pirates, the wreckers, and the Spanish mariners knew every bluff and headland perfectly. And, however the world beyond may have changed, these tiny hamlets have triumphantly defied the teeth of time. They know no alteration. The brogue of the people is strange but rhythmic, and, though pleasant to hear, very hard for ordinary ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... Beryl had listened so intently to her mother's glowing descriptions of the beauty and elegance of her old home "Elm Bluff," that she soon began to identify the land-marks along the road, alter passing the cemetery, where so many generations of Darringtons slept in one corner, enclosed by a lofty iron railing; exclusive in death as in life; jealously guarded and locked from contact ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... ready: the nurse, the doctor, the undertaker, all bought, the certificate all ready but the date! Let him get wind of this business, and you mark my words, Uncle Masterman will die in two days and be buried in a week. But see here, Johnny; what Michael can do, I can do. If he plays a game of bluff, so can I. If his father is to live for ever, by God, so ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... came in and found them together. He felt at once the antagonism in the atmosphere, something radical and insuperable, and he bit his lip. But he affected a bluff manner. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... call having an extra bed in your room roughing it, Parkins?' said a bluff person opposite. 'Look here, I shall come down and occupy it for a bit; it'll be ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... planned before ever he came down here. That's a cinch. The fishing was all a bluff. The four of them had the hold-up arranged weeks ago. They've gone into a hole and drawn it ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... has not yet been determined; but it may possibly belong to the glacial period. Natchez is about 80 miles in a straight line south of Vicksburg, on the same left bank of the Mississippi. Here there is a bluff, the upper 60 feet of which consists of a continuous portion of the same calcareous loam as at Vicksburg, equally resembling the Rhenish loess in mineral character and in being sometimes barren of fossils, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... found which contains 783/4 per cent, of silica, and l73/4 per cent, of alumina; from this clay is made the delicate, translucent eggshell ware, without the addition of any other matter. From an adjoining bluff a clay is taken which has 50 per cent, of silica, and 38 per cent, of alumina; from this the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... that met me from all points, because all who are to be convinced that these are the true ways in health culture will begin at once to enlighten their ailing friends, and will, therefore, encounter the same opposition. "Sir, you have not had enough opposition," said bluff, old Samuel Johnson. There will be no need to complain of any lack of this kind in the efforts to render suffering friends the only aid possible, that will be in persistent efforts ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... Contributions on the Public, if he does not cut himself short by Murder. Tom Tipple, a guzzling soaking Sot, who is always too drunk to stand himself, or to make others stand. A Cart is absolutely necessary for him. Robin of Bagshot, alias Gorgon, alias Bluff Bob, alias Carbuncle, ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... the position of attention is "chest lifted; and arched." There should be a stretch upward at the waist. The position should give the impression of a man as proud of himself as he can be. This is a bluff which works, not only by making a good first impression on others, but by causing the man himself to ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... anything of moment done, but a humble servant of yours ... had the greatest share in't.... Well, would you think it, in all this time ... that rascally Gazette never so much as once mentioned me? Not once, by the wars! Took no more notice of Noll Bluff than if he had not been in the land of the living."—Congreve, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... Gata, Carthagena. Cape Palos—all were gone. The sea was rolling over the southern extent of the peninsula, so that the yacht advanced to the latitude of Seville before it sighted any land at all, and then, not shores such as the shores of Andalusia, but a bluff and precipitous cliff, in its geological features resembling exactly the stern and barren rock that she had coasted beyond the site of Malta. Here the sea made a decided indentation on the coast; it ran up in an acute-angled triangle till its apex ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... began a bitter attack on the attitude of President Wilson. Colonel —— listened, and when the outburst was done, said: "Very well! Then I, too, will speak frankly. I have known President Wilson for many years. He is a very strong man, physically and morally. You can neither frighten him nor bluff him—" ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... did not think it safe to stand into it. From the Friars the land trenches away about N. by E. four leagues: We had smooth water, and kept in shore, having regular soundings from twenty to fifteen fathoms water. At half-past six we hauled round a high bluff point, the rocks whereof were like so many fluted pillars, and had ten fathoms water, fine sand, within half a mile of the shore. At seven, being abreast of a fine bay, and having little wind, we came-to, with the small bower, in twenty-four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... just as well have made it grow upon the banks of a river, upon some pretty bluff, where it might have seen the boats pass; or, better still, upon the mall in some garrison village, where it could have had the pleasure of listening twice a week to military music. But, no! it was written in the book of fate that this unlucky sycamore should ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... come down over the Ridge from Warren County with him, he had his joke with me about my herb-basket and a-setting up opposition to him. It's in our blood. My own cousin Seliny Lue Lovell down at the Bluff follows the calling just the same as I do. I say the Lord were good to me to give me the love of it and a father and a husband and now a son to ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... replied; "but when Kovner went to work and painted the house and fixed the plumbing he called your bluff, Glaubmann; so the only thing to do is to ask ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... hunt for Tom," said the bluff farmer. "I know he must be somewhere around. Don't you worry so," for he could see that Nellie had ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... with the hunters. Presently the pain left my hips, or, more properly speaking, my feet got so sore from the constant walking over sharp rocks that my mind was diverted in that direction solely. While resting on the top of a high bluff overlooking the lakes, I heard a faint "halloo," which seemed to come on the wind from an immense distance. I called "Sam's" attention to it, and he immediately dropped behind a rock, out of the wind, until it was repeated ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... however, be morose and absent-minded in a party of which Cora Grimsby and Jennie Stone were the moving spirits. It was a gay crowd that crossed the harbor in the Stazy to land at a roughly built dock under the high bluff of the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... I don't reckon anybody kin tell the distance o' the stars; they only put up a bluff on that. They ain't no ackshall way o' gittin' distance onless you lay a tape measure, er somethin' like it on the ground. These here surveyors all does it; I had 'em go ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... descending floods, toward the rushing torrents—drenched to the skin, on she passed toward the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find the waters rushing along high above and beyond the place where it had been. Then she thought of the great bluff rising to the west of her home and extending southward toward the railroad track, and she determined to ascend it and reach the bridge over this barrier to the waters. Need I recount how she struggled on and up through the thick oak undergrowth, that, being storm-laden drooped and made more ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... Ladysmith and Colenso and awaited the coming of Botha. A force of cavalry was observed coming out of the besieged city, and it was apparent that they could readily cut off Botha from the other Boers. Blake determined to make a bold bluff by scattering his small force over the hills and attacking the enemy from different directions. The men were ordered to fire as rapidly as possible in order to impress the British cavalry with a false idea of the size of the force. The seventy-five ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... bills with a fifty on the outside. I held the money up where everybody could see it and I carried on scandalous when the bookmakers wouldn't take it, I'd have carried on a lot worse if one of them children of Israel had called my bluff. And then I got so mad because they wouldn't let me bet on 'Lisha that they thought I'd lost interest in Jeremiah.... I've heard that Jeremiah wasn't played. He was played all over the ring, two dollars at a time and it was my money that played ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... spanned the stream, and thence bore away northward like the tines of a pitchfork, the one to the right going over the hills a three days' march to the Indian agencies up along the "Wakpa Schicha," the other leading more to the west around a rugged shoulder of bluff, and then stretching away due north for the head-waters of the Niobrara and the shelter of the jagged flanks of Rawhide Butte. Only in shadowy clusters up and down the stream was there anywhere sign ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... help feeling deeply moved as the newly reunited Collinses left the laboratory together. Even the bluff deputy, O'Connor, was touched by it and under the circumstances did what seemed to him his higher duty with a tact of which I had believed him scarcely capable. Whatever the ethics of the case, he left it entirely to Dr. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... district kadi, a venerable-looking and genial old gentleman whose acquaintance we had made in an official visit on the previous day, as he was then the acting caimacam (mayor). His house was situated in a neighboring valley in the shadow of a towering bluff. We were ushered into the selamluek, or guest apartment, in company with an Armenian friend who had been educated as a doctor in America, and who had consented to act as ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... cheer, the bluff old boy; and, forgetting all our quarrel in the thought of the long-bow and arrows, we trooped at his horse's tail to the open space, and doffed our coats ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... Owen in his bluff, cheery way when they had retired to the study for coffee and cigars, "I am in a difficulty, I must ask you some questions that may embarrass ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... 'good' family. He was liberal, frank, amiably autocratic in his home, apt to be peppery with inferiors who missed the line of perfect respect, candid and reasonable with equals or superiors. For his boy he reserved a store of manly affection, seldom expressing itself save in bluff fashion; his sister he patronised with much kindness, though he despised her judgment. One had now and then a feeling that his material circumstances aided greatly in making him the genial man he was, that with beef and ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... large pine-trees on the right bank of the river. During the afternoon the temperature had fallen below zero; a keen wind blew along-the frozen river, and the dogs and men were glad to clamber up the steep clayey bank into the thick shelter of the pine bluff', amidst whose dark-green recesses a huge fire was quickly alight. While here we sit in the ruddy blaze: of immense dry pine logs it will be well to say a few words on dogs ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... is the red fort, built on a bluff, and commanding a harbour beautiful to look upon, with its wooded island, its sharp high points, its sombre swamps covered with lacing mangroves, but locked from all the world but that which can come in sailing ships, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... without self confidence, lacks the truthfulness of the strong, his voice does not resound and compel, he dances and fidgets, grins and is grave in the same instant. If the men's attitude be sullen, he tries to be bluff and hearty, "my-boys" them, claps them heartily on the shoulder, or lapses into whining and gushing. It is all of worse than no avail with these undeceivable readers of character. It is a curious effect of the working of esprit de ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... weary the reader, we tracked the marauders, and came across them at earliest dawn the following morning, cooking their dog-stew under the shelter of a high bluff, with the stolen horses picketed near, in a ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... dense growth of leather-leaved bushes and low, scrubby China-berry, sea-grape, and Jamaica-apple trees. The highest part of the Key is occupied by the city, and the highest part of the city is the low bluff on its western side, where the slender shaft of the lighthouse stands at a height of fifteen or eighteen feet above the level of tide-water. Owing to its geographical position in a semi-tropical sea, just north of the Gulf Stream and within the zone of the northeast trade-winds, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... world who have sipped all the pleasures the city has to give. Masters of the art of entering a drawing-room, the Parisians crowd seaward to get the sure foot of the mussel-gatherer upon the slimy granite of a bluff Norman headland; they bring their taste with them, and they get heartiness in the bracing air. The salon of the casino, at the height of the season, is said to show at once the most animated and diverting assemblage of Somebodies to ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... until success should have crowned his efforts. He turned back into the interior, into the country of the Chickasaws, marched diagonally over the present State of Mississippi to its northwest corner, and crossed the Mississippi River near the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. From this point the general direction of the Spanish progress was southwest, through what is now Arkansas, past the site of Little Rock, till at last a river which seems to have been the Washita was reached. Down this stream de Soto and his decimated force floated—two hundred ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... cafes, but the greater part staid little whitewashed summer-dwellings with green verandas and occasional roof-balconies; set down irregularly, without street or system, along the sunny slopes of the bluff. Murray's Handbook for 1848 gives it passing notice, and disrespectfully styles it the dullest place upon earth for one having no resources of friends upon the spot. But in the modern edition of forty years ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... that had been planted in fat, loamy ground, to look at him. There was a healthy, liberal, lazy life for you! Yet the winter sky looked gray and dumb when he passed the window, and the fire-light broke fiercest against his bluff figure going to and fro. No matter; something there that would have warmed your heart to him: something genial, careless, big-natured, from the loose red hair to the indolent, portly stride. "Who knows? A comfortable, true-hearted, merry clergyman,—a jolly farmer, with open ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... "'Bachelor Bluff' is bright, witty, keen, deep, sober, philosophical, amusing, instructive, philanthropic—in short, what is not ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous

... few minutes the whistle was heard, and the conductor entered the building. Receiving his instructions, he returned, and immediately on engine, tender, and platform appeared the trainmen, with their rifles covering the group on the bluff. Sinclair put ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various

... that there will be one here in a day or two if we need it," said Browne with a sly grin. "That's the bluff we've worked." He looked around for his wife, and, finding that she had gone inside, politely waved his hand to ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... to occupy a station at the mouth of the St. Peters, on the Mississippi, have established themselves there, and those who were ordered to the mouth of the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, have ascended that river to the Council Bluff, where they will remain until the next spring, when they will proceed to the place of their destination. I have the satisfaction to state that this measure has been executed in amity with the Indian tribes, and that it promises to produce, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe

... be. The difficulty does not lie with them, but with the women who have a few weeks' or months' training, who blossom out into full uniform and call themselves Sister Rose, or Sister Mabel, and are taken at their own valuation by a large section of the public, and manage through influence or bluff to get posts that should only be held by trained nurses, and generally end by bringing shame ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... pleased she was to see me! and Jimmy and his father and mother were just as glad. There was famous "clam chowder" for tea, and such great big blackberries, that we really had to make two bites of them! not to mention the quantities of other good things; and after tea we strolled out on the bluff, which overlooks the ocean. There are three pretty little summer houses before the Mansion House, and in one of these we took our seats. Gipsey had come scampering up to me in delighted recognition as we left ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... probably, of the flocks of sheep the natives foolishly turned off the island,—brought us to the spot. We passed occasional water-holes, that reminded us also of the West, and a few cattle. Two or three lonely farm-houses loomed up in the distance, like ships at sea. We halted our rattle-trap on a bluff covered with thick green turf. On the edge of this bluff, forty feet above the beach, is Siasconset, looking southward over the ocean,—no land between it and Porto Rico. It is only a fishing village; but if there were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... shadowing the strange girl, had kept well in under the shadow of the bluff, and could not have been seen; and when he saw the man confront the girl, he moved rapidly forward, and gained a point near enough to overhear the talk ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"

... father? The child can't live. It is one of the worst cases of croup I have had this year, why didn't you send for me sooner? Where is his father? It is now just twelve o'clock, time for all respectable men to be in the house," said the bluff but kind hearted family doctor looking tenderly upon Jeanette's little boy who lay gasping for breath in ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... good to me, Roy Pell." The miser sank back on the grass, while Roy hurried to the edge of the bluff and making a trumpet of his hands, ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... run them down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm, but the next flash would show her far off, always sailing against the wind. Sometimes, in quiet moonlight nights, she would be seen under some high bluff of the Highlands; all in deep shadow, excepting her top-sails glittering in the moonbeams; by the time, however, that the voyagers reached the place no ship was to be seen; and when they had passed on for some distance and looked back, behold! there she was again with her top-sails ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... the end of the year, La Touche received orders to join Mr McDonald, a factor, with several other men, to assist in establishing a fort on one of the streams which run into the Fraser River. The spot selected was on a high bluff, with the river flowing at its base. The fort was of a simple construction. It was surrounded by a palisade of stout timbers, fixed deeply in the ground, and united by cross-bars, further strengthened by buttresses, and loop-holed ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... guy in the act of pulling a chair over the spot. He said he was replacing the chair where he found it. I've been wondering whether he wasn't actually covering up the spot himself. When we caught him in the act, maybe he just decided to bluff it out." ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... squire's bluff florid face was pinched with anxiety, and worn with the effort of being deaf to the footsteps of fate as he said these words which ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... who came to the mill or the village store; was elected "road commissioner" and bossed the neighbors when they had to work out their poll-tax, and turned his hand to any other affairs that offered a penny's recompense. The "real estate business" was what Seth Davis labeled "a blobbering bluff," for no property had changed hands in the neighborhood in a score of years, except the lot back of the mill, which was traded for a yoke of oxen, and the Wegg farm, which had been sold without ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... until the time of bluff King Hal that lace became an article of fashion, when during the life of the last of his unfortunate queens he permits "the importation of all manner of gold and silver fringes, or otherwise, with all new 'gentillesses' of what facyion or value, for the pleasure ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, "nobody can't bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you t'rowed me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin' cows is outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with. You'll let me stay, won't ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... games, from tag and jumping rope, to blindman's bluff and hide-and-seek. Snap was made to do a number of tricks, much to the amusement of the teachers and children. Danny Rugg, and some of the older boys, got up a small baseball game, and then Danny, with one or two chums, went off in a deeper part of the woods. Bert heard one of the boys ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... had been progressing for some time before the captain's arrival. In front of the bluff of rock blazed a fire made of birch and maple, and on a spit before this a huge piece of venison was roasting. A hideous old woman, with eyes like a rattlesnake, and draggled hair coloured like the moss upon an aged fir, stood by the spit, ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... various camps of Wise's Legion, Jackson's and Huger's divisions, and others of the rebel forces; while riverwards his eye could easily reach, with the aid of the glass and when the smoke of the field did not arise too thickly, the famed Drury's Bluff and the redoubtable Fort Darling itself, still frowning defiance ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... read Miss Mason's letter for the third time, and again the cold touch of fear assailed her. She took a camp stool and sat by the edge of the bluff for a long time, watching the water. Then she went indoors ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... came to breakfast this morning Rob was capering over another victory—Ball's Bluff. He would read me, "We pitched the Yankees over the bluff," and ask me in the next breath to go to the theater this evening. I turned on the poor fellow: "Don't tell me about your victories. You vowed by all your idols that the blockade would be raised by October ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... my way quickly back to Barbara with the poor spoils of my expedition. I rounded the bluff of cliff that protected her hiding-place. Again I stood amazed, asking if fortune had more tricks in her bag for me. The recess was empty. But a moment later I was reassured; a voice called to me, and I saw her some thirty yards away, down on the sea-beach. I set down pasty and ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... there shaking his head like a toy in a window. People tried to get past him in all the ways people try to get through life, in the ways that Saint Peter must grow very tired of at the gate of heaven—bluff, whine, bribery, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... ..." he blustered. He was trying to run a bluff, to find out whether we were on the right quarter-section or whether, like ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... dare interfere! I want the gown, but I know she'll come down,—if she doesn't, I'll make a bluff at going. Then if she sticks to her price, I'll ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... John Bull as a national type; but it shows great reserve in the use of him, and now continually resorts to Britannia as a substitute. Is not this because our old friend John is now only a survival, a tradition of the past? The bluff, stout, honest, red-faced, irascible rural person—of whom the photographs of John Bright remind us—has really been supplanted by a more modern, thinner, nervous, intellectual, astute type. For English ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... enough to of lasted." The imputation sobered Little Joe and he shrugged his massive shoulders significantly. Shorty's laugh was shrill with contempt. "Oh, you're big enough," he sneered. "But what does beef count agin a lightning flash?" He grew reminiscent. "I seen him bluff ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... (Leaning her parasol against bench, and stepping up to him in very business-like manner.) Very well, then. I accept your challenge. You can't bluff me out. I believe that ALL men lie when they talk to women, and I am under the impression that you are no exception. Keep your ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... drew up in the squalid station, where the branch line to Haifa meets the main Hedjaz railway and the two together touch a mean town at a tangent; for a French officer in uniform boarded the train and stalked down the corridors staring hard at everyone. He asked me for a passport, which was sheer bluff, so I asked him in turn for his own authority. He smiled and produced a rubber stamp, saying that if I wished to visit Beirut or Aleppo I must ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... he found sufficient under-brush, aided by the darkness of the night, to conceal himself from view. Hardly had he taken up this position when the noises suddenly became very distinct. The Indians, while following the trail, had made a turn round a bluff and were almost beneath him. Now the hunter felt his situation to be most precarious, for, should his mule bray, as these animals are apt to do when others are approaching, his own life would have to pay the forfeit; but, to prevent this, Armador held the mule's nostrils firmly with his hands ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... chapel and look carefully about him, he will soon perceive something to remind him of his distant home, and of the Province of which that home is the capital. Several feet above his head, on the inner wall, he will notice a medallian portrait in bold relief, by Flaxman, of a bluff, hearty, good-humoured-looking English gentleman, apparently in the prime of life, and attired in the dress of a Lieutenant-General. His hair, which is pretty closely cut, is rather inclined to curl—evidently would curl if it were ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... trouble is, if he's on to the game, it's just what he'll expect. But I've been thinking how we may be able to bluff—make him think it was his guilty conscience tricked him to imagine our interest in his movements. You know I'm giving a dinner to-morrow ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... him. "Very well, captain. I'll call your bluff, come along." He turned on his heel ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... I tell you, I've botched it all up! And just for want of money enough to buy an automobile! Brains never took a doctor anywhere—nothing but money and bluff!" ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... Creek. It was late in the afternoon. The Boy was passing on his way home from a point farther up the stream. Not more than twelve, but tall and strong for his age, he came along the rough path at the foot of the bluff with the easy movement and grace of a young deer. He checked a moment when he saw the Doctor, as a creature of the forest would pause at first sight of a human being. Then he came on again, his manner and bearing showing frank interest, and the clear, sunny face of him flushing a bit ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... route, at last reached Philadelphia in safety, and were welcomed by kind and sympathizing friends. Mrs. Grier's patriotism was of the active kind, and she was very soon employed among the sick and wounded soldiers who reached Philadelphia after Bull Run and Ball's Bluff, or who were left by the regiments hurrying to the front at the hospitals of the Volunteer and Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloons. With the establishment of the larger hospitals in January, 1862, Mrs. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... hearties!" called the bluff, cheerful voice of Captain Spark. "Heave up the anchor, brace around the yards, for we've got a good wind, a free ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... division. Each of these French generals has a striking individuality of his own which I wish I could fix upon paper. Their only common point is that each seems to be a rare good soldier. The corps general is Athos with a touch of d'Artagnan. He is well over six feet high, bluff, jovial, with huge, up-curling moustache, and a voice that would rally a regiment. It is a grand figure which should have been done by Van Dyck with lace collar, hand on sword, and arm akimbo. Jovial and laughing was he, but a stern and hard soldier was lurking behind the smiles. His ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... called their bluff. They thought we'd have a case of nerves when we saw them come rushing towards us. But we've seen those fellows' backs too often to be afraid of ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... and started back. He knew nothing about boats; but the bay was very smooth, it was yet early, and he got across in due time. As he neared the island he saw her, in her white dress, standing on the bluff, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various

... prevailed upon the others forward to insist upon it. Well, you know the feeling of an officer up against mutiny. No matter what the provocation, he must put the mutiny down; so, when the men came aft, they found me with the mate, and dead against them. We called their bluff, drove them forward at the muzzles of our guns, and promised them relief from all work except handling sail if they would take the ship to Queenstown. They agreed, because they could not do anything else, and the mutiny was over. But my conscience bothered me later on; for if I had joined them, ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fishing in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. On these ashen, weather-beaten features indigence was drawn in its most ghastly outlines. Every eye was aglow with the wild gleam of fever; and the odors that came from clothes, here, had not the vigorous pungency ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... garden will be, all nicely fenced to keep out the cattle; and over there, under the trees, will be the chicken-house, with big white hens swaggerin' in and out of it and down the ravine there will be the pig-pasture, and forninst us will be acres and acres of wheat, and be hind the bluff there will be the oat-field. I ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... a walk around to the rear if you want to," answered Slugger's father. "I'll see if I can't bluff those fellows into letting us ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer

... tactics for keeping discipline; tricks which they conceive as profoundly hidden from their underlings, and which are intimately known and discussed by those underlings.... There are the bosses who "bluff," those who lie, those who give good-fellowship or grave courtesy in lieu of wages. None of these was Mr. Wilkins. He was dully honest and clumsily paternal. But he was a roarer, a grumbler; he bawled and ordained, in order to encourage industry ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... memory. But as the sun dipped towards the sea, we passed out of the narrow gateway. On our left lay the plain of Troy, backed by the blue range of Mount Ida. The tamulus of Patroclus crowned a low bluff looking on the sea. On the right appeared the long, irregular island of Imbros, and the peaks of misty Samothrace over and beyond it. Tenedos was before us. The red flush of sunset tinged the grand Homeric landscape, and lingered and lingered on the summit of Ida, as if loth ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... without contradiction of the Apostle's statement is confirmed by his use of the word 'Christian,' which had by no means come into general employment when he spoke; and in itself indicates that he knew a good deal about the people who were so named. Mark the contrast, for instance, between him and the bluff Roman official at his side. To Festus, Paul's talking about a dead man's having risen, and a risen Jew becoming a light to all nations, was such utter nonsense that, with characteristic Roman contempt for men with ideas, he breaks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... haze, And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; To southward lay "Katawa", with the sand peaks all ablaze, And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm, You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough. Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch; 'Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... the way he had several years before when he had bluffed his way into a gigantic pot during a Washington poker game, with only a pair of fours to work with. At the last moment, his bluff had been called. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... high bluff, and at the time of our arrival was nearly inaccessible. The heavy rain which had been falling for many hours would have made any steep ascent difficult, but unfortunately a new road had been recently marked out, which beguiled us into its almost bottomless mud, from the firmer footing ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... while before this occurrence I had directed my party to proceed to the village, as I had discovered a smoke ascending from a hollow in the bluff, and wished to go alone to the place from whence the smoke proceeded, to see who was there. I approached the spot, and when I came in view of the fire, I saw an old man sitting in sorrow beneath a mat which he had stretched over him. At any other time I would ...
— Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk • Black Hawk

... we're going to get you out on parole and make an honest, upright citizen of you. We're going to get you a nice job',—and so on and so forth. Well, before he knows it, he's out and has to put up a bluff of workin' for a livin'. Course, he just has to go to stealin' again. It makes him sore when he thinks of the good, honest life he was leadin' up there in the pen, with nothin' to worry about, satisfactory hours, plenty to eat, and practically divorced from his ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... looked extremely picturesque in the pale moonlight, with the grand sandstone bluff of the island of Balhalla standing out boldly in the foreground against the starlit sky; but the coast-line seemed still more beautiful in the bright morning sunshine. The brilliant light was relieved by some heavy thunder-clouds fringing the Bay of Sandakan and hanging in ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... Master of the House. Far from it. He, with the family, was pleased when the Master of the House returned from a long cruise and proceeded immediately to make himself very much at home. For the Master of the House was a captain in the navy, and as hearty, bluff, and good-natured as ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... called Mungo Murray, whose name would seem to show that he was of Scottish birth. The most familiar example of whipping-boy is mentioned by Fuller in his "Church History." His name was Barnaby Fitzpatrick, and the prince whose punishments he bore was Edward, son of bluff King Hal, who was afterwards Edward VI., the boy-king ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... demand no championship from her sons. On an occasion in History, our bluff British monarch, our Eighth Royal Harry, almost went there. And long ere the periodical in which this exposure will appear, had sprung into being, Tattlesnivel had unfurled that standard which yet waves upon her battlements. The standard alluded to, is THE TATTLESNIVEL BLEATER, containing ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... morning gown," and with him his confidential clerk Bartlett (the Taggart of Lavengro). Sir Richard was at first enthusiastic and cordial, but when he learned from William Taylor's letter that Borrow had come up to earn his livelihood by authorship, his manner underwent a marked change. The bluff, hearty expression gave place to "a sinister glance," and Borrow found that within that loose morning gown there was a ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... the age of twenty-five, took Alice Warren for his wife. He had been in the army—fought through from Bull's Bluff to Richmond—had come out with a captain's commission. He had come from the army with but little money; but he had a good trade, a stout pair of hands, and had borrowed no trouble for the future. Alice had saved up ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... smacked rather of a threat," said Will. "Suppose we call the bluff, and keep him waiting. What do you say if we go and dine at ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... did find out this. There is some secret about the child's parentage. I have spoken with two people who know it, and one of them warned me that in keeping the child we were interfering in a greater matter than we had any idea of. Of course it might have been a bluff, but I fancy that ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... plain enough in a view of London to which Maitland affixes the date about 1560 (the second year of Elizabeth), so we may perhaps safely put it down as early as Edward VI. or Henry VIII. Indeed, if a certain scrap of history is correct—i.e., that bluff King Hal once threatened, if a certain Bill did not pass the Commons a little quicker, to fix the heads of several refractory M.P.s on the top of Temple Bar—we must suppose the old City toll-gate to be as old as ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... hour's ride from the Plaza there is a high bluff with the ocean breaking uninterruptedly along its rocky beach. There are several cottages on the sands, which look as if they had recently been cast up by a heavy sea. The cultivated patch behind each tenement is fenced in by bamboos, broken spars, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... valley, at least those which are obvious outliers of the Patkaye range, are characterised by conical peaks, and there is a bluff rock of good elevation to ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... and not far from the bluff, a vigorous rivulet started from beneath the half-bared roots of a monster beech, and fell over an outcropping boulder into a pool so clear that sand on its bottom, worked mysteriously into a pattern by the action of the water, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... after practice was over, instead of joining in the little stream that eddied back to the academy grounds, he struck off to where a long straggling row of cedars and firs marked the course of the river. Once there he found himself standing on a bluff with the broad, placid stream stretching away to the north and south at his feet. The bank was some twenty feet high and covered sparsely with grass and weeds; and a few feet below him a granite bowlder stuck its lichened head outward from the cliff, forming an inviting seat from which ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... in!" came in a loud, bluff, rather rich voice; and the next minute Archie was face to face with the fine-looking, white-haired, florid Major in command of the infantry detachment stationed at Campong Dang in support of Her Majesty's Resident, Sir Charles Dallas, whose duty it was to instruct the Malay ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... pleasure to all parties. The knight was pleased with the manners of the merchant, who, owing to his visit to Italy, had little of the formal gravity of his craft, while there was a heartiness and straightforwardness in his speech that well suited the bluff knight. The ladies were no less pleased with each other, and Dame Agatha found herself, to her surprise, chatting with her visitors on terms of equality, and discoursing on dress and fashion, the doings of the Court and life in the city, as if she had known ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... King George was and had been essentially a sailor Prince; that he had in his younger days been open-handed, free, and possessed of a certain natural and bluff and pleasant geniality which was, however, quite different from the urbane, charming, courtly geniality of King Edward; that something of this characteristic had disappeared from public view after the death of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, and his own assumption of public duties ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... could they use the paddles. It was out on one bank with a tow-line over the shoulders stumbling over the rocks, forcing a way through the underbrush, slipping at times and falling into the water, wading often up to the knees and waist; and then, when an insurmountable bluff was encountered, it was into the canoe, out paddles, and a wild and losing dash across the current to the other bank, in paddles, over the side, and out tow-line again. It was exhausting work. Antonsen toiled like the giant he was, uncomplaining, persistent, but driven to his utmost ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... and a series of knolls jutting down to the stream, which, with frequent sharp curves and crooks, wound its way among them. On turning one of these sharp points, my eyes suddenly encountered a sight that made my heart jump. On a high, open, and almost bare bluff, directly before me, and not fifteen rods distant, stood two tremendous moose, as unconcernedly as a pair of oxen chewing their cuds, or dozing in a pasture. The last was unusually large, the biggest a monster, appearing, to my wide-opened eyes, with his eight or nine foot height, and ten or eleven ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... from force of habit on having it scamped. Then he was almost happy, because he felt that he was doing someone down. If there were an architect superintending the work, Misery would square him or bluff him. If it were not possible to do either, at least he had a try; and in the intervals of watching, driving and bullying the hands, his vulture eye was ever on the look out for fresh jobs. His long red nose was thrust ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... to him, "Well, why don't you move?" as though we were playing checkers instead of the game of life. He made no reply, but the spell was broken. I believe that both sides had been bluffing. In attempting to use my kodak while continuing the bluff, I brought matters to a focus. "What a picture you fellows will make," I said aloud, as my right hand slowly worked the kodak out of the case which hung under my left arm. Still keeping up a steady fire of looks, I brought the kodak in front of ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... transport them. Two flags of truce were sent to the enemy, but the officer who bore them did not return. Colonel Scott then fixed a white handkerchief on the end of his sword, and, accompanied by Captains Totten and Gibson, passed under the river bluff and started to ascend the heights. They were met by Indians, who fired on them and rushed with tomahawks to assault them. A British officer happily arrived and conducted them to the quarters of General Sheaffe, and Colonel ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... we did not move camp, but leaving the twenty men detailed for camp duty in charge of the camp and stock, I took my entire scout force to escort Gen. Crook to Black canyon. When we came to where the trail started down the bluff, he asked me how far I had been down. I told him about a mile, but did not let him know that Lieut. Jackson was with me at the time, knowing that the General wanted the glory of being the first officer to investigate and ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... luxuriously as the next of delights to having her beside him.—She wrote of; 'Thoughts that are bare dark outlines, coloured by some odd passion of the soul, like towers of a distant city seen in the funeral waste of day.'—His bluff English anti-poetic training would have caused him to shrug at the stuff coming from another pen: he might condescendingly have criticized it, with a sneer embalmed in humour. The words were hers; she had written them; almost by a sort of anticipation, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... is a bluff game, intended to deceive me," said Vernon, showing symptoms of anger. "I can assure you that it ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... sea all around us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a game of chequers: and without disturbing them I stepped amidships where Mr. Fett lay prone on his belly, his chin propped on both hands, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... few minutes the hunters were threading their way through the outskirts of the wood at a rapid trot, in the opposite direction from the bluff, or wooded knoll, which they wished to reach. This they did lest prying eyes should have followed them. In a quarter of an hour they turned at right angles to their track, and struck straight out into the prairie, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... Henry Tanner, the artist; John W. Terry, foreman of the iron and fitting department of the Chicago West Division Street Car Company; J. D. Baltimore, engineer, machinist, and inventor, of Washington, D. C.; Wiley Jones, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the owner of a street car railroad, race track and park; Richard Hancock, foreman of the pattern shops of the Eagle Works and Manufacturing Company, and draughtsman; John Beack, the inventor, whose ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... up keenly over Agatha's engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself is one ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... at the age of thirteen as a naval cadet. The 'Discovery'. Looking up the gateway from Pony Depot. Pinnacled ice at mouth of Ferrar Glacier. Pressure ridges north side of Discovery Bluff. The 'Terra Nova' leaving the Antarctic. Pony Camp on the barrier. Snowed-up tent after three days' blizzard. Pitching the double tent on the summit. [Page viii] Adelie Penguin on nest. Emperor Penguins on sea-ice. Dog party starting ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... vessels there were Russians, with no yards to their masts, British coasters of varying rig, Norwegians, and one solitary Dutch galliot. But the majority flew the Danish flag—your Dane is fond of flying his flag, and small blame to him!—and these exhibited round bluff bows and square-cut counters with white or varnished top-strakes and stern-davits of timber. To the right and seaward, the eye travelled past yet another tier, where a stumpy Swedish tramp lay cheek-by-jowl with two stately Italian barques—now ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... sand, that girl. He was mighty glad his bluff that he would put her out of the chorus altogether, unless she took the little part in the sextette, had worked. He'd have felt rather a fool if she had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... and lean-tos, with several hundred horses in sight. But we never varied our course a fraction, passing within a quarter mile of their camp, apparently indifferent as to whether they showed fight or allowed us to pass in peace. Our bluff had the desired effect; but we made it an object to reach Fort Griffin near midnight before camping. The Comanche and his ally were great respecters, not only of their own physical welfare, but of the Henri and Spencer rifle with which the white ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... Scotland, and threatened to capsize the boat. When it seemed that the crisis had really come, the largest and strongest man in the party, in a state of intense fear, said, "Let us pray." "No, no, my man," shouted the bluff old boatman; "let the little man pray. You take ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... The house, then, was not uninhabited; it retained the dignity of a concierge. A man with a large grizzled beard cut square, and holding a journal in his hand, emerged from the lodge, and moved his cap with a certain bluff and ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... later, when a fine white surf of frost lay on the ground, and the sky was darkened often by the flight of the wild geese southward, they came upon a hut perched on a bluff, at the edge of a clump of pines. It was morning, and Whitefaced Mountain shone clear and high, without a touch of cloud or mist from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... declared by Mahan to be the most important of the Caribbean Sea for strategic purposes. In 1740-1745 a fortification called Nuestra Senora de los Angeles was erected at the entrance; it is still standing, on a steep bluff overlooking the sea, and is one of the most picturesque of the old fortifications of the island. On the 11th of May 1898 a force from two vessels of the United States fleet under Admiral Schley, searching for Cervera and blockading the port, cut two of the three cables here (at Point Colorado, at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... call Grandmamma Fudge. The gentlemen outsiders were the honor-saving committee from Finsbury, the members of which declared themselves large stakeholders in the game at the Treasury. Grandmamma Fudge thought it best to tell them, merely in a bluff sort of way, that England's honor was safe in his keeping—that they must not be scared about it; not however, until they found him pedling pills and other quack medicines with the object of inducing Austria to be more explicit. 'But, my old closeters, in we must ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... boys!" shouted Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the bloody B's, as we used to call them) had n't taught us any ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... it was said, adequately represent Dr. Muir, it cannot fail very grievously to misrepresent Dr. Bryce; and if the vehicle be adapted to give public airings to the thoughts and opinions of the bluff old Moderates, those of Dr. Leishman and the Forty must travel out into the wind and the sunlight by an opposition conveyance. One organ or one vehicle will be no more competent to serve a deliberative ecclesiastical body, diverse in its components, than one organ ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... her lee rail was almost under water when the heavy squalls swooped down on her from the cliffs. The rest of the squadron was keeping some distance out, presenting a fine sight as the ships lay over, sending the spray flying high into the air from their bluff bows, and plunging deeply into ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... a.m., and steered north 245 degrees east for one and a half hours, when we passed the high bluff of the range and changed the course north 330 degrees east, keeping three-quarters of a mile east of the remarkable hill called the Tower, by Captain Stokes, from a remarkable rock on the summit. The country was very rough and stony, though the ridge we passed ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... fine position and fine fare. He sat by the side of his bride, at the right hand of Joris; and Katherine assisted her mother at the other end of the table. Peter Block, the first mate of the "Great Christopher," was just beginning to sing a song,—a foolish, sentimental ditty for so big and bluff a fellow,—in which some girl was ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... tree was on top of a high bluff, but a path ran down the bank in a zigzag way to the water's edge, where Cap'n Bill's boat was moored to a rock by means of a stout cable. It had been a hot, sultry afternoon, with scarcely a breath of air stirring, ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... as he can crawl in the grass or brushwood, and steal silently upon him by surprise, or send a shaft from his bow from behind a tree, or a bullet from his rifle from the brow of a bluff, he has an advantage; but, when he comes face to face with the white man, he is superstitiously afraid of him. The power of the white man, in war, is that of bravery and skill; the power of the red man consists ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... just what will happen. That is why I want to know if you are prepared to lend me $39,000 to call their bluff. I will assign you a half interest in a certain water-right which I possess, as security for the advance. My water-right ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... Grande, are in the hands of the enemy. Very consoling and very easy to say that it was impossible to prevent all this, and that the occupation of the outer edge of the Republic amounts to nothing. Drowry's Bluff and Vicksburg give the lie to the first assertion; and the onward movement of Rosecrans towards Alabama, the presence of Grant in North Mississippi and of Curtis in Middle Arkansas, to say nothing of Banks at New Orleans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... the character of the American people. The power of the Union was therefore underestimated by us, and the high-spirited utterances of American youthful strength were more disapproved of than was necessary, because they were interpreted as mere "bluff" and arrogance. We never sufficiently allowed for the fact that the Americans are very "emotional"—that is to say, that they are easily carried away by their feelings and then become uncertain. Political surprises in the United ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... the shore of the swollen river, muttering, cursing, plotting as he rode. And so he came to the high bluff that overlooked the mouth of a broad coulee. He paused on the rim of the bluff and stared out over the raging flood. Something directly below him caught his eye, and he glanced downward. A water-logged craft, which he recognized as Long Bill Kearney's ferry boat, lay ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... said the artist, commenting as the work proceeded, "this is his head, with a turn-up—there—like that, for his nose. A little too bluff, no doubt, but no matter. Then comes the ears, two of 'em, somewhat longish—so, not exactly fore an' aft, as I've made 'em, but ath'ort ships, so to speak, only I never could understand how painters manage ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... pugilist and cudgel-player. He was member of a well-known and highly respectable English family, who had done all in their power to keep him from disgracing their name by his disreputable propensities. In dress and manner he affected the plain bluff Englishman, wore a blue coat, beaver gloves (or none at all), and a hat broad in the brim, spoke of all foreigners with supreme contempt, and of himself as honest Tom Ringwood. This lip honesty and assumed bluntness were a standing joke with those who knew his real character, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... Schley, but his fellow naval officers felt differently. A court of inquiry held in 1901 found Schley to be at fault, but despite this decision he retained his public popularity, a tribute to his affability and bluff, hearty manner. ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... (the Indian name), is the noblest of the volcanic cones extending from Lassen Butte and Mt. Shasta along the Cascade Range to Mt. Baker. One of the most telling views of it hereabouts is obtained near Tacoma. From a bluff back of the town it was revealed in all its glory, laden with glaciers and snow down to the forested foothills around its finely curved base. Up to this time (1879) it had been ascended but once. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... captain Lewis had written on the 2d instant. During the next four miles, we passed three small bends of the river to the right, two small islands, and two bayous on the same side. Here we reached a bluff on the left; our next course was six miles to our encampment. In this course we met six circular bends on the right, and several small bayous, and halted for the night in a low ground of cottonwood on the right. Our days journey, though only fifteen miles in length, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... ain't needed in all the other districts, but our men are just the kind to rule. There's Dan Finn, in the Battery district, bluff, jolly Dan, who is now on the bench. Maybe you'd think that a court justice is not the man to hold a district like that, but you're mistaken. Most of the voters of the district are the janitors of the big office buildings on lower Broadway and their helpers. ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... old salt; a bluff, strong, cast-iron man, of about forty-five years of age, who had been at sea since he was a little boy, and would not have consented to live on dry land, though he had been "offered command of a seaport town all to himself," ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Well," said the bluff old admiral, when they were sufficiently near to exchange words, "well, Miss Flora, you are looking a thousand ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... courageous, for these muscles are directly co-ordinated with the mind center of bravery. Therefore the head and shoulders easily held back and up; not a high chest, signify courage. The bulging chest often indicates no more than pouter-pigeon bluff temporarily put on. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... He withdrew two hundred yards from the bank of the stream that his pony might not scent the other man's horse, and so give notice of approach by whinnying. After a time he came across the trail. So he left the pony and followed it to the creek-bottom on foot. At the top of the bluff he peered over cautiously. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... April morn The worthy Julot came at last to say the babe was born. "I'd like to chuck it in the Seine," he sourly snarled, "and yet I guess I'll have to let it live, because of Gigolette." I only laughed, for sure I saw his spite was all a bluff, And he was prouder than a prince behind his manner gruff. Yet every day he'd blast the brat with curses deep and grim, And swear to me that Gigolette no longer thought of him. And then one night he dropped the mask; his eyes were sick with dread, And ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... that Hardman outfit. It can't be avoided. I'd have to bluff them out or fight them down, right off. Dick is a yellow skunk. Jard Hardman is a bad man in any pinch. But not on an even break. I don't mean that. If that were all. But he's treacherous. And his henchman, this two bit of ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... spot where the road hugged close the concave outline of a bushy bluff, Bud slowed and turned out behind a ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... weeds and slender sprouts, as he rolled down the almost perpendicular bluff, Stacy yelled lustily for help. From the soft, sandy soil the weeds came away in his hands, without in the slightest degree checking ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... observe how she dips in the bows, and what a breadth she 151has; why she's fit for any seas; and if the Arrow ever shoots past her, I'll forfeit every shot in my lockers." "Avast there! master Horace," said our master at the helm, who was an old Cowes pilot, and as bluff as a Deal sea-boat; "the Pearl is a noble sailer; but a bird can't fly without wings, nor a ship run thirteen knots an hour without a good stiff breeze. If the light winds prevail, the Arrow will have the advantage, particularly ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... Mary read Miss Mason's letter for the third time, and again the cold touch of fear assailed her. She took a camp stool and sat by the edge of the bluff for a long time, watching the water. Then she went indoors ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... Stimson, as bluff an old sea-dog as ever flattened in a jib-sheet, "and that's the craft, as I'm a thinkin', Mr. Green. She had an animal for a figure-head, and that craft has an animal, as well as I can judge, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the course he had adopted, the party and their adventurous leader on the 3rd of August, at 11 o'clock a.m., rounded a high bluff cape, which they called after the lady of Sir John Henry Pelly, Bart., Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is situated in latitude 67 deg. 28' 00" north; longitude, by account, 87 deg. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... we tracked the marauders, and came across them at earliest dawn the following morning, cooking their dog-stew under the shelter of a high bluff, with the stolen horses picketed near, in a ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... German trenches. We had to time each heave with the most extreme accuracy, for the fraction of a moment too late meant the bursting of the bomb in our hands. The game we played with the Huns (keeping up a continuous fire all night, for instance) was one of pure bluff. They were massed in, we estimated, four army corps, and could have walked through us—if they ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... with which the detective dismissed what was generally regarded as the most puzzling feature of the entire case. It occurred to him, however, that the detective might be indulging in the favorite police game of bluff—that his easy dismissal of one of the most important features of the mystery was but a sham, a pretense designed ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin

... authority with you, Totten, for you're right and there's no time for argument. But when you said political exigency you said a whole lot—and we'll let this particular skunk cabbage go under that name. Don't try that law-and-order and state-authority bluff with me in such a case as this is. You're right in with the bunch and you know just as well as I do what the game is this time. Probably those folks outside there don't know what they want, but they do know that something is wrong! Something is almighty wrong when elected ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don't mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they're not up against a bluff. It's the same way with the officers. I've seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig up along with the rest while I was taking ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled itself out, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... There was bluff old Sir Geoffrey loved brandy and mum well, And to see a beer-glass turned over the thumb well; But he fled like the wind, before Fairfax and Cromwell, Which nobody ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... fellow Peters struck Shopton about a month ago. He bought the old Wardell homestead, and began to show off at once. He's got two autos, and this big motor boat. He always goes around with a silk hat and a flower in his buttonhole. A big bluff—that's what he is." ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton

... change in Horace Lansing's demeanour. From a blustering braggart, he became a pale and cringing coward. But with a desperate attempt to bluff it out, he exclaimed, "What do you mean?" but even as he spoke, he shivered and staggered backward, ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... in it four days, and kept alive only on rum, which the patriarch supplied him, swimming into the grotto with a bottle-full at a time. "And behold us arrived, gentlemen!" said he, as he brought the boat skillfully around in front of the small semicircular opening at the base of the lofty bluff. We lie flat on the bottom of the boat, and complete the immersion of that part of our clothing which the driving torrents of rain had spared. The wave of destiny rises with us upon its breast—sinks, and we are inside of the Blue Grotto. Not so much blue as gray, however, and the water about the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... is, Violet!" answered Peony, in his bluff tone, but a very sweet tone, too,—as he came floundering through the half-trodden drifts. "Here is the snow for her little bosom. O, Violet, how beau-ti-ful ...
— The Snow-Image - A Childish Miracle • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the glorious moonlight. On getting up in the morning, which we did betimes, we found the deck slippery with hoarfrost, and are told that it is the coldest night of this winter. Somebody has told me that Beaufort was on a bluff, and that its environments were not so flat as the rest ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... the Prophet! It is enough!" The Master's soul warmed toward the honesty of this bluff old Arab. "Thy magic is good magic. Give me thy ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... on the Royal James made good speed up the Bay aided by a strong tide. A little while before light she came close enough to the west shore for Job to see the outlines of trees on a bluff. He figured the distance to be not above a mile at most. There was some question in his mind whether he should cut the painter and use the boat in getting away or swim for it. He decided that it would be better for him in most ways if the pirates still supposed him dead. So, quietly as ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... of Elizabeth, most of them now only remembered because they were reprinted in the collections of Hakluyt and Purchas, this book of Raleigh's takes easily the foremost position. In comparison with the bluff and dull narratives of the other discoverers, whose chief charm is their naivete, the Discovery of Guiana has all the grace and fullness of deliberate composition, of fine literary art, and as it was the first excellent ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... of the Rajah," he said half-musingly. "In fact, I know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of calling an 'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way to the front. If the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff bluff on the part of the C. G. R. it will be quite as well for us if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the continent—and well out of ordinary reach of ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... fair, and but for the sea-mist the power of the sun would have been enough to dazzle all beholders. Already this vapour was beginning to clear off, coiling up in fleecy wisps above the glistening water, but clinging still to any bluff or cliff it could ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... own the ship even, or that the charter ain't busted long ago, or that you're being libelled ashore right now, or that you won't dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee of what's comin' to me? Howsoever"—he anticipated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind and bluff—"howsoever, here's my ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... of Victor Emmanuel as a bluff, easy-going monarch is mistaken. Very few princes have had a keener sense of the royal dignity, or a more deeply-rooted family pride, or, when he thought fit to resort to it, a more decisive method of preventing people from taking liberties with him. But he knew that, in nearly ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the young ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... shore of San Francisco Bay, at a point where the Golden Gate broadens into the Pacific stands a bluff promontory. It affords shelter from the prevailing winds to a semicircular bay on the east. Around this bay the hillside is bleak and barren, but there are traces of former habitation in a weather-beaten cabin and deserted corral. It ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... mad," was the bluff response of the guest. "It was just after crossing the creek to the southwest, which doesn't lie in your way. A lot of the beasts took fright at something, and away they went on a bee line for Arizona. I thought a couple ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis

... ironclads and torpedoes as about the wrongs of the natives of Lazistan, the necessity of upholding the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and of circumventing the dark and crooked wiles of Russian diplomacy. Altogether Augustus Charles Hobart was a remarkable man—bluff, bold, dashing, and somewhat dogged. There was in his composition something of the mediaeval "condottiere," and a good deal more of that Dugald Dalgetty whom Scott drew. Gustavus Adolphus would have made much of Hobart; the ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... rough blue suit, his easy rolling gait, wandering about, stooping to look at the flowers in the beds, or glancing up at the sky, or sauntering off to fish in the stream, or writing swiftly in the parlour, or working at his loom; so bluff, so kindly, so blunt in address, so unaffected, loving all that he saw, the tide of full-blooded and restless life running so vigorously in his veins; or, further back, Rossetti, with his wide eyes, half bright, half ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... refreshed, and we were enabled to proceed with the scanty supply of water carried with us. In an hour we struck upon the channel of a river with a sandy bed, 300 yards wide, in which were a few pools of water, under a bold sandstone bluff, rising abruptly 300 feet from the plain. From the summit of this hill the river was observed to trend to the north-north-west for eight or ten miles, and to come upon a gap in a granite range four miles to the south-south-east, towards which we now turned our steps, across extensive beds ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... fatigue. With two hundred slaves of his own, and a dowry of three hundred more which was poured into his coffers by his marriage, Jeff did not care how much toil it took to polish off the top of a bluff or how much the sweat stood out on the brow ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... my hearties! another like that and it's home! Pitch into it, Mivins. You're the boy for me! Now then, Grim, trip him up! Hallo! Buzzby, you bluff-bowed Dutchman, luff! luff! or I'll stave in your ribs! Mind your eye, Mizzle! there's Green, he'll be into your larboard quarter in no time. Hurrah! Mivins, up in the air with it. Kick, boy, kick like a spanker-boom ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... farther that night, as it would be quite dark by the time he should get to the mountain pass, on the by-road to Kilbroggan. His warning was made light of. He grew more earnest, asserting, what was not the fact, that it was "a bad road," meaning one infested by robbers. Still the bluff tar paid no attention, and was turning away. "Oh, sir; oh, stop, sir," resumed Jeremiah, taking great courage, "I have a thing to tell you;" and he rehearsed his dream, averring that in it he had distinctly seen ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... huge of girth in a horizontal measure. His hair was a sort of wolf's gray, was clipped all over within an inch of his head, and stood up like the bristles on a wild boar's back. His brows were bushy, and jutted, roof-like, over his deeply-sunken eyes; his nose was bluff as a bull-dog's; his cheek-bones were rough and high; his eyes were wide-set; his mouth was cut square across almost from ear to ear; his chin was square and massy; he had an Adam's apple as large as a gilly-flower ripening on ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... "Guess your bluff wa'n't wuth a cent, Victor Gagnon. I see'd this comin' the minit you pass'd me the drink. I 'lows ye ken mostly tell a skunk by the stink. I rec'nized you awhiles back. Guess you ain't lightin' out o' here this night. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... about sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff." ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face, piercing grey eyes, and very prominent, bushy eyebrows, of about fifty or sixty years of age. Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaum pipe, which he smokes even when he is wearing a frock coat and a tall hat, and you have Jorsen. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... There was a bluff and hearty greeting from the clergyman as Cardo took off his hat to the two young ladies, who simpered and blushed becomingly, for Cardo Wynne was the catch of the neighbourhood; his good looks, his father's reputed wealth, and the slight air of mystery ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray; ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... forward with interest to meeting Sir Cresswell Oliver, who, only a few months previously, had made himself famous by a remarkable feat of seamanship in which great personal bravery and courage had been displayed. He had a vague expectation of seeing a bluff, stalwart, sea-dog type of man; instead, he presently found himself shaking hands with a very quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, who might have been a barrister or a doctor, of pleasant and kindly manners. With him was another gentleman ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... to the west, and after several repetitions of this same play, flying, following, and overtaking, and flying again, they passed, near noon, the old Apache look-out, Buffalo Bluff. Anti here, on watch, was Jo. A long thin column of smoke told Charley to come to camp, and with a flashing pocket-mirror he made response. Jo, freshly mounted, rode across, and again took up the chase, and back ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the buck would wait where he was, even if not alarmed, for the time necessary to afford a good shot for his enemy. It was some whim that had led him out upon the top of the towering bluff, where he was in view of the young hunters. It is not to be supposed that his kind appreciate such a thing as beauty in a landscape or scene spread before them, and yet the action of the buck almost indicated something of that nature; for he stood motionless, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... to use them? And where would we be after that? We're here to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetary incidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That's why we've got to pick up Rakhal before ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... Majesties was erected on a stage in the shape of a semicircle, and covered with a bluff carpet studded with bees, and was reached by twenty-two steps. The throne, draped in red velvet, was also covered by a pavilion of the same color, the left wing of which extended over the Empress, the princesses, and their maids of honor, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... of the Amazon. As we approached we passed half-clad black washerwomen on the river's edge. The men, with the local band, were gathered at the steeply sloping foot of the main street, where the steamer came to her moorings. Groups of women and girls, white and brown, watched us from the low bluff; their skirts and bodices were red, blue, green, of all colors. Sigg had gone ahead with much of the baggage; he met us in an improvised motor-boat, consisting of a dugout to the side of which he had clamped our Evinrude motor; he was giving several of the local citizens of prominence ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... as Sam Weller said. Oh, here's Tommy May—Here, Tom, what do you think of the weather?" said the lad, addressing a bluff-looking seaman. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... table of the Polonsky-Llewellyn group at the Cercle Bougainville, I looked him over narrowly. His name was Dixon,—Lovaina never got a name right,—an Englishman, a wanderer, with an Eton schooling, short, solidly built, with a bluff jaw and a keen, blue eye. He was not good-looking. He had learned the nickname given me, and was in such a happy frame of mind that he ordered drinks for ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... the bitter end. "Yes," replied the Governor; "good-night." And he was just going out, when the henchman rushed after him, calling, "Hold on! We accept. Send in your nomination. The Senator is very sorry, but will make no further opposition."* Roosevelt adds that the bluff was carried through to the limit, but that after it failed, Platt did not renew his attempt ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... miles inland, when they were attacked by the Turks in overwhelming force, and lost a large number in their retreat to the Beach and then to their boats. This was afterwards retaken by the Gurkhas, who pushed through from W. Beach, and the high cliff on the north side is now known as Gurkha Bluff. The Indian Brigade have their H.Q. here, and this morning there were about 2000 Gurkhas and Sikhs about. I was toiling up the "bloody cliff" when some Gurkhas passed me, thinking nothing of the steep ascent; while I straightened my knees slowly at ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... on the look-out, I could not have hit it," I said. "But I say, Pomp," I continued, looking round as we came upon a high sandy bluff through which the river had cut its way, and whose dry, sun-bathed sides offered a pleasant ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... eagerly began reading the advertisement. The hill was very steep just at its top, and the sulky slanted backward at a sharp angle. A terrific burst of wind tore around the corner of the bluff. It eddied through the sulky between the dashboard and the curtained sides. The widow, in her excitement at finding the advertisement, had inadvertently removed her feet from the pile of papers. In an instant the air was filled with whirling copies ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Tannis left the Flats; it was ten when she drew bridle before the house on the bluff. Elinor was regaling Tom and his wife with Avonlea gossip when the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... limitless prairie straight on in front of me. I walked for days, and slept at night wherever I could find a bluff. I could hear the little grasses whispering when I lay half-awake, and it was comforting to know that there were leagues and leagues of them between me and the city. I drove a team for a farmer most of that season. Then I went on to a track that they were strengthening ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... at first, and let up on this camp-meetin' exhortation. Well then—admitting you've got the old man and the young girl on the same string, and that you've played it pretty low down in the short time you've been there—I suppose, Dick Renshaw, I've got to see your bluff. Well, how much is it? What's the figure you and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... on the shore who watched her movements shook their heads in distrust as they communed among themselves, in very indifferent Italian, concerning her destination and object. This observation, with its accompanying discourse, occurred on the rocky bluff above the town of Porto Ferrajo, in the Island of Elba, a spot that has since become so renowned as the capital of the mimic dominion of Napoleon. Indeed, the very dwelling which was subsequently used by the fallen emperor as a palace stood within ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... his eyes would get a little dim as the bluff old gentleman touched his hat to the officers, and went over the side, while the captain put his hands behind him and walked thoughtfully aft, to have a long consultation with the first lieutenant, after which he too went ashore without seeing his son again, and Sydney prepared for his first ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn

... Cromwell, like many another bluff and gruff man, was a deal more tender-hearted than he was willing to admit. The death of his daughter broke the heart of Old Noll—he could not live without her. So passed away Oliver Cromwell in his sixtieth year. The very human side of his nature was shown in his supposing that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... authority, which covered the more unpleasant features of his character. He was detested by the prisoners—as he said, "it was a word and a blow with him"—but, among his superiors, he passed for an officer, honest and painstaking, though somewhat bluff ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... he thought he saw a fine, high bluff, and he hurried toward it with delicious expectation. When he had reached the brink he looked down and saw that the bluff ended in a little body of water hardly big enough to be called a lake. After measuring the drop with ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... yet as the man strode into the room with open palm and a general air of bluff hospitality—as if he had just been blown by some fresh strong wind across his tobacco fields—the lawyer experienced a relief so great that the breath he drew seemed a fit measure of his earlier foreboding. For Fletcher outwardly was but the common type ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... Jinaradasa's qualifications might be such as only just to satisfy the board of the Royal College of Surgeons, it was better to send him to look after the patients than to leave them utterly unattended. Therefore, when the neat little two-seater car drew up at Pendlemere Abbey it was not the bluff, rosy-cheeked Dr. Hunter who stepped out of it, but a foreign-looking gentleman with a very dark complexion. He explained his presence to Miss Todd, who gasped for a second, but recovered herself, received him gratefully, and conducted him upstairs to view his patient. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... which the precipice in which they are situated rises almost vertically, we were unable to camp under them, but remained on the right bank of the river, where a level plain extends for some distance, bordering the river and stretching back to the distant cliffs. We pitched our camp on a bluff, about 30 feet above the river, in full sight of the cave entrances, near a small stone inclosure which bears quite a close resemblance to a ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... On deck the bluff captain of the "Consternation," in resplendent uniform, stood beside Lady Angela Burford of the British Embassy at Washington, to receive the guests of the cruiser. Behind these two were grouped an assemblage of officers and very fashionably dressed women, chatting vivaciously ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... us, in two boats, and to avoid suspicion we ran down after dark and dropped anchor under a projecting bluff of land known as Point Pinole. As the east paled with the first light of dawn we got under way again, and hauled close on the land breeze as we slanted across the bay toward Point Pedro. The morning mists curled and clung to the water so that we could see nothing, but we busied ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... fidelity had the importance that they gave to it. To a few—very few—it matters—but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk—squalid, if you like—but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved women—psychologically. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real sin against marriage. He was a great lover, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... can't fool me, Morton. I know men of nerve. And here in Pecos they're not any different from those in other places. I say if you show anything like a lack of sand it's all bluff. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... to bluff a simple old clergyman, but it was another thing altogether to mislead an alert young woman. Belle knew there was something wrong—something more and different from ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Campaign.—Vicksburg stood on the top of a high bluff directly on the river. Batteries erected at the northern end of the town commanded the river, which at that point ran directly toward the bluff. The best way to attack this formidable place was to proceed ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing

... business of washing the sands of the ocean-beach. Between Point Mendocino, in California, and the mouth of the Umpqua River, in Oregon, the beach-sand contains gold, and in some places it is very rich. The beach is narrow, and lies at the foot of a bluff bank of auriferous sand. In times of storm, the waves wash against this bank, undermine it, sweep away the pieces which tumble down, leaving the gold on the beach. The gold is in very fine particles, and it moves with the heavier sand, which alters its position frequently ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... subordinates that took it upon themselves to disregard these orders—the intimation being cleverly conveyed that their action might not be unconnected with instructions from above. The old man then dropped his bluff, and asked what we wanted. We asked that he send for the Director-General, and give him, in our presence, the instructions and authorisation necessary to enable him to reestablish communication with the outside world, and instruct him to receive and ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... a bit of ingenious bluff on the part of Spargo; he watched its effect with keen eyes. But Miss Baylis was adamant, and she ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... was not even reminded of his own youth by this queer child on whom he leaned. He had never been like this, a shy frightened dreaming child taken up with fancies and finding omens and stories in the piping of a fowl. Oh! no, he had been a bluff, hearty, hungry boy, hot-headed, red-legged, short-kilted, stirring, a bit of a bully, a loud talker, a dour lad with his head and his fists. This boy beside him made him think of neither man nor boy, but of his ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... operations, and stared at him till he was out of sight. He soon reached the Gap; but he had advanced only a short distance before he discovered a battery of light artillery stationed on a kind of bluff, and whose guns commanded the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... chance against the boy who swept the office." He is to be found, this victim of an intellectual ambition, in the salaried class, from which the aspiring millionaire is bidden to escape as quickly as possible by the customary methods of bluff and bounce. Why, then, if Mr Carnegie thinks so ill of colleges and universities does he inflict his millions upon them? He has known "few young men intended for business who were not injured by a collegiate education." And yet he has done his best to drive all the youth of Scotland within ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... certainly mosquitoes from the woods; but there are mosquitoes everywhere, and the report that people have been driven away by them is manifestly untrue, for whoever comes to Jocelyn's remains. The beach at the foot of the bluff is almost a mile at its curve, and it is so smooth and hard that it glistens like polished marble when newly washed by the tide. It is true that you reach it from the top by a flight of eighty steps, but it was intended to have an elevator, like those near the Whirlpool at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a way that wasn't any bluff. At sun-up I rose and mooched on." His cigarette needed another match and he ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... Where waves the golden grain! Beneath yon tree, earth's bosom Was dark with crimson stain. That bluff the death-shot echoed Of husband, father, slain! God grant such sight of horror ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... strikes me as very well arranged," I retorted, in a bluff tone, as much as to say that I saw through her blandishments. I think she appreciated this. Nevertheless, a few minutes later when we were on the dining-room story, she rubbed her head against my shoulder and said, "Just see what a ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... boys liked the yacht they also liked the man who had charge of her, bluff and hearty Jerry Tolman—Captain Jerry, as Bob Sutter called him. He was truly an old salt, having sailed the ocean since his tenth year, on both whalers and merchantmen. Captain Jerry lacked a book education, but he was naturally shrewd, and far ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... number by fifty thousand since the last census in 1890. Of all their characteristics, the sincerity of their belief is the most striking. In Ohio, when one of the preachers of these "Smithite" Mormons was conducting me through the many-storied temple, still standing huge and gray on Kirtland Bluff, he laid his hand on a pile of copies of the Book of Mormon, saying solemnly, "Sister, here is the solidest thing in religion that you'll find anywhere." I bought the "solidest" thing for fifty cents, and do not advise the same outlay to others. The prophet's life is more marvellous and more ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... with his oar upon his shoulder. We were soon launched and instructed as to the course we were to take. The wind and sea had gone down, and the tide was favourable. We had to pull about five miles to get round the bluff, when we arrived at the sandy little nook from which we had made our involuntary excursion to sea the night before. The spirit of obedience to orders was strong upon me, and in spite of the remonstrance of the boys, I went in and loaded the dinghy nearly down to the gunnel with the sand, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... me in the idea already half formed, that my apparent arrest at the hotel, my strange and mysterious journey through the night, and the threat of Siberia, were all in the nature of what we Americans call a "bluff"; were only intended to conceal the real purpose of this enforced interview. During that moment of hesitation, which was so short that it would not have been noticeable to a disinterested party, I decided that the perfectly frank and open course would be the best one to adopt with this giant of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... of what you've just been saying to him is right, and how much is just bluff to cover a place where you miscued?" ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... nature both of the widow and her son. Had the honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended. But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-spoken one—and, after all, she had some little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a decayed fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account, had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she, with her strong common sense, attach all the importance ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... his shoulders. 'It's fairly simple,' he said. 'If, as I think, Germany is behind all this, Servia will appeal to Russia; and remember that the Great Bear is mother to all the Slavs. There will, of course, be jockeying for position, bluff, bravado, and all the rest of it; but France is bound to act with Russia, and with all that explosive hanging around it will be strange if some spark doesn't fall ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... taken the wet pack from Jim and were dragging it up the bluff. Janus tied this and two other packs on the back of one horse, then began making ready for doing the game with the other animal. By the time he was ready, Jim had returned with still another wet bundle ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... Gothic door-way of that gorgeous palace of the old Norman and older Saracen lords of Sicily, came the bluff German knight Anselm von Justingen, bringing into its perfumed air some of the strength and resoluteness of his sturdy Suabian breezes. With a deep salutation, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... reckon anybody kin tell the distance o' the stars; they only put up a bluff on that. They ain't no ackshall way o' gittin' distance onless you lay a tape measure, er somethin' like it on the ground. These here surveyors all does it; I had 'em ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... natural curiosity at the base of the foothills—a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so natural that one might almost imagine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... time, for it is "human warious," and its first volume, already filled out, is lying in the old desk. Martin Cortright said, one stormy day last autumn when he was sitting in the corner I have loaned him of my precious attic retreat, that, owing to the incursion of the Bluff Colony of New Yorkers, which we had been discussing, I should call this second volume "People of the Whirlpool," because—ah, but I must wait and hunt among my papers for his very words as I ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... the town at the bottom of its deep bay, we set out to explore a bluff-headed parallelogramical promontory, bounded by Thurso Bay on the one hand, and Murkle Bay on the other, and which presents to the open sea, in the space that stretches between, an undulating line of iron-bound coast, exposed ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... people in the world he wanted to stand high with Alexina...he had never taken more pains to bluff the street when things were at their worst than this girl who was the symbol of all he had aspired to and precariously achieved. He had longed for riches, not because she craved luxury and pomp, but ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... cup's a bottle," Polly returned. "This is a baby's benefit. It's Constance's pet scheme and I'm crazy about it. We've found a big, hundred-room summer hotel, with two hundred acres of ground, on a high bluff overlooking the ocean; and we're going to turn it into a free hotel for sickly babies and their ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester

... country is due for a lesson. It was anxious enough to get into trouble, and now we'll find how it likes some severe instruction. All the news here is bluff—the national asset. What I hope is that business ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... even better than the first one—provided the proposition is "on the square." It is hard to put sincerity into a letter that is not based on an absolute truth. If "Only 46 sets left" is merely a salesman's bluff when in fact there are hundreds of sets on hand, the letter will have a ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... being done beneath it. Suddenly we debouched into a level cornfield, extending quite to the river's verge. The clearing was not a wide one, and the farther bank of the Tennessee was in plain sight—the landings, the bluff, and the woods above stretching away ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... cheek, a man ought to get on in the world, I think, for after all it is self-confidence and "bluffing" that seems to succeed most. However down in the world you are, however bad your "hand," you only have to "bluff" a little to make it all right. There are many foolish people in the world ready to be your dupes, and luckily they never think of asking to "see" you. Even the best of us try it on a little; we strive to hide our skeletons ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... a degree," said Mr. Sorber, soberly. "Some men is all gruff and bluff, but tender at heart. So's—Why, how-d'ye-do, ma'am!" he said, getting up and bowing to Mrs. MacCall, whom he just saw. "I ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... he says. 'You're trespassers. The railroad company didn't come through wid the coin for the right-of-way. Your mon, Corrigan, has got an idee that he's goin' to bluff me. I'm callin' his bluff. You've got tin minutes to get out av here. At the end av that time I begin to shoot. I've got six cattridges in the gun, an' fifty more in the belt around me middle. An' I seldom miss whin I shoot. It's up to you whether ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... They've always thried to reform man, an' they haven't yet got onto th' fact that maybe he's not worth reformin'. They don't undherstan' why a man shud be allowed to pizen himsilf into th' belief that he amounts to something, but thin they don't undherstand man. They little know what a bluff he is an' how 'tis on'y be fortifyin' himsilf with stuff that they regard as iv no use except to burn undher a tea-kettle that he dares to go on livin' at all. He knows how good dhrink makes him look to himsilf, an' he dhrinks. They see how it makes him look to ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... but a small descendant from such great warriors. When you looked at their bluff visages and brawny limbs, as depicted in their portraits, and then at the little Marquis, with his spindle shanks; his sallow lanthern visage, flanked with a pair of powdered ear-locks, or ailes de pigeon, that seemed ready to fly away with it; ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... similar proclamation by the President of the United States, though it was frequently done by Abraham Lincoln. The act of Mayor Ruef of San Francisco, even at the time of the earthquake, declaring martial law, or giving troops or vigilance committees summary powers of punishment, was a mere "bluff." Such an order, though in practice obeyed by all good citizens, would in no way protect those acting under it from prosecution in the criminal or ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... our reins, while we made our way to the top of the bluff. Looking back we could see the train about half a mile off, slowly following in our tracks. Beyond us, to the southward, the country appeared much more level than that we had lately passed over, while, greatly to our satisfaction, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... long as he can crawl in the grass or brushwood, and steal silently upon him by surprise, or send a shaft from his bow from behind a tree, or a bullet from his rifle from the brow of a bluff, he has an advantage; but, when he comes face to face with the white man, he is superstitiously afraid of him. The power of the white man, in war, is that of bravery and skill; the power of the red man consists much in stratagem and surprise. Fifty white men, armed, on an open ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... should be able to set it forth clearly in the best words. This is precisely Dryden's praise,[96] and amid the rickety sentiment looming big through misty phrase which marks so much of modern literature, to read him is as bracing as a northwest wind. He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and bluff heartiness of expression, he takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... "Bluff!" Var read the words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. It must be an offer, ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey

... wherever chance might lead me. As confidence came, my enjoyment increased. I began to believe I could take care of myself. I reasoned out that, as the peaks were snow-capped, I should find water, and very likely game, up higher. Moreover, I might climb a foothill or bluff from which I could ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... every man to do his duty. Forward the Light Brigade, and so on to where glory and an express train were waiting, or would be waiting, before you had time to knock a tenpenny nail on the head twice. The company on the platform comprised the elite of the sporting world. "Bluff" TOMMY POPPIN, the ever courteous host of "The Chequers," "BILL" TOOTWON, by his friends yclept the Masher, JAKE RUMBELO, the middle-weight World's Champion, were all there, wreathed in silvery smiles, and all on the nod, on the nod, on the nod, as the poet hath it, though why "hath it" ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... know a few things, Brencherly, remember. Baker Allen told me your office held him up good and plenty to turn in a different report when his wife employed you, and you 'got the goods on him.' Now, don't give me any bluff. I want facts, and I pay you for them, don't I? Well, when you got that story, you looked it up ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... Chris, go in." He turned on his heel to go out, and I followed. When we were on the sidewalk he said: "I don't give it up yet, but I can play bluff as ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher

... you don't, Eleanor. It's only my doggone pride that makes me want to keep up the bluff, but you're a game kid,—you—know. I tried to get you switched off to one of the others till I could get on my feet, but—no, they just thought I had stage fright. I couldn't insist. It would be pretty humiliating to me to admit that I couldn't ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley

... of a high bluff, covered with wood, contiguous to the college, I observed a monument or obelisk, which I ascertained to have been erected to the memory of Kosciusko, a Polish patriot, who took a prominent part in the annihilation of British rule in America. ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... sloop of less than thirteen hundred tons, with a battery of fifteen guns, none of long range. Clearly such an armada as this could be of but little avail against the earthworks which the Virginians were busily erecting on every commanding bluff. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... agreed Ned. "But when my sister let out about that L1200, and I saw that you must have spotted me, there didn't seem much point in keeping up the bluff, when I came to think it over. And since then, Mr. Carrington, something has happened that you ought to know and I decided to come and see you ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... crown, surrounded by a circle of stiff curled black hair, had something the appearance of a parish pinfold begirt by its high hedge. The features expressed nothing of monastic austerity, or of ascetic privations; on the contrary, it was a bold bluff countenance, with broad black eyebrows, a well-turned forehead, and cheeks as round and vermilion as those of a trumpeter, from which descended a long and curly black beard. Such a visage, joined to the brawny form of the holy man, spoke rather of sirloins and haunches, than of pease and pulse. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... down past the intervening barriers of water and wood, and were walking on the fjord shore. Rounding a bluff, we had suddenly opened out a small cutter of some six-and-twenty or thirty tons, riding to her anchor in the mouth of the river. One concluded that she was a yacht, as she was flush-decked, and had a skylight instead of a cargo-hatch amidships; but her lines were ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... morning in June, 1769, the figure of a stalwart, broad shouldered man could have been seen standing on the wild and rugged promontory which rears its rocky bluff high above the Ohio river, at a point near the mouth of Wheeling Creek. He was alone save for the companionship of a deerhound that crouched at his feet. As he leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the glorious scene that stretched before him, a smile flashed across his bronzed cheek, and his ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... used to the ways of the Avenue and all that kind of thing, where would I be now, trying to run in the right kind of bluff with the trade?" ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... injury to my mill. The wheat belongs to the neighborhood." "Where is there another mill?" "About three miles down the creek." Off our forager rode. He saw that money nor begging would prevail to get bread and determined on a bluff. The next mill had soldiers claiming all the wheat, but some of it was in boxes or bins. He called the miller out, and offered to pay for a couple of bushels. "It is not mine, said the miller, it belongs to people around here, but I had ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little

... called home was in a high corner of the Alaska building, where the western windows, overtopping other stone and brick blocks of the business center, commanded the harbor, caught like a faceted jewel between Duwamish Head and Magnolia Bluff, and a far sweep of the outer Sound set in wooded islands and the lofty snow peaks of the Olympic peninsula. Next to his summer camp in the open he liked this eyrie, and particularly he liked it at this hour ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... thinking. Next time keep your pants on." And Miss Bray, who's good on a bluff, pretended like she had been truly injured, and the ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher

... loud "Ho! Ho!" [24] And he flung the brand to the drifting snow. Three times Wakawa puffed forth the smoke From his silent lips; then he slowly spoke: "Mahpiya is strong as the stout-armed oak That stands on the bluff by the windy plain, And laughs at the roar of the hurricane. He has slain the foe and the great Mato With his hissing arrow and deadly stroke. My heart is swift but my tongue is slow. Let the warrior come to my lodge and smoke; He may bring ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... his preoccupation had given place to a smile of anticipation. The Padre was intent upon the black slopes of the hill. Farther along, the hill turned away toward the creek, and the trail bore to the left, passing on the hither side of a great bluff of woods which stretched right up to the very corrals of the farm. It was here, too, where the overhang of the suspended lake came into view, where Yellow Creek poured its swift, shallow torrent in the shadowed twilight of the single-walled ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... comes bluff March—a cross between A Jester and a Libertine. He loves to make the parson race With wicked words his hat to chase; To dye with compromising rose The pious man's abstemious nose. The ladies hate him, though ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford

... you, when you look'd so bluff, But now I'll secret keep your stuff; For know, prostration is enough to ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... Bodoli, between Interlaken (left) and Unterseen (right), before again expanding in order to form the Lake of Thun. Near the west end of that lake it receives on the left the Kander, which has just before been joined by the Simme; on flowing out of the lake it passes Thun, and then circles the lofty bluff on which the town of Bern is built. It soon changes its north-westerly for a due westerly direction, but after receiving the Saane or Sarine (left) turns N. till near Aarberg its stream is diverted W. by the Hagneck Canal into the Lake of Bienne, from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and he has no idea how many tons the six families of Patmos heaved at and after the goats. When they weren't going headfirst into barrels of water they were chewing something not meant to be chewed. Casey asserts that it is all a bluff about goats eating tin cans. They don't. He says they never touched a can all the while he had them. He says devastated Patmos wished they would, and leave the two-dollar lace curtains alone, and clotheslines and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... to a certain green nook on the river bluff; and winged heavenward a prayer of thanks that she had put off until afternoon her daily pilgrimage to ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... South and Longitude 186 degrees 55 minutes West from Greenwich,* (* This position is very correct.) and North 63 degrees West 31 Leagues from Cape Brett; it forms the North Point of Sandy Bay, and is a peninsula juting out North-East about 2 Miles, and Terminates in a Bluff head which is flatt at Top. The Isthmus which joins this head to the Mainland is very low, on which account the land off the Cape from several situations makes like an Island. It appears still more remarkable when ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... in, big and bluff and easy-going. "Hittin' the trail, boys? Good enough. Hope you find the thieves. If you do, play yore cards close. They're treacherous devils. Don't take no chances with 'em. I left an order at the store for you to draw on me ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... as well, too, for I'd got half way through the soup before I notices anything the matter with it. My guess was that it tasted scorchy. I glances around at Vee, and finds she's just makin' a bluff at eatin' hers. Doris and Westy ain't even doin' that, and when I drops my spoon Doris signals to take it away. Which Cyril does, movin' as solemn and dignified as if he was usherin' at a funeral. Then there's a stage wait for three or four minutes ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... the present moment. Your bluff is perfect, yet there are moments when it cannot aid you, depend upon it. She told me one night long ago, in my own room, when she had disobeyed, defied, and annoyed me, that she would never rest until Sir Henry knew the truth, and that she would place before him proofs of the other ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... one night the singin' stopped . . . Seemed as if my heart just flopped; For I'd learned to love the boy With his gilt-edged line of joy, With his glorious gift of bluff, With his splendid fightin' stuff. Sing on, lad, and play the game! O dear God! . . . no singin' came, But there surged to me instead — Silence, silence, deep and dread; Till I shuddered, tried to pray, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... Weller said. Oh, here's Tommy May—Here, Tom, what do you think of the weather?" said the lad, addressing a bluff-looking seaman. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... describes the Helvetians as burning preparatory to their invasion of Gaul; and the monuments of Egypt, for which Bunsen claimed twenty thousand years, are now acknowledged by the best Egyptologists to reach not quite to 3000 B. C. As to the bone found at the base of the bluff at Memphis, it was not found in situ, and probably was washed out of some Indian grave at the top, and buried in the debris. The Abbeville skull[126] had a fresh tooth in it, for which thirty-five thousand years was claimed, until examination by a competent committee ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... far as facts are concerned.... They treated me rather badly.... I faced their firing-squads half-a-dozen times. After that bluff wouldn't work they interned me as an English civilian at Holzminden.... They hid me when, at last, an inspection took place. No chance for me to communicate with our Ambassador or ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... the sort of politics that you've been used to. But I'm kind of used to it myself. Had to pull the same game off over in Colfax County when I was runnin' for sheriff the first time. It worked, too, because the folks that was mixed up in it knowed I wasn't ringing in any bluff." He looked at Dunlavey with a level, steady gaze, his eyes gleaming coldly. "If you think I'm bluffing now, chirp for some one of your pluguglies to bust into this game. I'd sort of like to let off my campaign ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... know it," replied the stranger, with a smile. "What I said was intended to be jocular, and to put Brokedale at his ease. The Americans present, with their usual astuteness, would term it bluff. It was. I merely rattled on. I simply did not wish to offend the gentleman by letting him know that I had penetrated his disguise. Imagine my surprise, however, when his eye brightened as I spoke, and he entered my room with such alacrity that half the powder which he thought disguised ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... post and railway construction camp. Cameron never could forget the thrill of admiration that swept his soul one night in Taylor's billiard and gambling "joint" down at the post where the Elbow joins the Bow, when McIvor, without bluff or bluster, took his chainman and his French-Canadian cook, the latter frothing mad with "Jamaica Ginger" and "Pain-killer," out of the hands of the gang of bad men from across the line who had marked them as lambs for the fleecing. It was not the courage ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... boy. He saw that Austin was sensitive about being dependent and he enjoyed seeing him wince. At Harry's alarm he only grunted a word of disapproval and went on with his work. He believed Austin was only trying to bluff him. He did not think the boy could be driven away from ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale

... miles south-west of Charleston is the town of Savannah, situated upon an open, sandy plain, which forms a bluff or cliff, about fifty feet above the level of the river of the same name. It is laid out, in the form of a parallelogram, about a mile and a quarter long, and half a mile wide. The streets are broad, and open into spacious squares, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... and sorrowfully returning from an evening parade of his troops, to his own quarters, which stood at some little distance from the place of the encampment, and on the same high bluff of land, when his vacant eyes fell on the figure of a man, who by the regulations of the place, was not entitled to be there, at that forbidden hour. The stranger was meanly dressed, with every appearance about his person and countenance, of squalid poverty and of the most ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... claimed by Lord John Russell and Mr. Bright. It was sufficiently evident that members, without distinction of party, desired to hear the last-named gentleman, for cries of "Bright," "Bright," came from all parts of the House. The member for Birmingham is stout, bluff, and hearty, looking very much like a prosperous, well-dressed English yeoman. He is acknowledged to be the best declaimer in the House. Piquant, racy, and entertaining, he is always listened to with interest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... said a bluff sailor to him; "if you mean to be a man, you must learn to toss off your glass. Your white face don't look as if you ever tasted anything stronger than tea. Here is a ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... couldn't have handled him as Clancy had any more than I could have hove a barrel of salt mackerel over my head, which was what the strong fishermen of the port were doing about that time to prove their strength; but the bluff went, and I couldn't help throwing out my chest as I went out the door and thinking that I was getting to be a great judge of ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... the old house Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past, As if in a pageant glassed ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... to force the water of the springs up on the dry plains above, for irrigation (the fetich of the country), by means of a pneumatic pumping arrangement. His ladders and pipes, and all his hopeful apparatus, are clinging now like cobwebs to the face of the bluff, against that flashing, creaming broadside of the springs at their greatest height and fall. I was pitying the poor man and his folly, but Tom says ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... when she suddenly abandoned her play-acting. She hadn't figured on the difficult requirements, I suppose, poor child. Bluff and genial Tom, grown rather gray and stout and bald now, had met her with a hearty, "Hello, bride-elect!" Oliver had shouted, "Greetings, Mrs. Prof!" And Madge, his wife, had tucked a tissue-paper-wrapped package under Ruth's arm: "My engagement present," she explained. "Just a half-a-dozen little ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... 21st of July the Union forces were routed at Bull Run with terrific loss of life and many wounded. Two months later the battle of Ball's Bluff occurred, in which there were three Massachusetts regiments engaged, with many of Clara Barton's lifelong friends among them. By this time the hospitals and commissaries in Washington had been well organized, and there was no desperate need for the supplies ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... issues and the redoubtable character of the contest, they pursued subordinate aims with insufficient means. The most daring strategical moves of the enemy, in war as in diplomacy, they ridiculed as either bluff or madness. The journalistic campaign in neutral countries they scoffed at as vain, and put their faith in the final triumph of truth. Their financial measures, oscillating from one extreme to another, denoted the absence of any settled plan, of any ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... there, Bluff Shipley! If you keep on falling all over yourself like that you'll have to take a whole week ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... delight when finally they staggered out into the open with their burdens, on a high bluff overlooking the sea. The sea lay sparkling in the sunlight, while almost at their feet great white-crested combers were rolling in and breaking against the sandy bluff. The salt spray dashed up into their faces and the odor of the salt sea ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... the story of Henry VIII., Catharine, and Anne Boleyn. "Bluff King Hal," although a well-loved monarch, was none too good a one in many ways. Of all his selfishness and unwarrantable acts, none was more discreditable than his divorce from Catharine, and his marriage to the beautiful Anne Boleyn. The King's love was as brief as it was vehement. Jane Seymour, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... protruding from the green foliage. It was ponderous, overhanging, and seemed to frown down on the river. This was Shawnee Rock. Joe looked long at the cliff, and wondered if there was now an Indian scout hidden behind the pines that skirted the edge. Prominent on the top of the bluff a large, dead tree ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... everywhere had important losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the "German bluff." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... they leave the Souris valley the hills are blue with distance and seem to promise wooded slopes, and maybe leaping streams, but a half-day's journey dispels the illusion, for when the traveller comes near enough to see the elevation as it is, it is only a rugged bluff, bald and bare, and blotched with clumps of mangy grass, with a fringe of stunted poplar at ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... Dr. Singletary was situated somewhat apart from the main street, just on the slope of Blueberry Will,—a great, green swell of land, stretching far down from the north, and terminating in a steep bluff at the river side. It overlooked the village and the river a long way up and down. It was a brown-looking, antiquated mansion, built by the Doctor's grandfather in the earlier days of the settlement. The rooms were large and low, with great ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Mawruss," Abe replied. "I never liked them people, Mawruss. In fact, last week Mendel Immerglick struck me for new terms—ninety instead of sixty days—and he wanted to give me a couple of thousand dollar order. I turned him down cold, Mawruss. People what throw such a bluff like Mendel Immerglick don't give me no confidence, Mawruss. I'm willing to sell him up to five hundred at ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass

... were local artillery combats which terminated with the capture of Hill 60 and "The Bluff." On the 1st March there was a demonstration at 5 p.m., which consisted of artillery and infantry fire and cheering as if for an attack. The following morning at 4.32 a.m. the 3rd Division attacked and captured International and New Year trenches and "The Bean" with over 200 prisoners. ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown

... anchored within half-a-mile of the schooner in Portland Bay, and the men went ashore. During the night a gale of wind came on from the south-west, and the whale, being a bit stale and high out of the water, drove ashore at the Bluff, a little way ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... deal of talk about how many men you've handled in your day," said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray eyebrows. "It's bein' hinted round town here more or less that you're northin' but bluff. I don't realize, come to think it over, how I ever come to let you git such a holt ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... is that of protective resemblance pure and simple, where the animal's colour, form, or attitude becomes like that of its habitat. In which case the animal becomes one with its environment and thus is enabled to go about unnoticed by its enemies or by its prey. The other way is that of bluff, and it includes all inoffensive animals which are capable of assuming attitudes and colours that terrify and frighten. The colours in some cases are really of warning pattern, yet they cannot be considered mimetic unless they ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... Indiana, to work in 1924. Now both are working in the post-office. Two years later he came to Gary for the same reason and after working two years in the coke plant, was laid off due to the depression. The youngest daughter of the Reverend by his second marriage graduated from a college in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and is now teaching ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... mood for change, and Palmerston convinced it that he was the man for its mood. He had his full share of shrewd common sense, yet was capable of infinite recklessness. He was good-tempered and a man of bluff cheerful humour. But to lose the game was intolerable, and it was noticed that with him the next best thing to success was quick retaliation on a victorious adversary—a trait of which he was before long to give the world an example that amused it. Yet he had no capacity for deep ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the flood, which had brought opportunity to his door, had brought Mr Holcombe to feed Peter, the dog. And the same flood, which should have carried the headless body as far as Cairo, or even farther on down the Mississippi, had rejected it in an eddy below a clay bluff at Sewickley, with its pitiful covering washed ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... in his usual bluff manner. 'No, none partickler. None that I am much aware of. How d'ye do, gals and boys? Mr. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... waited in silence. Although Robert had expressed doubt he felt none. He had a supreme belief in the Onondaga's uncanny powers, and he was quite sure that a man was moving upon the bluff. A stranger at such a time was to be watched, because white men came but little ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... was loaded with irons, and whom they were forcing over the side of the vessel into a boat. The two principal persons among our enemies appeared to be a man of a tall, thin figure, with a high-crowned hat and long neck band, and short-cropped head of hair, accompanied by a bluff, open-looking elderly man in a naval uniform. 'Yarely! yarely! pull away, my hearts,' said the latter, and the boat bearing the unlucky young man soon carried him on board the frigate. Perhaps you will blame me for mentioning this circumstance; but consider, my dear cousin, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... hour or so won't make much difference. But you'll be free today, all right, all right. And don't let them bluff you, boy. If the police get funny, tackle them and throw 'em overboard, one by ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the stock-jokes of the China Sea and telling stories of his younger days, when he had better commands than the old Kut Sang. He was a bluff but likable old sea-dog, but I saw that he observed Meeker closely as he talked, and I knew that he was none ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... Vee," says I. "I'm a rank amateur. We might just as well have rice and confetti all over us. I've made two breaks already, and I'm liable to make more. We can't bluff 'em." ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... quarter of a mile past Mr. Lurgan's house the trail curved suddenly about a bluff of poplars. As Theodora rounded the turn she halted in amazement. Almost at her feet the body of a man was lying across the road. He was clad in a big fur coat, and had a fur cap pulled well down over his forehead and ears. Almost all of him that could be seen was a full ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... say, what a nice boy you are!" cried Kitty, impulsively, laying a hand a moment on his shoulder. And then, as though his filial instinct had awakened hers, she added, with hasty falsehood: "Maman, of course, knows nothing about her. That was just bluff what she said. But Donna Laura oughtn't to ask such ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... at Bucharest! I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this how they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything. To play blindman's bluff? He can't ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... probably influenced by his likable personality, made a hero of Schley, but his fellow naval officers felt differently. A court of inquiry held in 1901 found Schley to be at fault, but despite this decision he retained his public popularity, a tribute to his affability and bluff, hearty manner. ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... to disintegrate had been a bluff. Would the attorney general have dared disintegrate a ship with even a Junior E on board? Maybe it had been just a threat of the local police, one they didn't ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... was for some time on the coast of the North American colonies, then in a state of revolution, and passed the winter of 1782 in the city of New York. He is still borne in lively recollection by many of the elder inhabitants of that city, as a fine bluff boy of sixteen: frank, cheery, and affable; and there are anecdotes still told of his frolicsome pranks on shipboard. Among these, is the story of a rough, though favourite, nautical joke, which he played off upon a sailor boy, in cutting down his hammock while ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... who stood on the bluff and saw the first wave of the flood come down the valley tried to describe it. "I looked up," he said, "and saw something that looked like a wall of houses and trees up the valley. The next moment Johnstown seemed coming toward ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... no authority. Do you think you can bluff us because we are young? You will find you have made ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... surrounding woods or fields? How pleasant to have one's hamlet called Nightingale, or Whippoorwill, or Goldfinch, or Oriole! The home of Zosephine and Bonaventure's childhood was in the district known as Carancro; in bluff ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... was, at the time I mention, gathered up like a ball opposite a small, low window that looked upon the bluff headlands now fast becoming dim and misty as the night approached. He was apparently in low spirits, and hummed in a species of low, droning voice, the following ballad, at the end of each verse of which came ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... course he had adopted, the party and their adventurous leader on the 3rd of August, at 11 o'clock a.m., rounded a high bluff cape, which they called after the lady of Sir John Henry Pelly, Bart., Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is situated in latitude 67 deg. 28' 00" north; longitude, by account, 87 ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... worsted. Then raising his weapon McKay fired at the red skin, who dropped dead. This was the signal for battle. The voice of Dumont could be heard ringing through the hollow and over the hills. With perfect regularity his force spread out over a commanding bluff. Each man threw himself flat upon the ground, either shielding his body in the deep snow, or getting behind a tree or boulder. Major Crozier's force then drew their sleds across the trail, and the police threw ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... spend our day at Council Bluff, a large junction of the Grand Pacific Railway, having come in here at 8 o'clock this morning, and our train to Denver not leaving till 7 o'clock this evening. The hotel is right on the station. ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... her into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... it happened, from next morning's breakfast the Meadowcrofts sat next to us. Hilda was on one side of me; Lady Meadowcroft on the other; and beyond her again, bluff Yorkshire Sir Ivor, with his cold, hard, honest blue North Country eyes, and his dignified, pompous English, breaking down at times into a North Country colloquialism. They talked chiefly to each other. Acting on Hilda's instructions, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... morning a large Concord coach filled with passengers and a small guard of the United States soldiers, which had previously passed us, were awaiting our arrival before daring to proceed. On reaching the crest of the bluff leading to the valley of the river we saw hundreds of Sioux Indians, in war paint and feathers, camped on the opposite side in the underbrush and woods, and in the main trail ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... was meant when he received Mr. Chamberlain's ultimatum to open the drifts. The President 'climbed down' and opened them! He has several advantages which other leaders of men have not, and among them is that of having little or no pride. He will bluster and bluff and bully when occasion seems to warrant it; but when his judgment warns him that he has gone as far as he prudently can, he will alter his tactics as promptly and dispassionately as one changes one's coat ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... her affair. But it was odd, almost "creepy," how the links were being joined together in the chain of evidence against O'Reilly, the man who had followed Angel into the Limited—the man against whom Clo had presently to try her wits. What concerned her most was that her first attempt at bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her disappointment with ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... was the parson's pet antipathy. The bluff old minister, with his brusque manner and big heart, would have no truck with the man who never went to church, was perpetually in liquor, and never spoke good of his neighbors. Yet he entered upon ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... the conscience to contend that we left the ship sooner than was necessary, and have suffered themselves to be sued for the sums they had severally insured. It was a little after midday when we reached the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves. Our dress, appearance, language, and the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives, and the liveliest ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... sense in argy'in' with a gun an' a boozy bluffer at the other end of it. He'd put up his bluff an', feelin' sure you c'udn't hurt him, he'd have carried it through. Any time a man has the drop on me I raise my hands—or my feet, 'cordin' to orders. I've spent a deal of time practisin' so it's hahd to beat me to the draw. Trouble was, ef you-all don't mind my sayin' so, you ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... Presently the pain left my hips, or, more properly speaking, my feet got so sore from the constant walking over sharp rocks that my mind was diverted in that direction solely. While resting on the top of a high bluff overlooking the lakes, I heard a faint "halloo," which seemed to come on the wind from an immense distance. I called "Sam's" attention to it, and he immediately dropped behind a rock, out of the wind, until it was repeated several times, when saying, "Inuit ky-ete" (Somebody says come), he started ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... you to confess a crime you haven't come to me about," said Loeb, adding with peculiar emphasis: "Of course, if we KNEW you were still married to the Mrs. Feuerstein of seven years ago we couldn't take the present case. As it is—the best way is to bluff the old brewer. He doesn't want publicity; neither do you. But you know he doesn't, and he doesn't know that ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... tramp to the outer bar and so arose at five, tucked a borrowed pair of fisherman's boots beneath his arm, and, without saying anything to his housekeeper, walked down the lawn behind the parsonage, climbed the rail fence, and "cut across lots" to the pine grove on the bluff. There he removed his shoes, put on the boots, wallowed through the mealy yellow sand forming the slope of the bluff, and came out on the white beach and the inner edge of the flats. Then he plashed on, bound out to where the fish weirs stood, ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... great honour to Denas to have your love, but there then! your brother is a fine, handsome young man, and—no offence, miss—it would not be a great honour for my little maid to have his love or the likelihood of it—and out of temptation is out of danger, miss, and if so be I do speak plain and bluff, you will not put it down ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... is written to welcome you to England, but I may be with you when it is opened. It was glorious news to hear that you were coming—I was only playing a forlorn bluff when I sent those cables. You're on the sea at present and should be half way over. Our last trip over together you marvelled at the apparent indifference of the soldiers on board, and now you're coming to meet one of your own fresh from ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... and delivered for sale, but very few seem to have escaped the outcry that was raised against them, and to-day copies are extremely scarce. Poor Connell took the matter very much to heart, threw up his appointment, and forthwith retired into private life. But the portrait of the bluff mechanic type of countenance will be handed down from generation to generation in stamp catalogues and costly stamp collections long after the authorities ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... you wouldn't accept the position, anyhow," said Herbert. "He had to make a bluff at ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... the green boundaries of cool woodlands, Nor the song of larks and thrushes, Nor the bravuras of bobolinks, Nor scents of hay new mown, Nor the ox-blood sumach cones, Nor the snow of nodding yarrow, Nor clover blossoms on the dizzy crest Of the bluff by the lake Can take away the loneliness Of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... foxy for that. But the only story he told was so foolish that we laughed at him, and he ain't had the nerve to try to bluff us ever since. He says that he was sitting peaceable with Armstrong when all at once without no warning they was a shot from the window—the east window, I remember he was particular to say—and Armstrong dropped forward on the table, shot through ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... no one knew why he stayed away. It could not be that he was afraid, for he had shown the utmost fearlessness in bringing to justice and transportation the four ringleaders in the attack on the mill. He had now returned, and one day as he rode over Rushedge Moore from Stilbro' market with a bluff neighbour, he unbosomed himself of the reason why he had remained ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange, dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to express their ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... the decks were swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... had our line reached this point, when the enemy "came down like the wolf on the fold." Judging from the promptness and vigor with which they assailed us, they evidently counted on making our enterprise another Ball's Bluff affair. ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... tempest which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... First battallion, under Capt. Greene with a similar result, but was exposed to a heavy fire from behind a stone fence. Immediately after this a third charge was made under Capt. Rankin, which was the final rout of the enemy, driving them over a bluff on the Licking river, to where they had left their horses. Mounting their horses they moved down the railroad through Cynthiana, hotly pursued by our troops, driving them through the streets and into the river, killing, wounding and ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin

... for such delicacy of work; to see him in his rough blue suit, his easy rolling gait, wandering about, stooping to look at the flowers in the beds, or glancing up at the sky, or sauntering off to fish in the stream, or writing swiftly in the parlour, or working at his loom; so bluff, so kindly, so blunt in address, so unaffected, loving all that he saw, the tide of full-blooded and restless life running so vigorously in his veins; or, further back, Rossetti, with his wide eyes, half bright, half languorous, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sanction. He might hope to avoid the European war. And, in fact, there is good reason to suppose that both he and the German Foreign Office did cherish that hope or delusion. They had bluffed Russia off in 1908. They had the dangerous idea that they might bluff her off again. In this connection Baron Beyens records a conversation with his colleague, M. Bollati, the Italian Ambassador at Berlin, in which the latter took the ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... greater length the report of the interview in which the Russian Foreign Minister and the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg tried to induce the British Government to commit itself in advance to war against Germany. Mr. Shaw thinks that thus the German "bluff" would have been called and war would have been prevented, and he is confident that Mr. Winston Churchill would have taken the Bismarck tone and dictated the result. He cannot see—what is really the essential fact in both cases—that Sir Edward Grey was ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... their mobilizations and other measures originating from a mixture of bluff and fear, managed to get each other into an utterly unreasoning state of nerves, is entirely comprehensible. They did not trust each other, and above all, they did not trust themselves, their ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... fire and dry off, I was so drenched it took me nearly all day to get thoroughly dry. I felt much happier upon this old cotton plantation, for it was about as pleasant a place as I had seen in Louisiana. We were situated on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, which spread out before us like a broad lake. The banks were lined with live-oak, and back of us were dense forests. Hardly had we arrived when I was detailed to go on guard duty. Pretty rough on a fellow who ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell

... our business," said Walter, grimly, "But, Inez, don't scare the other girls. We have troubles enough without that, you know, with Mr. Robinson away. Just make a bluff ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... well-being he rose and moved to the secretary, where he got a fresh cheroot, and lighted it with slightly trembling fingers. He grumbled inarticulately, remembering his own exploits in the carrying of sail and record runs under the bluff bows of the Honorable John Company itself. The ebb tide, he thought, returning to William's figure and its amplification by himself. So much that had been good sweeping out to sea never to ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... angrily, and old Neb, who had listened, stepped quickly up to him. "Marse Frank," he pleaded, "don' yo' let dat white-trash bluff yo'!" The old darkey's voice was tremulous, his eyes were moist with feeling for his humiliated master. A great resolve thrilled through him. "See heah, honey, I's be'n sabin' all mah life. I's got a pile o' money in de bank. Take it all, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... good work of Aiai in establishing ku-ula stations and fish stones continued all around the island of Maui. It is also said that he visited Kahoolawe and established a ku-ula at Hakioawa, though it differs from the others, being built on a high bluff overlooking the sea, somewhat like a temple, by placing stones in the form of a square, in the middle of which was left a space wherein the fishermen of that island laid their first fish caught, as a thank offering. Awa and kapa were also placed ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... this part of the city. Here also are to be found the churches, schools, theatres, asylums, and hospitals, academies of law and medicine, governor's palace, public library, and museum, and an interesting public garden on the edge of the bluff, overlooking the bay. The city is served by four street-car lines, connecting the suburbs with both the upper and lower towns. In 1906 contracts were made to reconstruct some of these lines for electric traction. The railways radiating from the city to inland points are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... what," said Shams al-Din, "is she to have?"; and Nur al-Din continued, "Through her we shall not be remembered among the Emirs of the earth; but I see thou wouldest do with me according to the saying:—An thou wouldst bluff off a buyer, ask him high price and higher; or as did a man who, they say, went to a friend and asked something of him being in necessity and was answered, 'Bismallah, [FN366] in the name of Allah, I will do all what thou requirest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... open hands high to the stars, and then ran across the level to the foot of the bluff. It was high and very steep, but wings seemed his—his heart was on the summit, and his body must follow—must get there before the white flame sank into the west—must send his greeting to answer ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... the sturdy builders whose ancient masterpieces we are on our way to see. At the northern end of Chapin Mesa we swing sharply south and follow its slope, presently entering the warm, glowing, scented forests, through which we speed to the hotel-camp perched upon a bluff overlooking the depths ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... passed by. Rob's cousin Will was away at school; and Marian's father, who had learned of her friendship with Rob, had sent his daughter to the court of Queen Eleanor. So these years were lonely ones to the orphaned lad. The bluff old Squire was kind to him, but secretly could make nothing of one who went about brooding and as though seeking for something he had lost. The truth is that Rob missed his old life in the forest no less than his mother's gentleness, and his father's companionship. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... have made it grow upon the banks of a river, upon some pretty bluff, where it might have seen the boats pass; or, better still, upon the mall in some garrison village, where it could have had the pleasure of listening twice a week to military music. But, no! it was written in the book of fate that this unlucky sycamore should lose ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... need onything better than ane of her own fried chickens," said Dannie. "And its no true about hunters. We've the river on ane side, and the bluff on the other. If we keep up our fishing signs, and add hunting to them, and juist shut the other fellows out, the birds will come here like everything wild gathers in National Park, out West. Ye bet things know where they are taken care of, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... one of bluff, but he is the central figure of the stage; like the actor's profession the judge's job makes him an egotist. Take for example the essential elements of his knowledge of the law. He is the Jus Dicens, the one saying the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... sun was red above the bluff where the curving line of cliffs end at the river's edge, she ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... fond of robust sports and manly exercises of all kinds as our bluff Harry, a tilt-yard was indispensable; and he erected one on a grand scale, and made it a place of constant resort. Causing a space of one hundred and fifty yards in length and fifty in width to be inclosed and encircled by lofty walls, he fixed against the inner side ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... country the leaders held a council with the Ottoes and Missouris, and by the distribution of gewgaws and presents won the good will of the red men. Lewis and Clark named the place of meeting Council Bluff, which is retained to this day, although the site of the modern city is below the meeting place and on the opposite, ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... successful, that the Chevalier merely became convinced that the brothers were not simply riding to La Rochelle to embark for England, but had some hope and purpose in view; though as to what that might be, Philip's bluff replies and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he had heard the warning of a rattlesnake at his feet. Turning like a flash, he saw Mr. Warmore standing at his elbow. Had he received but a few seconds' notice, he might have tried to bluff it out, by pretending he had come to look after some matters about which he was not fully satisfied. Holding the situation he did in the establishment, he could feel certain no one would suspect him of ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... empire soldiers are more necessary than peasants and artisans. Already in 1815 Mecklenburg could claim the glory of having produced the greatest Junker soldier of the age, bluff and rough Prince Bluecher, the victor of Waterloo. The achievements of the Grand Ducal regiments have fully proved that Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz have in the present war remained true to the glories of their military past and have remained worthy ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... near twenty miles distant, lay a high hazy bluff, that was just visible. This was the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and Baltimore, as I sat on the platform of the blind, a fine spray began to fill the air. It did no harm. Ah, ha, thought I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the fly being bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this little spray amount to? Then I began to marvel at the device. This was railroading! Talk about your primitive Western railroading—and ...
— The Road • Jack London

... morning with a three-quarter-page picture of a beautiful woman, labeled New Orleans, on a prancing steed named Progress, dashing over a chasm entitled Sanitary Neglect and Commercial Stagnation, to a bluff called A Greater City, while in one corner was a female angel with wings outspread, designated as Victory. The two-page account ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various









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