"Sniff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... by Fate with a French-Canadian cook, himself a Three of Freres Provinciaux. Such was his reputation. We saw by the eye of him, and by his nose, formed for comprehending fragrances, and by the lines of refined taste converging from his whole face toward his mouth, that he was one to detect and sniff gastronomic possibilities in the humblest materials. Joseph Bourgogne looked the cook. His phiz gave us faith in him; eyes small and discriminating; nose upturned, nostrils expanded and receptive; mouth saucy in the literal sense. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... in time, too, for the dogs had come barking and yelping and bellowing, and now all they could do was to sniff, sniff, ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... shillin', an' there 's no call fer ye t' be sniffin' 'round, Timmy, me lad! Go about yer worrk, an' lave th' cat alone. 'Twill kape—'twill kape a long time yet. Don't be so previous, me lad. If ye want t' sniff, there 'll be plinty av time by an' by. ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... at her for five minutes at a time. This made the cat very uneasy, and she would go about from place to place, trying to get away from those small, bright, inquiring eyes. At last the cub again got up courage to sniff at the old cat, and this time she ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... to be incredulous. While he dared not break in again with any remark of his own, he took occasion to sniff as loudly as he could, and in this manner show his utter disbelief in the story given out by the skipper of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... flowers, which in the north country, to make up for the shorter tale of their days, bloom bigger and smell sweeter than any other flowers in the world. Even in the dirty paved square fronting the station was a smell of summer and flowers. You could see people's faces lighten and sniff it, as they got out of the hot, cindery coaches of the five-forty, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... we entered a Tatar horse-butcher's shop—ornamented with the picture of a horse, as the law requires—out of curiosity, to inquire prices. We recognized the smell and other characteristics of our Tzarskoe Selo "roast ox" at a glance and a sniff, and remained only long enough to learn that the best cuts cost two and a half cents a pound. Afterward we went a block about to avoid passing that shop. The explanation of the affair was simple enough. In our hotel there was a traktir, run by our landlord, tucked away in a rear corner ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... some village bazaar in Nepaul. The track of a consignment of this horrible filth can be recognised from very far away. The perfume hovers on the road, and as you are riding up and get the first sniff of the putrid odour, you know at once that the Nepaulese market is being recruited by a fresh accession of very stale fish. If the taste is at all equal to the smell, the rankest witches broth ever brewed in reeking ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... all the more,' said Trent. 'And now as to the house itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little in this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time, and in his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we're in this room, let's start here. You seem to be at the same stage of the inquiry. Perhaps ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... essence of savagery, and there is a superfluity of both in the Soudan. I have no desperate wish so to describe the vileness of the surroundings of the correspondents' camp at Dakhala that even casual thinkers will sniff at it. The place was bad enough in all conscience, and, mayhap, therein I have said all that is necessary. As for the worry of our lives, squatted as we were in the least agreeable quarter of the big rectangular fort, long will the memory of those days and nights burden our existence. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... faint, attenuated sniff. Again it came, this time accompanied by the ghost of something like ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... The Frenchman, with a sniff and with head in air, walked out of the library; and my friend summoned in the seventh servant so far, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... it's very beautiful, but everybody to their liking," replied Aunt Maria, with a sniff of her high, transparent nostrils. "For my part, I'd rather have a little, clean new house before all the old ones, that folks have died in ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... incense,' it said, with an injured sniff. A hurried consultation ended in plates being fetched from the kitchen. Brown sugar, sealing-wax, and tobacco were placed on these, and something from a square bottle was poured over it all. Then a match was applied. It was the only ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... Doctor Byrne went out with Barry to watch the loosing of the dog; from the window of Joe Cumberland's room he and Kate observed what passed. There was little hesitancy in Black Bart. He merely paused to sniff the foot of Randall Byrne, snarl, and then trotted with ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... his new rooms were situated. They were very pleasant bachelor rooms, with black oak walls and green hangings, prints upon the wall, a serviceable writing-table, and a deep green carpet. She looked around her and at the servant who had come forward at their entrance, with a little sniff. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unfortunate object, by this wild violence. The effect was the same if the herd did not witness the fight, but came suddenly to the discovery of blood that had been spilled. They would stare at it, and glare at it, and snuff down at it, and sniff up at it, and prowl round it—and get more and more excited, till, at last, the whole herd would begin to rush about the field bellowing and mad, and make nothing at last of leaping clean over hedges, fences, and five-barred gates. But, strange to say—if the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... silly, Abby," Miss Daggett bade her sharply. "There ain't any such nonsense in Famous People! I wouldn't be canvassing for it, if there was." And she shifted her pointed nose to one side with a slight, genteel sniff. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Gub-Gub poking his nose through the bars of the window, trying to sniff the cooking-smells that came from the palace-kitchen. She told the pig to bring the Doctor to the window because she wanted to speak to him. So Gub-Gub went and woke the Doctor who was taking ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... unlike some others made at the same period, time seems to have been no object. Possibly the maker was well paid for his work, if not he ought to have been." To these observations the workman only gives a sniff in reply. He thinks that all this can be quite equalled at the present day, if a fellow is really well paid; but this is reckoning with only a part of the subject. A further exclamation of admiration comes from his chief—"Think, ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... as much about the fish as did our father," Havelok said. "He will go out in the morning, and look at sky and sea, and sniff at the wind; and if I say it will be fine, he says that the herrings will be in such a place; and so they are, while maybe it rains all day to spite my weather wisdom. You cannot do without Raven; for it is ill to miss ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... met Pestilence Hasan and his followers, to whom said he, "Hath the Caliph asked after me?"; and he replied, "No, nor hast thou come to his thought." So he resumed his service about the Caliph's person and set himself to sniff about for news of Ala al-Din's case, till one day he heard the Caliph say to the Watir, "See, O Ja'afar, how Ala al-Din dealt with me!" Replied the Minister, "O Commander of the Faithful, thou hast requited him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... danger came from the direction in which the wind was blowing, they would sniff the air, and so smell the danger. If the danger were a tiger, the buffaloes could smell him half a mile off; that is about as far as ten blocks in a city. And if the wind were not blowing that way, the buffaloes could still smell the tiger five blocks ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... strokes I reach'd him, gained footing, and with Anthony's sword cut the straps away and pull'd him up. And there we stood, up to our necks, coughing and spluttering; while on the deserted brink the bear sniff'd at the ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... trail very soon, for nothing that man has made is friendly. She skirted along a low ridge, then across a little hollow where grew a few buffalo-bushes, and, after a careful sniff at a very stale human trail-scent, she crossed another near ridge on whose sunny side was the home of her brood. Again she cautiously circled, peered about, and sniffed, but, finding no sign of danger, went down to the doorway and uttered a low woof-woof. ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... said Bud, when he had treated himself to a long, trembling sniff, after a painful ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... not answer. He turned his back to the jailer and walked to the cot, again sitting on its edge. He heard the jailer sniff contemptuously, but he paid no ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hunted out that treasure and took a long, strong, tremendous snuff at it, expecting to revel in odors of delight. Her head tingled again while she thought about it; she felt a thousand needles running through her nose, and saw herself sitting on the floor shedding tears. How anybody could sniff at a hartshorn bottle and find it a consolation or restorative under any circumstances, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... in pitch darkness to recognise every man I know by the help of my nose alone; that is, if I passed near enough to him to sniff his atmosphere. I am almost ashamed to confess that men are the same to me as flowers; I judge them by their smell. I remember once a young English waiter in a restaurant who stirred all my sensibilities each time he passed ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... said the giant's wife, playfully, "or I'll pop you into that steaming kettle over there without a single sniff of laughing-gas; and you can't begin to fancy how unpleasant you would find it,—you ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... when the coffee began to boil to see those chaps elevate their noses and begin to sniff the fragrance as only wretched beings may who have long been ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... his snuff to the dogs, too. Kashtanka sneezes, twitches her nose, and walks away offended. Viun deferentially refuses to sniff and wags his tail. It is glorious weather, not a breath of wind, clear, and frosty; it is a dark eight, but the whole village, its white roofs and streaks of smoke from the chimneys, the trees silvered with ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... tastes; and the Cactus cochinellifera for the Luculluses of the day, who could afford to pay for its rearing. The small sneezing plant, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency: its vulgar name, malupertusu, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso, as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The Ferula communis or Saracinisca, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern lords, is sold in fagots at the green-grocers, and fulfils ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... they did not. He placed the chairs with dignity, and hoped instruction might prove as unwelcome to Barney and Tommie as it was to him. And as they jounced down into their seats the moment the steaming supper was put upon the table, and gazed at it with eager, hungry eyes, and even gave a sniff or two, he felt that here was a field for improvement, indeed. And he smiled. Not that Jim was a bad boy, or a malicious one, but when Barney and Tommie were wrong, it was the thing that they should be ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... two young bulls who had not been old enough to remember him sidled up on all fours to sniff at him, and one bared his fangs and growled threateningly—he wished to put Tarzan immediately into his proper place. Had Tarzan backed off, growling, the young bull would quite probably have been satisfied, but always after Tarzan's station among his fellow ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... growled Mrs Pansey, in her deep-toned voice. 'He might be better, and he might be worse. There is too much Popish superstition and worship of idols about him for my taste. If the departed can smell,' added the lady, with an illustrative sniff, 'the late archdeacon must turn in his grave when those priests of Baal and Dagon burn incense at the morning service. Still, Bishop Pendle has his good points, although he is ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... her were to me," the old man said, with a quiet little noise and a sniff behind my shoulder. "And with one ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... alert, intelligent little woman with a trace of West Indian blood in her, denied entering his stateroom. Shown the handkerchief and invited to sniff it, she professed utter ignorance concerning it, assured him that no lady in her section used that perfume, and offered to show it to the stewardesses of other sections on the chance of their identifying the ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... up to me, make 'em come up!" cried Fancy ecstatically; and the four damsels appointed, namely, Miss Susan Dewy, Miss Bessie Dewy, Miss Vashti Sniff, and Miss Mercy Onmey, surged upstairs, and ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... opened his box, found therein an unguent, rich and fragrant, and with this they rubbed their bodies completely. And they were ever after so fragrant from the divine anointing that all sought to be near them. Happy were they who could but sniff at the blessed ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... starve," said Aunt Winifred, with a sniff, applying for another piece of tea-cake. "It's no good, Marcia, your trying to stir us up. The Fallodens are not beloved. Nobody will break their hearts—except of course we shall all be sorry for Lady Laura ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fierce and dangerous when wounded, sir," said Bremen, who had ridden up. "We are not many miles from the river, for the cattle begin to sniff." ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be as careful as I can, Mrs. Wilson. That boy Jim is a treasure. I will warrant, if there are any black fellows about, he will sniff them out somehow. That fellow has a nose like a hound. He has always been most useful to me, but he will be invaluable ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... dishonesty, he went to the Stage Company's office at Fort Lyons and proposed to Mr. Lambert to put up a large stone building on the Stage Company's ground, for the purpose of storing goods. Mr. Lambert began to sniff the air at once, he thought he had found a mouse, and he said: "Mr. Macauley, I haven't the money to erect a building of that kind now." Mr. Macauley told him that he would not have to furnish a cent of ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... Use a handkerchief Whenever you're inclined to sniff. But with this band of blue I think They don't ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... Nancy gave a scornful sniff. 'I suppose that is a joke, Miss Horatia; but it's a poor one. For if it were this house or the Union I'd not hesitate ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... and excitement; there was a herd of strange living creatures grazing there, great deer with branching horns; they moved slowly forwards, cropping the grass, and the child was lost in wonder at the sight. Presently one of them stopped feeding, began to sniff the air, and then looking round, espied the child, and began slowly to approach him. The child had no terror of the great dappled stag, and held out his hand to him, when the great beast suddenly bent his head down, and ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... at it all over, then ran whining a little way down the avenue, came back to sniff the coat again, and finally elevating its stump of a tail in triumph, uttered a succession of sharp yelps to show that it was satisfied that it had struck the trail. Its owner tied a long cord to its collar to prevent it from going too fast for us, and we all set off upon our search, the dog ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there echoes of newspaper opinion, following on the recent performances of Christophe's work in England and Germany? It seemed impossible to trace it to any definite source. It was one of those frequent phenomena of those men who sniff the air of Paris, and can tell the day before, more exactly than the meteorological observatory of the tower of Saint-Jacques, what wind is blowing up for the morrow, and what it will bring with it. In that ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... there, savoring all the pent-up bitterness poured out for him by destiny, there came a patter of padded feet in the hallway, the scrape of nails, a sniff at the door-sill, a whine, a frantic scratching. He leaned forward and opened the door. His Highness landed on the bed with one hysterical yelp and fell upon Langham, paw ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... among themselves, as they never commune by day. Spirits seemed to move among them, sending down to Jeanne's and Philip's listening ears a restful, sleepy murmur. Farther back there sounded a deep sniff, where a moose, traveling the well-worn trail, stopped in sudden fear and wonder at the strange man-scent which came to its nostrils. And still farther, from some little lake nameless and undiscovered in the black ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... again to the pantry and returned with the bottle he had so recently found there. Now, however, it was two thirds full of a black sticky mixture. Mrs. Stover removed the cork and took an investigating sniff. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... did not know it. A flock of grouse got leisurely out of his way and flew to a low tree, when he caught a whiff of man smell, then heard a crack like that which had stung him in the sheep-corral, and down fell one of the grouse close beside him. He stepped forward to sniff just as a man also stepped forward from the opposite bushes. They were within ten feet of each other, and they recognized each other, for the hunter saw that it was a singed Bear with a wounded side, and the Bear smelt the rifle-smoke and the ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my gastric juices with nicotine, but I like the smell of tobacco. Poor old Steingall there has pretty fair eyesight, but his nose wouldn't sniff brimstone in a volcano, all because he insists ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... my snug tea, Margarina! Over my toast I muse on thee, Margarina! I sniff that smell, I see that dab, That greasy, grimy, marble slab. And thou art still the same I know, The slum's strange love, the slum's strange love. The poor man's "Butter," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... could find of 'en," put in Arch'laus Spry, "was a shin-bone and a pint of ashes. I don't know if the others noticed it, but to my notion there was a sniff of brimstone about the premises; and I've always been remarkable for my sense ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with something he had to sniff for purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly polished a palette with a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... time, he thought in vain. While he was speaking, my memory was groping to place a voice that seemed an echo of one I had heard in the past. I looked at the face, but in the firm-set features that told of wrestling with the world, I found no aid. It was not until the house-colley went up to sniff at him and he stooped to pat its head that it flashed on me the stranger was the shepherd-lad who had befriended me in my weary tramp across Ayrshire. Facing him, I said, 'Is not your name Archie?' 'It is,' he replied, looking surprised. 'And do you not remember ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... away the mosquitoes," she murmured in explanation, though no one had said anything, even if Russ did sniff rather ostentatiously. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... looked about in quest of small fry with popping, covetous eyes and sleekly brushed hair. The alluring scent of gaudily painted toys pervaded the Christmas atmosphere, quite offsetting the hint of steam from more fortunate depths, and one could sniff the odour of freshly buttered pop-corn. All these signs spoke of children and the proximity of Kris Kringle, and yet there were no little Bingles, nor had there ever ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... could sniff and smell Where all good things were kept, And in the pantry well she knew ...
— The Mouse and the Christmas Cake • Anonymous
... of the St. Bernard dogs is shown by the curious fact, that if a whelp of this breed is placed upon snow for the first time, it will begin to scratch it, and sniff about as if in search of something. When they have been regularly trained, they are generally sent out in pairs during heavy snow-storms in search of travellers, who may have been overwhelmed by the snow. In this way they pass over a great extent of country, and by the acuteness ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... "Sniff at my ottar of roses," said Mr. Touchwood; "the scent would revive the dead—why, what in the devil's name is the meaning of this?—you were quite ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... accompanied by immense throngs of people, who, wearied with the tiresome exactions of Pharisee and scribe, turned with eagerness to the humanness and holiness of the True Shepherd. It is said that cattle, sick and harried with the voyage across the Atlantic, will show signs of revival as they sniff the first land breezes laden with the breath ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... brilliant, morbid, handsome, abnormal creature with magnificent eyes and very white teeth and no particular appetite at mealtime. The man whom I could care for at thirty would be the normal, safe and substantial sort who would come in at six o'clock, kiss me once, sniff the air twice and say: "Mm! What's that smells so good, old girl? I'm as hungry as a bear. Trot it out. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... good care, before I said 'sniff,' to be sure she would say 'snaff,' and pretty quick, too. I warn't a-goin' to open my mouth like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again wi' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... gave him as good as he sent; but short measure at that; for I just lifted my head as if taking a sniff at the flowers, and that was all. If that young man thought I was brought up in the woods to be scared by owls, he found out his mistake. He was standing with his back towards me when I heard E. E. say, in one of those whispers that cut to the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... flight been in any way possible, but she had looked up and seen him, and her sudden arrested sniff held them both there as though by some third invisible power. He saw that she was crying; he saw her red nose, mottled cheeks, untidy hair. It was the most awful moment of his young life. He had never seen a grown-up person cry before; he ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... seen him talking to you two or three times—he danced with 'ee at the rejoicings, and came home with 'ee. Now, now, no blame to you. But just harken: Have you made him any foolish promise? Gone the least bit beyond sniff and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Mabel gave a little sniff. He thought it was over. But it wasn't over. "If you ask me, I call it a funny letter. You say your Christian name, but it isn't your Christian name—Marko! And then saying, 'How are ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... idea," said Hugh, with an extra loud sniff. "Scent! Let's make attar of roses. It costs a guinea a drop to buy, and we could make bottles full. I've been examining the rose-bushes—they are simply packed full of buds behind the flowers. I have been reading about it. It's quite easy to do; you merely have to extract the essential oil ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... sweetness and resignation as caused maulsticks to separate themselves every now and then from the denuded thicket and to wabble vaguely about his mouth or play wildly in his hair, accompanied by the commands, "Posez la bouche!" "Posez les yeux!" or, in good American accents, accompanied with a sniff of wrath, "Call him a good Christ? Umph! He'd pose better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the superintendent of the work, a cultured archaeologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fingers down, Max, only don't try to ditch me, don't try to ditch me! I'll go out to the country where your old woman can't ever sniff me. I—I'll fix it, Max, so you—so you just can't lose. Don't ditch me, dear; take your Maizie back. Take me in your arms and call me ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... tired hands over our bulging vests after dinner and lie down to rest, we know that there is no starving family in Homeburg which has had to celebrate Christmas by taking on an extra drink of water and indulging in a long, succulent sniff at ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... very well knew, in order to give her charges a chance at him. Not that Lady Farquhar liked the man. She knew him quite well for an ill-bred little snob at heart. But he would pass muster in a crowd, and none of the young women of the party could afford to sniff at two millions sterling. It was entirely probable that Joyce, with her beauty and her clear vision of the need of money in the scheme of things, would marry as well as if she had a mother to look out for her. But Lady Jim felt it her duty to plan for India and ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the silence when a blast fiercer than the rest shook the old house. "'Tain't right," he said dolefully, "I know it ain't, Jock! There's Tom and Foley gone off an' 'listed, and them only four years older nor me. What's four years?" This with a sniff ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... characteristic humour, that he thought he would keep them for a rainy day. It was much simpler to go from General Manager to fireman than vice versa, and it might be that he would need the suit again. It pleased him to hear his wife sniff contemptuously. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... food that was absolutely strange to him. The butler behind made him shiver. Hitherto in Merritt's investigations into great houses he had fought particularly shy of butlers and coachmen and upper servants of that kind. The butler's sniff and his cold suggestion as to hock slightly raised Merritt's combative spirit. And the champagne was poor, thin stuff after all. A jorum of gin and water, or a mug of beer, was what Merritt's ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... paces into the stream and then look back to see if its mother approved. Evidently she did not, for she would stop her drinking and call the fawn back to her side with a soft, crooning noise. Suddenly she raised her head, the long ears shot up, and she seemed to sniff the air. She waded through the deeper water to get round a rocky bluff which ran out into the creek. Then she turned and called the little one. The fawn waded until the water reached its knees, then stopped and uttered piteous little bleats. Encouraged by the soft crooning it plunged into the deep ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... royal welcome from the coach, who had not doubted for a moment that they would heed the call. He knew that the old war horses would "sniff the battle from afar" and come galloping to the fray. Now that they were there, he felt the lightening of the tremendous load of responsibility he had been carrying since the beginning of the season. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... colored woman named Belle Pope Calhoun who played the piano at parties given for white children—nice white children that would have passed Curtis Carlyle with a sniff. But the ragged little "poh white" used to sit beside her piano by the hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafes ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... quiet breathing, the air simply flows along the lower nasal passages into the pharynx, scarcely entering the olfactory chamber at all. This is the reason why, when we wish to perceive a faint odor, we sniff up the air sharply. By so doing, the air which is forcibly drawn into the nostrils passes up even into the higher olfactory chamber, where some of the floating particles of the odorous material come into contact with ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of course I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going: for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but above all of business. Why then should you tire yourself ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... was like Miss Terry to insist upon that nearer inch. Then she raised the cover. It was a box full of children's battered toys, old-fashioned and quaint; the toys in vogue thirty—forty—fifty years earlier, when Miss Terry was a child. She gave a reminiscent sniff as she threw up the cover and saw on the under side of it a big label of ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will occasionally sail away, as I did one pleasant autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and sniff ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... stalking a kangaroo. The man made not the slightest noise in walking, and he would stealthily follow the kangaroo's track for miles (the tracks were absolutely invisible to the uninitiated). Should at length the kangaroo sniff a tainted wind, or be startled by an incautious movement, his pursuer would suddenly become as rigid as a bronze figure, and he could remain in this position for hours. Finally, when within thirty or forty yards of the animal, he launched his ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... amusement. Both words express the same idea. Recreation means to create over again, the building up of the system when it is exhausted. Amusement primarily is said to be derived from the halt which a dog makes in hunting, when he pauses to sniff the air in order to see in which way the scent lies. Having done this, he starts off again with redoubled speed. Both these words in themselves suggest the place that the things which they signify should occupy in life. They ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... ape waddled once more to the girl's side. He turned her over upon her back, and stooping commenced to sniff and listen about her face and breast. She lived. The monkeys were returning. They came in swarms, and from above hurled down ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and particularly valued friend, Professor Sniff, curator of Mahon's Museum of Marvels—but I'll let that affair pass; for Professor Sniff certainly did not intend to wound my feelings by his apparent indifference; moreover, he has promised to send me for my private collection all the duplicates that occur in section E of his ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... the corral gate before any of the other motor tourists had appeared—and they stupidly halted to watch a bear, a large, black, adipose and extremely unchained bear, stalk along the line of cars, sniff, cock an ear at the Gomez, lumber up on its running-board, and bundle into the seat. His stern filled the space between side and top, and he was to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... watched while the other took the pannikin. He watched him raise it, and sniff suspiciously at its contents. And a shadowy smile ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... "It is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... beautiful and curious Clathrus. It is very probable that, after all, the odour of the Phallus would not be so unpleasant if it were not so strong. It is not difficult to imagine, when one encounters a slight sniff borne on a passing breeze, that there is the element of something not by any means unpleasant about the odour when so diluted; yet it must be confessed that when carried in a vasculum, in a close carriage, or railway car, or exposed in a close ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... took affect. With a listless movement Lenox let his fingers fall apart, and the pipe rolled on to the rug at his feet. Here Brutus lazily investigated it as a possible treasure trove; and after a puzzled sniff or two lifted inquiring ears to his master, who was ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... tenement-house gloom, Great Taylor was not without fear. Her footfall on the uncarpeted landings and iron treads sounded hollow and strangely loud. The odours that in the past had greeted her familiarly, making known absorbing domestic details of her neighbours, caused her neither to pause nor to sniff. She reached the narrow entrance hall, dark and deserted, and, hurrying down its length, fumbled with the knob and pulled open the street door. Dazzling sunlight, a blast of warm air and the confused clatter of the sidewalk engulfed her. She ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... advised Peter. "Don't sniff at your betters. There's a great little old plot here, and we're going to make a good thing of it and ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... into the city led by Finsbury Fields, where were many 'prentices at their sports, and citizens taking their sweethearts to sniff the sweet spring air. No one wanted me there. The lads bade me make way for my betters, and the maids held back their skirts as they swept by. So I ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the air, a-sniff to catch the fleeting scent of an enemy. Fancy could readily paint the ugly head of the lank body behind it. But Henry Ware was not deceived for an instant. The muzzle of the rifle that had been thrust forward, was raised now, and taking ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... statement that such a policy as Home Rule had always led to the disintegration and destruction of empires. He rolled out the case of Austria, which had been preserved from ruin by Home Rule; and when there was a sniff from the Tory benches, Mr. Gladstone, in tones of thunder, referred to the speech of Lord Salisbury in 1885, when he was angling for the Irish vote, and when he pointed to Austria as perhaps supplying some indication of the method of settling the Irish question. This was good old party warfare; ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... hunt!" said Mr. Lion, as he led Nero into the jungle. "Tread softly. Sniff with your nose until you smell something worth hunting, and then ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... you visit the town, and then you may talk of inhaling perfumes, though they're not of the sweetest," observed Jos Green. "If the wind comes off-shore we may get a sniff of spicy odours, but I never found them quite strong enough to swear to, whatever the poets ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... imagination the sniff of the unimaginative reader; I can figure to myself his instant dismissal of all these considerations as "sentiment." Let the word stand, coloured though it is with associations that degrade it. But is "sentiment" to be ignored ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... two young men are strolling, towards 5 P.M., in the then fashionable neighbourhood of Soho; the one is Terry, the actor—the other, Hook, the actor, for surely he deserves the title. They pass a house, and sniff the viands cooking underground. Hook quietly announces his intention of dining there. He enters, is admitted and announced by the servant, mingles with the company, and is quite at home before he is perceived by the host. At ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Connie," he said, "and I shall be as much astonished as yourself if something grand doesn't come of this. A great thing in my favour is that I can generally manage to get at the pith of a thing, while most people can do nothing but sniff in a hopeless sort of way at the rind. Of course you have noticed that in me, Connie. I sometimes regret that I am not a barrister, for I possess the qualities that lead to success in that profession. At the same time it is a profession that has a very ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... their names. This may be calumny; but I doubt whether the most blameless of them all could have spoken more delicately of a lady of peculiar personal appearance who had been dining near me. "She's too fat," I grossly said on her leaving the room. The waiter shook his head with a little sniff: "E troppo materiale." This lady and her companion were the party whom, thinking I might relish a little company—I had been dining alone for a week—he gleefully announced to me as newly arrived Americans. They were Americans, I found, who wore, pinned to their heads in permanence, the black lace ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... wreath was paling about the head of Night, and ever more wonderful on Morning's brow appeared the mark of power. And at the moment when the camp fires pale and the smoke goes grey to the sky, and camels sniff the dawn, suddenly Morning forgot Night. And out of that arbour of the gods, and away to the haunts of the dark, Night with his swart cloak slunk away; and Morning placed her hand upon the mists and drew them upward and revealed the earth, and drove the shadows before her, and they followed Night. ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... eternal youth, had already reached when I first knew him. It was a role to which, at the time, I attributed his concern about his health—his anxiety to know if we, any of us, had influenza before he would come home with me, his rush from the room or the house at a sniff or a sneeze. The truth is Bob shared Henley's love of the visible sign, or it may be nearer the truth to say that he shared his own love of it with Henley and his cousin who rarely, either of them, wrote anything in which it ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Philip Jacka. Philip was a lithe, restless youth, with curly hair that caught the light and bright, glinting eyes. He was far better-looking than his girl, and far more at his ease; sturdy, high-bosomed Katie was guilty of an occasional sniff of feminine sympathy; Philip looked on with the aloof ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... father and Ramabai, and all wondering where she was. She dared not call out for fear of attracting the leopards, whose movements she could hear constantly: the jar of their padded feet as they trotted under and about the palanquin, the sniff-sniff of their wet noses, an ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... at me for attending our church at home, and told me I ought to go down on my marrow-bones before his brazen idols, I'd whang him over the head with a frying-pan or anything else that came handy. That's the sort of thing I can't stand. As long as the people here don't snort and sniff at my ways I won't snort and ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight; but she gave no heed as she tore up the juicy buds and stems, and swallowed them with the appetite of a famished wolf. Then I would paddle ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... window to sniff in that damp, sweet scent of unseen flowers, to feel the white moonlight on her hand. She had often wished that, by some magic, the world might be enabled to spin out its whole time in such a gossamer, irradiant sheen as this—a sort of moon-haunted ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... room with a sniff; she was accustomed to better treatment. In fact, she bade fair to become a tyrant ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... expected to find there was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of gratuitous treachery, which in his view nothing could excuse; for he thought that even a passion of unrighteousness for its own sake could not excuse that. But could he detect it? Sniff it? Taste it? Receive some mysterious communication which would turn his invincible suspicions into a certitude strong enough to provoke action with all ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... didn't know there was so many chin whiskers outside of East Harniss, or some other back number place—and I say, 'Pardon, Monseer. Place delay Concorde?' Just like that with a question mark after it. After I say it two or three times he begins to get a floatin' sniff of what I'm drivin' at and says he: 'Place delay Concorde? Oh, we, we, we, Madame!' Then a whole string of jabber and arm wavin', with some countin' in the middle of it. Now I've learned 'one, two, three' in French and I know he ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Would you call up our enemies with your noise? (The wailing drops to a moan.) Put out that fire—they can sniff smoke as far as a vulture smells carrion. (CHOCO stamps out the fire.) You, Choco, do you show your face to me, misgotten whelp of a coyote! It was you who ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... studied the scene, two seasick navvies tottered out on deck to sniff the clean air. They dismally surveyed the traces of the storm. Then they moved weakly toward the boy, who was now scrutinizing the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... James's Street, and stopping to chaff the itinerant coffee vendor, who was preparing his stand at the corner of Piccadilly for his early customers, just about the time that Tom was beginning to rouse himself under the alder-tree, and stretch his stiffened limbs, and sniff the morning air. By the time the guardsman had let himself into his lodgings in Mount Street, our hero had undergone his unlooked for bath, and was sitting in a state of utter bewilderment as to what was next to be said or done, dripping and disconcerted, opposite to the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... flabellum[obs3], vertilabrum[obs3]. whiffle ball. V. blow, waft; blow hard, blow great guns, blow a hurricane &c. n.; wuther[obs3]; stream, issue. respire, breathe, puff; whiff, whiffle; gasp, wheeze; snuff, snuffle; sniff, sniffle; sneeze, cough. fan, ventilate; inflate, perflate|; blow up. Adj. blowing &c. v.; windy, flatulent; breezy, gusty, squally; stormy, tempestuous, blustering; boisterous &c. (violent) 173. pulmonic[Med], pulmonary. Phr. "lull'd ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... O Scribe, from yonder sniffy height; What pleasure lives in "sniff" (the Councillor sang), In sniff and scorn, the weakness of the "swells"? But cease to move so near the clouds, and cease To sit a votary of the "Great Pooh-Pooh"; And come, for Labour's in the valley, come, For Toil dwells ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... up again and again; they would draw back so as to avoid those stinging strokes, sniff, growl and push upward, more eager than ever to clutch the poor fellow, who was compressing himself between the limb and the trunk, and raining his blows with the persistency of ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... four big hounds were swimming aimlessly up and down the pool; a dozen more trotted to and fro along the water's edge, stopping to sniff and give tongue in an uncertain manner now and then; but there was no ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... and growled. This was his private hunting ground—the preserve he kept free of invaders. Dane put the cat down. The Salarik had found what he was seeking. He stood on tiptoe to sniff at a plant, his yellow eyes half closed, his whole stance spelling ecstasy. Dane looked ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... smells like peach leaves," snuffled the patient. "It's where it's handy to sniff at—that's ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... matter, Shanter?" cried Rifle, as the black suddenly threw back his head, dilated his nostrils, and began to sniff. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... different look," Ethan explained. "He stopped right here to sniff, and then went forward on the run, all ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... Blossom said that it was. Mr. Bangs heard another sniff of disgust from Miss Phipps. He was himself thoroughly disgusted and angry. This mockery of a great sorrow and a great love seemed so wicked and cruel. Marietta Hoag and her ridiculous control ceased to be ridiculous and funny. He longed ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sort of a beast do you want to kill?' she asked him. 'That is no business of yours,' said he. 'But it is my business,' she replied, 'for the poison that a wolf or a savage dog will eat, a bear will not even sniff at, and what makes one beast ill, on that will another beast thrive.' 'Then you must know that it is a bear.'—'Swear that you do not want the venom for a human being.' Fatia Negra swore with all sorts of subterranean oaths that it was really for a bear ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... or dog knows how to enjoy in its entirety. In great cities where life is pulsating around you, you are alert for the unexpected. The underlying principle of a world's backwater like this is restful stagnation. Here you must wallow in the uneventful. In vain you sniff around in quest of the exciting, mistaking like your fellow in the fable the shadow for the substance. The substance here is rest. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... muskrat's slide. Here was one at the butt of a tulip-poplar, its platform wet and freshly trodden, its "dive" shooting sheer over a root into the stream. Farther on stood a large tussock whose top was trampled flat and covered with sedge-roots. I could not resist putting my nose down for a sniff, so good is the smell of a fresh trail, so close are we to the rest of the pack. In the thick of the swamp I stopped a moment to examine the footprints of an otter at a shallow, shelving place along the bank, where, opening through the skunk-cabbage ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... said Miss Penkridge, with a sniff. "The world's full of 'em! How many murders go undetected—how many burglaries are never traced—how many forgeries are done and never found out? Piles of 'em—as the police could tell you. And talking about forgeries, what about old Barrett, who was the great ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher |
