"Puff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fetch'd around the goal) At the near prize each gathers all his soul, Each burns with double hope, with double pain, Tears up the shore, and thunders toward the main. First flew Eumelus on Pheretian steeds; With those of Tros bold Diomed succeeds: Close on Eumelus' back they puff the wind, And seem just mounting on his car behind; Full on his neck he feels the sultry breeze, And, hovering o'er, their stretching shadows sees. Then had he lost, or left a doubtful prize; But angry Phoebus to Tydides flies, Strikes from his hand the scourge, and renders vain His ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... replied. "We'll have a puff of wind about daylight at the latest, and the current sets north and south here rather than toward ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... usually found at 7000 to 10,000 feet elevation, and were growing here on mossy rocks, cooled by the spray of the river, whose temperature was only 56.3 degrees. My servant having severely sprained his wrist by a fall, the Lepchas wanted to apply a moxa, which they do by lighting a piece of puff-ball, or Nepal paper that burns like tinder, laying it on the skin, and blowing it till a large open sore is produced: they shook their heads at my treatment, which consisted in transferring some of the leeches from our persons to ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... woods beyond. They were still five miles distant, and he was tired; there was little chance of his reaching it before night. He put his paddle down for refreshment and rest, and while he was thus engaged, a change took place. A faint puff of air came; a second, and a third; a tiny ripple ran along the surface. Now he recollected that he had heard that the mariners depended a great deal on the morning and the evening—the land and the Lake—breeze as they worked along the shore. This was the first breath of the Land ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... the mountain continued burning slowly, though steadily, and our uncle told us he trusted it would do so without committing further damage, though he suspected that the beauties of many of the scenes we visited round its base must have been considerably marred; indeed, now and then a puff of wind brought a quantity of fine dust in our direction, which covered everything, and even penetrated ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... my dear," said I, "to dry my hair." She quickly set to work with powder and powder-puff in hand, but her smock was short and loose at the top, and I repented, rather too late, that I had not given her time to dress. I felt that all was lost, all the more as having to use both her hands she could not hold her smock and conceal two swelling ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the wind of the hour, too frail and too brittle to float into the future. Our little day of greatness is a mere child's puff-ball, inflated by men's laughter, floated by women's tears; what breeze so changeful as the one, what waters so shallow as the other?—the bladder dances a little while; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... threat, for in the middle of the right-hand panel of the door a small wicket was opened through which the priests were wont to puff incense into the tomb of the sacred bulls—and twice, thrice, finally, when he still would not be pacified, a fourth time, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of faith should regard doubt as devil-born, rather than a providential instrument in God's hand, is something I do not understand. If doubt humbles the Church and acts as a thorn in its flesh, may not such chastening be providential, quite as much as the things which puff it up? As Luther well expressed it, "We say to our Lord, that if he will have his church, he must keep it, for we cannot. And if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven." As Attila was the scourge ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... I entered the Transportation Buildin', and looked round me, there wuz no gentle prick to that overgrown puff ball to let the gas out drizzlin'ly and gradual—no, there wuz a sudden smash, a wild collapse, a flat and total squshiness—the puff ball wuz broke into a thousand pieces, and the wind it contained, where wuz it? Ask the breezes that wafted away Caesar's last groans, that blowed ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... blackened and worn by all the storms of the winter. Loosely against her masts was hanging and flapping her canvas, 510 Rent by so many gales, and patched by the hands of the sailors. Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over the ocean, Darted a puff of smoke, and floated seaward; anon rang Loud over field and forest the cannon's roar, and the echoes Heard and repeated the sound, the signal-gun of departure! 515 Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of the people! Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was read from the Bible, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... disentangle the different emotions, the pride, humility, pity, and passion, which are excited by a look of happy love or an unexpected caress. To make one's self beautiful, to dress the hair, to excel in talk, to do anything and all things that puff out the character and attributes and make them imposing in the eyes of others, is not only to magnify one's self, but to offer the most delicate homage at the same time. And it is in this latter intention that they are done by lovers, for the essence of love is kindness; and, indeed, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say, Once when the mother chanced to be away: One 'scapes, and tells his dam with bated breath How a huge beast had crushed the rest to death: "How big?" quoth she: "is this as big?" and here She swelled her body out. "No, nothing near." Then, seeing her still fain to puff and puff, "You'll burst," gays he, "before you're large enough." Methinks the story fits you. Now then, throw Your verses in, like oil to feed the glow. If ever poet yet was sane, no doubt, You may put in your plea, but not ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... king! Well, I should say you needed room. You splash into that basin like a kedge anchor goin' overboard and when you come out of it you puff like a grampus comin' up to blow. How do you cal'late Mrs. Armstrong enjoys seein' ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... as a collection of book-facts, or "as credenda propounded for us to believe," or when we attempt to "make Christ's righteousness serve onely as our outward covering."[19] "Some of our {310} Dogmata," he thinks, "and Notions of Justification puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of ourselves than God hath of us; and we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ serve only as a covering to wrap up our foul deformities and filthy vices ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... A puff, like smoke, from the entrance to the cavity announced her coming; but it was only the madly dancing cloud of craneflies clearing the passage at ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... She puffed a little also, and did contrive to attract peculiar attention. "But I have to be in my carriage every day at the same hour. I don't know what would be thought of us if we were absent." Then she turned, with a puff and a waddle, to Miss Abbot. "Dear Lady Tresham was with us." Mrs. Mountjoy murmured something as to her satisfaction at not having delayed the carriage-party, and bethought herself how exactly similar had been the excuse made by Sir Magnus himself. Then Lady Mountjoy gave another little ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... from other operatives." A puff of cigarette smoke wreathed upward from the speaker's lips. ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... answering; for he saw Olly coming, and was afraid he might want to kiss him. On the other side of the gate they had to begin to climb up a steep bit of soft green grass; and very hard work it was. After quite a little way the children began to puff and pant like two little ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Elliot, although a man and a clergyman, followed like a little boy the large woman with the water-waves through the weedage of the pastoral garden, and the girl sat weeping awhile from mixed emotions of anger and grief. Then she took a little puff from her bag, powdered her nose, straightened her hair and, also, went home, bag in hand, to ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... struck with similar result. The fifth, however, crackled a little, and rekindled, sinking hope in the observers, though it failed to kindle itself. The seventh burst at once into a bright blaze and almost drew forth a cheer, which, however, was checked when a puff of wind ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... about half a mile from the shore, making it about three-quarters of a mile from the fort, the peal of a cannon was heard, and a puff of smoke could be seen as it rose on the clear, starred sky, for the clouds had rolled away during the night. The shot dropped into the water a short ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their opponents' range, fired perpetually. All night long searchlight bombs were thrown. All night long, golden and red and yellow streams of flame or the sudden jagged flash of an explosion lit up the black smoke of burning buildings and fields in the valley, or showed the white puff-like low clouds of the bursting shrapnel. Not for an instant did the roar diminish, not for a second was the kindly veil of night left unrent by a fissure of vengeful flame. Yet, all night long, as ceaselessly ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... man, who was advancing with raised spear. I turned my head aside and felt sick as death. I could not bear to see him stab her. Glancing up again, to my surprise I saw the Masai's spear lying on the ground, while the man himself was staggering about with both hands to his head. Suddenly I saw a puff of smoke proceeding apparently from Flossie, and the man fell down headlong. Then I remembered the Derringer pistol she carried, and saw that she had fired both barrels of it at him, thereby saving her life. In another instant ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... regiment is dashing ashore, While bullets are whistling and cannons do roar, Says Montcalm: "Those are Shirley's—I know the lappels." "You lie," says Ned Botwood, "we belong to Lascelles'! Tho' our cloathing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff; So at you, ye b——s, here's ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and plundering; so they go on," returned the Major, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, preparatory to filling it anew; an employment that gave him an opportunity to give vent to his feelings, without pausing to puff.—"Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they go on. Now, do you remember old Watson, who was in the Massachusetts Levies, in the year '12?—old Tom Watson; he that was a sub under Barnwell, in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... seen one or two places in Szech'wan like this, but the danger is incomparably less and the road infinitely superior. We pull and pant and puff up, up, up, around each bend, and my men can scarce go forward. Huge pieces of rock have fallen from the cliff, and well-nigh block the way, and just ahead a landslip has carried off part of our course. ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Me own feeling is that the climate is not to blame. 'Tis age. I'm like a hollow-hearted tree, ready to fall with the first puff of ill wind. I've never been a man since that ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... captain's little vessel, close hauled, had been threshing through leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... A blistering puff of smoke enwrapped her as she went down. She saw a face blackened and ghastly advance in the flaring light of a lantern. Hands that seemed to come out of a cloud and a great darkness helped and sustained her, until she was ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... She will always have skill and energy in the conduct of life; and when all the froth and foam of youth has subsided, she will make a noble woman. Why, then, do I cling to this fancy? I feel that this little flossy cloud, this delicate, quiet little puff of thistledown, on which I have set my heart, is the only thing for me, and that without her my life will always be incomplete. I remember all our early life. It was she who sought me, and ran after me, and where has all that love gone to? Gone to this fellow; that's plain enough. When a girl ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was such, that I could scarcely persuade myself of its being real. But when I recovered from my surprise, and was convinced of the truth of the matter, I found the thing which I had followed, and heard puff and blow, to be a creature which came out of the sea, and was accustomed to enter at that hole to feed upon the dead carcases. I considered the mountain, and perceived it to be situate betwixt the sea and the town, but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... toward evening found myself wandering down town near the wharves. It was very dusty and close, and the temperature a slice of Hades served up on a hot plate. There was no need for matches, all you had to do was to put your unlighted cigar in your mouth and puff away. I was trying hard to remember why I had on glasses,—they were of no use in the world to me,—and I was also much astonished to find that I was wearing Seymour's coat and hat, the latter a typical western slouch, broad-brimmed and generous. I also sported a tie loud enough to ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... curiosity, as usual, proving too strong for alarm, she set out with me in order not to miss a peep of the great man. James Skene and his lady were with us, and we gave our carriages such additional dignity as a pair of leaders could add, and went to meet him in full puff. The Prince very civilly told me, that, though he could not see Melrose on this occasion, he wished to come to Abbotsford for an hour. New despair on the part of Mrs. Scott, who began to institute a domiciliary search for cold meat through the whole city of Selkirk, which produced one ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... he began to puff and blow and the snow began to bank up higher and higher in front of us and on top of us until, bymeby, he couldn't stand no more, and he jest laid down and died. Well, of course that put me afoot and I was almost despairin'. The snow was stacked up on top of me about ten feet deep and I was ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... with people; then, on the opposite side of the hall, far away, other galleries equally crowded, separated from her by a vast open space; she leaned, still standing, against the wall, amazed to be there, bewildered, confused. A puff of hot air striking her in the face, the hum of voices ascending from below drew her down the sloping floor of the gallery, toward the edge of a yawning pit, so to speak, in the centre of the great vessel, where her son must ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... believe it possible; for the discarded sheath is absolutely intact from end to end. Neither the terminal spurs nor the double rows of spines do the slightest damage to the delicate mould. The long-toothed saw leaves the delicate sheath unbroken, although a puff of the breath is enough to tear it; the ferocious spurs slip out of it without leaving so much as ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... dropped over his head, and his hiding-place was hidden. But while he and Hiram stood looking at the place where Mr. Crymble had disappeared, there sounded a muffled squawk from the depths, there was the dull rumble of rocks, an inward crumbling of earth where the planks were, a puff of dust, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... when Nancy Ellen hung several new dresses and a wrapper on her side of the closet after her first pay-day, and furnished her end of the bureau with a white hair brush and a brass box filled with pink powder, with a swan's-down puff for its application. For three months Kate had waited and hoped that at least "thank you" would be vouchsafed her; when it failed for that length of time she did two things: she studied so diligently that her father called her into the barn and ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... strategy. In localities where no white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar. From the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail to collect his monthly dues. That signal or a puff of smoke told the Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from the "license-man." Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides into artificial caves or leafy coverts. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... unknown. Bon Gaultier's verses are not as a rule much more than rough-and-ready imitations; and, like so much of the humour of their day, and of Scotch humour in particular, they generally depend for their point upon drinking and drunkenness. Some of the different forms of the Puff Poetical are amusing, especially the advertisement of Doudney Brothers' Waistcoats, and the Puff Direct in which Parr's Life-pills are glorified after the manner of a German ballad. The Laureate is a fair hit at ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... end. Here, too, we find ourselves coming down on all its old ceremonial and observance, from that new height which we found our foreign philosopher in such quiet possession of,—taking his way at a puff through poor Cicero's periods,—those periods which the old orator had taken so much pains with, and laughing at his pains:—but this English philosopher is more daring still, for it is he who disposes, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... were talking, they reached the interior of Mrs. Ch'in's apartments. As soon as they got in, a very faint puff of sweet fragrance was wafted into their nostrils. Pao-yue readily felt his eyes itch and his bones grow weak. "What a fine smell!" he exclaimed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... my bewilderment during the space of time it takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... any rate," said Eric, keeping off the wind with his cap, as he lighted a cigar, and began to puff. ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... A puff of smoke from the bushes; another; twenty. But no bullets came, the enemy firing from too long a distance. It was like a peaceable field ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... upon us heavily runs, Silent and sullen, the floating fort; Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, And leaps the terrible death, With fiery breath, From her ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... for one or the other to ignore self. Aubrey is the epitome of selflessness. So that I claim no credit for the noiseless wheels of our domestic machinery, for over trifles I am inclined to go up in a puff of vapour and blue smoke, and I ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... mile and a quarter—it was a march of fully twenty minutes—to the edge of the woodland, the proposed cover of the column. Ten minutes before this point was reached a tiny puff of smoke showed on the brow of the hostile ridge; then, at an interval of several seconds, followed the sound of a distant explosion; then, almost immediately, came the screech of a rifled shell. Every man who heard it swiftly asked himself, ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... be considerably deeper than either brother had anticipated, and Waldo vanished from sight for a few seconds, then reappearing with lusty puff and splutter, shaking the pearly drops from his close-clipped ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... with the hollow note of consumptives on the outlying rocks. On the horizon was a bank of fog, outlined with the crests and slopes and gulches of the mountain beside him. It sent an advance wrack scudding gracefully across the ocean to puff among the redwoods, capriciously clinging to some, ignoring others. Then came the vast white mountain rushing over the roaring ocean, up the cliffs and into the gloomy forests, blotting the ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that the purring monster could tell no tales. How disconcerting it would be should the scarlet devil suddenly shout aloud: "Well, Steve, don't you hope we do not get stalled to-day the way we did going to Torrington?" Mercifully there was no danger of that. The engine might puff and purr and snort but at least it could not talk, and his secret was quite safe. This reflection lighted his face with courage and when the family came out to join him no one would have suspected that the slender boy waiting on the doorstep harbored a thought ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... regarded as an old fogy, because he assumed that the spores of smut travel from the manure and seed of the previous crop in the circulation of the plant to the capsule, and thus convert the grain into a puff-ball, so also the ears of corn, the oats, and rye. This monstrosity on the rye grains is called ergot, or spurred rye, and when it is eaten by chickens or other fowls their feet and legs shrivel ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... seemed, with the mellow afternoon sunlight dancing on the water as a puff of warm wind came now and then along the river. The trees were so green and the sky so blue, and the barges, and horses that drew them by the towing-path on the other side, all seemed to add to my pleasure, for the barges seemed to ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... giving out with a sigh a long puff of smoke, "I dare not assume the responsibility. I go with the majority, which has decided that we await in this city the threatened siege, and repulse the enemy by the power of artillery, and ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... Miller, after fixing life preservers on both of them, must have watched for his chance at a good puff of wind, close-hauled on the sheet and sent the boat over. That explains why they weren't very cordial with us last night. Our overhauling them prevented ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... growled the boatswain, as he slacked the sheet to a still fiercer puff. "If this had been a fair wind, now, we could have shown whole canvas to it, and would have been reelin' off our seven, or even eight knots as easily as possible. But, as it is, we can't make no headway agin it; and the time ain't far off, in ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... master Juet, and uttered these remarkable words, while he pointed towards this paradise of the new world—"See! there!"—and thereupon, as was always his way when he was uncommonly pleased, he did puff out such clouds of dense tobacco smoke that in one minute the vessel was out of sight of land, and Master Juet was fain to wait until the winds ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 'Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,' 'Vox populi, vox Dei,' a very liberal tribute to the vanity and to the prejudices of the classes who might be expected to send their children to the institution or to puff it; with an elaborate pivot a la Lacordaire—that the Church had achieved all that had been effected in this genre hitherto. Au reste, there was the wonderful mechanism which gives that church such ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... stood, it was," declared the Father. "But all at once, a smart puff o' wind caught that pretty wisp o' veilin' from the young wife, and wafted it away. And as quick as the wind itself after it she darted; but when she was close to it, up and off it whirled again, and she followed ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... front door it was slammed with a quick puff of wind in their faces. They heard Mrs. Barnard's voice calling piteously. "Oh, father, do let ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... One of the guns firing at us could not, for some time, be accurately located, owing to some small trees, etc., which intervened, so the other gun received most of our attention. Finally, I marked the hidden one exactly, beyond a small tree, from the puff of smoke when it fired. I then asked J. P., as we called him, to let me try a shot at it, to which he kindly assented. I got a first-rate aim and ordered "Fire!" The enemy's gun did not fire again, though its companion continued ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... afraid she would catch cold in the draft, lose her glove out of the window, go out on the platform, or fall in stepping from car to car, Gypsy did not pay the immediate heed to his warning that she ought to have done. Before he had time to speak again, puff! came a sharp gust of wind and away went her pretty turban with its new brown feather,—over the bridge and down into ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if you—cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... was summoned to the cellar, where Mrs. Cornelia Barclay of New York was evolving from a pan of flour and water that miracle in the pie department called puff paste. This, it seems, can only be accomplished where the thermometer is below forty, and near a refrigerator where the compound can be kept cold until ready to be popped into the oven. No jokes or nonsense here. With queenly dignity the flour and water ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and, from the darkness within, Mr Girtle and the old Indian stepped slowly out, bringing with them a soft, warm puff of the aromatic odour, and, as they grew more distinct in the faint light of the stained-glass window, everything was so still in the great house that there was a strange unreality about them, fostered by the silence ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... flitting from Bud to Debutante to Ingenue to Fawn to Broiler to Kiddykadee back in 1880, he was a famous Beau with skin- tight Trousers, a white Puff Tie run through a Gold Ring and a Hat lined with Puff Satin, the same as a ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... sharp flash, a puff of hot flame, a great cloud of smoke, and then darkness, with the side of house and ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... Cupid's bow come flashing fast towards him, to feel the touch of the stock as it fits itself against his shoulder, and the kindly give of the trigger, and then, oh thrilling sight! to perceive the wonderful and yet awful change from life to death, the puff of feathers, and the hurtling passage of the dull mass borne onward by its own force to fall twenty yards from where the pellets struck it. Next session the politician will be hooted down, next year perhaps ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... really committed suicide and that this was a note of explanation. But it is not. Listen. It is just a line or two. It reads: 'Am feeling better now, though that was a great party last night. Thanks for the newspaper puff which I have just read. It was very kind of you to get them to print it. Meet me at the same place and same time to-night. Your Blanche.' The note was not stamped, and was never sent. Perhaps she rang for a messenger. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a while flattered himself that he was immersed in perfect happiness; but, somehow,—he could not tell what it was; perhaps he was not quite old enough,—but somehow he did become a little weary of being a mandarin. The palace was deliciously perfumed, but he longed for a puff of fresh wind. Nothing could be richer than their dresses, but the embroidery was rather heavy. Nothing could be profounder than their politeness, but it would have been a relief to have given some boy a good snowballing. Nothing could be serener than their silence, but he would gladly have ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... back as history goes and probably still farther back in time. For at that point, just where the winterbourne gushes out from the low hills, is the spot man would naturally select to make his home. And he would see no mansion or big building, no puff of white steam and sight of a long, black train creeping over the earth, nor any other strange thing. It would appear to him even as he knew it before he fell asleep—the same familiar scene, with furze and bramble and bracken on the slope, the wide expanse with sheep and cattle grazing in ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... Moses stood before Pharaoh and said, "Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, let my people go, that they may serve me. If you refuse I shall plague you and your people worse than ever, and so teach you that there is none like me in all the earth. Don't puff yourself up with conceit, for you were made what you are only in order that through you my power might be manifested. You had better cave in at once." But Pharaoh would not harken. He tacitly declared that the Lord God of the Hebrews might ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... in our part of the world," said he, "a puff of wind from the Gribun Cliffs would send the whole ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... victory declared for Boreas, and he drove the smooth strip towards our vessel, which had hitherto been sailing in the territory of the south wind. We presently entered the calm region; and while we had not a puff to swell our sails, the wind raged with undiminished fury on both sides. This strange spectacle lasted for about a quarter of an hour; when the north wind, which had been continually advancing, reached us, and carried us quickly forward towards the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... self-righteous moralists who puff themselves into a state of Jingo complacency over the failings of foreign nations, to declare with considerable unction that the domestic hearth, which every Frenchman habitually tramples upon, is maintained in unviolated purity in every British ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... for this job.' 'Whau, what for,' said Dick. 'Aw 've no skill of sich like squallin' boxes as this. If they'd taen my advice, an' stick't to th' bass fiddle, aw could ha stopt that ony minute. It has made me puff, carryin' that thing. I never once thought that it 'd start again at after th' hymn wur done. Eh, I wur some mad! If aw'd had a shool-full o' smo' coals i' my hond, aw'd hachuck't 'em into't.... Yer, tho', how it's grindin' away just ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh
... one of them being the bowl of punch and its contiguous beverages in the colonel's den. This seemed to be the storm centre to-night, and here he determined, even at the risk of offending his host, to set up danger-signals at the first puff of wind. The old fellows, if they chose, might empty innumerable ladles full of apple toddy or compounds of Santa Cruz rum and pineapples into their own persons, but not the younger bloods! His beloved Kate had suffered enough ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... left, recalling the incidents of that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the gloom. With tears on her cheeks, but all eager and smiling once more, Gwendolyn blew the candles out. And as she bent forward to puff at each tiny one, Jane held her bright hair back, for fear that a strand might ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... crown; Now, opening seas of knowledge, shoreless, vast, Knowledge of ages past and yet to come, Knowledge of nature and the hidden laws That guide her changes, guide the roiling spheres, Sakwal on sakwal,[1] boundless, infinite, Yet ever moving on in harmony, He thought to puff his spirit up with pride Till he should quite forget a suffering world, In sin and sorrow groping blindly on. But when he saw that lust of power moved not, And thirst for knowledge turned him not aside From earnest search after the living light, From tender love for every living thing, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... at the moment, because less influenced by the mysterious night and the silence, and the intensity of thought which fixed itself relentlessly in some particular cells of the brain until they became fevered and ached horribly. A little puff of cooler air began to blow over the baked and withered camp; but the room where the lamp was burning had become intolerably hot, and the mosquitoes which had been contemplating the wall thoughtfully throughout the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... were in a repair train in rear. The leading train halted at Graspan station, from whence by means of field-glasses a large number of Boers could be seen standing on the crests of the kopjes commanding the line. Almost immediately a puff of smoke appeared on the ridge a little to the east of the railway, and a shell whistled over the train, bursting some 200 yards beyond. Lieutenant Dean at once detrained two guns (the strength of his party being insufficient to man-handle more than ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... ornamented with gilt anchor buttons, stood suddenly in the doorway on the right, smoking solemnly a long churchwarden clay pipe, rilling his mouth very full of smoke, and then aggravating the looker-on by puzzling him as to where the smoke would come from next— for sometimes he sent a puff out of one corner of his mouth, sometimes out of the other. Then it would come from a little hole right in the middle, out of which he had taken the waxed pipe stem, but only for him perhaps to press one side of his nose with the pipe, and send ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... the hole in the roof, they made a screen of canvas, covered her with cloaks, and heaped them with hay, and she took no harm; and the pure open air that blew in was soft with all the southern sweetness of early spring-tide, and the little one throve in it like the puff-ball owlets in the hayloft, or the little ring-doves in the ivy, whose parent's cooing voice was Eustacie's favourite music. Almost as good as these her fellow-nestlings was the little Moonbeam, la petite Rayonette, as Eustacie fondly called this light that had come back to her from the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There were tall Gugollaph-trees all along the road, here and there, but Sara felt sure she would know the right one when she saw it. And sure enough, there it was, with the smithy in the shade of it, and the Koopf blowing up the fire in his forge with a pair of puff-ball bellows. She knew now why he had hurried home so fast: it was to put on his apron. It was of the finest mouse-hide, and he was plainly very ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... "Ja, that is right." He blew a puff of smoke toward the morning clouds; "the Bachs do not hurry, my child—no more does ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... part of it, with the greatest curiosity. It appeared to him, however, to be immaterial as to which end the mouth was to be applied, for he put the lower part of the instrument to his mouth, and drawing up his breath to its full extent, sent such a puff of wind into it, as would have been sufficient for a diapason pipe of an organ; not hearing, however, the accustomed sound, he delivered the instrument to John Lander, who brought out of it the shrillest note which he could, which set the king and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... sprang up to his seat and the car glided off. Pamela leaned forward and looked at herself in the mirror. There was a shade more colour in her face, perhaps, than usual, but her low waves of chestnut hair were unruffled. She used her powder puff with ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and then to occasional sighs. She opened her bag, extracted a miniature powder-puff and dabbed at her small upturned nose spitefully. I knew ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... fully awakening in the early dawn, looked out upon the frosty air, his breath was as visibly voluminous as the puff from an escape-valve of the "Swogon." With his finger-nail he scratched the winter enameling from his window-pane, and through that peep-hole gazed out upon the lake. The frozen expanse stretched steel-white, glary and glistening, a ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... books, pamphlets, etc., Balzac, as has been said, did a certain amount of journalism, especially in the Caricature, his performances including, I regret to say, more than one puff of his own work; and in this, as well as by the success of the Chouans, he became known about 1830 to a much wider circle, both of literary and of private acquaintance. It cannot indeed be said that he ever mixed much in society; it was impossible ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... copper in the brew-house; the tree sighed deeply, and each sigh was like a pistol-shot; so the children who were playing there ran up, and sat in front of the fire, gazing at it, and crying, 'Piff! puff! bang!' But for each report, which was really a sigh, the tree was thinking of a summer's day in the wood, or of a winter's night out there, when the stars were shining; it thought of Christmas Eve, and of Humpty Dumpty, which ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... religion been likened to a madman's robe, for the least puff of reason parts it and shows the wearer's nakedness. This view of religion explains the otherwise inexplicable fact that eminent piety is usually associated with eminent imbecility. Such men as Newton, Locke, and Bacon are not remembered and reverenced on account of their faith. By all but peddling ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... "A great puff of wind came in through the window, and it blew the blind against the candle, and the flame of the candle came towards me, and I had my hand up to arrange my hair. I was fastening it up with hairpins to make myself ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... consultation with faithful John, in the evening, revealed to him the perplexing nature of the material processes necessary to get up his fair puff of thistledown in all that wonderful whiteness and fancifulness of costume which had so ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... vented horrid Impieties on this Occasion, and introduced Jupiter shaking his Sides at the Perjuries of Lovers, and ordering the Winds to puff them away: Nay, he is said to have forsworn himself even by Styx to Juno: and therefore, say they, he encourages Men to ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... "Well, let it puff! If ther's onny shovin to be done tha'll ha to tak thi share on it. We'll stop at yond haase at top o'th hill an then wol we get a bite an a sup, ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... each packet!" from Vendor in gangway) ... history and life of the ... ("'Buffalo Bill Puzzle,' one penny!" from another vendor behind) ... impress one fact upon your minds; this is not ... (roar and rattle of passing train) ... in the ordinary or common acceptation of ... ("Puff-puff-puff!" from engine shunting trucks) ... Many unthinking persons have said ... (Piercing and prolonged scream from same engine.) This is not so. On the contrary ... (Metallic bangs from trucks.) Men and animals are ... ("Programmes! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... delighted to find himself safe that he no longer felt sorrowful or hungry. When we have escaped a great danger, we no longer think of small annoyances. Jack fell asleep from fatigue, and was just dreaming that he was at home eating millet and milk, when suddenly, piff, paff, puff, he heard a shot and started ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... had been sighted by the look-out forward was a small Mtpe dhow well under the lee of the island and creeping along-shore, her light sails and the wider spread of canvas which her lateen rig permitted enabling her to take advantage of the slightest puff of air; while our heavy pinnace, with her small-cut sails hardly raised above the surface of the sea, so as to get the full force of the wind, required a strong breeze to move her at all, although then ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... casing a few inches from where the sheriff was standing. Quick as thought, with the instinct born of a semi-guerrilla army experience, he raised his gun and fired twice at the point from which a faint puff of smoke showed the hostile bullet to have been sent. He stood a moment watching, and then rested his gun against the window, and reached behind him mechanically for the other weapon. It was not on the bench. As the sheriff ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... closer observation, is a kind of loose morning sack, with, I think, a silky gloss on it; and she seems to have a silver comb in her hair,—no, this latter item is a mistake. Sheltered as the space is between the two rows of houses, a puff of the east-wind finds its way in, and shakes off some of the withering blossoms ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in it that offend them, and because they want to find matter in it for abusing you. Let them: the more it is discussed, the more strongly Will your fame be established. I commend you for scorning any artifice to puff your book; but you must allow me to hope it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... tree. Then he went to the next, and the next, and so on, till he had gobbled them all off the trees, one after another. But when Richard expected to see them go after the turkey, there was nothing there but a flock of huge mushrooms and puff-balls. ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... or Broiled: Serve with Currant Jelly and—if offered as a main course at a luncheon—with light vegetables, Mushrooms, Peas, Beans, Asparagus on Toast, Spinach in Puff Paste ...
— Prepare and Serve a Meal and Interior Decoration • Lillian B. Lansdown
... sacrifices, so we may say about assaults on Scripture, 'If they had done their work, would they not have ceased to be offered?' And the effect of the heaviest artillery that can be brought into position is as transient as the boom of their report and the puff of their smoke. Why, who knows anything about the world's wonders of books that a hundred years ago made good men's hearts tremble for the ark of God? You may find them in dusty rows on the top shelves of great libraries. But if their names had not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... brought both of us to our feet, for it shook the very ground beneath us. We looked in the direction from which it seemed to come—Meaux—and we saw a column of smoke rising in the vicinity of Mareuil—only two miles away. Before we had time to say a word we saw a second puff, and then came a second explosion, then a third and a fourth. I was just rooted to my spot, until Amelie dashed out of the kitchen, and then we all ran to the hedge,—it was only a hundred feet or so nearer the smoke, and we could see ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... children. In Mrs. Bergen's (400) list of popular American plant-names are included some which come from this source, for example: "frog-plant (Sedum Telephium)," from the children's custom of "blowing up a leaf so as to make the epidermis puff up like a frog"; "drunkards (Gaulteria procumbens)," because "believed by children to intoxicate"; "bread-and-butter (Smilax rotundifolia)," because "the young leaves are eaten by children"; "velvets (Viola pedata)," a corruption of the "velvet ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... said a rather rollicking voice, with a rank puff and a shower of sparks, as the cautious ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... of it by taking cold. Aurora affected wearing her furs in the house. To increase their sense of ill usage, they would now and then turn their faces away from the fire and sigh, admiring how the air was dimmed by a puff of silver smoke. These pilgrims from a Northern climate, who knew so well the sensation of breath freezing in the nostrils and numbness seizing the nose when on certain winter days they stepped from their houses into the snow-piled streets at home, could not admit ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... hard-palate, and the root of the tongue with the soft-palate. The interruption may be complete, as in p or t, or only partial, as in th. The sound of the consonant results from the slight explosion or puff which follows the recoil of the movable parts from the point ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... fallen by the rifles of the other. The Hoopers were loyal Union men, and if the Watsons yielded any loyalty it was to the State of North Carolina. On one occasion shortly before the final tragedy, when one of the young Hoopers was sitting quietly in his door, a light puff of smoke rose from the bushes and a rifle-ball plowed through his leg. The Hoopers resolved to begin the new year by wiping out their enemies, root and branch. Before light they had surrounded the log ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... first ominous puff before the tempest, the deadly breath of the Black Death—called "influenza," but known of old among the verminous myriads of the East—swept over the earth from East to West. Millions died; millions were yet to perish of it; yet the dazed world, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Pulcifer assured him to that effect. But Raish was still uncertain just how to proceed. He continued to puff and scrutinize. ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... boat stopped and swayed a little in the current. There was a flash of flame from her side, a puff of smoke, and a crash that traveled far up and down the river. A cannon ball struck inside the palisade, but buried itself harmlessly in the ground, merely sending up a shower of dirt. There was a second flash, a second puff and crash, and another cannon ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I reached the top, before, as I looked down into the glen below me, a puff of white smoke, instantly succeeded by a second, and the loud full reports of both his barrels from among the green-leafed alders, showed me that Tom had sprung game. The next second I heard the sharp questing of the spaniel Dan, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... he did, 'bout how he fear'd he losin' de use er he min', 'kaze he done come ter dat pass dat he aint kin fool de yuther creeturs no mo', en dey push 'im so closte twel 't won't be long 'fo' dey'll git 'im. De ole Witch-Rabbit she sot dar, she did, en suck in black smoke en puff it out 'g'in, twel you can't see nothin' 't all but 'er great big eyeballs en 'er great big ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... strangely solemn and impressive in the deep silence of a ride across the forest. Horses bred on the moors, if left to themselves, rapidly pick their way through pools and bogs, and canter smoothly over dry flats of natural meadow; creep safely down the precipitous descents, and climb with scarcely a puff of distress these steep ascents; splash through fords in the trout-streams, swelled by rain, without a moment's hesitation, and trot along sheep-paths, bestrewed with rolling stones, without a stumble: so that you are perfectly at liberty to enjoy the luxury of excitement, and follow out the winding ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... does not convey any great idea of security to a stranger. They are always painted white, and the paint is always very dirty. When they begin to move, they moan and groan in melancholy tones which are subversive of all comfort; and as they continue on their courses they puff and bluster, and are forever threatening to burst and shatter themselves to pieces. There they lie, in a continuous line nearly a mile in length, along the levee of St. Louis, dirty, dingy, and now, alas! mute. They have ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope |
