"Ruff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tomb was the glory of Ashbourne Church. It was of white marble, and beautifully sculptured. Sir Guy de Claremont lay represented in full armor, with his lady in ruff and coif by his side. Six sons and four daughters, all kneeling, were carved in has relief round the side of the monument. Long, long ago, in the Middle Ages, the de Claremonts had been the great people of the neighborhood. ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... addressed suddenly, as if she felt herself to be a sort of foot-ball that the world was kicking about at pleasure,—your gentlest smile might prove a blow. She seldom spoke unless she were spoken to, and fell into long reveries, with her eyes on the window or the coals. She wore a horrible sort of ruff,—"illusion," I think Allis called it,—which, of all contrivances that she could have chosen to encircle her sallow neck, was exactly the most unbecoming. She was always knitting blue stockings,—I never discovered for what or whom; and she wore her lifeless ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... reverence and silence. The contrast between the light and shade is as marvellous as that between death and life. Everything is painted with infinite pains; it is possible to count the little folds of the ruff, the wrinkles in the face, the hairs of the beard. It is said that the foreshortening of the corpse is incorrect, and that in some places the finish degenerates into hardness, but universal approval places the "Lesson ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... case, particularly on the eve of an insolvent act, two or three persons are obliged to sleep in a room. A prisoner who can pay for being alone, chuses two poor chums, who for a stipulated price, called chummage, give up their share of the room, and sleep on the stairs, or, as the term is, ruff it. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... cook's shop. Then with a presidential majesty holding his bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised, furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... reverence and horror-worship at the identical clothing worn by William the Silent *{see above} when he was murdered at Delft by Balthazar Geraerts. A tawny leather doublet and plain surcoat of gray cloth, a soft felt hat, and a high neck-ruff from which hung one of the "Beggars'" medals—these were not in themselves very princely objects, though the doublet had a tragic interest from its dark stains and bullet holes. Ben could readily believe, as he looked upon the ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... name in the Blunderer and the Love-Tiff. The dress in which he acted this part, has not been mentioned in the inventory taken after his death, but in a pamphlet, published in 1660, he is described as wearing an enormous wig, a very small hat, a ruff like a morning gown, rolls in which children could play hide-and-seek, tassels like cornucopise, ribbons that covered his shoes, with heels half a ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... to her—not assumed. A gray silk gown, simply made, showed to advantage her slender, graceful form, which seemed far too fragile to endure the hardships inseparable from the wandering life she was leading. A high Elizabethan ruff made a most becoming frame for her sweet, delicately tinted, young face, and her only ornament was a string of pearl beads, clasped round her slender, white neck. Though her beauty was less striking at first sight ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... insignificant features, with crooked teeth, like a hare's, in a tiny little mouth, with a multitude of finely crimped little yellow curls on her forehead, and painted eyebrows. She invariably wore a pyramidal cap with pink ribbons, a high ruff round her neck, a short white dress, and prunella slippers with red heels; and over her dress she wore a jacket of blue satin, with a sleeve hanging loose from her right shoulder. This was precisely the costume in which she was arrayed on St. Peter's Day in the year 1789! On that day she ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... all the most distinguished persons in every profession, including very full details about the lives and doings of all our journalists. But on the club table where these books of ready reference stand with "Whitaker," "ABC," and "Ruff's Guide to the Turf," there is just one gap that the compiler of this work has for a long while felt sorely needed filling. There has been until now no work that gives immediate and trustworthy information about the lives, and—so sadly ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth, Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine, Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine,— What would we with such skittle-plays at death % Say, must we watch these ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... drinking a cup of thick, syrupy coffee, and soaking a rusk in it. Stephen thought this a disgusting sight, and could hardly bear to let his eyes rest on the thick rolls of fat that bulged over the man's low collar, all the way round his neck like a yellow ruff. Not trusting himself to speak just then, Stephen let ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a mistake," said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow's cap: the princess of Wales was very busy at the third. "Is not that what is called an anachronism, Miss Adamson? Are not sewing-machines a recent invention? There were none in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... sense of the grand security and serenity of nature, to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer. The Fresh-Water Sun-Fish, Bream, or Ruff, Pomotis vulgaris, as it were, without ancestry, without posterity, still represents the Fresh-Water Sun-Fish in nature. It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin's string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible all along the shore, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... then, and coming at Christmas time, we took a liking for his very picter that hangs in what used to be, anciently, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted for an annual stipend in money, our great Dinner Hall.—A sedate gentleman in a peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and a scroll below him, in old English letters, 'Lord! keep my memory green!' You know all about ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... and I went out to do some necessary shopping. When I got back my mother was gone. She had received a bogus note, written I presume by Crabtree, asking her to come to me at once, as I had been taken sick in one of the stores. I immediately hired a detective, Mr. Ruff here, and we tracked Mr. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... fetched his bands from pawn, And all his best apparel; Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn With droppings of the barrel; And those that hardly all the year Had bread to eat, or rags to wear, Will have both clothes and dainty fare, And ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... buckler, of gilt leather and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front." Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty, was in them by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios and boots were in good order, stepped forth with some satisfaction. Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; a decidedly truculent-looking figure. Jostle him in the street thoroughfares, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and the lips that snarled. He brought the rope forward over the cloaked head and drew the noose in tautly, with the knot adjusted to fit snugly just under the left ear, so that the hood took on the semblance of a well-filled, inverted bag with its puckered end fluting out in the effect of a dark ruff upon the hunched shoulders of its wearer. Stepping back, he gripped the handle of the lever-bar, and with all his strength jerked it toward him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... much; and I promise you, my brother, in the presence of Mr. Gorgibus, to be so careful in future that you will never have reason to complain. I beg of you not to think any more of what is past (he kisses his hat and his ruff, which he has put at ...
— The Flying Doctor - (Le Medecin Volant) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... much about what you call literature. There's Ruff, and Hoyle, and—I say, Nell, there's a dog-cart going a pace! Who can that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the past. But the prosaic landlord was an obstacle to the complete working of the spell. At last, however, a change came over mine host, or so it seemed to the dreaming chronicler. "He insensibly began to alter his appearance; his cravat seemed quilled into a ruff, and his breeches swelled out into a farlingale. I now fancied him changing sexes; and as my eyes began to close in slumber, I imagined my fat landlord actually converted into as fat a landlady. However, sleep made but few changes in my situation: the tavern, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white smudge under the spot. There are members of this family—Aunt Eleanour, for instance—who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too—as he was before he died, of course. And very interesting details both my aunts are ready ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... will begin as usual, and yet somehow Fitz will not be there. "Where's Fitz?" says Trumpington, just arrived from the Rhine. "Don't you know?" says Punter, turning down his thumb to the carpet. "You led the club, I think?" says Ruff to his partner (the OTHER partner!), and the waiter snuffs ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... downstairs nervously. She was wearing a new net blouse that she thought became her. It had a high collar with a tiny ruff, reminding her of Mary, Queen of Scots, and making her, she thought, look wonderfully a woman, and dignified. At twenty she was full-breasted and luxuriously formed. Her face was still like a soft rich mask, unchangeable. But her eyes, once lifted, were wonderful. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... framework. It is like a portrait of one of the earlier CECILS stepped out of the frame in the Long Gallery. The stately figure is attired in white doublet, trunks, and hose, embroidered with pearls. On the purple surcoat, lined with red, gold buttons gleam. The white ruff is fastened at wrist and throat with gold buttons: the black cap is solely adorned with a knot of pearls; a golden cord hangs from the neck; the right hand rests upon the head of a large dog, that has, perhaps, a rather stuffed look; whilst ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... surroundings, that he might recover from his sense of interested bewilderment. His eyes fell upon the stern lineaments of a Mount Dunstan in a costume of the time of Henry VIII. He was a burly gentleman, whose ruff-shortened thick neck and haughty fixedness of stare from the background of his portrait were such as seemed to eliminate him from the scheme of things, the clanging of electric cars, and the prevailing roar of the L. Confronted by his gaze, electric light ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 'Prefaces,' according to this flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, 'ever were, and still are, but of two sorts, let the mode and fashions vary as they please,—let the long peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff; presbytery, popery; and popery, presbytery again,—yet still the author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning of his book he enters, either with a halter round his neck, submitting himself to his readers' mercy whether ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... The vixen was still well within sight from Desdemona's cave when her time came. She leaped and snapped, and faced overwhelming odds without wavering, but her race was run when the wolfhound's great weight bore her to the earth and his massive jaw closed about her ruff as a vise ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... sentences. In her apparel she was less gay than her ladies, but nevertheless she was more queenly. Her dress and mantle were of the richest purple Genoese unadorned with embroidery, and round her neck she wore a ruff of fine ermine and a string of princely pearls. A small golden cross of curious graven gold dangled to her waist from a loup in the vale of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... very odd that just at that minute Bessie was seized with an uncontrollable longing to become the possessor of a Japanese fan. It was excessively dear and excessively ugly, and the young person in the Catherine de Medicis ruff who was in charge of that part of the stall was otherwise engaged; nevertheless, Bessie would not give up her point. Mrs. Sefton was on the other side of the room, talking to Lady Hampton; and though it was clearly Bessie's duty to remain with Edna, she was ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... will be much suppress'd, when we can have recourse to the Fashions of their Times, produce them in our Vindication, and be able to shew that it might have been as expensive in Queen Elizabeth's time only to wash and quill a Ruff, as it is now to buy Cravats ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... lernt how to make white oak split chair bottoms. I made all kinds baskets. We had all sizes and kinds of baskets. When they git old they turn dark. Shuck bottom chairs last longer but they kinner ruff an' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was very brilliant in the billowy silken skirts, puffed sleeves, tight bodice, and wide ruff of Queen Elizabeth, and carried off well the character of that hot-tempered majesty, making no effort to disguise the fact that she was ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... Richard, above your ruff, In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you! For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff To your blades that blunder, you ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... escutcheon was the figure of a woman, standing. It was an enchanting vision. She was tall and slim, and wore a robe of brocade which fell in ample folds about her feet, a ruff of many pleats and a necklace of large gems. On her head was an enormous and superb turban of blond hair on which rested a crown of filigree that was not round, and that followed all the undulations of the hair. The face, although somewhat too round and large, was exquisite. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... the Scotchman thrust his hand into the ruff of shaggy hair about the neck of one of the collies beside him. There was a low growl from the other dog, who rose and rested his pointed nose on ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... the previous day suddenly made his appearance silently at the door and walked in, his deerskin moccasins making no sound as he came towards us. He was followed by a great fierce-looking dog, about whose neck was a formidable ruff of loose hair, and as he trotted towards me I saw in them the Indian and the wolf ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... let the great creature past him, and Lloyd uttered an exclamation of delight, he was so unusually large and beautiful. His curly coat of tawny yellow was as soft as silk, and a great ruff of white circled his neck like a collar. His breast was white, too, and his paws, and his eyes had a wistful, human look that went straight to Lloyd's heart. She shook the offered paw, and then impulsively threw her ...
— The Story of the Red Cross as told to The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... knees were of colored seaweeds, woven into broad ribbons. His hair was yellow and banged across his forehead. His eyes were large and dark, with a pleasant, merry sparkle in them. Around his neck he wore a high ruff, but in spite of this Trot could see that below his plump cheeks were several scarlet-edged slits that looked like the gills of fishes, for they gently opened and closed as the boy breathed in the water ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... circles at the bottom of the paper for kisses. And then she dried her tears, laughed, and dressed him up as a favorite of Henri III by putting her toque on his head and her white cape with its collar turned up like a ruff round his shoulders. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... vittles; but it allers seemed drefful hard for him to take 'em, an' fin'ly he told me not to do so no more, an' said suthin' to himself about devourin' widders. So I didn't darst to go up agin, he looked so kind o' furce an' sharp, till, last night, I reck'n'd the snow would sift in through the old ruff, an' I went up to offer him a comf'table for his bed. I knocked; but he didn't make no answer, so I pushed the door open an' went in. It was a good while sence I'd seen the inside o' the room,—for when he heerd me comin' up, he'd open the door a crack an' peek out while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... door opened and a dejected apparition in a ruff and petticoats, like a rumpled remnant of a pre-war pageant, drifted in and sat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... Richart, who had been hourly expected, arrived from Amsterdam grave and dignified in his burgher's robe and gold chain, ruff, and furred cap, and was received not with affection only, but respect; for he had risen a step higher than his parents, and such steps were marked in mediaeval society almost as visibly as ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sovereign protector from the evils of fire, floods, carnage, and—so say some ancient writers—from the bite of rabid dogs. Annis Vane, decked out in the bravest array her altered fortunes would permit, knelt by the blazing hearth. Her ruff was of the finest lace, and a row of milk-white pearls clasped her slender throat. She shaded her face from the fire, and piled up shining cones of bright-brown nuts that seemed to tempt ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... is of pale-yellow, in the manner of a corselet with wide, up-and-down stripes, a stiff ruff and buttons of topaz. There is a narrow frilled stripe on the edge of the collar, and also on the close-fitting sleeves. The trunks are short, wide-slashed, and of a dead-green color with pale purple in the slashes. The ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... his full height, raised his tail and spread it until it was like an open fan above his back. The outer edge was gray, then came a broad band of black, followed by bands of gray, brown and black. Around his neck was a wonderful ruff of black. His reddish-brown wings were dropped until the tips nearly touched the log. His full breast rounded out and was buff color with black markings. He was of about the size of the little Bantam hens Peter had ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... return for the fruit, deeming himself much in her debt, he sent on shore a very courteous letter, and with it two ounces of ambergriece, an ounce of the essence of amber, a great glass of fine rose-water, an excellent picture of Mary Magdalen, and a cut-work ruff. Here he expected courtesies to stay, but the lady must positively have the last word, and as the English ships were starting her servants came on board with yet a letter, accompanying a basket of delicate white manchett bread, more clusters of fruits, and twenty-four fat hens. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... less magnificent. She wore a dress, with a train, of silver brocade covered with gold bees; her shoulders were bare, but on her arms were tight sleeves embroidered with gold, the upper part adorned, with diamonds, and fastened to them was a lace ruff worked with gold which rose behind half up her head. The tight-fitting dress had no waist, after the fashion of the time, but she wore a gold ribbon as a girdle, set with thirty-nine pink gems. Her bracelets, ear-rings, and necklace were formed of precious stones and antique cameos. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... back to the Big House which lately he had left in anger; and as he entered the great dining-room he saw once more his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. He ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... time hath flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in face, An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... hand out to rouse Mr. Hume, then drew it back ashamed of his fancies; but the movement awoke the jackal. It lifted its head, snuffed the air, then sprang up with the ruff on its neck erect, and its sharp white teeth gleaming. Several moments it stood so, then with many a look ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... a glimpse beneath Of ample, throat-encircling ruff As white as some wind-gathered wreath Of snow quilled into ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... wrinkled boots that came half-way up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled-up banner, which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his right hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet and hose of black satin. He carried a roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two came a young man of very striking countenance and demeanor, with deep thought and contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... partner adopts the turn-up without your assistance, and you hold queen, seven; ten, eight, etc., in trumps, ruff as early as possible with the big one, and lead the ...
— The Laws of Euchre - As adopted by the Somerset Club of Boston, March 1, 1888 • H. C. Leeds
... (Its heft almost tied the 147-pound Green County wheel of Wisconsin Swiss presented by the makers to President Coolidge in 1928 in appreciation of his raising the protective tariff against genuine Swiss to 50 percent.) While the cheese itself weighed a mite under 150, His Royal Highness, ruff, belly, knee breeches, doffed high hat and all, was a hundred-weight heavier, and thus almost ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... grave and decorous figure was seated. His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him a certain ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... follies of the day; at the fair Clara's devotion to her pet monkey; at the insolence of the Town Beau at the playhouse; at the arrogance of carters in the streets; at the vagaries of fashion according to which Belinda graces the theatre with yards of ruff one day, and on the next discards that covering so entirely that the snowy scene in the boxes "becomes extremely delightful to ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... bit of black velvet ribbon, while gray hairs straggled from underneath to make the patent sham more transparent still; and over her topknot she wore a rusty black cap that enclosed the keen monkeyish face like a ruff. Her every-day gown was one of coarse brown camlet, any number of years old, darned and patched till it was like a Joseph's coat; and the Rob Roy tartan shawl which she pinned across her bosom hid a state of dilapidation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Elizabeth, with ruff and farthingale, could have said it with more consciousness of her own dignity, or more superb dismission of that of another. But probably Queen Elizabeth would not have cast upon her courtiers the look, half ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the "Master Shipbuilder and his Wife," at present in Buckingham Palace; that simply marvellous old woman at the National Gallery in London, made familiar to everyone by countless photographs and other reproductions; the man in ruff and woman in coif at the Brunswick Museum; and a score of others scarce less important. With increasing popularity, he was able to command his own prices, so that only a part of his time was it necessary for him to devote to the portraits which were his chief source of income. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... aught I care, so long as the stomach and the feet are sound!" replied the Queen, raising her hand to the high lace ruff, which oppressed the breathing of one so accustomed to the outdoor air. "But when, like him, a man must give up deer-stalking and at every movement makes a wry face and can scarcely repress a groan—it might move a stone ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eyes, which must have flashed forth flame in moments of anger. Whether by reason of his obesity, or because of his thick, short neck, or in consequence of his vigils and his constant labors, Calvin's head was sunk between his broad shoulders, which obliged him to wear a fluted ruff of very small dimensions, on which his face seemed to lie like the head of John the Baptist on a charger. Between his moustache and his beard could be seen, like a rose, his small and fresh and eloquent little mouth, shaped in perfection. The face was divided by ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the prairie-dog town we found a settlement of five white men. They Proved to be the two Clifford brothers, Arthur Ruff, Dick Seymour, and John Nelson. To the last I have already referred. Each of these men had a squaw for a wife and numerous half-breed children. They lived in tents of buffalo skins. They owned a herd of horses and a few ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Mr. Kilburn had trained his dog to scour the woods, and the faithful animal ever had his eyes and ears open, and was sniffing the wind if a wolf or bear was about. On this afternoon in August the dog came running in with his hair in a ruff, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... palm the curled thing stirred, spread wings. A fledgling bird lay there, small soft body throbbing slightly. Half-hidden in a ruff of metallic feathers I glimpsed a grimly elongated beak. The pinions were feathered with delicate down less than a quarter of an inch long. They beat with delicate insistence against the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five, for while his eye possessed the fire of youth, there were streaks of gray in his long hair and beard. His ruffled shirt of well-worn linen was met at the neck by a modest ruff faded and torn like the shirt, and both sadly in need of washing. On his head he wore a round black cap which, if it ever had a peak, had lost it. The trousers of dark stuff came just below the knee, Puritan fashion, and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... they are so close, he can see the ruff around their naked necks, bristled up; the skin reddened as with rage, and their beaks, stained with bloody flesh of some other banquet, getting ready to feast upon his. Soon he will feel them striking against his skull, pecking ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... toward a northern cove, where the diver's little boat was housed. There he found Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday. His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of his enemies. For flies, of innumerable sorts and sizes, held a hopeless buzz ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the dark, lofty state chamber, lighted but little by six tall candles; there was the American in shirt and trousers, a smoking pistol in his hand; and there, advancing from the door of the powdering-room, a figure in doublet and hose, a ruff round its neck and no head! The head, sure enough, was there; but it was under the right arm, held close in the slashed-velvet sleeve of the doublet. The face looking from under the arm wore a pleasant smile. Both ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... carrying food conspicuously in the mouth, then pretending to visit a far-off spot and returning without it; but he always ended by mounting the oak brush, ruffling up his neck feathers till they stood out like a ruff, and uttering his cry; it can hardly be called of distress, it became so evidently perfunctory. His mate never tried deception, but relied upon skulking to and fro, ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... jesting and lightness touching this matter, which should be right serious. A man's choice of a wife is a choice for life, and is hardly to be talked of, meseemeth, in the same fashion with his choice of a partlet [neck ruff]. I pray you, pardon me if in so speaking, I fail aught in the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... shoes. Then follows a fancy ball in the Guerzenich House, in which the lineal descendants of the burgomasters and councillors of old come out in ancient family trappings of black cloth or velvet, stiff white ruff and heavy gold chain from shoulder to shoulder, which their forefathers once wore in earnest. Among the museums and other additions of modern taste is the beautiful botanical garden and large conservatory, where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... not a Yorkshireman, or a Cornishman, speak as veil as a Lonnoner? I tell you what, Evans, I'll pet the pest game-cock on ter Neck, against the veriest tunghill the parson hast, ter Presitent of Yale calls p e e n, pen, ant roof, ruff—and so on." ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... aquiline features lent an added touch of distinction. One was reminded of those dangerously mild and rather sad faces of Spanish soldiers which look at one from Velasquez's canvases. This man might wear a ruff and a velvet doublet, or, better yet, a coat of mail, she reflected, instead of the well-cut but rather worn gray ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... for her digester, and if I only had one dropped in water," she said, and quick as thought Maude brought her one, while Hannah growled again, "Ole marster 'll raise de ruff, case he ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown,—such as had been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, 'Fideles au roy jusqu'a la besace,' while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide slashed underclothes ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... I made his acquaintance. He was still on rigid duty at his post. He had regained his good looks. His bright, keen face set off by his white ruff and pricked ears made a dog to catch the eye anywhere. But he gave me no second glance, once he found my legs were not those he sought, and in spite of my friendly overtures during the ten months following that he continued ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call, Great Queen, and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r, Suckl'd, and cheer'd with air, and sun, and show'r, Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread, Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. Then thron'd in glass, and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd, Charming; and each youth, Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays, Such vary'd light in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... by Portuguese artists, chiefly portraits, amongst which is that of Don Sebastian. I sincerely hope it did not do him justice, for it represents him in the shape of an awkward lad of about eighteen, with a bloated booby face with staring eyes, and a ruff round ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the Fauconberg monuments in it were replaced. Sir William Belasyse, who received the Newburgh property from his uncle, the first owner, died in 1603, and his fine Jacobean tomb, painted in red, black and gold, shows him with a beard and ruff. His portrait hangs in one of the drawing-rooms of the Priory. The later monuments, adorned with great carved figures, are all interesting. They encroach so much on the space in the narrow chancel that a most curious method for lengthening the communion-rail has been resorted to—that of bringing ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... a well-known portrait of Henry III., King of France and Poland; a cap on his head, surmounting his long pale face and heavy eyes; a pointed beard, and a ruff round ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... a chamber of the Tremont of the brick edifice, opposite, on the other side of Beacon Street. At one of the lower windows, a woman at work; at one above, a lady hemming a ruff or some such ladylike thing. She is pretty, young, and married; for a little boy comes to her knees, and she parts his hair, and caresses him in a motherly way. A note on colored paper is brought her; and she reads it, and puts ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from Angora, in Syria. It is much larger than the common cat; its hair is very long, especially about the neck, where it forms a fine ruff, of a silvery whiteness and silky texture, that on the tail is three or four inches long; these cats frequently spread their tails on their backs, as squirrels do. The colour is generally white, but sometimes light brown; ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... came in a piteous burst of howls, followed by a hissing sound, and directly after Bruff appeared, tearing along on three legs, his last tucked out of sight, the rough shaggy hair which formed a ruff about his neck bristling; and close behind him, Jacko running as ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... used to wear a sort of ruff round the neck, composed of the longest white hair of the deerskin, hanging down over the bosom in a manner very becoming to young people. It seemed to afford so little additional warmth to persons already well clothed, that I am inclined rather to attribute their wearing it to some superstitious ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... shot gauzes and fastened with jewelled bands and ornaments. On each side of the red cheeks other braids were looped over the ears hung with broad earrings of filigree set with rough pearls and emeralds, or gold loops and pendants of coral, and an unexpected tulle ruff, like that of a Watteau shepherdess, framed the round chin above a torrent of necklaces, necklaces of amber, coral, baroque pearls, hung with mysterious barbaric amulets and fetiches. As the young things moved about us on soft hennaed feet ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... means, Master Paradise," I said courteously. "I desire your company and that of the gentleman from Lima. You will go with me to bring up the rest of my party. The three gentlemen of the broken head, the bushy ruff, which I protest is vastly becoming, and the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... in the ruff over there? That is Mary Darragh, Lady Benneville, my bitterest, bitterest enemy! See how she smiles at me! Deceitful minx! When I tell you all you will surely take her out of the room and fling her into the fire! For sixty years she has ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... difficult search after the mere truth. The public who imposed these laws, this exacting public of women who read Plutarch and Plato, who judged the merits of great men as learnedly as the cut of a ruff, found at the very moment they most wanted him the author who could please them in the person of a novel writer, the famous Lyly. At twenty-five years of age, John Lyly, a protege of Lord Burghley, who was at ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff—the real Maccaboy—twice as large, with twice as fierce an action. "I don't know what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband; I s'pose I don't; but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff to stick my head under. I wish I had all the money I ever spent travelling,—and that's twelve dollars," she ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... I ain't hongry, nohow. An' w'edder de professor am right dat dese yer earthquakes ain't shockin', I kin tell yo' right now dat it shocked me! Nor I ain't gwine ter gib it no secon' chance ter tumble dat ruff down on ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... of the weirdness of an apparition, stand before me. She might have been posing for her photograph. Her sad-coloured robe arranged itself in serpentine folds at her feet; her hands locked themselves listlessly together in front; her chin rested on a cinque-cento ruff. The first thing I did after bidding her good-morning was to ask her for news of her little nephew—to express the hope she had heard he was better. She was able to gratify this trust—she spoke as if ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... his face in 's ruff, as I have seen a serving-man carry glasses in a cypress hatband, monstrous steady, for fear of breaking; he looks like the claw of a blackbird, first salted, and then broiled in a ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... cly the nab of the Harmanbeck, If we mawnd Pannam, lap, or Ruff-peck, Or poplars of yarum: he cuts, bing to the Ruffmans, Or els he sweares by the light-mans, To put our stamps in the Harmans, The ruffian cly the ghost of the Harmanbeck If we heaue a ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the career of Mr. Payne. John Payne was born in 1842 of a Devonshire family, descended from that breezy old sea-dog, Sir John Hawkins. Mr. Payne, indeed, resembles Hawkins in appearance. He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit. Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even—a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master's neck, looking not unlike a lady's boa—and its name, Parthenopaeus, is long enough even for ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... or something with a ruff," and he kicked an army blanket into a corner as he spoke. "There's the ruff hanging on that pair of foils, Waller sent it over." Then his merry eyes fell on Jack's sprawled-out figure, his feet almost ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... affected even the apprentices of the city. The Lord Mayor and Common Council, in 1582, found it necessary to direct apprentices; "to wear no hat with any silk in or about the same. To wear no ruffles, cuffs, loose collar, nor other thing than a ruff at the collar, and that only a yard and a half long. To wear no doublets * * * enriched with any manner of silver or silke. * * * To wear no sword, dagger, nor other weapon but a knife; nor a ring, jewel of gold, nor silver, nor silke in any ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... ober to play wif Ruff!" said Trouble. "I play wif Slider in barn, and den hims hoots get tired, so I bringed him over to ride in de carriage ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... mark, and above it part of the skin is blue and part scarlet. The bill is orange and black, and those curious lumps or carbuncles on its forehead are rich orange. At the lower part of the neck it wears a black ruff. The wing feathers and tail are black, and the lower part of the body white, and the rest a fine ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... from these inanimate reminders of her marriage. It was as though the chair and the rug and the clock had become possessed with some demoniacal spirit. "If I can only get out of doors I shall feel better," she insisted; and when she had hurriedly pinned on her hat and tied her tulle ruff at her throat, she caught up her gloves and ran quickly down the stairs and out into the street. But as soon as she had reached the sidewalk, the agony, which she had thought she was leaving behind her in the closed room ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... LADY. When I prize A lover's sigh more dear than mine own pleasure. See, the Signora Julia passed again. She is far too pale for so much white, I find. Donna Aurora—ah, how beautiful! That spreading ruff, sprinkled with seeds of gold, Becomes her well. Would you believe it, sir, Folk say her face is twin to mine—what ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... toilet be eminently simple, for you will find the time coming when to button a cuff or arrange a ruff will be a matter of absolute despair. You lie disconsolate in your berth, only desiring to be let alone to die; and then, if you are told, as you always are, that "you mustn't give way," that "you must rouse yourself" and ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... the colour of blue greatly predominated, so as to remove the tawdry effect too frequently produced in tartan, by the mixture and strong opposition of colours. An antique silver chain hung round her neck, and supported the WREST, or key, with which she turned her instrument. A small ruff rose above her collar, and was secured by a brooch of some value, an old keepsake from Lord Menteith. Her profusion of light hair almost hid her laughing eyes, while, with a smile and a blush, she mentioned that she had M'Aulay's directions to ask them if they chose ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... corner, watched His wife Susannah, with her sleeves rolled back Making a salad in a big blue bowl. The thick tufts of his black rebellious hair Brushed into sleek submission; his trim beard Snug as the soft round body of a thrush Between the white wings of his fan-shaped ruff (His best, with the fine lace border) spoke of guests Expected; and his quick grey humorous eyes, His firm red whimsical pleasure-loving mouth, And all those elvish twinklings of his face, Were lit with eagerness. ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... cats as well. As for fighting, he emulates the example of that veteran who boasts that during the war he might always be found where the shot and shell were the thickest,—under the ammunition wagon. Like most cats he has a decided streak of vanity. My sister cut a wide, fancy collar, or ruff, of white paper one day, and put it on Pompanita. At first he felt much abashed and found it almost impossible to walk with it. But a few words of praise and encouragement ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... astonishment; he did not know what to make of it, for Reinhold's dress was in keeping with anything sooner than a journeyman cooper's on travel. His doublet of fine black cloth, trimmed with slashed velvet, his dainty ruff, his short broadsword, and baretta with a long drooping feather, seemed rather to point to a prosperous merchant; and yet again there was a strange something about the face and form of the youth which completely negatived ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... they were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, "See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived again; though means be never so inconsiderable, ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... pretty little heads you've got, And such good-natured eyes! And ruff of wool all round your necks— How ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to lose, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should hear it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mapped out to start. Call 'em 'The Trouble-hunter Twins, Ruff and Reddy.' If they catch on, the artist and me can keep 'em goin' forever. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... spectacle is magnificent. Four trumpeters in front and four behind, the Swiss guards on one side and the French guards on the other, form a line as far as it can reach.[2112] The Cent Suisses march ahead of the horsemen in the costume of the sixteenth century, wearing the halberd, ruff, plumed hat, and the ample parti-colored striped doublet; alongside of these are the provost-guard with scarlet facings and gold frogs, and companies of yeomanry bristling with gold and silver. The officers of the various corps, the trumpeters ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was comforting, as though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice. He lingered a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to Winifred. 'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... great white beard seemed to bristle like the ruff of an angry dog, and his eyes flashed fiercely under their shaggy brows. "Do you mean to tell me that after all you've done and—and gone through, Helen has thrown you over? Do you mean to tell ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... linings, 100 Monmouth caps (round caps without a brim used by soldiers and sailors), 200 pairs of shoes of seven sizes, 100 pairs of knit socks, 100 pairs of Irish stockings, falling-bands, which were the large loose collars that fell about the neck replacing the stiff ruff of the sixteenth century. Accessories included glass beads, buttons, thread, both brown and black, twelve dozen yards of gartering, bone combs, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... directly in front of the hallway a young woman of charming appearance had halted. Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... had was arranged by the Festal Series, after the reorganization. It was historic in design, illustrating the Elizabethan period in England. Dr. Ripley personated Shakespeare; Miss Ripley, Queen Elizabeth, in a tissue paper ruff, which I helped to make; Mr. Dana, Sir Walter Raleigh; Mary Bullard, the most beautiful of our young women, Mary Queen of Scots, and Charles Hosmer, Sir Philip Sidney. The programme sent home to mother, at the time, gives a list of the characters represented ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... wife and children in the wilderness. He had the king's charter in his keeping, and was appointed the first governor of Massachusetts. Imagine him a person of grave and benevolent aspect, dressed in a black velvet suit, with a broad ruff around his neck, and a peaked beard upon his chin. {Foot Note: There is a statue representing John Winthrop in Scollay Square in Boston. He holds the charter in his hand, and a Bible is under his arm.} There ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Knee Buckles Fluke and Tongs, ruff and smooth Files, Bone Buckle Brushes, Freezing Punches, Binding Wire, Steel Top Thimbles, Cypher and Brilliant Button Stones, Cypher and Brilliant Ring Stones, Ring Sparks, Motto Ring Stones, Amethysts, Garnetts, Brilliant and Cypher Earing Stones, Amethysts Foyle, red & white ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... girdle &c. (circle) 247; stomacher; petticoat, panties; under waistcoat; jock[for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth[obs3]; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; cummerbund, rumal[obs3], rabat[obs3]. shoe, pump, boot, slipper, sandal, galoche[obs3], galoshes, patten, clog; sneakers, running shoes, hiking boots; high-low; Blucher boot, wellington boot, Hessian boot, jack boot, top boot; Balmoral[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... berry. Besides which, they wear wreaths of dried flowers of the Indian mallow; and another beautiful ornament called eraie, which is generally put about the neck, but is sometimes tied like a garland round the hair, and sometimes worn in both these ways at once. It is a ruff, of the thickness of a finger, made in a curious manner, of exceedingly small feathers, woven so close together as to form a surface as smooth as that of the richest velvet. The ground was generally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... sets up his altar on a rock, which becomes resonant beneath his fervent blows. Who has seen the partridge drum? It is the next thing to catching a weasel asleep, though by much caution and tact it may be done. He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous, unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute. The tips of his wings barely brush the log, so that the ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... to know them all at last by name—whole generations of them. There was Sir Ralph in armour, and Bridget, his wife, in a ruff and a farthingale; young Sir Maurice, who died in boyhood, and Sir Penrhyn, his brother, in long love-locks and lace ruffles. A whole succession of Sir Martins and Sir Henrys; then came the first Sir ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... description of my dress; and I shall also feel greatly obliged, if at the same time they will select the best-looking portrait of me for the likeness: a scarlet tunic, embroidered with gold-thread; a purple satin sash, with a deep gold fringe; a ruff a la Elizabeth; white satin pantaloons; shoes with crimson rosettes; black velvet hat and feathers. My hair, not naturally curling, had been put in graceful papillote the preceding evening. As ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... also always played some part in blue silk knee-smalls at her benefit—glancing, from the depths of her coal-scuttle straw bonnet, at Nicholas, and affecting to be absorbed in the recital of a diverting story to her friend Miss Ledrook, who had brought her work, and was making up a ruff in the most natural manner possible. There was Miss Belvawney—who seldom aspired to speaking parts, and usually went on as a page in white silk hose, to stand with one leg bent, and contemplate the audience, or to go in and out after Mr Crummles in stately ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... and bottles on it, and on the necks of the bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... considerably above the wrist, in the manner of a gauntlet. In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and rested upon the plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue, which is sometimes produced by metallic medicines, administered in excessive ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... that form the brim of the hat, and the soft, graceful arrangement of the hair in front that decreases the too broad effect of the brow, and the full fluffy ruff snuggled up closely to the chin, produce a pleasing transformation of the meagre-looking original that to the uninitiated seems little short of magical. The broad, cravat-like bows, and the flaring ones known as "incroyables," ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... Paris, condemned never to leave him by the perpetual rule of etiquette; pursued, if I tried to go away, by that doleful voice, crying, 'St. Luc, my friend, I am ennuye, come and amuse me.' Free, with that stiff corset which strangled me, and that great ruff which scratched my neck! No, I have never been free till now, and ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... Cyril. Granville was born, and grew to be a big boy, and was treated by everybody as the heir to Tilgate. And now the Colonel's difficulties gathered thicker around him. At last, in the fulness of time, the Admiral died, and slept with his fathers, whose Elizabethan ruff's were the honour and glory of the chancel at Tilgate; and then the day of reckoning was fairly upon him. How well he remembered that awful hour. He couldn't, he couldn't. He knew it was his duty to acknowledge his rightful sons and heirs, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... and all the sea-fern tribe of branching polypidoms, and last, but not least, at the glass sponges; first at the Euplectella, or Venus's flower-basket, which lives embedded in the mud of the seas of the Philippines, supported by a glass frill "standing up round it like an Elizabethan ruff." Twenty years ago there was but one specimen in Europe: now you may buy one for a pound in any curiosity shop. I advise you to do so, and to keep - as I have seen done - under a glass case, as a delight to your eyes, one of the most ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... the ruff on the back of his neck began to rise. He uttered a low, reverberating bark. It was almost a growl and it sounded threatening. He dashed down the hill ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... had his association indeed with the ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic. He had once said to the wearer—and it was as "free" a remark as he had ever made to her—that she looked, with her ruff and other matters, like Queen Elizabeth; and it had after this in truth been his fancy that, as a consequence of that tenderness and an acceptance of the idea, the form of this special tribute to the "frill" had grown slightly ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... removed from youth and beauty now, but later in the day, when her hair would be taken out of its crimping kids, her sallow cheeks touched with rouge, and her veined neck covered by a high collar, a coral chain, and an ostrich-feather ruff, some traces of her former good looks might be visible. She still affected tight corsets, high heels, enormous hats. But Emeline's interest in her own appearance was secondary now to her fierce pride and faith in Julia's beauty. Drifting along the line of least resistance, asking only ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... silk, the sleeves puffed at the shoulders, the bodice tight across the breast and swelling at the waist, the skirt voluminous. On either side of her bosom, sheer linen, puckered by golden rosettes, mounted to form behind her neck a little ruff. Over her golden hair, every strand of which had been drawn back strictly from her brow, a white veil was clasped, behind her ears, by a band of pearls and amethysts ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... turn to be thrilled with horror. There were not many situations which would yield such a sensation to his seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the card-table broke in upon them again. "We had a double ruff if you had returned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of a thicket of low black alders, surrounded by a perfect hedge of bushes, I found him at last. He was on the lower end of a fallen log, gliding rapidly up and down, spreading wings and tail and budding ruff, as if he were drumming, and sending out his peculiar call at every pause. Above him, in a long line on the same log, five other partridges were sitting perfectly quiet, save now and then, when an answer came to the leader's call, they would turn their heads and listen intently ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... another moment a group of ladies, attired in deep mourning, appeared beneath the portico; where, separating into two ranks, they left a passage open for the widowed Queen; who, clad in violet velvet like her son, with a high ruff, and her head uncovered, advanced with an unsteady step and streaming eyes ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe |
