"Puffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is ordinarily applied to the Antarctic Petrel, AEstrelata lessoni. In Australasia it is applied to the Puffin or Short-tailed Petrel, Puffinus brevicaudus, Brandt. The collection of the eggs of this Petrel, the preparation of oil from it, the salting of its flesh for food, form the principal means of subsistence of the inhabitants, half-caste and other, of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... scrap. Ain' you shame of yourself en you bigger den June, too? Go way from here, I say. I ain' got no time to monkey up wid you. I got to get dese collards boilin hard, else dey ain' gwine get done time you chillun start puffin for your dinner. Go way, I tell you. Miss ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... way, that our naturalist, who was amiable and eccentric, on one occasion nearly drove his comrades out of the yacht. One day he shot a young unfledged gull or puffin, or some such creature, whose brief existence had only conducted it the length of a down coat, a little round body, and a pair of tremendously long legs. Well, this object was laid carefully past [sic] in a spare berth ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... stoop down more, sah," Sam urged. "Fer sum o' dem fellars might see yer yit. Ah nebber heerd nuthin', ner saw no smoke till she cum a puffin' 'round de end 'o dat p'int. Ah cudn't dare go fer yer then, sah, fer fear dey'd see me, so Ah jus' nat'larly lay down yere, an' ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... like a cat gettin' to his feet, and he sights Shorty tarin' and lights out after him. There they went lickety-split. That bull was puffin' on the seat of Shorty's trowsers and tossin' his horns and jest missin' Shorty by inches; and Shorty had his mouth so wide open hollerin' that you could have throwed a side of beef down his throat; and his eyes ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... emotions, among which hope no longer predominated. No man in his senses would keep two such precious prizes in a pen in his backyard, I argued, and I was perfectly prepared to find anything from a puffin to ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... "Silence! weak-minded puffin!" thundered the wizard, to the great astonishment of a seal which came up at that moment to breathe, and prudently retired in time ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... taken in May were with egg, which really fills the whole cavity of the body, and is so heavy that I think it must fatigue the bird much in flying. This bird of Providence, which I may with great propriety call it, appeared to me to resemble that sea bird in England, called the puffin: they had a strong fishy taste, but our keen appetites relished them very well; the eggs ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... of their losin' their way unless they want to. And I thought to myself as I looked pensively at the different steeples, "What though there might be a good deal of'wranglin', and screechin', and puffin' off steam, at the different stations, as there must always be where so many different routes are a layin' side by side, each with its own different runners, and conductors, and porters, and managers, and blowers, still it must be, that the separate high ways would all end ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... that comes puffin' down the chimney," explained Prudy, who knew very well it would be only cousin Percy under a ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... account by their lazy elders, who call them to the feast whenever the ebbing tide uncovers a heap of dead pilchards lying in three or four feet of water, and then pounce on them the moment they come to the surface with their booty. The fact is that gulls are not expert divers. The cormorant and puffin and guillemot can vanish at the flash of a gun, reappearing far from where they were last seen, and can pursue and catch some of the swiftest fishes under water. Some gulls, however, are able to plunge farther below the surface ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... thing I 'members well, was a big crowd wid picks and shovels, a buildin' de railroad track right out de other side of de big road in front of old marster's house. De same railroad dat is dere today. When de fust engine come through, puffin' and tootin', lak to scare 'most everybody to death. People got use to it but de mules and bosses of old marster seem lak they never did. A train of cars a movin' 'long is still de grandest sight to my eyes in de world. Excite me more now than ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... act patient, without makin' any mad dash for a seat at stations, but hangin' on and watchin' the crowds shift sort of curious. You might as well, you know; for if you do get a chance to camp down durin' the rush hours, along comes some fat lady and stands puffin' in front of you, or a thin, tired lookin' one who glares at you over the top of your paper. But if you're a standee yourself you feel free to look any of 'em in ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... yelp, yelp, yelp, down in the swamp; then I creeps through the jungle so sly, lays low till the fellers cum up, all jumpin'-pig ahead, then dogs, niggers follerin', puffin' and blowin', eyes poppin' out, 'most out o' breath, just as if they tasted the sparerib afore they'd got ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... morning [SUNDAY AUGUST 2], I went off in one of the cutters, accompanied by Messieurs Brown and Bauer, the naturalist and natural-history painter, to the southernmost island, called Bujio, which was not far distant. On the way, I shot several birds of the puffin kind, one of which had a fathom of small brass wire attached to its wing. The distance of the land proved to be more considerable than was expected; and there being a current setting southward we did not reach ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the puffin and the kingfishers burrow into the friendly and solid earth. The eider duck plucks from its own breast the softest, of feather linings for ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... sum left in your treasury,' observes this Holliday, puffin' his seegyar, 'I reckons I'll let one of these yaller tokens go, coppered, on the high kyard ag'in. You-all doubles ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... knowed yo' mammy was gone, I helt you tight an' prayed. An' after a while—seem lak a million hours—come a pale streak o' day, an' 'fo' de sun was up, heah come a steamboat puffin' down de river, an' treckly hit blowed a whistle an' ringed a bell an' stop an' took us on boa'd, an' brung us on down heah ter ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... vulture I have often heard of, and the skin of which I will take home before I mention even its approximate spread of wing. There are also noble white cranes, and flocks of small black and white birds, new to me, with heavy razor-shaped bills, reminding one of the Devonian puffin. The hornbill is perhaps the most striking in appearance. It is the size of a small, or say a good-sized hen turkey. Gray Shirt says the flocks, which are of eight or ten, always have the same quantity of cocks and hens, and that they live together "white ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... As to the pace, wot sort o' pace do you think I, Tony Veller, could have kept a coach goin' at, for five hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in adwance afore the coach was on the road? And as to the ingein, - a nasty, wheezin', creakin', gaspin', puffin', bustin' monster, alvays out o' breath, vith a shiny green-and-gold back, like a unpleasant beetle in that 'ere gas magnifier, - as to the ingein as is alvays a pourin' out red-hot coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the sensiblest thing it ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... riles me. He's always so good and so sort of angelic, and I don't like people who are too good. A man without a few failin's is like underclothes without trimmin', useful but uninterestin', and—and—then, John, he's one of them fussy little men who's always puffin' around and never doin' nothin' worth while, just like a little engine in a switchyard that snorts and puffs and makes a lot of noise pullin' a dump-wagon. And—then, sometimes, I wonder about his religion, he's so narrer, he's got lots of religion but not so much Christianity. He kind of thinks ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper |
