"Puff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make her forget the factory. When she set forth in the morning on her father's arm, she always cast a glance in that direction. At that hour the works were just stirring, the chimney emitted its first puff of black smoke. Sidonie, as she passed, could hear the shouts of the workmen, the dull, heavy blows of the bars of the printing-press, the mighty, rhythmical hum of the machinery; and all those sounds of toil, blended in her memory with recollections of fetes and blue-lined ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... know the old saying, Master Gordon," responded Groves. "I think you'd be sorry enough after getting up five hundred feet into the air, to feel that a puff of wind might tumble you over, and make the coming down a trifle quicker, and less agreeable, ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... Suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing Superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking Swim in troubled waters without fishing in them Take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men's affairs Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst Take my last ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... started. He was a thick, short man, with a clean-shaven face and a certain air of breeding about the lines of his countenance; the word millionaire sounded well to his ears. He thought—he thought a great deal; he almost heard the puff of the fearfully costly automobile that was coming up the road, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... with a little silly note from the girl. This time the young lady was seen in a black satin evening bodice, cut square, with little puff sleeves, and black lace hanging ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... "Puff-ridden!" why to be sure they are. The nation is a miserable Sindbad, and its boasted press the loathsome, foul old man upon his back, and yet they will tell you, and proclaim to the four winds for repetition here, that they don't ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the right bank of the Rhine will be the signal of explosion. I say more; that if the effect is to be permanent, pure, or beneficial, it will not be the result of the tricolor. The French conquests have always been brilliant, but it was the brilliancy of a soap-bubble. A puff of the weakest lips that ever breathed from a throne, has always been enough to make the nation conquerors; but the hues of glory no sooner began to colour the thin fabric, than it burst before the eye, and the nation had only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... obeyed the invitation and sat down on the bed between two heaps of clothes. Christine was very gay; she was like a child. She had apparently quite forgotten her migraine and also the incident of the policeman. She snatched the cigarette from G.J.'s mouth, took a puff, and put it back again. Then she sat in front of the large mirror and did her hair while Marthe buttoned her boots. Her corset fitted beautifully, and as she raised her arms above her head under the shaded lamp G.J. could study the marvellous articulation of the arms at the bare shoulders. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Ernestine Dumont quivering with a strange blend of emotions, a spit of flame, a puff of smoke hanging idly in the still air of the room, the sharp bark of a small calibre revolver, and Drennen's hand dropped from Kootanie's throat. He swayed unsteadily a moment, stepped toward her, his eyes flecked with red and brimming with rage, his hand ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... a little, with a quick, unsteady tread, and took a puff or two again at his cigar abstractedly. Then he held it thoughtfully between his fingers for a while and began to hum a few bars from his own new opera then in course of composition—a stately long-drawn air, it was. something like the rustle of Hilda Tregellis's ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: "Oh, aye!" and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor all polished wood, the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... faith in thinking about enlarging the work so as to double or treble it? 5. Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me to go beyond my measure? 6. Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, in attempting to build a very large ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... shade—and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole republic of states, a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and despised—and that the soul has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd—and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff—and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet or satellite, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... any body that was?" answered Oldbuck;"what reason has an old battered powder-puff like you to be easy in your mind, more than all the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and quickly as he leaped behind the pine he was not quick enough to escape the cunning rustlers who had waylaid him thus. He felt the shock, the bite and burn of lead before he heard a rifle crack. A bullet had ripped through his left forearm. From behind the tree he saw a puff of white smoke along the face of the bluff—the very spot his keen and gloomy vigilance had descried as one of menace. Then several puffs of white smoke and ringing reports betrayed the ambush of the tricksters. Bullets barked the pine and whistled by. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... and said, "Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, let my people go, that they may serve me. If you refuse I shall plague you and your people worse than ever, and so teach you that there is none like me in all the earth. Don't puff yourself up with conceit, for you were made what you are only in order that through you my power might be manifested. You had better cave in at once." But Pharaoh would not harken. He tacitly declared that the Lord God of the Hebrews might ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... moving battery: it seemed to move when we moved and to halt when we halted. Sometimes in the dun smoke I caught a glimpse of something blacker, raised high in the air like the threatening head of some great gliding serpent. Suddenly there came a sharp puff of lighter smoke that seemed like a forked tongue, and then a hollow report, and we could see a great black projectile hurled into the air, and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... we should try to find them on the piano. This will make us listen more attentively to the tone sounded by the clock, the church-bell, the bird, the drinking-glass. And what a lot there are, like the squeaking door, the cricket, the noise of the wind and rain, the puff of the engine, and all the other sounds we hear in a day. Bit by bit, in this way, our familiarity with tones will grow and we shall be well repaid for all the trouble. Gradually we shall become better listeners—but about listening we are to speak in ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... a puff on the rocks, twenty feet from where the two projectors were mounted. I saw that two helmeted figures were down there. They tried to swing their grids upward, but could not get them vertical to reach us. The ship was firing at us, but it was ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... fastest. I have marvelled greatly how it is possible for any hot-blooded creature to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as do these old seals. They paddle about, throw themselves on their backs, float and puff out their breasts, flapping their flippers like paws over ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... flicker like a candle flame in a sudden puff of wind. "A friend of my, a dragoman. He could not come to bring it. So he give it to me. The gentleman's name was Fenton. My friend, he was sent from him at Cairo." As the fellow spoke, in fairly good English, he ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... 1792, and who had been near assassinating him. This man never left the Tower, and was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Bloated Youth). Might I ask you, Sir, not to puff your smoke in this lady's face—it's extremely unpleasant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... said Dick. "Wilberforce and I did nothing of that kind. We only made explorations in the ruins, and used a little tobacco to keep off the bad air. The air in the guard-room was close, and Georgie had a puff at a cigarette, but only with a sanitary view. And our dinner was in a hamper; there are distinctions. By the way, it was not dinner at all; ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... the Sea Eagle, which was now a half mile from shore, they saw a puff of smoke, and then a shell struck into the beach below them and exploding, sent a shower of sand over them and the horses. The latter, frightened, reared and plunged, but the boys soon got their animals under control, as they quickly tired of acting up in the ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... army of rich men, hear of an increase of the income-tax, or some poor wretch hints at a sliding scale of taxation, they yell as if they were thumb-screwed: but five shillings in the pound goes to the kitchen as a matter of course—to puff those pompous idiots! and the parsons, who should be preaching against this sheer waste of food and perversion of the strength of the nation, as a public sin, are maundering about schism. There's another idle army! Then we have artists, authors, lawyers, doctors—the honourable professions! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came into possession of an ill tempered French poodle called Crapouillot, which the patients in our hospital insisted on clipping like a lion with an anklet, a curl over his nose and a puff at the end of his tail. A most detestable, unfortunate beast, always to be found where not needed, a ribbon in his ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... now, Master Tongs. A song is a main fine thing, now, to fill up the chinks. First a glass, then a puff or two, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... knife-blade into the plank where was the splintered hole, and located a bullet. He was turning it curiously in his fingers when another one plunked into the boards, three feet to one side of him; this time he was sure of the gun-sound, and he also saw a puff of blue smoke rise up on the rim-rock above him. He marked the place instinctively with his eyes, and went on to the stable, stepping rather more quickly ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... pitchy night the fire died down and the woodpile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the billows shivering about us, but apart from this not very welcome sound a deep and depressing silence reigned, broken only by the gurgling of the river and the humming in the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... 2 [Honour's a puff of noisy breath; Yet men expose their blood, And venture everlasting death To gain that ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... at pastry was a decided failure. It was plain that she had never been initiated into the mysteries of making puff paste, nor did she, when telling over what she called her grievances to a friend, think it worth while, she said, "to pomper the appetite by making pies sweet as sugar itself, when there were thousands of poor souls in the world that would jump at a piece of pie a good deal sourer ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the dark cliff. As they gazed, a second object of similar form came into view; then a fore and top sail made their appearance; and, in another second, a schooner floated slowly through the opening! Ere the spectators of this silent apparition could give utterance to their joy, a puff of white smoke sprang from the vessel's bow, and a cannon-shot burst upon the mountains. Leaping on from cliff to crag, it awakened a crash of magnificent echoes, which, after prolonged repetitions, died away ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... High above this animal life, remoter even than the tops of my beloved trees or the mountain-ranges, etched on the dark firmament, shone multitudinous stars, even the rings round Saturn being plainly discernible. From the Milky Way my eyes at length wandered to the pines, and a puff of air laden with the odour of their resin and decaying brushwood decided me. I took a few preliminary sips of whisky, stretched my rusty limbs, and, placing one foot in a jagged crevice of the wall, swarmed painfully up. How slow and how hazardous was the process! I scratched my fingers, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... Still, I repeat, the knowledge that there are women on board, delightful at other times, does not tend to comfort in bad weather. Of course, if you prefer it, we can put off our start till this puff of wind has blown itself out. It may have dropped before morning. It may last some little time. I don't think myself that it will drop, for the glass has fallen, and I am afraid we may have a ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... in a "coffee-house" had closed these hovels, pending a sufficient payment to the Pasha; and where, during the hard winter of 1885-86, the poorer classes were compelled to puff their Kayf (Bhang, cannabis indica) and sip their black coffee in the muddy streets under a rainy sky, I found the Rawi active on Sundays and Thursdays, the market days. The favourite place was the "Soko de barra," or large ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... It is passed several times round the body, and made fast behind, where the fringed ends hang gracefully over the left hip. There is no waistcoat. A jacket of dark cloth embroidered and tightly fitting, short behind, a la Grecque, leaving the shirt to puff out over the scarf. The shirt itself, with its broad collar and flowered front, exhibits the triumphant skill of some dark-eyed poblana. Over all this is the broad-brimmed, shadowy sombrero; a heavy hat of black glaze, with ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke through the keyhole and a burst of laughter ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Puff! puff!" sounded the returning launch. Dick glanced apprehensively at Dr. Bentley and the ladies. Did the coming of the launch mean that it was about time for the pleasant ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... crowd was growing impatient. But hardly had the church clock chimed the hour when the shriek of a whistle was heard from up the valley. Amid wild excitement a puff of white smoke appeared, then another, and finally the mid-day train steamed serenely ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I again reflected, and continued to puff my cigar. Regarding the transfer of the trunks, my eye was suddenly attracted to some lettering that appeared upon one of the packages—a leathern portmanteau. I sprang from my seat, and as the article was carried up the gangway ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... Little Tommy and Johnny see their fathers or uncles smoke a pipe, and they say, "If I could only do that, I would be a man too; uncle John has gone out and left his pipe of tobacco, let us try it." They take a match and light it, and then puff away. "We will learn to smoke; do you like it Johnny?" That lad dolefully replies: "Not very much; it tastes bitter;" by and by he grows pale, but he persists and he soon offers up a sacrifice on the altar of fashion; but the boys stick to it and persevere until at last they conquer their natural ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... seemingly irresolute, her eyes new lifted, now falling before mine. Her slender arms bare, save for the little puff at the shoulders; her simple dress drawn a little above the waist, then falling straight to the white slipper. How real the ecstasy of that moment, and the pain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... would lose themselves in this mist. Besides, everything is drenched with rain; the brambles and mosses are full of water; the least puff of wind would drown many of them. We must wait a little while. I know what is the matter: they feel dull, they want to work; they are tormented at the idea of devouring their honey instead of making it. But I cannot afford to lose them. Many ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... was miserable and stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up to his belly, taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there, while smoke and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither—God knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half an hour all his work was done, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said, with a puff of his cigar, which ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a moment of horrible grinding, crashing, and splintering, a mad surging of brown waters, and then the little showboat passed beneath the monster that had crushed out its life. It was gone as utterly as the flame of a candle is extinguished by a puff of wind, and the great river was its grave, as it has been of thousands of other craft, and will ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... rising, or notice taken, when anybody enters or leaves. Let the entering man take his place and pipe, without obligatory remarks: if he cannot smoke, which is Seckendorf's case for instance, let him at least affect to do so, and not ruffle the established stream of things. And so, Puff, slowly Pff!—and any comfortable speech that is in you; or none, if you authentically have ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... by two other handwoven baskets of sweet-grass. One held the scout-biscuits just baked, while the other was piled high with light little puff-cakes. On either side of the centerpiece stood two large flat clay platters,—one held the Indian cucumber salad, and ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... hammock alone. Oh, you bet, I'll think of that hard! What does the old mountain lady say to you, anyway? Look—when the light's on that long precipice, you can sometimes see a snow slide come over the edge in a puff of spray. They are worst at mid-day when the heat sends 'em down; and they're bigger on the back of the mountain where she shelves straight up ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper's end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires. "Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke," Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke; "No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face: One would not, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... contented with the traditional Cries of their Forefathers, have invented particular Songs and Tunes of their own: Such as was, not many Years since, the Pastryman, commonly known by the Name of the Colly-Molly-Puff; and such as is at this Day the Vender of Powder and Wash-balls, who, if I am rightly informed, goes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... out for a holiday. The wind was a trifle light for sailing, so the gentlemen pulled, but very lazily and not at all in good "form," as the object of each oarsman seemed to be to do as little work as possible. However, we got on somehow, a light puff helping us now and then, but our progress was hardly perceptible. I had been for a long time gazing down into the clear blue depth of water, every now and then seeing a flash of the white sand shining at the bottom, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... cried the Merry Monarch, approvingly, "we'll form a Court of Inquiry. This table shall be our bench, on which we'll hem and haw and puff and look judicial. Odsfish, we will teach Radamanthus and Judge Jeffreys ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... had got it—he had clutched it in his hand, a handful of it. Exactly like a great flame rose the simultaneous yell of the crowd as the boy jerked and got the flag loose. He had torn it down. A tremendous prolonged yell, touched with a snarl of triumph, and searing like a puff of flame, sounded as the boy remained for one moment with the flag in his hand looking down at the crowd below. His face was odd and elated and still. Then with the slightest gesture he threw the flag from him, and Aaron watched the gaudy remnant falling towards the many faces, whilst the noise ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... The clouds were completely overhead now, from north to south, from east to west. There was not a patch of blue to be seen. The panting earth waited in abject fear. A puff of wind came, hot and stifling, as if an oven door had suddenly been opened. It passed over the mulgas, making them sigh and moan, and then was gone again, leaving the same breathless stillness. Another puff, this time cool and fresh. It also passed away and left the men with dread in their ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... the Deity as imaged and incarnate, seek after the unveiled God. Afterward, when the hour of judgment comes, and they feel the wrath of God, God himself judging and searching their hearts, the devil ceases to puff them up and they despair and die. They go about in the untempered sunlight and forsake the shade that delivers from the heat, ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... my bewilderment during the space of time it takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the instant a wreath of smoke blew to one side, a whole host of ferocious insects darted forward to assail their victims on the other. Cigars and pipes were quickly lighted, in the hopes of driving off the pests, but in vain; the fumes of tobacco had but little effect, for if a puff drove them off a man's nose, in an instant they attacked some ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... praise the poorest production simply because the paper is receiving so much a column for the praise. In many other cases, when the copy is not paid for, the editor often considers it only fair to give the production a little puff in return for the free press tickets. And so a large share of any reporter's dramatic criticism is reduced to selecting things that he can praise. Yet, one cannot praise in a way that is too evident; he cannot simply say "The play was good; ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... love-sick fool, with ease, Merely his lady-love to please, Sun, moon, and stars in sport would puff away. (Exit.) ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... white gown that clung to her virginal figure. The swelling-out period had passed, even sleeves had collapsed to a small puff, and for house wear the arms and neck ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... invisibility of the warring armies. On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown earth, or a burst of shrapnel sent a puff of white smoke to float like a Cupid's cloud along the sky. And yet two armies were hidden here, with their rifles, machine-guns, and artillery ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... vigorous puff and pull, the brother and sister, for such they were, seemed to be fastening something to their feet—not skates, certainly, but clumsy pieces of wood narrowed and smoothed at their lower edge, and pierced with holes, through which were ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... without an alarm, and then, just as we were passing into another and a wider river, there came from the jungly edge of the left bank a puff of smoke, and a ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... lump of quartz required the use of the pick. Suddenly they came to some glittering particles of yellow, which, with heartfelt delight they hailed as gold. It WAS MICA. Many are at first deceived by it, but it is soon distinguished by its weight, as the mica will blow away with the slightest puff. After a little useless digging among the clay, they reached the solid rock, and thus having fairly "bottomed," the holes to ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... head, blew a delicate puff of smoke toward the ceiling and looked across at his unsympathetic hostess. Then he brought his fist down on the table; "Marry me, Belle, and sleep in a regular ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... if something is hurt and needs mending, I'm not a tinker, though my father and the priest—yes and you, too—sometimes think so. But sisters do mending, don't they?" and she laughed my earnestness off as one would puff out a candle. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... and tantalizingly incomplete. He walked homeward at a gait which caused plump little Bailey to puff in his efforts to keep up, and he would say almost nothing about ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... had been there, nonetheless, and the ship had hit it at high velocity. Fortunately the ship had only touched the edge of the swirling cloud—otherwise the ship would have vanished in a puff of incandescence. But it had done enough. The power plants that drove the ship at ultralight velocities through the depths of interstellar space had been so badly damaged that they could only be used in short bursts, and each burst brought them closer to the fusion point. Even when ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... which had proved to Polly a mine of information on many subjects. As she took down the third volume, she heard a portentous Meaouw! and there, outside the window, stood Mufty, the grey cat, rubbing himself against the frosty pane. Polly opened the window and Mufty sprang in, bringing a puff of frosty air in his wake. Without so much as a word of thanks he walked over to the stove. Finding it, however, cold, as only an empty air-tight stove can be cold, he strolled, with a disengaged air, beneath which lurked a very ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... not move. Captain Giles lost his patience a little. With an angry puff at his pipe he turned his back ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... make old women's marrow freeze Is the best sport the bike has given. To chase them as they puff and wheeze, On ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... girl had charm and he was young; if he were not cautious, there might be some risk for him. He was not a clever philanderer, and Ruth and Duveen had been kind. By and by a puff of cool wind touched his hot skin and he looked round. A black cloud had rolled up and there were ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... contain: 1. One outfit of clothes. 2. One tube of sterilized tape. 3. A pair of blunt-pointed scissors. 4. Large and small safety-pins. 5. Pieces of fine old linen; old handkerchiefs are the best. 6. A soft hair-brush. 7. A powder box and puff, with talcum powder. 8. Two tubes of sterilized white vaselin. 9. Two soft towels. 10. Castile soap. 11. Single-bulb syringe; so-called "eye and ear syringe." 12. A woolen ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... the manager's office when Evan entered. He greeted the savings man with a puff of ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... was doing this when a child came skipping joyously across the common, and pushing her way up to him through the circle of his listeners, handed him a note. He read it, and in an instant the great battle, hills, river, horse, rider, shrieks, groans, all vanished from his mind as silently as a puff of white smoke from ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... poured in gentle streams, Sending o'er snowy hill and dell A pleasance to greet the Christmas bell! Now every yeoman starts abroad For holly green and the ivy-tod; Good folk to kirk are soon atrip Mellow with cheer and good-fellowship, And cosey chimneys, here and there Puff forth the sweets ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... of smut in our corn last summer. The diseased cobs had large white bladders as big as a small puff-ball, or very large nuts, and these on being broken were full of an inky black liquid. On the same plants might be observed a sort of false fructification, the cob being deficient in kernels, which by ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering in search of food that was ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... and paff is puff!" laughed Ulrich. "When I snap the twigs, you always hear them say 'knack, knack,' and 'knack' is a word too. The juggler Caspar's magpie, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... himself with another broom and a loud BANG! to indicate the somewhat belated sound of cannon. For a few seconds the two boys plied their brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere, accompanying each long sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report of explosions and loud HA'S! of defiance, until not only the store, but the veranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainly to pierce. In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion—happily ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... may say about assaults on Scripture, 'If they had done their work, would they not have ceased to be offered?' And the effect of the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is as transient as the boom of their report and the puff of their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made good men's hearts tremble for the ark of God? You may find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great libraries. But if their names had not occurred in the pages of Christian apologists, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... blowing out, as of a candle in the wind; a puff—then darkness, without a trace. A sense of your own safety may suggest the method. I ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... you know. One really plays around so much before one is seventeen, that it's positively anticlimax. (Shaking hands with a visionary middle-aged nobleman.) Yes, your grace—I b'lieve I've heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff—they're very good. They're—they're Coronas. You don't smoke? What a pity! The king doesn't allow it, I suppose. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... He settled himself comfortably in his chair, and after a preliminary puff, said: "I am no ordinary felon. I am even not, strictly speaking, amenable to the laws. I am however, as I have told you already, a sham. The world believes me to be a young fellow of fortune, whose only concern ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... glassware, whiskey, mirrors, ammunition, and pianos. From any one of a dozen bold points on this road one could see far down and far up its entire white, thread-like length. The tiny crawling teams each with its puff of dust crawling with it; the great tumbled peaks of the Sierras; the river so far below as to resemble a little stream, the round Cove with its toy houses and its distant ant-like industry—all these ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... by his own. For the trophies in Armenia, near the Parthian frontier, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis, and the great wealth brought from thence to Rome, with the captive crown of Tigranes carried in triumph, all helped to puff up Crassus, as if the barbarians had been nothing else but spoil and booty, and he, falling among the Parthian archers, soon demonstrated that Lucullus's triumphs were not beholden to the inadvertency and effeminacy ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... for all at once right along the deck I saw a flash, then a white puff of smoke as Jarette knelt down, lit a match, and held it to ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Ceramites flapped him, and smacked him, and slapped him, In the ribs, and the loin, and the flank, and the groin, And still, as they spanked him, he puffed and he panted, Till at one mighty cuff, he discharged such a puff That he blew out ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... beyond credibility in the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. It was the very feeblest of whiffs, to be sure; but it was followed by another and another, each more decided than the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time a slight puff of air had ruffled the sea, thereby intensifying, if possible, the blackness which already prevailed. The tiny sails caught the puff, causing the canoe to lean slightly over, and glide with a rippling sound through the water, while Moses steered ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... boy, not to catch hold of the tail of a puff adder," he exclaimed, as Percy again dismounted. "They are pretty numerous hereabouts, and you may chance to put your hand close to one of their holes while you are ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... may harm us, as His never did Him. It may disturb and dissipate our communion with God; it may weaken the very motive from which it should arise; it may withdraw our gaze from God and fix it upon ourselves. It may puff us up with the conceit of our own powers; it may fret us with the annoyances of resistance; it may depress us with the consciousness of failure; and in a hundred other ways may waste and wear away our personal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... It's awfully humiliating, you know, to be obliged to crawl about here on the water, at twenty-five knots at the utmost, while that fellow is flying a hundred miles an hour or so through the clouds without turning a hair, or I ought to say without as much as a puff of smoke. He seems to move of his own mere volition. I wonder what on earth ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... as strong as gunpowder, only it works more slowly," said Daddy Blake with a smile. "Powder goes off with a puff, a flash and a ...
— Daddy Takes Us Skating • Howard R. Garis
... waiting drove my heart to extra work. The breeze quickened and fanned my cheek, and borne upon it came the faint and far-away bay of a hound. It came again and again, each time nearer. Then on a stronger puff of wind rang the clear, deep, mellow call that had given Sounder his beautiful name. Never it seemed had I heard music so blood-stirring. Sounder was on the trail of something, and he had it headed my way. Satan heard, shot up his long ears, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the mate replied. "We'll have a puff of wind about daylight at the latest, and the current sets north and south here ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... one go from the city to the country to breathe tar and gasoline? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wandering from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since the real vacation is change, we welcomed the task of looking out for hostile dogs instead of swiftly moving vehicles. Our noses wanted whiffs of hay and pig, and our boots wanted ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his corn-cob, picked up a live coal, and, pressing it down on the tobacco with his thumb, commenced to puff vigorously. As soon as his withered old face was half hidden in a cloud of smoke, he opened his story in his stereotyped way. I relate it just as he told it, but divested of much of its dialect, so difficult ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... growing quite indistinct, when the steam man gave its last puff, and came to rest in the margin of the grove. The fires were instantly drawn, and every-thing was put in as good shape as possible, by the boy, while the trapper made a tour of examination through the ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... aside and felt sick as death. I could not bear to see him stab her. Glancing up again, to my surprise I saw the Masai's spear lying on the ground, while the man himself was staggering about with both hands to his head. Suddenly I saw a puff of smoke proceeding apparently from Flossie, and the man fell down headlong. Then I remembered the Derringer pistol she carried, and saw that she had fired both barrels of it at him, thereby saving her life. In another instant ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... those who survive him he can only leave the inheritance to which he was heir; and thrice bitter to him that even his hovel has not the security of the wild beast's den—that Squalidness, and Hunger, and Disease are insufficient guardians of his home—and that the puff of the landlord's or the agent's breath may blow him off the land where he has lived, and send him and his to a dyke, or to prolong wretchedness in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... the moving speck startled her. She watched it breathlessly as they neared each other. Could it be a wild beast? No, it must be a horse and rider. A moment later there came a puff of smoke as from a rifle discharged, followed by the distant echo of the discharge. It was a man, and he was yet a great way off. Should she turn and flee before she was discovered? But where? Should she go back? No, a thousand ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... him one, and he struck it on his boot. "There, now," he went on, "I meant to set a light to these here heaps of rubbish this afternoon, and now I've come out without my matches." He waited for the sulphur to finish bubbling, and then began to puff. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... slowly the flower balloons enlarge and puff themselves up, the petals standing together at their tips; all the variety is united into a harmony of exuberance, color and form; then one day there is a shower of genial rain, a warm sun, birds in the air, bees released, ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... He was crossing in his mind the four hundred and five metres to the first Boche listening-post. Next beyond the abris was the latrine from which a puff of wind brought now and then a nauseous stench. Then there was the tin roof, crumpled as if by a hand, that had been a cook shack. That was just behind the second line trenches that zig-zagged in ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... foremost boat; and seeing the force at the bend, we pushed out from the side, as far as the shoal water would permit, and tried to bring them to a parley, by declaring that we had not come to fight, but to see the river. "Why did you fire a gun, a little while ago?" they asked. "We shot a large puff-adder, to prevent it from killing men; you may see it lying dead on the beach." With great courage, our Mokadamo waded to within thirty yards of the bank, and spoke with much earnestness, assuring them that we were a peaceable party, and had not ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... Helmholtz's splendid hydrodynamical theorems, seeks for the properties of molecules in the ring vortices of a uniform, frictionless, incompressible fluid. Such whirling rings may be seen when an experienced smoker sends out a dexterous puff of smoke into the still air, but a more evanescent phenomenon it is difficult to conceive. This evanescence is owing to the viscosity of the air; but Helmholtz has shewn that in a perfect fluid such a whirling ring, if once generated, would go on whirling for ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... all the world goes to sleep. It awakes at about four o'clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans. They greet, or avoid. They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze. They coquet with one another like butterflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the principal charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks are gathered for a rustic fire, and after an hour ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... and still. Occasionally a puff of cooler air would meet the children at some dusky driveway or odorous garden, and they would halt to enjoy it. From dark verandas and brilliant houses laughter and song floated out to them as they passed along. Altogether this stalking Colonel Gresham was rather a delightful affair, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... population were constantly in arms. The musket became more familiar to their hands than the plow and spade; and their marksmanship was near perfection. They gradually developed a system of tactics of their own, foreign to the manuals. The first thing you were aware of in the provincial soldier was the puff of smoke from the muzzle of his weapon; almost simultaneously came the thud of his bullet in your breast, or crashing through your brain. He loaded his gun lying on his back beneath the ferns and shrubbery; he advanced or retreated invisibly, from tree to tree. Your only means ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... powdered sugar, the same weight of fresh butter, three teaspoonfuls of orange-flower water, two glasses of sherry wine, two or three stale Naples biscuits or lady fingers, and a teacupful of cream. Line a dish with puff paste, pour in the ingredients, and bake for half an hour in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... returned, Saw Some hand Som Countrey, the Creek near the high land is rapid and nearly as muddy as the river, & rising Gutrich caught two verry fat Cat fish G Drewyer Killed 3 Deer, & R Fields one, a puff of wind brought Swarms of Misquitors, which disapeared in two hours, blown off by a Continuation of the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... about what a sheep would do as did the animal itself. It was positively uncanny. Perhaps we would see a herd of sheep half a mile away. The old fellow would seat himself, nonchalantly fill his pipe and puff contentedly, now and then glancing at the animals. In a few moments he would announce what was about to happen, and he ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... necessary to leave some clay here and there to attach the various forms to the slab. The under-cutting may be carried to such a pitch as to make the design look weak, and as though it would fall to pieces with a puff of wind. When this is the case, I reckon the finishing has been carried too far. Clay should always look strong enough to hold together, and I may say I never thought much of that fancy china one sees which is covered with flowers and foliage modelled as delicately ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... weary months of blockade, were adepts at scouting; their wings covered with ease a vast space, their frigates rapidly signalled news to the flagship, and their concentration was swift and decisive. Prompt to note every varying puff of wind, they bade fair to overhaul their enemies when the chase began in earnest, and when once the battle was joined, numbers counted for little: the English crews, inured to fights on the ocean, might ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and noisy. Most of the passengers were ashore, hurrying with guidebooks and field-glasses to see the statue of the dead Bellini or watch the lava flow. A blazing, suffocating heat lay over the oily sea, and the summit of the volcano, with its tiny, ever-changing puff of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... were a few small houses and a wharf hidden among trees and rocks, appeared to be a long distance off. But the Curlew staggered gamely onward with Jack anticipating every puff of wind skillfully. ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... at sundown, and at sundown a puff of dust rose on the track, and as a cry of "Mail oh !" went up all round the homestead, the Fizzer rode ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... sense go numb When day down the eastern way has come. 'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn From Design) that the world should retire at dawn. Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe Death in the sun, the cities seethe, The mortal black marshes bubble with heat And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint (Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint In the lands where the villainous sun has sway Through the livelong drag of the dreadful ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... excitedly. "Say, fellows, clear off these desks. Quick, before she gets up here. In the closet with these blueprints, Walter. There, that's a little better. If I had known she was coming I would at least have had the place swept out. Puff! look at the dust on this desk of mine. Well, there's no help for it. There they are at the door now. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... see it," said Colton, taking another puff at his cigarette. "There! Germans have ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Julia," Doctor Barnes snapped, and it wasn't until they had gone that I knew she'd meant me. I looked through the crack of the door and she was leaning over taking a puff ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
