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More "Puff" Quotes from Famous Books



... overboard, and six of the crew had been set to work bailing in deadly earnest to keep ahead of the new leaks, there was time to consider the position and to realize how hugely better off we were than if the launch had caught us somewhere close inshore. Now we could sail safely northward, every puff of wind carrying us nearer to British water and safety, whereas unless they could mend that high-pressure boiler, they would have to lie there for a week, or a month—die unless some one came in search of them. Had ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... spin a coin. Madame Depine was to toss, the "Princess" to cry pile ou face. From the stocking Madame Depine drew, naturally enough, the solitary five-franc piece. It whirled in the air; the "Princess" cried face. The puff-puff of the steam-tram sounded like the panting of anxious Fate. The great coin fell, rolled, balanced itself between two destinies, then subsided, pile upwards. The poor "Princess's" face grew even longer; but for the life of her Madame Depine could not make her own face other than ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... his breast. I hesitated a second, squinting along the barrel of the carbine; I wanted him to round the point that jutted out from the other side of the canyon, so that his partners could not see his finish. If they did not see him go down, nor observe the puff of smoke from behind the rock, they might think he had fired a shot himself. And while I waited, grumbling at the combination of circumstances that made it necessary to shoot down even a cold-blooded brute like him ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... sidelong glance at the Baron, and then at the Count, and blew a puff of smoke, but made ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... dressed!" cried Alice, and soon she, her sister, Estelle and the other women were donning their Southern costumes, wide skirts, with hoops to puff them out, and broad-brimmed hats, under which ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... supports this view. While sitting in my garden the other day a puff of wind blew a lady's parasol across the lawn. It rolled away close to a dog lying quietly in the sun. The dog looked at it for a moment, but seeing nothing to account for its movements, barked nervously, put its tail between its legs, and ran away, turning occasionally ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... the three people round it wanted for no element or means of comfort. There were the shortcakes, which Mr. Linden might more readily recognize now in their light brown flakiness—his coffee was poured upon the richest of cream; the potatoes came out of the oven in the shape of a great puff-ball, of most tender consistency; and the remains of a cold chicken had been mystified into such a dish of delicacy as no hands but a Frenchwoman's—or Faith's—could concoct. It's a pleasant thing to be catered for by hands that love you. Mr. Linden had found that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... in a wild panic. It was a blast of that kind that threw down and severely injured Battalion Chief M'Gill, one of the oldest and most experienced of firemen, at a fire on Broadway in March, 1890; and it has cost more brave men's lives than the fiercest fire that ever raged. The "puff," as the firemen call it, comes suddenly, and from the corner where it is least expected. It is dread of that, and of getting overcome by the smoke generally, which makes firemen go always in couples or more together. They never lose sight ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... anything to square up with those fellows," grumbled Nappy. He paused for a moment to puff away at his cigarette. "What do you ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer

... the reason for the difference at home is because we always carry a few amateurs, who are privileged to come in at practice and do all the damage they can, but who have to keep mighty quiet on the march. They can carry their horns, puff out their cheeks and look as grand as they please, but if they'd presume to cut loose with some real notes and smear up a piece, they'd ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... hawkweed, stretched away in rolling undulations like the plain of the sea; dense woods hung massed on the far horizon, beech-woods, sapphire blue beyond the pale silver and amber, of the middle distance, and under them a puff of white smoke from a passing train, or was it the white scar of a quarry? He could not be sure across so many miles of sunlit air, but it must have been smoke, for it dissolved slowly away till there was no gleam ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... who may this lady be whom ye so ungallantly devote to perdition?" inquired a stranger from behind, who had hitherto been silent, apparently not wishful to join the hilarity of those he addressed. The party quesited was in the midst of a puff of exhalation more than usually prolonged when the question was put, so that ere he could frame his organs to the requisite reply the pragmatical tailor, whose glibness of tongue was equalled only by his assurance, gave the following by way ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... it, but she always sighed more than usual, and behaved with even more sobriety and gravity then, as if to show that the utmost splendour of the world as represented by the satinet gown and a Paisley shawl could not make her forget that she was mortal, or puff up ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... Genlis, "Adele et Theodore," I. 312.—De Goncourt, "La Femme an dixhuitieme siecle," 318.—Mme. d'Oberkirk, I. 56.—Description of the puff au sentiment of the Duchesse de Chartres (de Goncourt, 311): "In the background is a woman seated in a chair and holding an infant, which represents the Duc de Valois and his nurse. On the right is a parrot pecking at a cherry, and on the left a little Negro, the duchess's two pets: the whole is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... my darling with his odour of health is to feel a flood of bodily strength coursing through me, enough to make me forget that I am a frail thing myself, who could be blown away by a puff of wind. But to hear him talk on his own subject is to be lifted up to the highest reaches ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... the blazing rags and trampled them under his feet. But the fire had reached the powder. There was a quick hissing sound of a burning fuse, and then a great puff. Brown threw himself on his face and waited, but there was nothing more. His two friends rushed to him and ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor

... ago that I saw two Dissenting Ministers (the Ultima Thud of the sanguine, visionary temperament in politics) stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it Radical Tobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at every puff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim blew up the army opposed to the Allies! They had deceived the Senate. Methinks I see them now, smiling as in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the Demon Cigarette as he abhorred tobacco in any form, but he had martyrized himself until he was able to puff up the cold-air flue in the stilly reaches of the night without having to grope his way back to the bed and watch the room careen about him. He did not inhale, but he had learned to imitate the process so as to defy ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... allers a mistery to peeple how I make farmin pay, but, Squire, between you and I, heer's where I reckon I've got 'em. Where I loses in other branches I make up heer. Any and everybody which invents a farmin masheen sends me one, and I gives them a puff. Every 30 days I gets up a bee, to which I invites the nabors. With hammers we knock them masheens to pieces, and, sir!" said he, blowin his bugle horn of liberty with his cote sleeve, "as the Roman mother once said, 'these is my tressoors,' for, sure's your born, the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various

... boldness with the fair, so that it raises scandalised shafts in horror to the sky!—Hang care!—A barleycorn—Eat and be merry.—The gear upon my head and under my eye is a far more gorgeous red, when I puff out my chest and strut, than any robin's waistcoat or finch's tie.—A fine day. All is well. I curvet—I blow my horn. Conscious of having done my duty, I may quite properly assume the swagger of a musketeer, and the calm commanding bearing of a ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... The clouds were completely overhead now, from north to south, from east to west. There was not a patch of blue to be seen. The panting earth waited in abject fear. A puff of wind came, hot and stifling, as if an oven door had suddenly been opened. It passed over the mulgas, making them sigh and moan, and then was gone again, leaving the same breathless stillness. Another puff, this time cool and fresh. It also passed away and left the men ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... closely. In the centre of it he paused and looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As it came near he trembled from head to foot, and, catching at the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... will be extremely gay, And Hook extremely dirty; And brick and mortar still will say "Try Warren, No. 30;" And "General Sauce" will have its puff, And so will General Jackson— And peasants will drink up heavy stuff, Which they pay a heavy tax on; And long and late, at many a fete, Gooseberry champagne will shine— And as old as it was in Twenty-eight, It ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various

... present," said I, "require a knife with indispensable cheese-scoop and marmalade-shredding attachment. My indispensable steel mirror with patent lanyard and powder puff for attachment to service revolver is in perfect working order. I already possess two pairs of marching boots with indispensable trapdoors in each heel containing complete pedicure set and French-Portuguese dictionaries. My indispensable fur waistcoats, Indian clubs, ponchos, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... came to us in flaws from different points of the compass, we did not come to an anchor until nearly midnight. We had a boat ahead all the time that we were working in, and those aboard ship were continually bracing the yards about for every puff that struck us, until about twelve o'clock, when we came to in forty fathoms water, and our anchor struck bottom for the first time since we left Boston,— one hundred and three days. We were then divided into three watches, and thus stood out the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... according to size. Cooked haricot beans. 1 onion. About one tablespoon of chopped mint or parsley. Puff or short paste. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... him through the pantry door I locks it behind him. Followin' which, Doris uses the powder-puff under her eyes a little and we adjourns to the Plutoria palm-room, where we had a perfectly good dinner, all the humility Westy could buy with a two-dollar tip, and no folksy chatter on ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... the interruption away with a gesture of his strangely slim hands. "This ain't an argument. It's facts. Another ten years on the road, and where'll you be? In the discard. A man of forty-six can keep step with the youngsters, even if it does make him puff a bit. But a woman of forty-six—the road isn't the place for her. She's tired. Tired in the morning; tired at night. She wants her kimono and her afternoon snooze. You've seen some of those old girls on the ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... Mrs. James, shaking her head, with a jam puff in her hand, "if the Queen had listened to Maxwell she might have lived in safety ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... that their firebrands were no longer in their hands, and a moment later a puff of smoke from the corner of the house and the exultant yells of the savages warned me of our new danger. As I turned from the door, I met Brightson coming to seek ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... leaped up and bounced down the trail ahead of them. Fadeaway jerked his horse to a stop. "Now we'll see some real speed!" he said. There was a flash of the dog's long body, which grew smaller and smaller in the distance; then a puff of dust spurted up. Fadeaway saw the dog turn end over end, regain his feet and toss something in ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... back to those very real dreams of the nursery at home, and baby there, and little brother, and papa and mamma, and the long time ago, hours and hours ago! when I said good-bye, and Bobbie kissed his hand out of window, and the carriage took me off—a happy little woman, really going in the puff-puff! Oh, how could I ever have felt so happy then and be so miserable now? Had I ever thought that I was coming away from them all, with nobody at all but Jane, the new nursemaid, to take care of me? Had I ever thought how quite alone I should be, never able to ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous

... the wind came fresher and fresher, and now and then a damp puff and lull, that were too significant tokens for a seaman to disregard. Captain Ratlin jumped upon the inner braces of the taffrail, and shading his eyes with his hands for a moment, looked steadily to windward, then glanced at his well-filled sails as though he was loth to lose even a minute of such ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... in a brazier near at hand, I dexterously substituted a fragment of paper, on which I had been figuring my accounts, for the paper received, from the dhobi, placing the former on the glowing charcoal embers and bestowing the latter in the security of my girdle. A curl of white smoke, a puff of flame, and the work of destruction was, to all ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... a fresh tribute of curiosity. A strong puff of wind fluttered the awnings and one of the screens blowing out wide let in upon the quarter-deck the rippling glitter of the Shallows, showing to d'Alcacer the luminous vastness of the sea, with the line of the distant horizon, dark ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... goes up to him, and looks in his face. "Why," says he, "you confounded long-shore picked-up son of a green-grocer, what are you after?" an' he takes the article a slap with his larboard-flipper, as sent it flying to leeward like a puff of smoke. "Keep off the quarter-deck, you lubber," says he, giving him a wheel down into the lee-scuppers—"it's well the captain didn't catch ye!" "Come aft here, some of ye," sings out the third mate again, "to brace up the main yard; and you, ye lazy beggar, clap on this moment ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... almost calm, except for the swell running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles from land in ten minutes under the hour—speed, that, for a twenty-two-foot ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... significative of true power, likely to issue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his school-fellows; and the aim of the teaching you give him ought to be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own separate gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are everlastingly greater than he: still less ought you to hang favours and ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make the rest envy him. Try to make them love ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... their character, and peacock to their reflection, meditating: Does it become me? Will it be generally liked? Will it advance me towards my heart's desire? Then they catch up their cloak, twist the mirror back to its usual position, puff out the candles, and steal forth into their career, shutting the door gently behind them. And, perhaps till they are laid out in the grave, the last four walls enclosing them, only the dressing-room could tell their ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... at intervals only,— Black, from a burning house, we suppose, by the Cavalleggieri; And we believe we discern some lines of men descending Down through the vineyard-slopes, and catch a bayonet gleaming. Every ten minutes, however,—in this there is no misconception,— Comes a great white puff from behind Michel Angelo's dome, and After a space the report of a real big gun,—not the Frenchman's?— That must be doing some work. And so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... every minute seemed to make the issue more and more certain. Sometimes a little puff of wind would strike the Defiance, fill her sails, and push her a little nearer her goal, but the hopes that those puffs must have raised in Dolly's rival and her crew were false, for each died away before the Defiance really ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart

... back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... Comedy, or Tragedy, being supported partly by its real Merit, but most powerfully by a Toasting, or Kit-cat-Club, comes off with universal Applause. How slippery is Greatness! Philo puff'd up with his Success, writes a second Play, scorns to improve it by the Corrections of better Wits, brings it upon the Stage, without securing a Party to protect it, and has the Mortification to hear it Hist to death. Pray how many Philos do we reckon in ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay

... Scheldt came the cries of sailors, the creaking of cordage, and the puff! puff! of the ferry-boats. On the bastions of the fortress opposite, a bugler was standing. Twice the mellow notes of the bugle came faintly over the water, then a great gun thundered from the ramparts, and the Belgian flag fluttered along ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... my opinion, the most remarkable of this famous company were two sons of the North Wind (airy youngsters, and of rather a blustering disposition), who had wings on their shoulders, and, in case of a calm, could puff out their cheeks and blow almost as fresh a breeze as their father. I ought not to forget the prophets and conjurers, of whom there were several in the crew, and who could foretell what would happen tomorrow, or the next day, or a hundred years hence, but were generally quite unconscious ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... It was that marvellous transparent blue, flecked with silver, but the sand at the bottom looked gold; when you kicked with your toes there rose a little puff of gold-dust. Now the waves just reached her breast. Beryl stood, her arms outstretched, gazing out, and as each wave came she gave the slightest little jump, so that it seemed it was the wave which lifted ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... not what makes thee tremble so, for I dare swear I never rode easier in all my life; our horse goes as if he did not move at all. Take courage, then; for the affair is in a good way, and we have the wind astern."—"I think so, too," quoth Sancho; "for I feel the wind puff as briskly here as if a thousand pairs of bellows were blowing on me at my back." Sancho was not in the wrong; for two or three pairs of bellows were indeed giving air; so well had the plot of this adventure been laid ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... and gripping him by the thigh, threw him to the ground, so that he fell on his back. She laughed at him and said, "Thou art surely an eater of bran: for thou art like a Bedouin bonnet that falls off at a touch, or a child's toy that a puff of air overturns. Out on thee, thou poor creature! Go back to the army of the Muslims and send us other than thyself, for thou lackest thews; and cry as among the Arabs and Persians and Turks and Medes, 'Whoso has ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... heard footsteps, which froze her. A man was crossing the street. He came from the direction of the corner where she had seen the supposed spy. Presently she saw him stop under one of the trees to scratch a match, and in the round glow of light she saw him puff at a cigar. Then he passed on with uncertain steps, as of one slightly under the influence ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... them never forgot. He told his publisher that to him alone he should look for the only true account of the reception of his book. "The critics," said he in continuation, "may write as obscurely as they please, and look much wiser than they are; the papers may puff and abuse as their (p. 044) changeful humors dictate; but if you meet me with a smiling face I shall at once know that all is ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... tried! But just as her boat would near the other, a chance current or a puff of wind would take the canoe just out of her reach. Paddling now with one oar she came very near the unsteady little craft, so near that Gladys suddenly decided to jump into ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells

... an amazed bulldog, managed to chew and puff on his cigar simultaneously and still speak understandable English. "Never saw anything like it. Never. First ballot and you had it, Jim. I know Texas was going to put up Perez as a favorite son on the first ballot, but they couldn't do anything ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett

... 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

... to himself to watch the boat turning into the shore, where a wharf loaded with truck for shipping jutted out into the stream; and one passenger—a sturdy, grizzled man in rough, brown hunting corduroy—leaped aboard followed by two fine dogs. Then the laboring engines, with puff and shriek, kept on their way; while Dan continued his investigations, and made friendly overtures to a big deck hand who volunteered to show ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... there came a slight puff of wind, and the water curling under it glanced more luminously; while an occasional flash of lightning announced that the clouds above ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... smoke was puffing out of its stack, and the dirty water running from its pipes, and the reflected fire from the engine's furnace blazed through the sunken eyes of the windows, begrizzled and begrimed, nothing was wanted but a little imagination to hear it cough and spit and give one final puff at its pipe and say: "Lu'd but o'ive wur-rek hard an' ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... mounted the hill, two regiments of cuirassiers on the right, and a regiment of lancers on the left fell on their flanks like lightning, and before they had time to look, they were upon them. We could hear the blows slide over their cuirasses, hear their horses puff, and a hundred paces away we could see the lances rise and fall, the long sabres stretch out, and the men bend down to thrust under; the furious horses, rearing, biting, and neighing frightfully, and then men under the horses' feet were trying to get up, and sheltering themselves ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... surface,—rise above it—and finally become some of the fairest isles of the Pacific. Charts tell of the isles, but no charts can tell the locality of coral reefs which have just, or barely, reached the surface. The Lively Poll was forging slowly ahead under a puff of air that only bulged her top-sails as she rose and sank on the majestic swell. Presently she rose high, and was then let down on a coral reef with such violence that the jury-mast with the main-topmast and all the connected rigging, went over the side. Another swell lifted her off, ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor "drafts" are made ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... sinks behind the Adirondacs over the lake, the parade ends; the many lookers-on having nothing to see but the bright visions of the next year's training, retire to their homes; while the now weary students, gathered in knots in the windows of the upper stories, lazily and comfortably puff their black pipes, and watch the lessening ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... avenging shell burst right among the bushes a thousand yards off. At the same time the ger-r-er of the machine-gun told that its handle was turning, and its deadly missiles tearing through the light cover. The effect was immediate; the enemy cleared off like midges from a puff of tobacco smoke, and retired across the ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... art by the gifted and high-minded; but in England thanks in the main to the anonymity of the press cunningly contrived by the capitalist, the journalist or modern preacher is turned into a venal voice, a soulless Cheapjack paid to puff his master's wares. Clearly our "Professor of AEsthetics and Critic of Art" is likely to have a doleful time of it in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... a few, muff, muffs; chief, chiefs. So hoof, roof, proof, relief, mischief, puff, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... to whom he gave a passing glance, seemed even less earthly in her nature. Indeed, it appeared as if she had never more than half belonged to the material creation. Slight, ethereal, with untroubled blue eyes, and little puff curls too light to show their change to gray, she struck Gregory unpleasantly, as if she were a connecting link between gross humanity and spiritual existence, and his eyes reverted to Miss Walton, and dwelt with increasing interest on her. There at least were youth, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... General Vaugirard began to puff like one of the machines. He threw out his great chest, pursed up his mouth and emitted his breath in little gusts between his lips, "Very good! Very good, my children!" he said, "Oil and electricity will carry us now, and we go ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... different from other operatives." A puff of cigarette smoke wreathed upward from the speaker's ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... courteously. "There is room by the fire for them," and he motioned to them to sit down by his side. A pipe, composed of a long flat wooden stem studded with brass nails, with a bowl cut out of red pipe-stone, was now handed round, each taking a short puff. ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... leave you to guess at the excess of my joy; it 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, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... handkerchief to her lips. Forgetful, he followed her swaying figure with puzzled gaze till admonished by the flame that crept toward his fingertips. Then dropping the match he struck another and put it to his cigarette. At the second puff he heard a choking gasp, and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... strong symptoms of astonishment and admiration. He is said to have turned to 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 dispersed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... of that noisy crowd, he could catch the faint perfume of hyacinths from the borders along which they had passed and the trimly-cut flower-beds which fringed the deep green lawn. Almost he could hear the chiming of the old stable clock, the clear note of a thrush singing. A puff of wind brought them a waft of fainter odour from the wild violets which carpeted the woods. Then the darkness crept around them, a star came out. Hand in hand they turned towards the house and into the library, where a wood fire was burning on the grate. ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... visage so derisively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... place for fishing. A deep, quiet pool, partly shaded by big trees, lay placid and motionless, except for an occasional ripple, stirred by a light puff of wind. An old wattle tree grew on the bank, its limbs jutting out conveniently, and here Jim and Wally ensconced themselves immediately, and turned their united attention to business. For a time no sound was heard save the dull "plunk" of sinkers ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... to read, so I lit a match. A puff of wind extinguished it. There is always just enough wind to extinguish ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... in Germany, and all the adjacent countries, in all times, are to be found in the catalogue. I pass over the implied compliment to this country, namely, that while a true description is required in Germany, a puff both in time and space is wanted for England. I dwell on the injurious effect of such alterations to literature, and on the trouble they give to those who wish to be accurate. It is a system I attack, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... more or less than an arrangement of holes through which, when the wind blows in a stiff puff, air is forced with violence enough to cause the cry that disturbed us so much ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... said the other with a laugh. "But if your motive is what I imagine, then, thank goodness, your efforts are wasted. Listen to this. If, instead of being a young innocent girl, you were an ancient, shrivelled-up, worldly-minded woman, with a dried-up puff-ball full of blue dust for a heart, and a scheming brain manufactured by Maskelyne and Cook; and if you had Captain Horton for a son, and had singled me out for his victim, you could not have done more to put me in ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... "Robbins & Hartley, Brokers." The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A puff of red-hot air flavoured with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke and train oil came in through the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... the chair, though, almost caused his heart to stop beating. The cushions of the seat, compressed before, began to puff out to full volume, as if someone had just risen from them. And then, faintly but sharply outlined in the long-napped rug in front, appeared the print of a ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... hull throbbed with the giant pulsings of the two sets of engines. There was not another sound. It was as though the vessel were plunging through an endless void. In the darkness astern arose a spear-like puff of crimson flame. Again it ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... with a snow-white beard, sat equally unmoved, smoking the long chibook, without apparently regarding the king or his people. The chibook is a most useful instrument for a diplomat. If the situation is difficult, he can puff, puff, puff, and the incorrigible pipe will not draw; in the mean time, he considers a reply. At length the pipe draws, a cloud of smoke issues from the mouth. "I beg your pardon," says the embarrassed diplomat, evidently relieved by the little unreal difficulty ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... into a small room, in which the candles were so well screened by a green tin screen that we could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black, who rose from her armchair by the fireside as the door opened: a great puff of smoke issuing from the huge fireplace at the same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and ink-stands, and bird-cages, and a harp. She did not speak, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... double-edged dagger in the other, he thrust his arm into the entrance, where the President, sitting in an arm-chair, presented to his view the back and side of his head. A flash, a sharp report, a puff of smoke, and the fatal bullet had entered ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... north and east of the county of Norfolk. We take note of this that we call a fact, and straightway the temptation presents itself to construct a theory upon it. Who knows not that in the trying spring-time, the "colic of puff'd Aquilon" makes life hard for man and beast in Norfolk, and that across our fields the cruel gusts burst upon us with a bitter petulance, unsparing, pitiless, hateful, till our vitality seems to be steadily waning? It was in the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... once more in the bow of the long-boat, and presented towards us the weapon with which he had a moment before threatened us; and this time it was no idle menace. A puff of smoke rose from the muzzle of the piece, and, just as the sharp report reached our ears, Browne uttered a quick exclamation of pain, and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... her cigarette, drew a puff upon it and exhaled a cloud of smoke before she answered. Then ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... he disappeared from view. Suddenly aware of a pain in his hand, he held it out before him and was astonished to find that the knuckles were already beginning to puff. He winced when he tried to clench his fist. A rueful smile twitched at the corners ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me information of the "trainers." It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody's bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil's advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... others undertook to get down the chimney, "big squaw took up mighty great wallet, all full of feathers, more than was on all the eagles of all the hunting grounds of the red men, and tearing it open, easy as we tear a leaf, poured them on the fire. Big black smoke puff up quick as powder flash, and down come Indian like he shot. White squaw take up big tomahawk, and strike both on the head. Me nearly in the door by this time; big squaw jump at me with he great tomahawk, so big the great chief no lift it, and lifted it to strike. Me no like to be killed by ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... with its alternating smoke puff and dull red flare, struck the one jarring note in a symphony blown otherwise on great nature's organ-pipes; but to Thomas Jefferson the furnace was as much a part of the immutable scheme as the hills or the forests or the creek which furnished the motive power for its air-blast. ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... to find that her hand-bag had not been stolen. The powder-puff would serve temporarily for a wash-basin. The small change in her purse would postpone starvation ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... the very threshold one detected the rumbling and quivering of machinery, all the noise and bustle of work. Black water flowed by at one's feet, and up above white vapour spurted from a slender pipe with a regular strident puff, as if it were the very breath ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... by his side handed him a rifle, which he sighted, then took down as a puff of smoke rose ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... then add a quarter of a Pound of fine Sugar well beaten and sifted, and four Ounces of fresh Butter; warm these gently over a Fire, keeping it stirring all the while till it begins to thicken; then take it off, and put it in the Coffins made of puff Crust, and bake your Cheesecakes ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... no air-ships available for immediate charter, nor big balloons waiting for passengers, with sand-bags ready for instant unloading, nor any underground pneumatic tubes into which he could be pumped and with a puff landed on his own doorstep in Kennedy Square, the impatient lover was obliged to content himself with the back seat of the country stage and a night ride in the train down ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... von Boobenstein, blowing a big puff of smoke. "In fact, it is these cigars that have given rise to the legend (a pure fiction, I need hardly say) that our armies are using asphyxiating gas. The truth is they are merely smoking ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock

... head, her black eyes fixed on the red draught of the stove with a far-away, fateful, veiled glint in them which her grandsons knew well. She had ceased to puff at her pipe for the moment, and in the failing light from the window they could see a thin reek of smoke trailing straight ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... until within rifle-shot, and then suddenly swerved away in an oblique line. The ambush had failed, and a puff of smoke issued from behind the bowlder. Two braves, in gorgeous war paint, sprang up, and at the same time a score of whooping Indians rode out of timber on the other side ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong as the ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... immaculate Lamb of God, and find as great necessity of covering your cleanest duties with it, as your foulest faults, and thus shall you be kept still humble and vile in your own eyes, and have continual employment for Christ Jesus. Your best estate should not puff you up, and your worst estate should not cast you down; therefore be much in the search of the filthiness of your holy actions. This were a spiritual study, a noble discovery to unbowel your duties, to divide them, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... of the warring armies. On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown earth, or a burst of shrapnel sent a puff of white smoke to float like a Cupid's cloud along the sky. And yet two armies were hidden here, with their rifles, machine-guns, and artillery pointed ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... time, (for the labor requires activity, and consequently is exhausting,) feeds the thresher, which, with its armed teeth, moves with such velocity as to appear like a solid cylinder. Here there is no stopping for horses to take breath and rest their weary limbs,—puff, puff, onward the work,—steam as great a triumph in threshing as in printing or spinning. Men and boys are stationed at the rear of the thresher to remove the straw, and roughly separate the seed from the shattered hulm,—others again being engaged in thrusting the dried crop ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... oak.' ... 'A star appeared at noon day at his birth; he was a great mathematician, chemist, and mechanick, and wrought oft in the laboratories himselfe; he had a natural mildnesse and command over his anger, which never transported him beyond an innocent puff and spitting, and was soon over, and yet commanded more deference from his people than if he had expressed it more severely, so great respect had all to him. His clemencie was admirable, witnesse his sparing 2 of Oliver Cromwell's sones, tho on of them had usurped his throne. His firmnesse ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... suddenly, demanding an immediate answer. Under the watchful eyes of the other party the questioned party tried not to show by his expression any indication of searching for an answer, for obvious reasons. So, instead, he would take a long puff at the cigar, then a slow attentive look at the ashes on its tip, and then another moment consumed in flicking the ash into the receptacle, and then came the answer, slowly, "Well, as to that—" or some other words of that kind, prefacing the real ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... worship thinks you have to deal With men. Go straight on, in the Devil's name, Or I shall puff your flickering life out. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of liver in small slices, flour and fry them in butter or dripping, together with a calf's or pig's or sheep's brain, previously scalded and also cut up. Serve with bits of fried ham and little diamond-shaped pieces of puff pastry. ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters

... cheap kimona. The dresser, in keeping with the general meanness, was adorned with pictorial postcards stuck in between the mirror and the frame, and on it were all the accessories necessary to the actress—powder box and puff, a rouge box and a rabbit's paw, a hand mirror, a small alcohol curling-iron heater, and a bottle of cheap perfume, purple in color, and nearly empty. On the mantelpiece were arranged photographs of actors and actresses and pieces of cheap bric-a-brac. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... a slender tongue of flame running up a tall reed, and quivering for a moment high above. Other flames ran in and out among the withered white sheaths that had dropped off, and mounted up the smooth stems, and then there came a wandering puff of wind, which rustled over the bending tops and fanned the little serpent-tongues of fire ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... that I came into possession of an ill tempered French poodle called Crapouillot, which the patients in our hospital insisted on clipping like a lion with an anklet, a curl over his nose and a puff at the end of his tail. A most detestable, unfortunate beast, always to be found where not needed, a ribbon in his hair, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... Everybody who knows the House of Commons will easily guess what followed. The Major was soon considered as the greatest bore of his time. His exertions were not confined to Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the newspapers did not contain some puff upon Hastings, signed Asiaticus or Bengalensis, but known to be written by the indefatigable Scott; and hardly a month in which some bulky pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same pen, did not pass to the trunkmakers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's capacity ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... puff of wind, the smoke, lace-edged with the dawn light, swayed, seeming to twine about the figure of the King as he stood with the wand outheld, as if firmly hooked in the guts ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... shell, you can see the smoke just this side of Sharpsburg on our left," said the Colonel, addressing his companion. "There it bursts," and a puff of white smoke expanded itself in the air fifty yards above one of our batteries posted on a ridge on the left. Two pieces gave quick reply. "Officers, to your posts," shouted an aide-de-camp, and forthwith the officers galloped ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong

... Mayflower riding at anchor, Battered and blackened and worn by all the storms of the winter. Loosely against her masts was hanging and flapping her canvas, 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! Ah! but with louder echoes replied the hearts of the people! Meekly, in voices ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom of his heart. My mother ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... see how romantic and foolish it was, how like a puff of wind it ought to be on your conscience. We shall ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... where I stood to see this procession, the room was hung with crimson damask and gold, and the windows were mended in ten or a dozen places with paper. At dinner they give you three courses; but a third of the dishes is patched up with salads, butter, puff-paste, or some such miscarriage of a dish. None, but Germans, wear fine clothes; but their coaches are tawdry enough for the wedding of Cupid and Psyche. You would laugh extremely at their signs: some live at the Y grec, some at Venus's toilette, and some ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... proudest devices of heraldry to incorporate them as quarterings into his arms, and this gave rise to an epigram from the pen of an ex-Jesuit, to this effect: "The eagle belongs to the Empire, the lilies of the field to France, to heaven belongs the stars—to Braschi what? Puff." ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... a steep angle and ran back. It banked again. The pilot stared carefully. He reached forward and pushed a button. There was a tiny impact underfoot. Another steep banking turn, and Joe saw a puff of smoke in ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... explosive under all circumstances when mixed with air. A certain ratio of air to vapor is necessary to make an explosive mixture. Equal volumes of vapor and air will not explode; three parts of air and one of vapor gives a vigorous puff when ignited in a vessel; five volumes of air to one of vapor gives a loud report. The maximum degree of violence results from the explosion of eight or nine parts of air mixed with vapor. It requires considerable skill ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... gaunt smiths felled a tree, perhaps with the very axes which their own sturdy hands had hammered at a former period; with the wood thus procured they prepared the charcoal which their labour demanded. Everything is in readiness; the bellows puff until the coal is excited to a furious glow; the metal, hot, pliant, and ductile, is laid on the anvil, round which stands the Cyclop group, their hammers upraised; down they descend successively, one, two, three, the sparks are scattered on ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... we discovered the reason. The horse had shied at a sleeping puff adder which was curled up in the sand of that little frequented road, and on this puff adder Savage had descended with so much force, for he weighed thirteen stone, that the creature was squashed quite flat and never stirred again. ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... The thing was dragging, too, or so it seemed to Field. All at once there were voices at the back of the stage as if somebody was quarrelling. Suddenly the bright tuneful chorus broke off altogether and a female voice screamed. A little puff of smoke ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... smile seemed to flicker like a candle flame in a sudden puff of wind. "A friend of my, a dragoman. He could not come to bring it. So he give it to me. The gentleman's name was Fenton. My friend, he was sent from him at Cairo." As the fellow spoke, in fairly good English, he took from a pocket of the short coat which spoiled ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... boy like "Dodd" that he is on the high road to ruin, the prison, or the rope, and the chances are that you puff him up with pride at his own achievement, or fill him with ambition to see the end of his own career ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... approached it, however, I saw it to be a dwelling-house, and that it had windows, though these were shuttered, and the shutters painted a light stone colour; and I had scarcely made this discovery when one of them jetted out a sudden puff of smoke and a bullet sang over ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... exaggeration. Exaggeration did we say? The modern newspaper writer, who is always glad, when off duty, to call things by their plain names, would brand the notice of the "Distressed Mother" as a bare-faced puff. And who could quarrel with his scepticism? Actors are not in the habit of weeping over the reading of a play; they have little time ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... The dry leaves were flying, and the weather cocks turned, creaking, around, and Gustave had to hold his head low for he was only a little boy and the wind nearly pushed him down. A bent old gentleman, walking with a cane, passed them. Puff, whisk, the wind took the old gentleman's hat and sent it racing ahead of ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... her, "these are but idle tales to tell me; fit for naething but to puff up our inward man wi' our ain vain acts. I stude beside blessed Alexander Peden, when I heard him call the death and testimony of our happy martyrs but draps of blude and scarts of ink in respect of fitting discharge ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... village, never to return. Such was the reputation of the proprietor of the Western Sun, that a distinguished speculator, who was going to found a great city at the junction of Big Dry, and Little Dry, Rivers, made him the most advantageous offers to come and establish himself there, and puff the embryo bantling into existence as fast as possible. He offered him a whole square next to that where the college, the courthouse, the church, the library, the athenaeum, and all the public buildings were situated.... Truth obliges ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... continued to puff steadfastly at his pipe, lost in the news, holding mechanically in his further hand the return ticket which would presently be snatched by the hurrying tram-conductor. He was a shabby middle-aged clerk with a thin beard, and so he had not the least interest ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... the youngest member of a large family, was taken to see his married sister's new baby. He seemed more interested in the contents of the baby's basket than in the baby, and after examining the pretty trifles, picked up a powder-puff. Much surprised at his discovery, and looking rather shocked, he said, "Isn't she rather young ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... out the cloudy, cavernous depths. In the silence he could hear an occasional click as of some iron implement, and he opined that the pirates were burying the chest, though just where they were at work he could neither see nor tell. Still he lay there watching and listening, and by-and-by a puff of warm air blew across the sand, and a thumping tumble of louder thunder leaped from out the belly of the storm cloud, which every minute was coming nearer and nearer. Still Tom Chist ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... had roughly trimmed these giant oars, with the help of an assistant, who in the meantime seemed to have no other duty except to puff his charred black pipe, the old "Baptiste" balanced the piece of timber on a rock. Carefully testing the spar, in order to get the exact point of equilibrium, the oar maker then made a rectangular hole through the six inches of timber. The two ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler

... little pieces; a whole bundle lay there, it blazed brightly under the great brewing copper, and it sighed deeply, and each sigh was like a little shot: and the children who were at play there ran up and seated themselves at the fire, looked into it, and cried, "Puff! puff!" But at each explosion, which was a deep sigh, the Tree thought of a summer day in the woods, or of a winter night there, when the stars beamed; he thought of Christmas-eve and of Klumpey-Dumpey, the only story he had ever heard or knew how ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... though inspired; but to no purpose in the end. For the flames increased. Puff after puff of wind drove the fire on, scattering brands from the blazing pine; and now another, and another, tree caught. The glare of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... peremptory whisper. He obeyed, but not quick enough. A pair of red lips emerged from the shadows. There was a puff, and the candle was extinguished. "I've got my reputation to consider. We mustn't ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... reddish light in the sky marked east, but over all else there lay only starlight, as, lantern in hand, he swung down the frozen path. With the opening barn door there came a puff of warm animal breath. As the first rays of light entered, the stock stood up with many a sleepy groan, and bright eyes shining in the half-light swayed back and forth in the narrow stalls, while their owners waited patiently for the feed they knew ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... "They puff and blow like boasters braggin' that they extract from the ocean the means to make it help to subdue itself. It is a war in the elements, fire and water contendin' for victory. They are black, dingy, forbiddin' looking sea monsters. It is no wonder the superstitious ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... scrivano, with our two pledges, our Jew friend, and twenty other persons, came aboard, bringing a bullock, with bread, quinces, and other fruits, a great round cake or pasty, like puff-paste, in which were several fowls and chickens, well seasoned and baked, and most excellent eating. We also, with a large quince pye, and many crabs, together with sack and cordials, added our best welcome. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... the face of Jacob Pacomb became a study. Savagely he bit off the end of a cigar, lit it, and began to puff away furiously. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr

... artful Frank used that phrase "bloodhounds of the law," for he knew that it would cause Joe Green to puff up with pride, and feel more kindly disposed ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... two or three fields until at last he got it in the angle of two stone walls. "Aha! my friend, I think I have you now," said my grandfather, and proceeded to take a leisurely pinch of snuff, when a puff of wind came and blew the hat far out to sea. There are many more Dorsetshire stories that recur to my memory; but neither here is the interest of Suffolk. So to Suffolk we will come back, like my father in 1845, in which year he succeeded ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... The innocent ringlets of a child's free hair, And crouches, when the thought of some great spirit, 120 With world-wide murmur, like a rising gale. Over men's hearts, as over standing corn, Rushes, and bends them to its own strong will. So shall some thought of mine yet circle earth, And puff away ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... happen to get five cents more, you'll puff out with pride till you most bust.... Anyway, it won't take much more to buy grub for a kid with an appetite like a bird.... Come on! I'll wheel you to the kitchen so you can have a look ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White

... 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 the rest ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... going down the steps, there came the North Wind, puffing and blowing, caught up the meal, and so away with it through the air. Then the lad went back into the safe for more; but when he came out again on the steps, if the North Wind didn't come again and carry off the meal with a puff; and more than that, he did so the third time. At this the lad got very angry; and as he thought it hard that the North Wind should behave so, he thought he'd just look him up and ask him to give up ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... producer that it is worth while supplementing the sulphur match with is the even older-fashioned flint and steel, which to a man who smokes is a convenience in a wind. All the modern alcohol and gasoline pocket devices are extinguished by the lightest puff of wind, but the tinder, once ignited, burns the fiercer for the blast. With dry, shredded birch-bark I have made a fire upon occasion from the flint and steel. One resource may here be mentioned, since we are on ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... motion on board le Feu-Follet, the sweeps were on the point of being handled, when the jigger fluttered and the first puff of the expected western breeze swept along the surface of the waters. To the seamen it was like inhaling oxygen gas. Every appearance of drowsiness deserted the people of both vessels, and every one was instantly busy in ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... among the Americans, there was a little stir, and then a pistol barked with that loud crash which black powder makes. Jack, on the instant when the smoke curled up in a little, balloon-like puff, turned and leaped into the saddle. The duel of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... "Ja, that is right." He blew a puff of smoke toward the morning clouds; "the Bachs do not hurry, my child—no more ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... 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 she had pretty ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson

... the sound of the withdrawing bolts, and his heart beat fast. Surely, his half-hour had not already expired; and if it had, would she be the person to conduct him to death? The door opened; a puff of wind extinguished his candle, but not until he had caught the glimmer of jewels, the shining of gold, and the flutter of long, black hair; and then some one came in. The door was closed; the bolts shot back!—and he was alone ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... taken two strokes before the matter was settled finally. For there came a puff of white smoke from the ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair

... white girls blown with fat who puff and pant; * The maid for me is young brunette embonpoint-scant. I'd rather ride a colt that's darn upon the day * Of race, and set my friends upon ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... a writhing, twisting, tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... Captain Fred happened to turn their heads at the same moment, and were looking at the double proa coming up with them very rapidly, when each uttered an exclamation, for they suddenly saw a red flash at the prow of the boat, a puff of smoke, and then the report of a musket reached them almost at the same instant that the whistle of the bullet through the rigging ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... Cole, with many a puff That haloed his urbanity, Would smoke till he had smoked enough, And listen most attentively. He beamed as with an inward light That had the Lord's assurance in it; And once a man was there all night, Expecting ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... straws on 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; then sinks, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... the world goes to sleep. It awakes at about four o'clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans. They greet, or avoid. They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze. They coquet with one another like butterflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the principal charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... his arms frantically, motioning to me to run also for the woods. I could see no pursuer; but still, as he came on, his arms waved, and were waving yet when a bush on the chine above him threw out a little puff of grey smoke. Toppling headlong into the bushes he was lost to me even before the report rang on my ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... watch these fragments burn, it was from abstraction rather than from interest; for his step grew lighter as he left the fireplace. Whatever this young girl's face had meant to him in days gone by was now as completely dissipated as the little puff of smoke which had marked ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... Why, Pompey, as if the senate had not power To appoint, dispose, and change their generals! Rome shall belike be bound to Sylla's rule, Whose haughty pride and swelling thoughts puff'd-up Foreshows the reaching to proud Tarquin's state. Is not his ling'ring to our Roman loss At Capua, where he braves it out with feasts, Made known, think you, unto the senate here? Yes, Pompey, yes; and hereof are we sure, If Romans' state on Sylla's pride should lie, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... trail ahead of them. Fadeaway jerked his horse to a stop. "Now we'll see some real speed!" he said. There was a flash of the dog's long body, which grew smaller and smaller in the distance; then a puff of dust spurted up. Fadeaway saw the dog turn end over end, regain his feet and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... double or treble it? 5. Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me to go beyond my measure? 6. Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, in attempting to build a very large ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... 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, it may ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and assumed a listening attitude. Above the patter of the rain he heard the putt-putt of a motor launch. He laid the book on the table and reached for a black cigar, which he lit and began to puff quickly. Louder grew the panting of the motor. It stopped abruptly. Cleigh heard a call or two, then the creaking of the ladder. Two minutes later a man limped into the salon. He tossed his sou'wester to the floor and followed ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... the red leather before me. It was of most unusual workmanship, apparently Indian, being made of some kind of dark brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake's skin; and the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with an ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... It ain't the easiest thing gettin' around on this rocky ole mounting in the pitch dark, let me tell ye, Peg," Nick remarked; and by the way he seemed to puff between each few words, Bob understood that it must be Nick who was using the cigarette, ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... After puff paste has been rolled 5 times and chilled, roll to 1/2 inch thickness, shape with patty cutter, cut halfway through with a small cutter, chill again, and bake in oven at 550 degrees F. at first, reducing heat after 5 or 8 minutes to 425 degrees F., and turning often that ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley

... to the powder. There was a flash, a puff of smoke rising to the ceiling, and filling ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... and 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, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Virginian weed. But, to keep up his connection with the party, and to prove that his interest in them could not be diminished by a brief and enforced absence, Mr. Bouncer paid them flying visits at every station, keeping his pipe alight by a puff into the carriage, accompanied with an expression of his full conviction that Miss Fanny Green had been smoking, in defiance of the company's by-laws. These rapid interviews were enlivened by Mr. Bouncer informing his friends that Huz and ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... published elsewhere. According to the English, all classics printed in Germany, and all the adjacent countries, in all times, are to be found in the catalogue. I pass over the implied compliment to this country, namely, that while a true description is required in Germany, a puff both in time and space is wanted for England. I dwell on the injurious effect of such alterations to literature, and on the trouble they give to those who wish to be accurate. It is a system I attack, and not individuals. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... dropped from the 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

... which was now a half mile from shore, they saw a puff of smoke, and then a shell struck into the beach below them and exploding, sent a shower of sand over them and the horses. The latter, frightened, reared and plunged, but the boys soon got their animals under control, as they quickly tired of acting up in the heavy sand. Jim shook ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... superintendent of the washing establishment observed, with a legitimate triumph, that it had been built without giving a single dinner or printing a single puff,—an extraordinary thing, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... hut, in which the bomb had been placed, arose in the air. The roof was lifted off, the sides spread out and there was a great flash of fire and a puff of smoke. ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... scenes have been picked out by certain disinterested gentlemen, who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff them; and have been met with bold denials of public facts, and with timid personalities, and a little easy cant about Sensation* Novelists; but in reality those passages have been written on the same system as the nautical, legal, and other scenes: the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Verplanck he allows himself to refer to his figure and features as subjects of ridicule. This war I think was closed by the publication of "The Bucktail Bards," as the little volume is called, which contains The State Triumvirate, a Political Tale, and the Epistles of Brevet Major Pindar Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant

... mountain; the animals are sometimes entirely hidden behind rocks, as they follow the windings and twistings of the trail down the rugged slope which the old Turk this morning thought would make me puff ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... it, old chap," went on Reggy, dropping into a chair. "Fellow fell overboard a little while ago," he went on, calmly. There was a chorus of cries and Brewster was forgotten for a time. "One of the sailors, you know. He was doing something in the rigging near where I was standing. Puff! off he went into the sea, and there he was puttering around in ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... if the trade were about to cease, but it commenced afresh and continued until the 26th of November, generally very moderate, with fine weather. During the last six days of our stay we had light airs from about North-West, succeeded in the evening by a slight puff of south-easterly wind followed by a calm lasting all night. Last year, during the month of October, we experienced no northerly or westerly winds, but a moderate trade prevailed throughout, pretty steady at East-South-East, but varying ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... on what he had gone through. He was drawing in his breath gradually, his cheeks expanding all the while, until they reached the utmost point of distention, when he would all at once let it go with a kind of easy puff, ending in a groan, as he surveyed his naked feet, which were now quite square, and, like my own, out of all shape. I asked him how he liked the station; he gave me one of the old looks, shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing—it was, however, a shrug condemnatory. I then asked ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... of it, putting to it a Pint of Cream, which boil; then add four or five yolks, and two whites of Eggs, and the Marrow of two bones cut small, and of one in lumps: sufficient Sugar, and one Nutmeg grated. Put this either to bake raw, or with puff-past beneath and above it in the dish. A pretty smart heat, as for white Manchet, and three quarters of an hour in the Oven. You may make the like with great Oat-meal scalded (not boiled) in Cream, and soaked a night; then made ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby

... household it had lost, it never could begin once more a new earthly existence. The necromancers, indeed, might snatch away death's prey for a few moments. The earth gaped at the words of their invocations, the soul burst forth like a puff of wind and answered gloomily the questions proposed to it; but when the charm was once broken, it had to retrace its steps to the country without return, to be plunged once more in darkness. This prospect of a dreary and joyless eternity was not so terrifying to the Chaldaeans as ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... of genius could thwart and direct. But humanity now is a stream so broad that it is almost like an ocean, in which all have similar being, and the big fish come to the surface, and spout and blow and puff without having any influence ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... unknown to half the workmen of the present day. For whatever appearance of self-complacency there may be in their outward bearing, it is visible enough, by their feverish jealousy of each other, how little confidence they have in the sterling value of their several doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and there is too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit of the supposition that they have any stable support of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... and at last swallow it. The Paunches of the Goats would make them an excellent Dish; they drest it in this manner. They would turn out all the Chopt Grass and Crudities found in the Maw into their Pots, and set it over the Fire, and stir it about often: This would Smoak and Puff, and heave up as it was Boyling; wind breaking out of the Ferment, and making a very savory Stink. While this was doing, if they had any Fish, as commonly they had 2 or 3 small Fish, these they would make very clean (as hating nastiness belike) and cut ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... were met with silence save by Madame Kanine who cried: 'Pity, pity for the children! They are innocent!' as she dropped on her knees and stretched out her hands in supplication to us. The short-haired girl laughed out of impudent eyes and blew a puff of smoke into my face. I was forced ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... same instant, the puff, the report, and the shriek were repeated; but this time the shell burst to our right in mid-air, and scattered ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... sir," said a bluejacket, with his eyes glued to binoculars. "At the balloon"—and presently we heard the weary pinions of the shell, and saw the little puff of ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... towards rank. He hung the arms of the family over his parlour-chimney; pointed at a chariot decorated only with a cypher; became of opinion that money could not make a gentleman; resented the petulance of upstarts; told stories of alderman Puff's grandfather the porter; wondered that there was no better method for regulating precedence; wished for some dress peculiar to men of fashion; and when his servant presented a letter, always inquired whether it came ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... be sent to," muttered Jock, running round to give a sly puff to the white heap, diffusing a sprinkling of white powder ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he wrote a sentence which some of them never forgot. He told his publisher that to him alone he should look for the only true account of the reception of his book. "The critics," said he in continuation, "may write as obscurely as they please, and look much wiser than they are; the papers may puff and abuse as their (p. 044) changeful humors dictate; but if you meet me with a smiling face I shall at once know that all is ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... "Steam-boiler, indeed," said Todd. "Two rivets loose,—steam-room full of steam,—police frightened,—neighborhood in a row,—and we had to put out the fire. She would have run a week without hurting a fly,—only a little puff in the street sometimes. But there we are, Ingham. We shall lose the early mail as it stands. Seventy-eight tokens to be worked now." They always talked largely of their edition at the Argus. Saw it with many eyes, perhaps; but this time, I am sure, Todd spoke true. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... estates, containing thousands of acres. All the while the common people of England were learning to smoke, snuff, and chew tobacco, and across the English Channel the Dutch burghers, housewives, and farmers were learning to puff their pipes. A pound of tobacco was worth three shillings. The planters grew richer, purchased more land and more slaves, while the apprenticed men, who had no money and no means of obtaining any, of course could not become land-owners. Thus the three classes of men—planters, poor white ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... will harness thee in their mill, and make thee grind their grist; and fools that were not worth a moment of thy time while thou livedst will command thee by the hour; and Sludge the Medium will use thy great name to puff his obscene vanity and swell his obscener gains. This is the worst of all thy trials, for thou canst not defend thyself; and, in thy helplessness, fools and pigmies cut capers over ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... undone it. She lifted the lid, and Peter saw the confusion inside, and caught sight of the unfamiliar clothes, Julie was rummaging everywhere. "I know I've left them behind!" she exclaimed. "Whatever shall I do? My scent and powder-puff! Peter, it's terrible! I can't go to Soho to dinner ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... will gather in a crowd under big flat stones in damp places. If the stone is suddenly overturned, the bombardiers at once begin a cannonade like the explosion of a grain of gunpowder, and throw out a puff of whitish vapor resembling smoke. The bombardiers of South America, China, and other warm countries, are much larger than those found in England, and the fluid they eject, which causes the tiny explosion, is capable of making a black stain, and leaving an unpleasant burning ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... have a breeze, Bob," said he, as a sharp puff of wind crossed the deck, driving the black smoke to leeward, and making the fire ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... 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' you ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... from the chimney now in a copious puff and then, for a space, would cease, only to roll forth once more in larger volume. The boys watched ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... to get out of here," said Ogden with finality. He put his hand in his trouser-pocket and pulled out a sticky mass which looked as if it might once have been a cream-puff or a meringue. He swallowed it contentedly. "I'd forgotten I had that," he explained. "Mary gave it to me on the stairs. Mary thinks you've a funny nose, too," he proceeded, as ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... "Puff-ridden!" why to be sure they are. The nation is a miserable Sindbad, and its boasted press the loathsome, foul old man upon his back, and yet they will tell you, and proclaim to the four winds for repetition here, that they don't need their ignorant and brutal papers, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... immense cleverness. "That kind of thing, you know, it's all exploded now," he would say among the circle of his admirers, and he would give a little wave of the hand, which was vastly effective—as if he "could an if he would" puff away the whole system of Christianity with quite a little breath of objection, but refrained from such tyrannous use of a giant's strength. "It's all very well, you know, for parsons—though, by the way, not half of the cleverest believe what they preach—but really for men of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... (3) Puff pastry.—In this, one half as much fat as flour, up to equal parts of each is used; one quarter of the fat is cut in, and the remainder is laid on ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education

... men the most secure in their faith, now saw it dissolve at the first puff of reality, and stood turning this way and that, not daring to make up their minds, and often, to their immense surprise, deciding upon a course of action entirely different from any that they had foreseen. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... appreciate the annoying suspense on the Termagant when dawn revealed the calm sea, quiet sky, and tempting but unapproachable prize. The well-known pluck of our British tars was fired by the alluring vision, and nothing was heard about decks but prayers for a puff and whistling for a breeze. Meanwhile, Seagram, the surgeon, and purser were huddled together on the quarter, cursing a calm which deprived them of prize-money if not of promotion. Our master's mate and passed midshipman were absent in some of the brig's ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... leave the pressman alone with the star. As the latter promised to "give her a good puff in his paper," Lola, who never missed an opportunity, made herself specially agreeable to him. Her bright eyes did their work. "When we separated," says "Q" in his reminiscences, "I found myself tumbled heels ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... But your peculiar terror of mixing with the crowd naturally makes you struggle a little, and puff and blow in the effort to keep your ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... into our cozy parlor walked the most venerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with great dignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I was conscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languid tranquillity. I was not surprised that the figure before me was clad in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about the middle with a rich shawl. Followed him a swart attendant, who hastened ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... instant there came a puff of blue flame from out the pit, carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... stuff and did it. But he met Rawson's inquiring eyes with a puzzled shake of his head when the open mouth of the twenty-inch bore gave faint echo of the deep explosion and followed after a time with only a feeble puff of air. ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... in the bottom he made a clutch— A heart or a puff-ball of sin? Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, He grasped but a handful of dry-rotted dust: It was a horrible thing to touch, But he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... breeze in less than two hours," said he. "You've plenty of time, but if you're not back before the first puff, I'll sail without you, as sure as you're born." North assured him of his punctuality. "Don't wait for me, Captain, if I'm not here," said he with the lightness of tone which men use to mask anxiety. ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... superlatives. It were better to drink—say, iced lemonade, in which—for you, dear reader—by some mistake a little sherry has been cobblered. Sherrare est humanum. The Rabbis, we are told, forbade the children of Israel to puff the fire on the Sabbath with bellows, though they might keep it going by blowing through a straw. Wherefore, to this day, certain of the devout 'keep it a-going' by means of a straw—only by some strange mistake in interpretation, or by some vowel-points getting mislaid, they, instead of blowing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... 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 ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... of its stack, and the dirty water running from its pipes, and the reflected fire from the engine's furnace blazed through the sunken eyes of the windows, begrizzled and begrimed, nothing was wanted but a little imagination to hear it cough and spit and give one final puff at its pipe and say: "Lu'd but o'ive wur-rek ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... occasion, indulged themselves, in addition to the usual bush fare, with what are called 'Leather jackets,' an Australian bush term for a thin cake made of dough, and put into a pan to bake with some fat. . . The Americans indulge in this kind of bread, giving them the name of 'Puff ballooners,' the only difference being that they place the cake upon the bare coals . ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... build concealed nests for the sake of protection. Mr. Wallace enumerates (19. 'Journal of Travel,' edited by A. Murray, vol. i. p. 78.) a long series of groups in which this rule holds good; but it will suffice here to give, as instances, the more familiar groups of kingfishers, toucans, trogons, puff-birds (Capitonidae), plantain-eaters (Musophagae, woodpeckers, and parrots. Mr. Wallace believes that in these groups, as the males gradually acquired through sexual selection their brilliant colours, these were transferred to the females and were not eliminated ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... black side-whiskers tore up-stairs and grabbed his arms full of those bottles in the racks—you know—those fire-extinguishing bottles that have some kind of chemical stuff in them. There was a strong smell of smoke and a little puff of it curling up from under the stairs. He threw all those bottles down into the lower hall. You can imagine the smash there was when they ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... from the treasure in his hand to the threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, to escape ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... Budd of that ilk might envy—'tis a rough Rude thing to say, but it is plain enough Your name is to be sneezed at: its acclaim Will "fill the speaking trump of future fame" With an impeded utterance—a puff Suggesting that a pinch or two of snuff Would clear the tube and somewhat disinflame. Nay, Abner Doble, you'll not get from me My voice and influence: I'll cheer instead, Some other man; for when my voice ascends a Tall pinnacle of praise, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... forget from whence he came; Has he forgot from whence he sprung; A mushroom in a bed of dung; A maggot in a cake of fat, The offspring of a beggar's brat. As eels delight to creep in mud, To eels we may compare his blood; His blood in mud delights to run; Witness his lazy, lousy son! Puff'd up with pride and insolence, Without a grain of common sense, See with what consequence he stalks, With what pomposity he talks; See how the gaping crowd admire The stupid blockhead and the liar. How long shall vice triumphant reign? How long shall ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... mean to let him try. He hustled his fat, podgy body up a tree at a rate that made him puff. Wahb reached up nine feet from the ground, and with one rake of his huge claws tore off the bark clear to the shining white wood and down nearly to the ground; and the Blackbear shivered and whimpered with terror as the scraping of those awful claws ran up the trunk and up his ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton

... say what you did that night. A puff of wind blew the boat over after he got out. Mr. Dalhousie never knew I ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... long black side-whiskers tore up-stairs and grabbed his arms full of those bottles in the racks—you know—those fire-extinguishing bottles that have some kind of chemical stuff in them. There was a strong smell of smoke and a little puff of it curling up from under the stairs. He threw all those bottles down into the lower hall. You can imagine the smash there was when they ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... or 6 potatoes, according to size. Cooked haricot beans. 1 onion. About one tablespoon of chopped mint or parsley. Puff or short paste. ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... deputation of roses understood the cause of his wrath they at once left their hiding places and, aided by a sudden puff of wind, came before Nanahboozhoo. The sight of them excited his curiosity, as it had seemed to him that every rosebush had been destroyed. Before he could say a word, however, the rosebushes, who were then able to talk, at once presented their petition and pleaded for ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... agile Gibbon, swinging from The top branch of a tree, Her brown-faced baby in her arms, A humming-bird did see (Upon a lower bough he sat) Of Puff-leg family. "Oh dear!" she cried, "I wish you'd give One of your puffs to me; I hear that they are always used In white society. And though I have no powder, yet A pleasure it would be To dab my face and arms with it, Like dames of high ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... fire the town; and it was sad to see these humble homes puff up in a cloud of smoke and sparks, then burst into vivid flame. In the orchards our men were plying their axes or girdling the heavily-fruited trees; field after field of grain was fired, and the flames swept ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... open," says Puff, "with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience; it also marks the time, which is four o'clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere."—Sheridan, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... storm would probably not last long and might do some good if it were followed by moderate rain. But he was not sure that moderate rain would fall. By and by a few large drops beat upon his hat, there was a roar in the distance, and a cool draught touched his face. It died away, but the next puff was icy cold, and the roar got louder. He looked up, for he knew what was coming, but there was not a bluff in sight that would shield him from ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... and in the minister's front garden the roses were all wide awake. A soft moisture glittered on every tiny leaf and blade of grass. The penetrating and delicious odor of sweet violets scented each puff of wind, and now and then the call of the cuckoo pierced the air with a ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... seen. Even the church was concealed in a garland of orange-trees, and had lianas and star-flowered creepers climbing over and dangling on it, up as high as the slender cross that surmounted its square white tower. As we gazed, the first sign of life appeared in the village. A puff of blue smoke rose curling and spiral from a chimney, and the matin bell rang out its summons to prayer. Our Mexicans fell on their knees and crossed themselves, repeating their Ave-marias. We involuntarily took off our hats, and whispered a thanksgiving to the God who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... world wag? ha!' 'The world wags much after the old fashion, my lord (answered the captain): the politicians of London and Westminster have begun again to wag their tongues against your grace; and your short-lived popularity wags like a feather, which the next puff of antiministerial calumny will blow away' — 'A pack of rascals (cried the duke) — Tories, Jacobites, rebels; one half of them would wag their heels at Tyburn, if they had their deserts' — So saying, he wheeled about; and going round the levee, spoke to every individual, with ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... the unconscious boy in his arms, Ned saw the driver of the Vixen rain great stones down on the frail planes of the Nelson. Then a puff of smoke came from the driver's seat, and Ned saw that the wisps of straw were being ignited to finish the work begun ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson

... of the roses," said Susanna. "How do they do it? A pinch of sunshine, a drop or two of dew, a puff of air, a handful of brown earth—and out of these they distil what seems as if it were the very ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... handiest, 'cos they've the strongest legs,' returned his informant, with a fresh puff of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... dining-room and stopped short. On a low sofa at the far end of the room lay a man of more than ordinary girth, with coat, vest, and shoes off, his face concealed by a newspaper. From beneath this sheet came, at regular intervals, a long-drawn sound like the subdued puff of a tired locomotive at rest on a side-track. Beside him was an empty tumbler, decorated with a broken straw and a ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... in attendance all the evening, so I may as well see what books she has got. "The West Indies"; "The Crusaders"—of course! "Geoffroi de Villechardouin"—Percy's name in it. Where's this review? Some puff, I suppose. Yes, now if I was a silly young lady, how much I should make of Percy because he has made a good hit, and is a literary lion; but he shall see the world makes no difference to me. I thought the book good in manuscript; and all the critics in the country won't make me think a bit better ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... respecting the rifle-shot which announced the arrival of a messenger; a few minutes after the puff of white smoke on the crest of the rise had drifted away, a mounted man rode up to Grant at a gallop. His horse was white with dust and spume, but his ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... just what we like, as brute beasts which have no understanding. And our flesh is to be subdued to our spirit for a certain purpose; not because our flesh is bad, and our spirit good; not in order that we may puff ourselves up and admire ourselves, and say, as the philosophers among the heathen used, "What a strong-minded, sober, self-restraining man I am! How fine it is to be able to look down on my neighbours, who cannot help being ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... souls do travel abroad; that they will speak, one to another, while our bodies sleep—while we are steeped in that mysterious period of mimic death which leads us so uncannily near their twilight zone! Some men hold that our dreams are vagaries, as a puff of air or a passing breeze; others that they are unfulfilled desires; still others that they are the impress made by another soul upon the subliminal part of us, that leaves to our active senses but imperfectly translatable hieroglyphics. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... was shooting planes into the air like bullets from a gun. The American Mediterranean fleet was putting out to sea at emergency-speed, getting every flying craft aloft that could be gotten away. A cruiser swung a peculiar crane-like arm, there was a puff of smoke and a plane came into being. The crane retracted. Another plane. ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... them but very small temporal goods, lest their inward state should be in danger! A thing, they need not much fear, since that effectual humiliation by HENRY VIII. "For," say they, "the great tithes, large glebes, good victuals and warm clothes do but puff up the Priest! making him fat, foggy, and useless! and fill him with pride, vainglory, and all kind of inward wickedness and pernicious corruption! We see this plain," say they, "in the Whore of Babylon [Roman Catholic Church]! To what a degree of luxury and intemperance, besides a great ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... wounded animal, and fell to the ground with the noise of a load of bricks. Through my peep-hole I saw him writhing, with both hands pressed to his head. Then, lying flat on his back, he whipped out his revolver. I saw the red spurt, the puff of ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... ex-editor, had written up a good "puff" for a local paper, inserted gratis an exciting comment and anticipation in reference to the impending sale, and Darry and Bob had printed fifteen hundred dodgers on their home press, very neat and presentable in appearance, and these had been judiciously distributed for miles ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... warm steam-boiler?" "Steam-boiler, indeed," said Todd. "Two rivets loose,—steam-room full of steam,—police frightened,—neighborhood in a row,—and we had to put out the fire. She would have run a week without hurting a fly,—only a little puff in the street sometimes. But there we are, Ingham. We shall lose the early mail as it stands. Seventy-eight tokens to be worked now." They always talked largely of their edition at the Argus. Saw it with many eyes, perhaps; but this ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... caught up the meal, and so away with it through the air. Then the lad went back into the safe for more; but when he came out again on the steps, if the North Wind didn't come again and carry off the meal with a puff; and more than that, he did so the third time. At this the lad got very angry; and as he thought it hard that the North Wind should behave so, he thought he'd just look him up, and ask him to ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... one grasps them they escape The hand like shining, slippery, squirming snakes! And she has subtle words, caressing words, And words that set the mind on fire; hot words That burn, and haughty ones that swell and puff Like stallions' nostrils, and toss high their heads! Oh she has words, and words, and many words With which ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... sweep him away! When it rains, may the lightning strike him! May evil nights be his!" It is believed that in the knot the sorcerer has bound up the life of his enemy. In the Koran there is an allusion to the mischief of "those who puff into the knots," and an Arab commentator on the passage explains that the words refer to women who practise magic by tying knots in cords, and then blowing and spitting upon them. He goes on to relate how, once upon a time, a wicked Jew bewitched the prophet Mohammed himself by ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... ship's log. The men speak of one heavy gale after another, in January, and the pumps going; but the log says, 'A puff of wind from the N.E.' And, here again, the entry exposes your exaggeration. One branch of our evidence contradicts the other; this comes of trying to prove too much. You must say the log was lost, went ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls "fateful lines." At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own wares as ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... go-as-you-please proposition; it's got to be thought out. Feelin's don't allers point the right trail to jedgment, an', as often as not, the blazes lead the wrong way. You're all right in your own way, Bob-Cat, but you're shy on roots, and your idees gets a windfall every time an extra puff comes along. You're like the trees settlers forgets about when they cuts on the outside of a forest an' ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... far after Blackburn shouted his warning when a puff of white smoke dotted the luminous haze ahead, and a bullet whined ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Remarks Puff Paste Common Paste Mince Pies Plum Pudding Lemon Pudding Orange Pudding Cocoa Nut Pudding Almond Pudding A Cheesecake Sweet Potato Pudding Pumpkin Pudding Gooseberry Pudding Baked Apple Pudding Fruit ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... fellow, and he started off, taking a double gun and a few charges of powder and ball. The elephant-catchers were delighted with the idea, and we patiently awaited the result. About a quarter of an hour passed away, when we suddenly saw a puff of white smoke spring from the green rushes at the point of the sandbank. A few moments after, we heard the report of the gun, and we saw the ball splash in the water close to the elephants. They immediately cocked their ears, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... awake at sea. I had fallen asleep brimful of all kinds of romantic thoughts. But lo! I had been awakened early on the dark morning of this almost wintry day with the shouting of men, the rattling of chains, and puff-puff-puffing ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... humiliating, you know, to be obliged to crawl about here on the water, at twenty-five knots at the utmost, while that fellow is flying a hundred miles an hour or so through the clouds without turning a hair, or I ought to say without as much as a puff of smoke. He seems to move of his own mere volition. I wonder what ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... And suddenly hangings parted, and Ribiera came into the room. He smiled nervously, and then, as Bell blew a puff of smoke at him and nodded casually, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... in quietly with his hat on, appropriates the most comfortable chair, lights his pipe, and commences to puff in silence. He lets the youngsters brag away for a while, and then, during a momentary lull, he removes the pipe from his mouth, and remarks, as he knocks the ashes out ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... manner. In such a case she will not put you out of countenance, by telling you of it in company; but either intimate it by some sign, or wait for an opportunity when you are alone together. She is also in the best French company, where she will not only introduce but PUFF you, if I may use so low a word. And I can assure you that it is no little help, in the 'beau monde', to be puffed there by a fashionable woman. I send you the inclosed billet to carry her, only as a certificate of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... used to think myself of a very nervous turn!" he says, presently, with a smile. "Nancy, you will laugh at me, but I assure you upon my honor that all the way home I have been in the most abject and deadly fright: at every puff of wind I thought we were infallibly going to the bottom: whenever the carriage rocked in the least to-day on the way down, I made up my mind we were going to smash! Little woman, what can a bit of a thing like you have done to me to make me seem so much more valuable to myself ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... as though inspired; but to no purpose in the end. For the flames increased. Puff after puff of wind drove the fire on, scattering brands from the blazing pine; and now another, and another, tree caught. The glare of the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... talked about, for the puff and humbug attracted people. The Montefiores, like fashionable knicknacks, succeeded that whimsical jade, Rose Peche, who had gone off the preceding autumn, between the third and fourth acts of the burlesque, Ousca Iscar, in order to make a study ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... the bottom he made a clutch— A heart or a puff-ball of sin? Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, He grasped but a handful of dry-rotted dust: It was a horrible thing to touch, But he hid ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... water of some half-empty well; and he explains, finally, the change by which they become stiff and motionless and hard, until a husk breaks away and the little gnat is seen sitting upon it; and by and by the sun's heat or a puff of wind starts it off, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... pipe, lighted it, and commenced smoking. Presently the coachman drew near; I saw at once that there was mischief in his eye; the man smoking was standing with his back towards him, and he came so nigh to him, seemingly purposely, that as he passed a puff of smoke came of necessity against his face. 'What do you mean by smoking in my face?' said he, striking the pipe of the elderly individual out of his mouth. The other, without manifesting much surprise, said, 'I thank you; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the crevices of the rattling old casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... PUFF, or PUFFER. One who bids at auctions, not with an intent to buy, but only to raise the price of the lot; for which purpose many are hired by the proprietor of the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... the farthest corner of the room and a huge puff of smoke. Before I could collect my wits another followed in the opposite corner. The room was filled ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... breeze of wind that soon began to puff and gust. The cloud stuff flying across the sky foretold us of a gale. By midday Arnold Bentham fainted at the steering, and, ere the boat could broach in the tidy sea already running, Captain Nicholl and I were at the steering sweep with all the four ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... the mountains for a few minutes, and turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... at the sides and in and out of the stalls, eating sweetmeats and visiting their friends. And there was scarcely a grown person in the entire audience of Japanese who was not smoking, for women as well as men smoke in Japan: one pinch of tobacco in a short pipe, one puff, a little whiff of smoke inhaled and the operation is over. Before the curtain rose, the Nesan flew busily from one box to the other with cushions and sweetmeats, baskets of oranges and boxes of sweet pickled black beans. Presently ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... who was to serve as godfather, giggling; the apple-cheeked Flemish girl carrying "Pervyse"; Hilda and Hinchcliffe closely following. They walked through the village street past laughing soldiers who called out, "Les Anglais!" They entered the church through the left door. A puff of damp air blew into their faces. In the chancel stood a stack of soldiers' bicycles. They kneeled and waited for the Cure. In the nave, old peasant women were nodding and dipping, and telling their beads. The nurse handed the baby to Hilda. Rene giggled. Three small children wandered ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... idee, now, Master Tongs. A song is a main fine thing, now, to fill up the chinks. First a glass, then a puff or ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... if you don't put it out, ( That's positive) will increase: And any may spy, With half of an eye, That it comes from our priests and Papistical fry. Ye have one of these fellows, With fiery bellows, Come hither to blow and to puff here; Who having been toss'd From pillar to post, At last vents his rascally stuff here: Which to such as are honest must sound very oddly, When they ought to preach nothing but what's very godly; As here from this place we charge you to do, As ye'll answer to man, besides ye know who. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... and inhaled a puff thoughtfully. "You don't understand. All you have to say does have some bearing upon things, but, when you get down to brass tacks, it's instinct—at the last gasp, it's instinct. You can't get ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... course, powder! She applied it liberally, and then wiped away every grain, that being what she had seen older girls do in the Gymnasium dressing-room. Then with a last survey of her face, unaltered by the ceremonial with the powder-puff, she ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... and a puff of smoke from one of the guns. There was a dead silence for the space of a few moments, and then a screech and a peculiar whirring sound, as a shell hurried through the air over ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... with her in the least. She was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the Sylph got within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But once having been induced to make the voyage, I must admit she stuck manfully by her decision, ensconcing herself on deck with books and cushions and numerous other necessities to her comfort, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Society's exhibition Jeffery (Mr.), news from Law relating to tenant right, rev. Lycoperdon Proteus Manure, liquid ——, waste Moles, to drive away Norton's, Captain, cartridge Oregon expedition, news of Peas, early Pelargoniums, new Plants, wearing out of Poultry show, West Kent —— books Puff balls Rhubarb, monster —— wine, recipes for making Royal Botanical Gardens Seeding, thin Societies, proceedings of the Agricultural of England, Bath and Oxfordshire Agricultural, Belfast Flax Steam ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various

... Knox's visitors desired him to praise God for the good he had done. He answered, "Flesh of itself is too proud, and needs nothing to puff it up," and protested that he only laid claim to the free mercy of God in Christ among others. To the earl of Morton (who was then about to receive the regency, the earl of Moray being dead) he was heard to say, "My lord, God hath given you many blessings; he hath given you high honour, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... ran Reddy Fox as fast as he could go, and going home he passed the house of Johnny Chuck. Now Johnny couldn't run so fast as Reddy Fox and he was puffing and blowing as only a fat little woodchuck can puff and blow when he has to run hard. Moreover, he had lost his ill temper now and he thought it was the best joke ever to think that he had actually frightened Reddy Fox. When he came to his own house he stopped and sat on his hind legs ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess

... learning and thinking power!" He caught his wife's arm. "See! see, Sidonie, my dear! See her enhancing in magnitude so fastly approaching!" As he spoke a puff of white vapor lifted from the object and spread out against the blue, the sunbeams turned it to silver and pearl, and a moment later came the far-away, long, wild scream ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... at the door of Mrs. Singleton's room. A dispirited expression characterized the countenance usually serene and happy, and between her brows a perpendicular line marked the advent of anxious foreboding. Her hopeful scheme had dissolved, vanished like a puff of steam on icy air, leaving only a teazing memory of mocking failure. Judge Dent's conference with the District Solicitor, had convinced him of the futility of any attempt to secure bail; moreover, a message from the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... flash of light, a puff of smoke, a loud report. The Kru boy fell forward upon his face howling with fear. Monty ran off towards the house ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... you never given it a serious thought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you have just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried to sell you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blow like a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you served in the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... winds are bluff And veering to the East, And Beauty shuns their rude rebuff By hiding hands (and powder-puff) Inside her Russian sable muff, We tell ourselves, "Why, sure enough There goes, disguised as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... across the floor, and then passed toward the open door. How good that puff of fresh air and freedom felt on his face! He did not know that Colonel Woodville raised his head on the pillow, glanced after him, and then let his head sink back and his eyes close again. A low sigh came between the colonel's lips, and it would have been difficult to say whether ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... inventive, and something of a genius; and next day she concocted another dish out of the Giant's heads. She boiled them, and sifted them, and mixed them with eggs and sugar and milk and spice; then she lined some plates with puff paste, filled them with the mixture, and set them in ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... twelve-hour night; for under the "Line"—and they were less than three degrees from it—the days and nights are equal. But throughout all its hours, the wind continued to blow steadily from the same quarter; and the spread tarpaulin, thick and strong, caught every puff of it acting admirably. It was, in fact, as much canvas as the pinnace could well have carried on such a rough sea-breeze, and served as a storm-try sail to ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... outer port the puff of air struck them like the exhaust from a furnace, dry and hot as a tongue of flame. Brion heard Lea's gasp in the darkness. She stumbled down the ramp and he followed her slowly, careful of the weight of packs and equipment he carried. The sand, still hot from the ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... on 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

... came near having an untimely ending for, unheeding Aunt Sheen's caution as to strange flies, he leaped eagerly at a particularly beautiful one poised over his head. Fortunately for our hero a strong puff of wind blew the fly aside at that moment, but not before the cruel hook which was concealed in it ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater

... Audley's determined look, but he was not conquered. He took up his tools and his trap, gave a final puff to spread his sawdust farther, and marched off without ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flakes, the feathery curls, of the balmy cirro-cumulus, whose huge bulk arose out of the bowels of the ship itself. Up and down, in and out, here and there, into every chink and crevice, rolled the blue-white incense-cloud, dense as the cottony puff at the mouths of the guns in Vernet's "Siege of Algiers." Or you might say that these were but the flying-buttresses, the floriated pinnacles, the frets, and the gargoyles of a great frowzy cathedral lying vast and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... since, is now 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 or perish with ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... by the spring-house where the boys had left the tramp and Jonesy, a puff of smoke went curling around the roof. Then a tongue of flame shot up through the cedars, and another and another until the sky was red with an angry glare. It lighted up the eastern window-panes of the servants' cottage, but the inmates, tired from the unusual serving of the evening before, ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... shot came whizzing every now and then. Gods! how we exulted at the sight. Along our line rose a wild cheer, as our horses tugged and strained at their bits, and every man's bridle was drawn tight. Soon a puff of smoke came from a hillock near, and the stern command 'draw swords' ran along from troop to troop, as the bright steel flashed in the sunshine like a river of light. Then out pealed the trumpets, and away we went, amidst a storm of ringing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf; but the stillness was broken by a puff of icy wind which suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... him). So she tells me. And, as she has brought nothing with her except a tooth-brush and a powder-puff, I am going into the town to get her a few articles. We must make her feel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... went first, and was safely lodged before I arrived. She did not disturb you, I dare say, as I did; for she sails along like a swan: but I have got the gout in my left claw, and that's the reason I puff and groan so in taking ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in the various occupations which minister to the exigencies of fashion, are confined to close rooms, surrounded by masses of silk, muslin, &c. They are debarred the healthful practice of working in the open air, and can scarcely venture even to sit at an open window, because a drop of rain or a puff of wind may be fatal to their work and its materials. The lace-maker, on the contrary, whose work requires only her thread and her fingers, is not disturbed by a refreshing breeze or a light shower; and even when the weather is not particularly fine, she prefers ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... rotund bodies being visible. These lay so motionless that they might have been mistaken for floating puncheons, and the observer would have thought them asleep, had he not noticed an occasional turn of the whites of their small eyes, and a slight puff of steam and water from ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... Fielding's which unfortunately remained a project. This was a Translation of the works of Lucian, to be undertaken in conjunction with his old colleague, the Rev. William Young. Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author well, as he ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... have a bit of talk to you; and as soon as I am done I am going to take you with me. What do you think of that, Thomas?" And thereupon the old man lighted his pipe, and sat smiling for a little and moving his long fingers daintily. "When the two queer companions had taken puff by puff together for some time, ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... action of my horse, the waiting drove my heart to extra work. The breeze quickened and fanned my cheek, and borne upon it came the faint and far-away bay of a hound. It came again and again, each time nearer. Then on a stronger puff of wind rang the clear, deep, mellow call that had given Sounder his beautiful name. Never it seemed had I heard music so blood-stirring. Sounder was on the trail of something, and he had it headed my way. Satan heard, shot up his long ears, and ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... is this an' some is that, But 'ere's a truth I know: A fightin' cove who's run to fat Is bound t' puff an' blow!' ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... be pushed together for others of their good friends, who in passing would be hailed to join them. And how Marguerite used to sing all through dinner and how they would all sing, until it grew so late and so dark that they had to puff their cigarettes aglow over their plates, and yell to Madame Giraud for a light! And how the old lady would bustle out with the little oil lamp, placing it in the center of the long table amid the forest of vin ordinaires, with a "Voila, mes enfants!" ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... swarm is obtained from it, by the following process. Choose that part of a pleasant day, say from 10 A. M. to 2 P. M., when the largest number of bees are abroad in the fields; if any bees are clustered in front of the hive, or on the bottom-board, puff among them a few whiffs of smoke from burning rags or paper, so as to force them to go up among the combs. This can be done with greater ease, if the hive is elevated, by small wedges, about one quarter of an inch above ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... paused, hand on the knob, to glance back around the room—a habit formed of caution. Then, satisfied, I opened the door and left it standing wide so that the room might air. As I ascended the attic stairs a little fresh puff of wind cooled me. Doubtless a servant had opened the flaps to the cupola, for they were laid back; and as I mounted, I could see a square of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... Betsy began to climb the hill to Putney Farm. It was a very warm night for May, and little Molly began to puff for breath. "Let's sit down on this rock awhile and rest," ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... except Weir seemed in a hurry to answer the postman's ring. He came in with the letters and his jaw dropping. It so happened that his letter was the very last one, and when he got to it the truth flashed over him. Then the peculiar appropriateness of the nickname Puff was plainly manifest. One by one the boys slid off their chairs to the floor, and at last Weir had to join in the ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... and Mrs. and Miss Somebody, these volumes are," etc. etc.—why, this is doling out the "soft milk of dedication" in gills,—there is but a quart, and he divides it among a dozen. Why, Pratt, hadst thou not a puff left? Dost thou think six families of distinction can share this in quiet? There is a child, a book, and a dedication: send the girl to her grace, the volumes to the grocer, and the dedication ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... cakes and bread until their cupboards were full; and surely enough the threshers did come with the threshing-machine, which was painted red, and went "Puff! puff! puff! rattle! rattle!" all the time. And the proud wheat was threshed out by it, and found itself in grains again and very ...
— Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... swallowed another ant if he had tried. Of course they made his stomach stick out, but it wasn't the ants that puffed him out all over. Oh, my, no! It was pride. That's what it was—pride. You know nothing can puff any one up quite ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... and partly no. I think I told you at the time that they vanished between two days like a puff of smoke, leaving no trace behind them. How it was done I couldn't imagine. There is a wagon-road paralleling the river over there at the Siding, as you know, and the first thing I did the next morning was to look for wagon-tracks. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... is dead, and I am practically under sentence of death myself. I have got to put my affairs in order. I'd hardly learned I was a very rich man before I also learned my time was limited. On high authority. Heart, Nephew. I may last for several years. Or go out like a puff of ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... so as to double or treble it? 5. Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me to go beyond my measure? 6. Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, in attempting to build a very large ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. "'Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'—tell me again what that ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... knew to be the rush of a round shot far above her head, and following the sound saw a little silver fountain leap up into the sunshine and skim before the breeze; then glancing up the hill she saw the gray puff drifting, and presently felt the dull rumble of the air. At the root of the smoke-puffs, once or twice, she descried a stocky figure moving leisurely, and in spite of the distance and huddle of vapour could declare that it was Captain Stubbard. Then a dense mass of smoke was brought ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... our seaside resorts that a land breeze brings swarms of mosquitoes from far inland is based on the supposition that these insects are capable of long-sustained flight, and a certain amount of battling against the wind. This is an error. Mosquitoes are frail of wing; a light puff of breath will illustrate this by hurling the helpless creature away, and it will not venture on the wing again for some time after finding a safe harbor. The prevalence of mosquitoes during a land breeze is easily explained. It is usually ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... with the yet early light which streamed between the trees, and laid lines of enchantment upon the green turf; and the air came up from the sea-board, and bore the breath of the roses to Fleda every now and then with a gentle puff of sweetness. Such light she had seen none such light since she was a child. Was it the burst of mental sunshine that had made it so bright? or was she going to be really a happy child again? No no not that, and yet something very like it so like it, that she ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... ran to the rebuilt fire. The little man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompous puff. "There's only one of me—and the devil made a twin," ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... 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 she had made an effort, and assisted ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... youth exaltation of spirit requires but slight causes; only a soft puff of a favoring wind will send up one like a kite into the ether. Jerome, with the prospect of two shillings per week, and that great, kindly strength of the Squire's underlying his weakness, went home as if he ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... writing fast enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong as ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... nothing he cannot do," cried the fat little man whose name was Puff. "You must hear him talk! You must ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay

... 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; then sinks, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... crossed before they reached the river, and their pursuers might overtake and capture them within sight of their vessel. Presently several men were seen running about on the deck of the Boxer, and then a puff of smoke arose from one of the ports, and a shell went shrieking over their heads and ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon

... locket, frosted over with seed pearls, Oblong and slim, for wearing at the neck, Or hidden in the bosom; their joined curls Should lie in it. And further to bedeck His love, Heinrich had picked a whiff, a fleck, The merest puff of a thin, linked chain To hang it from. Lotta could ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... horses, and rode off down the Arkansas Lane, to have a gallop and a peep at the gunboats from the levee. But mother's entreaties prevented us from going that near, as she cried that it was well known they fired at every horse or vehicle they saw in the road, seeing a thousand guerrillas in every puff of dust, and we were sure to be killed, murdered, and all sorts of bloody deaths awaited us; so to satisfy her, we took the road about a mile from the river, in full view, however. We had not gone very far before we met a Mr. Watson, a plain farmer of the ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... printed in Germany, and all the adjacent countries, in all times, are to be found in the catalogue. I pass over the implied compliment to this country, namely, that while a true description is required in Germany, a puff both in time and space is wanted for England. I dwell on the injurious effect of such alterations to literature, and on the trouble they give to those who wish to be accurate. It is a system I attack, and not individuals. There is no occasion to say much, for ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... this also," Millar said, handing her a little mirror, then a powder puff and a tiny stick of rouge. Elsa could not help smiling through her tears at the absurdity of it, as she dabbed and dusted her tear-stained face, looking at herself in the little mirror, until all traces ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... disguise than they might have done at home. Sue, in her new summer clothes, flexible and light as a bird, her little thumb stuck up by the stem of her white cotton sunshade, went along as if she hardly touched ground, and as if a moderately strong puff of wind would float her over the hedge into the next field. Jude, in his light grey holiday-suit, was really proud of her companionship, not more for her external attractiveness than for her sympathetic words and ways. That ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... the wind. "Now you may go—puff!" And away flew some of the seeds, just as they do when you blow ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various

... of the following day, while it was Frank's watch on deck, as the Ticonderoga came suddenly around an abrupt bend in the river, a puff of smoke rose from behind an embankment, about half a mile in advance, while a shell whistled over the vessel, and dropped into the ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon

... am lying? They promised him 10,000 rubles dowry. I always said you should have saved something. Now you have it! They have snatched him away from you. And such a man, too! They puff themselves up entirely too much. Where did they get the money, I would like to know? [Micho appears ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... fortune had not again particularly favoured me, I should have had to abandon my design. But the light airs which had begun blowing from the south-east and south had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west. Just while I was meditating, a puff came, caught the Hispaniola, and forced her up into the current; and to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my grasp, and the hand by which I held it dip for a second ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hesitating, something did happen. There was a shrill whistle, a puff of white smoke in the distance, and another train ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... tub I go, With towel, dressing-gown and soap, Then most, the while I puff and blow, My soul with song doth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various

... fell with an uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of dripping eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the drinking earth, and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one hand upon the upraised sash, a great puff of the outside air invaded the room, odourous with the reek of the soaking earth, redolent with fertility, pungent, heavy, tepid. He closed the window again and sat for a few moments on the edge of the bed, one ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... laugh, and rejoined with the alacrity of a maritime adventurer who feels a puff of wind in his sail. "Ah, no; if she were in love with me I should know it! I am ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... the vessel to the shore were speedily cut. Three hands jumped into the boat, and the end of a hawser being heaved to them, they towed round the schooner's head—the current caught it and helped them. Meantime the topsails were loosed and the jib run up; a puff of wind also came down the creek. Away glided the schooner—the boat dropped alongside. The slave-dealers, now mustering strong, began firing at them. They fired in return, so as to drive the villains to seek shelter behind the trees. It ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... the means of perpetuating and diffusing its species by thousands of fertile germs. When the once thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any collection of water, beaten down by every summer shower into the streams or ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... His rich men bemoaned it, and the poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern, that he recked not the hatred of them all; for they must follow withal the king's will, if they would live, or have land, or possessions, or even his peace. Alas! that any man should presume so to puff himself up, and boast o'er all men. May the Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins! These things have we written concerning him, both good and evil; that men may choose ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... parts coward;—I do not know Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do; Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means To do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me: Witness this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd, Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an egg-shell. 'Tis not to be great Never to stir without great argument; But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honour's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... they were not his own by finessing and trick; He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind: If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ...
— English Satires • Various

... bag 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' same as nought wur. Aye, thae may ...
— Th' Barrel Organ • Edwin Waugh

... remark, she took the smoker from him and set to work. She inserted in the fire-chamber a handful of the cotton-waste and set fire to it; then with a preliminary puff or two of the bellows to make sure that the conflagration had not gone out, she aimed the nozzle at the front door of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... in printer's ink,) This makes 'em think our fust o' May is May, Which 't ain't, for all the almanicks can say. O little city-gals, don't never go it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country, ez it dons in books They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. I, with my trouses perched on cow-hide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse Your ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... is the signal for a run, so the two long-legged Dogs and the white broad-chested Dog dashed after the Coyote. But right across their path, by happy chance, there flashed a brown streak ridden by a snowy powder-puff, the visible but evanescent sign for Cottontail Rabbit. The Coyote was not in sight now. The Rabbit was, so the Greyhounds dashed after the Cottontail, who took advantage of a Prairie-dog's hole to seek safety ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... gull, I would keep him under observation for minutes at a time and see no motion of his wings downwards or upwards to aid his flight. He would tilt all of a piece to one side or another as the gusts of wind caught him: rigidly unbendable, as an aeroplane tilts sideways in a puff of wind. And yet with graceful ease he kept pace with the Titanic forging through the water at twenty knots: as the wind met him he would rise upwards and obliquely forwards, and come down slantingly again, his wings curved in a beautiful arch and his tail feathers outspread ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... calumny, the complete art might be drawn from these archives of political lying, during their flourishing era. We might discover principles among them which would have humbled the genius of Machiavel himself, and even have taught Mr. Sheridan's more popular scribe, Mr. Puff, a ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... group are the puffballs before they begin to puff. All our puffballs when young and solid white inside are good, wholesome food. Some of them, like the brain puffball or the giant puffball, are occasionally a foot in diameter, and yield flesh enough to feed a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... Instantly a puff of fire shot up, colorless and clear, throwing no very satisfactory light, yet capable of dispelling the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... his vituperative "Word with Punch," "in distinct terms that none but themselves can write a pantomime, and modestly entitled the one they did write 'Punch's Pantomime' ... which they laboured so lustily, but so vainly, to puff into notoriety." It was written in 1842, by Lemon, Jerrold, and Henry Mayhew; but when it was read by the first-named to the Covent Garden Company, by whom it was produced, it was found to contain a great deal of wit, but very little ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... sitting somewhere in the bush, and fully determined (if I did) to try her with a charge of duck-shot. And sure enough, I had not gone far when I met with a queer thing. The wind came on the top of the wood in a strong puff, the leaves in front of me burst open, and I saw for a second something hanging in a tree. It was gone in a wink, the puff blowing by and the leaves closing. I tell you the truth: I had made up my mind to see an aitu; and if the thing had looked like ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... noble, or emotional? There must be another violent head shaking here. The air from Oberon, Ocean, thou mighty monster, is so grand that scarcely a singer can be found today capable of interpreting it, although many sopranos puff and steam through it, for all the world like pinguid gentlemen climbing the stairs to the towers of Notre Dame. The Fifth Symphony of Beethoven is both grand and noble; probably no one will be found who will deny that it is supermusic, but Mahler's Symphony of the Thousand ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... that. This won't do, though." Out came a tiny powder-puff. "How's that?" she demanded, smiling ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... heat, G. W. reached the summit, only to sink down at once in the tangle of bushes and pant and puff. But after a while he revived; and then peering through the undergrowth he gazed down upon the plain below ...
— A Little Dusky Hero • Harriet T. Comstock

... thing!' laughed the second. 'Tell us all about it.' He drank what remained in his huge measure and handed the mug to a fox to be filled. Then he took a good puff at his pipe and settled himself in ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... exchange of courtesies, Yavapai Joe had not moved, except to puff at his cigarette; nor had he ceased to regard Patches with a stupid curiosity. As Phil and Patches moved away, he still sat gazing after the stranger, until he was aroused by a sharp word from Nick, as ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... Company, Shirley rang for her maid. "Bring me my motor-coat and hat, Thelma," she ordered, "and telephone for the limousine." She seated herself before the mirror at her dressing-table and dusted her adorable nose with a powder-puff. "Mr. Smarty Cardigan," she murmured happily, "you walked rough-shod over my pride, didn't you! Placed me under an obligation I could never hope to meet—and then ignored me— didn't you? Very well, old boy. We all have our innings sooner or later, you know, and I'm going to make a substantial ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... by two other handwoven baskets of sweet-grass. One held the scout-biscuits just baked, while the other was piled high with light little puff-cakes. On either side of the centerpiece stood two large flat clay platters,—one held the Indian cucumber salad, and ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... it was tight! it didn't feel so a bit. Of course it would open if I puff like this, but I never do, because I hardly ever run," explained Rose, rather discomfited by ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... Unfortunately, the ground between looked frightful, a series of ridges like the teeth of a saw, the northern faces being covered with snow, which made the going particularly treacherous. I had hardly noticed this when there was a puff of smoke and a report, and I saw to my disgust that on the edge of my nice grassy slope were a few clusters of innocent-looking rocks, which I now saw to be sangars, evidently occupied. Just at this moment a man ran across the slope and began ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon

... slopping all about the lugger. Empty as a barrel she began to rock to the rocking of the tide. A puff would launch her. ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... pan, while in the case of eclairs, several of which are shown in Fig. 20, it is forced through a large round pastry tube so as to form long strips. The shapes are then baked in a hot oven, and during this process they puff up and become hollow in the center. If, upon attempting to fill the shells thus made, the centers are found to contain a little moist, doughy material, this may be removed. The filling may then be introduced either by cutting a slit ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... belle.' And the long hair came out of its close braids enveloping her in its glossy dark waves, while she carefully smoothed out the bits of red ribbon that served as fastenings. At this moment the door opened, and the surgeon, the wind, and a puff of snow came in together. Jeannette looked up, smiling and blushing; the falling hair gave a new softness to her face, and her eyes were as shy as the ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... called him Georgie Porgie because of the singularly Burmese-like manner in which he sang a song whose first line is something like the words 'Georgie Porgie.' Most men who have been in Burma will know the song. It means: 'Puff, puff, puff, puff, great steamboat!' Georgie sang it to his banjo, and his friends shouted with delight, so that you could hear them far away ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... corner. This startled me into the consciousness that I had been as if I had not existed for these two men. With his elbows propped on the table Mills had his hands in front of his face clasping the pipe from which he extracted now and then a puff of smoke, staring ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... kind will serve for patties generally. In cities the cases are very easily bought, but where they have to be made at home, only one who is already an expert in making puff-paste should attempt them. ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen

... and therefore could not see what Jeanne did, but he felt a sort of soft puff fly all over him, and opening his eyes again at Jeanne's bidding, saw, to his amazement, that he too was now dressed in the same pretty shiny stuff as his little cousin. They looked just like two Christmas angels on the top of a frosted Twelfth ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... This will make us listen more attentively to the tone sounded by the clock, the church-bell, the bird, the drinking-glass. And what a lot there are, like the squeaking door, the cricket, the noise of the wind and rain, the puff of the engine, and all the other sounds we hear in a day. Bit by bit, in this way, our familiarity with tones will grow and we shall be well repaid for all the trouble. Gradually we shall become better listeners—but ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper

... a little unto the monstrous towering of the Great Redoubt; and afterwards make strong mine heart, and go forward again. And always I did go warily, and chiefly among the low moss-bush; but sometimes out upon stony ground, and oft across places where sulphur did puff somewhat from the ground in a low smoke, very strong in the nostrils ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... open face movement that made me suspicious maybe he wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the wrist. His springin' ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... pushed together for others of their good friends, who in passing would be hailed to join them. And how Marguerite used to sing all through dinner and how they would all sing, until it grew so late and so dark that they had to puff their cigarettes aglow over their plates, and yell to Madame Giraud for a light! And how the old lady would bustle out with the little oil lamp, placing it in the center of the long table amid the forest of vin ordinaires, with a "Voila, mes enfants!" and a cheery word for ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... young lady, for we were still in doubt which to think her, led into a small room in which the candles were so well screened by a green tin screen that we could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black who rose from her chair by the fireside; as the door opened a great puff of smoke came from the huge fireplace at the same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and birdcages, and a harp. She did not speak, and as her back was ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... place for a discussion of the different genera of the puff-balls, etc., but it might be well to say that in recent years the old genus Lycoperdon has been divided into several genera. The giant puff-ball, and the L. cyathiforme, where the wall or peridium ruptures irregularly, have been placed ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... "for a reverend father abbot, who was fain to give place to bluff King Hal and some of his courtiers, a score of years since, had a chemist's complete apparatus, which he was obliged to leave behind him to his successors. Thou shalt there occupy, and melt, and puff, and blaze, and multiply, until the Green Dragon become a golden goose, or whatever the newer phrase of the brotherhood ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... to the blast, high peak and spire snow-silvery leaving. 240 But from a rock's wall'd eyrie the father wistfully gazing, Father whose eyes, care-dimm'd, wore hourly for ever a-weeping, Scarcely the wind-puff'd sail from afar 'gan darken upon him, Down the precipitous heights headlong his body he hurried, Deeming Theseus surely by hateful destiny taken. 245 So to a dim death-palace, alert from victory, Theseus Came, what ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... to pray, it is by conviction for sin; and this is the way to make our sweet babes do so too. But the other way, namely, to be busy in teaching children forms of prayer, before they know any thing else, it is the next way to make them cursed hypocrites, and to puff them up with pride. Teach therefore your children to know their wretched state and condition; tell them of hell-fire and their sins, of damnation, and salvation; the way to escape the one, and to enjoy the other, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of death; Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons; Echoes, the very leavings of a voice, Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves; Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; While we fantastic dreamers heave and puff, And sweat with an imagination's weight; As if, like Atlas, with these mortal shoulders We could sustain the burden of the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... blew a puff of smoke into the air and watched it disappear before he answered. In civilian clothes he bore a more distinct resemblance to the man he had been; and yet the resemblance only served to emphasize the change that had taken place ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... toy train creeps out of a grove of pines to the open bay. It is high tide. A flight of plover, startled by the engine, go wheeling away in a silver streak to a spit of sand running out from the marsh. A puff of smoke from the sand-spit, and the band leaves two of its members to a gentleman in new leather leggings; then, whistling over the calamity that has befallen them, they wheel again and strike for the open sea ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... 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 ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with the golden Armour, whose whole Army you blew away with a single Puff, like Leaves before the Wind, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard

... 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 give you ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... tangled mass of snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... Lloyd. "Don't you dare! The spooks would just eat you up. You look exactly like a cream puff." ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... there as far 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 ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... embroidered on it, and now it had assumed an ivory tint. Two breadths had been taken out of the skirt, people were so slim at present. But the court train was left. The bertha, as we should call it now, was as a cobweb, and the lace from the puff sleeve falling over the arm of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... the attempt the eyeball rolls upwards and outwards. The lower lid droops, the patient cannot wink, and the conjunctiva therefore becomes dry, and is irritated by exposure to cold and dust. The tears run over the cheek. From paralysis of the buccinator muscle there is inability to whistle or to puff out the cheeks and food collects between the cheek and the gums. The orbicularis oris being also paralysed, the patient is unable to show his upper teeth, and the labial consonants are pronounced indistinctly. The sense of taste ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... done, more and more wood had to be collected; and as a great deal of this was green, a great smoke arose, and, whenever a puff of wind came, this was ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... like women's hair is worn by some men, either their own or others' hair made into periwigs;—and by some women wearing borders of hair, and their cutting, curling, and immodest laying out of their hair," (does this hint at puff-combs?) "which practice doth increase, especially among the younger sort." Not much was effected, however,—"divers of the elders' wives," as Winthrop lets out, "being in some measure partners in this disorder." The use of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Lacelle, "would not supply enough air; it would work like a water-pump, sending down the air by jerks, and the receiver would be exhausted between the supplies of air. Two pumps would send down the air puff-puff, like the pumps of a steam engine; but three pumps, constantly in motion, send down, through the hose, a steady and continuous stream of air, enabling the diver to breathe ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... Presently there was a puff of white smoke and the first loud report rang out, making the vessel quiver beneath us. We waited, listening, but there was no response. The light quickly faded, night cast her veil of darkness over the sea, but we still stood in ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... sea was almost calm, except for the swell running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles from land in ten minutes under the hour—speed, that, for a twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... she came to the Azhogins' with her manuscript for the rehearsal. She was wearing a black dress with a string of coral round her neck, and a brooch that in the distance was like a pastry puff, and in her ears earrings sparkling with brilliants. When I looked at her I felt uncomfortable. I was struck by her lack of taste. That she had very inappropriately put on earrings and brilliants, and that she was strangely dressed, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... made on earth, and cracked hearts can be mended like any other cracked ware. 'A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste,' with a woman's name—and it has power to turn the sunshine black! Let him play the man and put ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... were playing now unchecked about the top of the Marconi room. Another more imperative signal flew from the pirate ship. A minute later there was a puff of white smoke, a loud report, and a shell burst in the sea, fifty yards ahead. Crawshay edged up to ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... open the end of my patent leather slipper so my toes can push through and then put a puff of black, ribbon over the hole!" The idea was an inspiration, ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... A puff of wind, the last vital rally of the expiring breeze, carried the Spindrift forward till the punt at her moorings lay ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... Santa Fe, another very beautiful and curious little bird, the copper-bellied puff-leg, is found, at an elevation of about 9000 feet. (Unlike the greater number of birds, the female humming-birds are generally as richly ornamented as the male.) It is named from the curious white ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... was being done with him; he was miserable and stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up to his belly, taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there, while smoke and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither—God knows! What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half-an-hour, all his work was done, and he would once more stand stock-still ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... drew in his chair, and leaning his elbow on his knees, opened wide a pair of expectant eyes; the Natchalnik, after a long puff of his pipe, said, with some magisterial decision, "That was a moment when nature had her sleeves tucked up. I think our Kara Georg must also have been ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... Sue, in her new summer clothes, flexible and light as a bird, her little thumb stuck up by the stem of her white cotton sunshade, went along as if she hardly touched ground, and as if a moderately strong puff of wind would float her over the hedge into the next field. Jude, in his light grey holiday-suit, was really proud of her companionship, not more for her external attractiveness than for her sympathetic words and ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... one piece of the typewritten letter escaped the burning except along the edge. A puff of air from the chimney or the opened door, as Linda entered the room, lifted it off the cinders and deposited it on the hearth. Linda had dressed early for the party, had felt a little hurt at the locked door of Michael's dressing-room, and had ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... followed him very closely. In the centre of it he paused and looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As it came near he trembled from head to foot, and, catching at the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... immured himself for practice before entering upon his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox, and Bar Harbor. And one very lovely afternoon in May, when the Park from his windows looked like a green forest, and puff on puff of perfumed air fluttered the curtains at his opened windows, he picked up his gloves and stick, put on his hat, and went out to walk in the Park; and when he had walked sufficiently he sat down on a bench in a flowery, bushy ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... star-shaped contour of the modern great city, thrusting out arms along every available railway line, knotted arms of which every knot marks a station, testify sufficiently to the relief of pressure thus afforded. Great Towns before this century presented rounded contours and grew as a puff-ball swells; the modern Great City looks like something that has burst an intolerable envelope and splashed. But, as our previous paper has sought to make clear, these suburban railways are the mere first rough expedient of far ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... was due at sundown, and at sundown a puff of dust rose on the track, and as a cry of "Mail oh !" went up all round the homestead, the Fizzer rode out of ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... smells with which the air of the room, was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... expenses, he grew rich, and began to turn his thoughts towards rank. He hung the arms of the family over his parlour-chimney; pointed at a chariot decorated only with a cypher; became of opinion that money could not make a gentleman; resented the petulance of upstarts; told stories of alderman Puff's grandfather the porter; wondered that there was no better method for regulating precedence; wished for some dress peculiar to men of fashion; and when his servant presented a letter, always inquired whether it came ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... such as we now see many bed-quilts made of, with a little narrow plaiting round the edge. My common black caps were made of silk quilted in the same way. Our best caps were of the same form: the foundation being of coloured silk or satin, with gauze puffed over it, and in each puff either a flower or a bit of ribbon, finished off to the fancy, with a plaited border of gauze, and larger bunches of flowers peaked over ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... days, provided our remarks attract sufficient attention, to publish a volume upon this subject. We have the materiel by us and about us; and as soon as we can make arrangements with Mr. POH for a puff in the 'North-American Review,' or the 'Southern Literary Messenger,' we shall broach the affair to Mr. FIELDS, the enterprising publisher. We have moreover desired Mr. WHIPPLE to write to his friend Mr. MACAULAY in England, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... merry set we were, behaving extremely like children out for a holiday. The wind was a trifle light for sailing, so the gentlemen pulled, but very lazily and not at all in good "form," as the object of each oarsman seemed to be to do as little work as possible. However, we got on somehow, a light puff helping us now and then, but our progress was hardly perceptible. I had been for a long time gazing down into the clear blue depth of water, every now and then seeing a flash of the white sand shining at ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... writes, 'is a solemn, great office, being no less than that of spiritual father to a family of men consecrate (as it is written, Abba, father); yet not on that account should vainglory puff the cheeks of a pious man. God knows that I am no boaster. He, therefore, will not misjudge me, as certain others have done, when I record in this place (for positive cause and reason good) the exorbitant honours ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... or three fields until at last he got it in the angle of two stone walls. "Aha! my friend, I think I have you now," said my grandfather, and proceeded to take a leisurely pinch of snuff, when a puff of wind came and blew the hat far out to sea. There are many more Dorsetshire stories that recur to my memory; but neither here is the interest of Suffolk. So to Suffolk we will come back, like my father ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... and was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... hand it was found that it attached to it "all sorts of little fragments, like leaves of gold, silver, paper, etc." "Thus this globe," he says, "when brought rather near drops of water causes them to swell and puff up. It likewise attracts air, smoke, etc."(9) Before the time of Guericke's demonstrations, Cabaeus had noted that chaff leaped back from an "electric," but he did not interpret the phenomenon as electrical repulsion. Von Guericke, however, recognized it as such, and refers to it as what he calls ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... a wharf loaded with truck for shipping jutted out into the stream; and one passenger—a sturdy, grizzled man in rough, brown hunting corduroy—leaped aboard followed by two fine dogs. Then the laboring engines, with puff and shriek, kept on their way; while Dan continued his investigations, and made friendly overtures to a big deck hand who volunteered to show the eager ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... us, and struck a blow on a dry gourd. Instantly three warriors appeared, and took their place by his side. Then all of us sat down and a pipe was lit and handed by the chief to Ringan. He took a puff and gave it to one of the other Indians, who handed it to me. With that ceremony over, the tongue of the chief seemed to be unloosed. "The Sachem comes," he said, and an old man ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... have you any rouge on hand? I'm growing pale. Please drop a little cologne on this handkerchief, my boy. May I borrow your powder puff? I've been sitting in the sun. Don't you want that gallon of stale buttermilk to take your ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... cracked the outer port the puff of air struck them like the exhaust from a furnace, dry and hot as a tongue of flame. Brion heard Lea's gasp in the darkness. She stumbled down the ramp and he followed her slowly, careful of the weight of packs and equipment he carried. The sand, still hot from the day, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... instrument and the very high magnification obtained by it surpasses all existing appliances. By this instrument, phenomena hitherto beyond the reach of investigation can now be studied with great precision. It shows ultra-microscopic changes inducted in a growing organism even by a puff of smoke or a gentle breeze, by a passing cloud or fleeting brightness. This super magnifier was exhibited for the first time by Sir J. C. Bose before an appreciative gathering 10-1-1919. A number of lady students, professors, lawyers, doctors and several ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... too small for the reception of any moderate-sized Christian subject of his Majesty's. There were turkeys, quails, poults, and plovers; but of pheasants only two, and one for the king. The greatest triumph, however, was reserved for the confections; an artificial hen was here served of puff-paste; her wings displayed, sitting upon eggs of the same materials. In each of these was enclosed a fat lark roasted, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... slices, and slid them into the round. Mrs. Holabird folded over the edges, gathered up the linen cloth in her hands, tied it tightly with a string, and Barbara disappeared with it behind the damask screen, where a puff of steam went up in a minute that told the pudding was in. Then Mrs. Holabird went into the pantry-closet and washed her hands, that never really came to need more than a finger-bowl could do for them, and Barbara carried after her the board and its etceteras, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... used for ballast for the road bed. I looked anxiously for the passenger. Seconds dragged like hours. Would she never come? There was a curve not far from the station, and the passenger could not be seen until it almost reached it. I listened. I could hear the low tremulous noise of the rails, a puff of black smoke went up from behind the curve—at last it was in view, engine No. 8. On seeing me the engineer came to a sudden stop. I hurriedly told him what to do. He was to back onto the siding and ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... been formed at Stockholm for storing wind power. There should be a great demand for the insides of some puff pastry that we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... brought it to light: upon what authority he makes the assertion remains a mystery. A very considerable number of sets remain unsold in the warehouse of a certain great bookseller. Query. Was the Rev. gentleman's pen dipped in gold when he wrote this puff direct?] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various

... groups here and there and fell full on the face of a woman in the steerage, who sat with her arms crossed on her knee and her face set eastward. She was singing, and her voice rose clearly above the puff of the engine and the jabber below. There was a chorus to the song, in which rough men and tired looking women joined. The song was about home, and once in a while the girl unclasped her arms and passed her hands over her eyes. Mae and Norman ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... if I were quite a Delilah. Going to a rendezvous at half past eight in the evening! At my age too! Ah me, in my old age I'm going to do what I should have been ashamed of when I was a girl." Then aloud. "Braesig don't puff so loud any one could hear you a mile off." Resuming her soliloquy: "And all for the sake of a boy, a mischievous wretch of a boy. Good gracious! If my pastor knew what I was about!" Aloud. "What are you laughing at, Braesig? I forbid you to laugh, it's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of Coriolanus, the sixteenth of Shakespeare's plays to be put on in Kristiania, neither the newspapers nor the magazines give us any clew. If we may believe a little puff in Aftenposten for January 20, 1874, the staging was to be magnificent. Coriolanus was played in a translation by Hartvig Lassen for the first time on January 21, 1874. After thirteen performances it was withdrawn ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... Mr. Puff, in "The Critic," giving a specimen of "the puff direct" in regard to a new play, says: "As to the scenery, the miraculous powers of Mr. De Loutherbourg are universally acknowledged. In short, we are at a loss which to admire most, the unrivalled genius ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... as a somewhat fresher puff took the brig and caused the spars to buckle still more ominously. "Royal halliards, let go! Clew up and furl!" he shouted to the men who were lounging on the forecastle over some tasks that they were performing in the leisurely manner usual ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... skipper, and there came a hot puff and filled the sails again, making us careen over. 'There, Mr Staples,' says the skipper, 'what do ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... him those pictures were the greatest things in the world. He was carried away with the crowns, diadems, plumes, iron gratings over the faces, with the swords and the daggers with cross-hilts to swear on—with the trains and puff-sleeves and girdles with pendents of gold—and the pages. All this had nothing in common with his everyday surroundings. How is it possible, he thought, that anyone who has such beautiful pictures should sell them? The doctor must ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... lifted us fairly off our feet. A great puff of smoke came belching up through the hole, followed by the crashing of hundreds of dollars' worth of glass ware in the jewelry shop as fragments of stone, brick and mortar and huge splinters of wood were flung with ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... overhead was a clear greenish-gold, the sky strewn with soft pale clouds that cast racing shadows on the soft grass underfoot, fragrant pinkish-yellow stuff strewn with bright vermilion puff-balls. Bart wished he were alone ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... well ask for a big position at first, and then take what you can get, At least that has been my rule so far, For, as I says to myself, if you can only get a very high position, with a sort of nabob's salary, and lots of perquisites running in annually, you needn't do anything, you bet, But puff at your cigar, Says ICHABOD BOGGS, ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various

... completes this volume, rounding out, as it were, the housewife's understanding of dessert making. To many persons, pastry making is an intricate matter, but with the principles thoroughly explained and each step clearly illustrated, delicious pies of every variety, as well as puff-paste dainties, may be ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... There was no staying with the past. The Earth was becoming too small for its expanding population. It was a stifling, dangerous little world that, if the pressures were not relieved, might puff into fire and fragments at any moment during any year. And the era of prospecting and exploration in the Asteroid Belt seemed destined soon to come to an end, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... cloud, with the others following. It was a cordial invitation for the Boche to come up and fight! Jeb did not see them again for several minutes, but he noticed that one of the kite balloons suddenly burst into a little puff of flame and ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... much if he'd really done it—the smoke out of his ears, I mean; but not one teeniest little puff came. I watched so careful ... He ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... she heard the deadened footfall of a fast-trotting horse, accompanied by the faint roll of carriage-wheels over the snow. As she turned half involuntarily to see who it was that travelled so fast, the creeping mist was driven aside by a puff of wind, and she saw a splendid blood- horse drawing an open victoria trotting past her at, at least, twelve miles an hour. But, quickly as it passed, it was not too quick for her to recognize Lady Bellamy wrapped up in furs, her dark, stern face looking on straight ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Mollie commented. "But I love you, just the same. Now," she added, "who's going to take the wheel while I do my duty with the powder puff? I need both ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope

... this joke, and Noddy seemed pleased. There was a short consultation among the judges and other officials, and, a moment later, a white puff of smoke was seen hovering above the uplifted revolver of the starter. Then came a sharp crack, and the panting machines, the engines of which had been put in motion some time previous, started off together, as the drivers threw in ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... nature with a powder puff, almost ready for her call at a crowded matinee, when her dresser mentioned the name of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... would say, cheerily. "It ain't hot, because it's a gas stove. And I'll only get fat if I sit around. You put on your black-and-white and go to church. Call me when you've got as far as your corsets, and I'll puff your hair ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... of slips which had come that evening from a Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertisement, but I do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... interesting because it affords a clue to a project of Fielding's which unfortunately remained a project. This was a Translation of the works of Lucian, to be undertaken in conjunction with his old colleague, the Rev. William Young. Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author well, as he who hath formed his Stile ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... the first puff of the coming breeze hit the Dartaway and sent the aircraft up on a slant. Dick promptly moved the tips and one of the rudders, and the flying machine came along on a level. But from then on the oldest Rover boy had all he could ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... inside!" he was moved to utter out of the goodness of his heart. "She went in jest as easy," he recounted later to one of his cronies. "It warn't no more exertion for her than 't would be to you to stick your finger through a cream puff." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of the keys sounded like a ghostly threat in the empty corridors. The air was as damp as a fog, and the stones were cold and slimy. After a moment the guard succeeded in unlocking the door and roughly pushed the Englishman forward. The door closed with a little puff, and Thorndyke felt about him for the guide; but he was alone. For a moment there was no sound. With the closing of the door it seemed to him that he was cut off from every living creature. In the awful silence he could hear his own ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... face movement that made me suspicious maybe he wa'n't one of the Algernon kind, after all. But he had most of the points, from the puff tie to the way he spoke. It wa'n't the hot potato dialect Piddie uses; but it leaned that way. If he'd been a real Willie boy, though, he'd gone up in the air, and maybe I'd got slapped on the wrist. His springin' that grin was a hunch for me ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... work. Of course, it is necessary to leave some clay here and there to attach the various forms to the slab. The under-cutting may be carried to such a pitch as to make the design look weak, and as though it would fall to pieces with a puff of wind. When this is the case, I reckon the finishing has been carried too far. Clay should always look strong enough to hold together, and I may say I never thought much of that fancy china one sees which is covered with flowers and foliage ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... out of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs! Dost thou wince as thou readest this line? Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated? Puff out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to me as the Baggs of old—the generous, the gentle, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... crab meat to a half pint of cream sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Have ready either bread pates or pates made from puff paste. Put a tablespoonful of the crab mixture in the bottom of each. Break in an egg. Stand in the oven until the egg is "set." Or you may poach the eggs and slide them into the pate. Pour over the remaining quantity of crabmeat sauce, and send at ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer

... or a half crumpled rose leaf. And where her chin melted into her neck, and the neck sloped to the shoulder, there were exquisite lines. After the fashion of the day her bodice was cut square, and the sleeves had a puff at the shoulder and a pretty bow that had done duty in various places before. He did not understand that it was beauty that moved him so, for he had always been deeply sympathetic over the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... hope not! A summer breeze is altogether too promiscuous with its kisses. I hope you don't allow any kisses, except those of your own particular swansdown powder puff." ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... flushed with the heat of the stove and the excitement of turning the muffins, and the little iron spatula she used for that purpose still in her hand; and a fresh and larger puff of the unsavoury blue smoke accompanied her entrance. She came forward however gravely and without the slightest embarrassment to receive her cousin's somewhat unceremonious "How do, Fleda?"—and keeping the spatula still in one hand shook hands with him with the other. But at the very different ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... walking to and fro across the carpet, listening to the rain which beat hard against the curtained windows. The riotous blast shook the casement as if a strong man were striving to force his entrance into the comfortable room. With every puff of the wind the fire leaped upward from the hearth, laughing and rejoicing at the shrieks of ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Malone took a puff of his cigarette. "Maybe he just wants to be sure," he said. "Funny things are happening all over." The cigarette tasted terrible and he put it out in an ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... my victim stood, Disguis'd a sigh or two, and puff'd them from him; Then rubb'd his brow, and took it ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... slow. I am tired. That dunkee tired. B'mbi that dunkee he talk. He say—'Hamed, you good man, you kind man. Subpose you no hammer me too much I take you up, alonga Medina one time quick.' I say, 'I no want hammer you.' My word, that dunkee change!—dunkee before, horse now—Arab horse. Puff! We along Medina! Wind bin take 'em!" With the wind in his favour Hamed does wonders even now—at sea. It was not seemly to suggest to him that cynical memory dulled the polish of his story; but if there really are chinks ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... hangings in an historical painting ought to be, not velvet or cotton, but merely drapery. The same principle should be applied to poetry and romance. The truth of character is the first object; the truth of place and time is to be considered only in the second place. Puff himself could tell the actor to turn out his toes, and remind him that Keeper Hatton was a great dancer. We wish that, in our own time, a writer of a very different order from Puff had not too often forgotten human nature in the niceties of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thus early a leaning to the theatre, where presently he was to score one of his greatest successes, and he wrote "The Wife of Bath," which was produced at Drury Lane on May 12th, 1713. Steele gave it a "puff preliminary" in No. 50 of ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... sir. Auddy is enjoying a puff along with a panorama." I surmised that my friend had received a gift from the cab driver; I knew Auddy had not carried ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... water; and he got so proud that whenever old Mrs. Hen or old Mr. Rooster would say 'Good-mornin'' to him as kind and as nice as could be, he wouldn't answer politely, but he'd stick up his head and go 'Gobble-gobble-gobble!' and then he'd swell up again and puff out his chest and march himself off. Pretty soon he got so sassy that nobody could live with him. Why, he didn't care what he did and who he stepped on. He trampled on two po' little chicks one day that were just out of the shell ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... hitherto he had never got beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar from his mouth, and looking at it said, "I say, sir! seems to me the fire is uncommon near the chimbly." Mr. Winchester laughed; he then asked George to show him the blacksmith shop. "I must learn how to shoe a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... the professor of the science was applied. Every muscle was rubbed, every sinew was soothed. And from time to time, as at touch of the iron muscles and steel sinews the old fellow's ardor increased, he would straighten up and give a loud puff of satisfaction. ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... arm about her. For the first time in her life she distrusted the perfection of the old soul's motives. She felt like a Judas when Lady Webling offered her cheek for another good-night kiss. Then she pretended to read a book while she listened for Lady Webling's last puff as ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... schools of TAFAU ULI and other fish. In quick, alarmed silence the people headed back, but even then the first fierce squall struck them, and some of the frail canoes began to fill at once. "I MATAGI! I MATAGI! (head to the wind)" a man called out; "head to the wind, or we perish! 'Tis but a puff and it is gone." ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... last began to puff and snort and show alarm, and Henry, springing to his feet, whirled the torch in a circle of living fire around his head. The whole herd broke in an instant into a frightful panic, and with much snorting and bellowing rushed ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... underground, turning the wool and cotton into tiny garments. Maia liked the clothes, but hated the thought of the blind mole, only she did not know how to escape him. In the evenings, when the spiders were going to their homes for the night, she would walk with them to the door and wait till a puff of wind blew the corn ears apart, and ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... smoking the spark of your cigar inevitably draws a full delegation of those moldy old whiskerados who follow the profession of collecting butts and quids. They hover about you, watchful as chicken hawks; and their bleary eyes envy you for each puff you take, until you grow uneasy and self-reproachful under their glare, and your smoke is spoiled for you. Very few men smoke well before an audience, even an audience of their own selection; so before your cigar is half finished you toss it away, and while it is yet in the air the watchers ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... itself with iniquity," Fenton observed with a philosophical puff of his cigar. "Or what people call iniquity; though a truer definition would ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness. A small eater, but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper-berry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale in prose, called 'Rosamund Gray,'—a dramatic sketch, named 'John Woodvil,'—a 'Farewell Ode to Tobacco,'—with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... noncommissioned officer told us an unknown number of the defenders, running probably into the hundreds, had been buried so deeply beneath the ruins of the fort in the last hours of the fighting that the Germans had been unable to recover the bodies. Even as he spoke a puff of wind brought to our nostrils a smell which, once a man gets it into his nose, he will never get the memory of it out again so long as he has a nose. Being sufficiently sick, we ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... had a little hobby horse, His name was Tommy Gray, His head was made of pease straw, His body made of hay; I saddled him and bridled him, And rode him up to town, There came a little puff of wind And blew him up ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... though peace reigned between his country and Great Britain, he no sooner saw an armed vessel approaching, than he put his vessel in trim for action, and sent the crew to the guns. Nearer and nearer came the great English man-o'-war; and, as she came within range, a puff of smoke burst from her bow-port, and a ball skipped along the water before Perry's unarmed convoy, conveying a forcible invitation to heave to. Perry at once made signal to his convoy to pay no regard to the Englishman; and, setting the American flag, the two ships ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... have missed to one I have killed! How often the fierce arrow hissed its threat close by the wide ears! How often the puff of lifted feathers has marked the innocuous passage of my very best arrow! How often the roar of wings has replied to the 'chuck' of my steel-head shaft as it stabbed the tree branch under the grouse's feet! Oh, le bon temps, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... prevented a worse calamity in the loss of human life. The fire was discovered just after the morning service, and everyone had left the building but myself, Mrs. Talmage, the organist, and one or two personal friends. We were standing in the centre aisle of the church when a puff of smoke suddenly came out of the space behind the organ. In less than fifteen minutes from that discovery the huge pipe organ was a raging furnace, and I personally narrowly escaped the falling debris by the rear door of my church study. The flags and decoration which had been put ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... morning all was bustle and hurry, for the aunts were to start on their trip and Mr. Gordon must be off to Chicago. Miss Hope insisted on being taken to the station an hour before their train was due, and when a puff of steam up the track announced the actual approach of the train the two old ladies trembled with nervousness and excitement. Mr. Gordon guided them up the steps of the car, after a tearful farewell ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson

... "these are but idle tales to tell me; fit for naething but to puff up our inward man wi' our ain vain acts. I stude beside blessed Alexander Peden, when I heard him call the death and testimony of our happy martyrs but draps of blude and scarts of ink in respect of fitting discharge ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... many times when he doth nothing to it at all, yet when it is brought home again it is very fit and handsome; then must we put it on, then must the long seams of our hose be set by a plumb-line, then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman's ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... fitting cover should be used. Heat the water to boiling, then add the rice, and after stirring, put on the cover, which is not again to be removed during the boiling. At first, as the water boils, steam will puff out freely from under the cover, but when the water has nearly evaporated, which will be in eight to ten minutes, according to the age and quality of the rice, only a faint suggestion of steam will be observed, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... 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 ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... affirmed Franz. "I saw the puff of smoke from a battery on the hill where the Germans are grouped. Then I knew they were firing in our direction. But of course I couldn't see the shell, and I didn't know where it would land. But I didn't want to take a chance. That either went over ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... by a half-dozen ports, from which protruded as many saucy-looking guns, their red tompions contrasting prettily with the aforesaid white line and the black sides of the vessel. A flag hung negligently down from her gaff end, and, as a puff of wind stronger than the rest blew out its crimson folds, we saw emblazoned thereon the cross of St. George and merry England. The brig was the British cruiser on this station. To the northward stretched the broad ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... muzzles of her guns, while her high, curving sides seemed to tower over us. As I gazed, with my heart full of a pitiful fear for her, I saw a head appear above her quarter-railing, a very round head whereon was a mariner's red cap. Came a puff of smoke, the sharp crack of a caliver, and one of the officers beside Don Miguel threw up his hands and, twisting on his heels, fell clashing in his armour. When I looked again for the red cap, it was gone. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... 1805, let readers transport themselves to Canterbury in 1776, and let them enter a barber's shop, hard by Canterbury Cathedral. It is a primitive shop, with the red and white pole over the door, and a modest display of wigs and puff-boxes in the window. A small shop, but, notwithstanding its smallness, the best shop of its kind in Canterbury; and its lean, stiff, exceedingly respectable master is a man of good repute in the cathedral town. His hands have, ere now, powdered the Archbishop's ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... began to climb the hill to Putney Farm. It was a very warm night for May, and little Molly began to puff for breath. "Let's sit down on this rock ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... a sweet little play upon words," Warrington remarked, with a puff "Amory—Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of the rubbish." And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught hold of Pen's manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that the venerable Hugh Peters did not appear again. The Judge never mentioned him. But oddly enough, considering how he laughed to scorn the weak invention which he had blown into dust at the very first puff, his white-wigged visitor and the conference in the dark front parlour were often ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... diminished to sniffles, and then to occasional sighs. She opened her bag, extracted a miniature powder-puff and dabbed at her small upturned nose spitefully. I knew that ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... intense gratification. It is not possible to 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 ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... like dusty puff-adders of the Sahara itself, the three companions in arms—American, French, Arab—slid out of the shallow trench, and in the gloom were lost to sight of the beleaguered ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... remonstrate, he raised her into the saddle as easily as if she had been a puff of thistle-down, and then turning to Elsie, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... counterpart of that Which Hester wears, but palpitating here In life! This is beyond my skill. Ah! David! David! Thou art the man! Thou wouldst Have set me in the hot forefront of battle Hadst thou but known me as Uriah! Bah! Why, what a brainless dullard have I been, To see this pretty puff-ball of a preacher Wax large before mine eyes in righteous husk— And think him whole within—when but a touch, But one, had aired his rottenness! Oh! dotard that I am! blind, deaf and stupid! It takes a miracle to make me see ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... carried the Earl of Evesham's contingent, order and discipline prevailed. The earl's voice had been heard at the first puff of wind, shouting to the men to go below, save a few who might be of use to haul at ropes. His standard was lowered, the bright flags removed from the sides of the ship, the shields which were hanging over the bulwarks were hurriedly taken below, and when the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... convinced that the highest desire of every human being is to see his name in print, no matter how. Unhappily, there is a great deal to encourage this belief: I have known men to express great indignation at an unexpected newspaper-puff, and then to send ten dollars privately to the author. This is just the calamity of the profession, that it brings one in contact with this class of social hypocrites; and the "personal" correspondent gradually loses faith that there is any other class to be ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... madness. The Emperor is nothing to me, the Government is nothing to me. I have to pay my taxes—they are necessary—for the army has to be kept up and the Government paid; beyond that I do not care a puff of my pipe what Government ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... and safe group are the puffballs before they begin to puff. All our puffballs when young and solid white inside are good, wholesome food. Some of them, like the brain puffball or the giant puffball, are occasionally a foot in diameter, and yield flesh enough to feed a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... The General blew a puff of smoke into the air and watched it disappear before he answered. In civilian clothes he bore a more distinct resemblance to the man he had been; and yet the resemblance only served to emphasize the change that had taken place in him. The old Braithwaite had been a slight-built, gentle ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... He paused, and his eyes followed the course of Simone's gaze and then came back to Simone. "You are a soldier," he said; "it is your business to kill. You prize the life of other men lightly; 'tis but a puff of your heavy breath and out goes his candle. I am no such butcher, and though I am not unskilled in arms, we should be ill-matched, you and I." And as he spoke he laughed softly, as at some jest known only ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... spend a social hour after finding themselves the victors of a hard-fought field. I must admit, however, that I did some clever things which the newspapers of that era ought to have at least given me a "puff" for, but they didn't; in fact, I never, like Byron (Lord Byron, I mean), awoke one morning to find myself famous, because my football was that of days long ago, in an obscure (to football, at least) country ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... if you only thought of me once in a while," said Rollin suddenly. He took one last nervous puff on his cigar, tossed it into the street and walked along with a ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... I took a puff on my cigarette, and the Captain followed suit, very respectfully. I felt like screaming at him but I kept my voice polite. "The war's definitely over, isn't it?" ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer

... in the manager's office when Evan entered. He greeted the savings man with a puff of smoke followed by ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... was scarcely half-past seven when she was aroused by a strange commotion and a loud sound of hammering. She was trying to imagine the cause of all this uproar, when Madame de Fondege, already arrayed in a marvellous robe composed of three skirts and an enormous puff, entered the room. "I have come to take you away, my dear child," she exclaimed. "The owner of the house has decided to make some repairs, and the workmen have already invaded our apartments. The General has taken flight, let us follow his example—so make yourself beautiful ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the fog was denser than it had been the night before. There was no sign of its abatement, not a puff of wind elbowed its way through the yellow drift, and the cold was intense. The prospect of leaving a comfortable home at nine in the evening to undertake a journey of some two miles, clad in habiliments which, while highly ornamental, were about as ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... found herself close to the edge of the high plateau. She leaned far over and peered downward. Upon the white snow of the rocks, close to the foot of the cliff, lay several dark forms. She drew back and turned to MacNair, but he had gone. A puff of smoke arose into the air above the tops of the scrub-trees, and Chloe knew that the storehouse was burning. The smoke increased in volume and rolled heavily skyward upon the light breeze. She could hear the crackle ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... each slow puff of your pipe. All you want is time,—time to quiet the nerves, time to think, time to breathe. The moment you begin to stammer, stop, fill the lungs thus, then try again! It is only a clever man who can learn to write,—that is, to compose; but any fool can ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the bomb had been placed, arose in the air. The roof was lifted off, the sides spread out and there was a great flash of fire and a puff of smoke. ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton

... then proceeded to take a long puff at his pipe, and winking at his initiated friend, proceeded to narrate how that the injured ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... one of Purt's coffin nails once—ugh!" admitted Lance. "He calls 'em mild. But he's so saturated with nicotine that he doesn't know what 'mild' means. I believe they make his cigarettes out of rope-yarn and distilled opium. One puff made me ill ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison

... vessel was still unharmed and was bearing down on them at full speed. Even as Jack looked there came a puff of smoke from one of her forward turrets and a great splash, less than a hundred yards ahead of the U-6, told that the submarine ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake

... the men waited for the final signal. As a light westerly puff swelled the mainsail, which was drawn flat, Mr. Duff uttered a low "Now then," that was repeated loudly by the boatswain, who acted also as ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... 'Cause he dreams and seems to whimper that a flock o' quail are near; An' the children playin' checkers till it's time to go to bed, Callin' me to settle questions whether black is beatin' red; Oh, these nights are filled with gladness, an' I puff my pipe an' smile, An' tell myself the struggle an' the work are ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest

... This story about a house-boat, for instance, has been much appreciated. It's almost in the style of Mr. JEROME'S masterpiece; or this screamer about my wife's tobacco-pipe and the smoking mixture. "Observe," he went on, holding the sample near to his mouth, "I can expand it to any extent. Puff, puff! Ah! it has burst. No matter, these accidents sometimes happen to the best regulated humorists. Now, just look at these," he produced half-a-dozen packets rapidly from his bundle. "Here we have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various

... the world cast me out of its gilded nursery. I became a man, and put away childish things." Then he rose slowly from his seat, and as he laid his hand on the door-latch, and lifted it to go out, a welcome little puff of outside air darted into the chamber, and stirred the nightshade blossoms in the breast of the old rusty coat. And I raised my dark purple head, and perceived that the mournful shadow rested again upon the face ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... come for, Mister," said the veteran, pulling a firestick out of the fire, and slowly lighting his pipe, "if that's what you come for"—puff, puff, puff—"you've come on a wild goose chase. I never knew no Peggy Donohoe in my life. My wife"—puff—"was a small, dark woman, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... of death; Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons: Echoes, the very leavings of a voice, Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves. Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, And sweat with our ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... Puff! puff!" sounded the returning launch. Dick glanced apprehensively at Dr. Bentley and the ladies. Did the coming of the launch mean that it was about time for the ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... June, 1792, and who had been near assassinating him. This man never left the Tower, and was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom of his heart. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... and unpassioned, White-faced in the dusk of your hair— Your beauty so fleetingly fashioned That it filled me once with despair To look on its exquisite transience And think that our love and thought and laughter Puff out with the death of our flickering sense, While we pass ever on and away Towards ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... left and high in air a puff of smoke appeared, a pearl-grey, fleecy cloud, and as I, unsuspecting, watched it writhe into fantastic shapes, my ears were smitten with a deafening report, and ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... work so as to double or treble it? 5. Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me to go beyond my measure? 6. Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, in attempting to build a very ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... once, a puff of wind—not a cream puff, you understand, but a wind puff—came in the window, and rolled up the wallpaper in a tight little roll, and the worst of it was that Papa No-Tail was asleep inside. Yes, fast, fast asleep, and he never knew that he was wrapped up, just ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... 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 household. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various

... number of books out, a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... not again particularly favoured me, I should have had to abandon my design. But the light airs which had begun blowing from the south-east and south had hauled round after nightfall into the south-west. Just while I was meditating, a puff came, caught the Hispaniola, and forced her up into the current; and to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my grasp, and the hand by which I held it dip for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... down in the cabin, and Peter, with his automatic in his hand, waited for another tell-tale puff ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... seeing the disorder in the kitchen, she claps her hands together. Then she takes out a powder-puff and begins to ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... "Cease mother, to puff yourself out," said her son, "and do not be angry; for you would, I assure you, sooner burst than successfully imitate the hugeness ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... the proper height over the fire—for this was the kitchen as well as the reception room. The low ceiling was blackened with the smoke that filled the upper part of the room and escaped slowly through the hole over the fire, unless a puff of wind drove it back again. A row of bright copper casseroles hanging against the wall—like the burnished shields along the sides of the ancient triremes, if this comparison be not too noble for such a lowly subject—gleamed ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... over to my boat-shed, which was but a few yards distant, I endeavoured to close the rough wooden doors so as to prevent the rain from blowing in and flooding the ground. But my strength was not equal to the task, for a puff of more than usual violence not only tore the handle of the door from my hand, but blew me inside the house. Feeling my way in the darkness along the boat's side, I reached her stern, where I was sheltered, and searched ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... 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 ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... done, Don Quixote and Sancho withdrew to the knight's room, and there Don Quixote gave his squire advice about governing. He admonished him to be a champion of virtue always, to strive to know himself and not to puff himself up like a peacock, whose feathers, he bade him remember, were fine, but who had ugly feet. And the advice and instructions that master gave servant were such that no one would have thought it was ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... 1872.—Leave Chikulu's, and pass a large puff-adder in the way. A single blow on the head killed it, so that it did not stir. About 3 feet long, and as thick as a man's arm, a short tail, and flat broad head. The men say this is a very good sign for our journey, though it would have been a bad sign, and suffering ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... of bathers. The little timid waders could dip their toes and splash their hair in the shallow basin in-shore. The more advanced could wade out shoulder-deep, and puff and flounder with one foot on the ground and the other up above their heads, and delude the world into the notion they were swimming. For others there was the spring-board, from which to take a header into deep water; and, further out still, the rocks rose in ledges, where practised ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... Easter week, and Mrs. Tulliver's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. "A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... to faint," said Lady Dorinda, and having parted with her breath in one puff, she sincerely lost consciousness and lay in extreme calm, her clay-colored eyelids shut on a clay-colored face. Marie was used to these quiet lapses of her mother-in-law, for Lady Dorinda had not been a good sailor on their voyage; but Antonia was alarmed. They bathed ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... coal to the powder. There was a flash, a puff of smoke rising to the ceiling, and ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... has always to suffer from one's friends," rejoined Baraja, sending up a puff of smoke ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... starch, finely divided and baked so as to be free from a tendency to form starch paste when applied to a mucous surface, is equally good. Well-browned flour is also serviceable. The use of the contents of a puff-ball, which contains many millions of fine spores, has been employed from time immemorial. The use of such drying powders tends to favor the speedy formation of clots. Where the small points of engorged vessels are to be readily reached, use a solution ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... elsewhere. According to the English, all classics printed in Germany, and all the adjacent countries, in all times, are to be found in the catalogue. I pass over the implied compliment to this country, namely, that while a true description is required in Germany, a puff both in time and space is wanted for England. I dwell on the injurious effect of such alterations to literature, and on the trouble they give to those who wish to be accurate. It is a system I attack, and not individuals. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various

... grand, sad, noble, or emotional? There must be another violent head shaking here. The air from Oberon, Ocean, thou mighty monster, is so grand that scarcely a singer can be found today capable of interpreting it, although many sopranos puff and steam through it, for all the world like pinguid gentlemen climbing the stairs to the towers of Notre Dame. The Fifth Symphony of Beethoven is both grand and noble; probably no one will be found who will deny that it is supermusic, but Mahler's Symphony of the Thousand is likewise grand ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... down into the extensive grounds, and came plump upon Mr Draycott, the well-known military tutor and coach, tramping laboriously up and down one of the gravel paths, with his hands behind, giving a loud puff at every second step, for he was an enormously fat man, to whom walking was a severe trial, but a trial he persevered in from a wholesome dread that, if he neglected proper exercise, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... worldly array when he specially desired it, but she always sighed more than usual, and behaved with even more sobriety and gravity then, as if to show that the utmost splendour of the world as represented by the satinet gown and a Paisley shawl could not make her forget that she was mortal, or puff up ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... sing in thee. For look now, if she named thee hooked of nose, fierce-eyed and of aspect grim—she speaketh very truth, for so thou art, my Pertinax. Now truth is a fair virtue in man or maid, so is she both virtuous and fair! Nay, puff not, sighful Pertinax, but for thy comforting mark this—she hath viewed and heeded thy outward man narrowly—so shall she not forget thee soon; she with woman's eye hath marked the great heart of thee through sorry habit and rusty mail, and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... time—'twas not so very long ago— Miss Puff craved something of Philosophy to know, And, with proofs of culture armed and high position, To a Summer School of ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... play-bill put forth a puff, How splendid the public had found it, But it lay like a piece that had been called "stuff," With a very ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... said, handing her a little mirror, then a powder puff and a tiny stick of rouge. Elsa could not help smiling through her tears at the absurdity of it, as she dabbed and dusted her tear-stained face, looking at herself in the little mirror, until all traces of her weeping ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien

... on," 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 me on ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... city-gals, don't never go it Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet! They're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom looks Up in the country ez it doos in books; They're no more like than hornets'-nests an' hives, Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 30 I, with my trouses perched on cowhide boots, Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... faintness; collapse, prostration, swoon, fainting, deliquium[Lat], syncope, lipothymy[obs3]; goneness[obs3]. V. be fatigued &c. adj.; yawn &c. (get sleepy) 683; droop, sink, flag; lose breath, lose wind; gasp, pant, puff, blow, drop, swoon, faint, succumb. fatigue, tire, weary, irk, flag, jade, harass, exhaust, knock up, wear out, prostrate. tax, task, strain; overtask, overwork, overburden, overtax, overstrain. Adj. fatigued, tired &c. v.; weary &c. 841; drowsy &c. 683; drooping &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... like a large Oven. These they make much Use of; especially, for any Pains in the Joints, got by Cold, or Travelling. At Night, as we lay in our Beds, there arose the most violent N.W. Wind I ever knew. The first Puff blew down all the Palisadoes that fortify'd the Town; and I thought it would have blown us all into the River, together with the Houses. Our one-ey'd King, who pretends much to the Art of Conjuration, ran out in the most violent Hurry, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... Dick, but he was joyed to see me,—him with the upper hand and wedding Tilly. Chance to puff big over me. The tale that I was hot after her had spread through the camps, and my presence did him proud. All hands knew me, without my blanket, and set to grinning and giggling. It was rich, but I made it richer ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... at this joke, and Noddy seemed pleased. There was a short consultation among the judges and other officials, and, a moment later, a white puff of smoke was seen hovering above the uplifted revolver of the starter. Then came a sharp crack, and the panting machines, the engines of which had been put in motion some time previous, started off together, as the drivers threw in the high ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... would almost as soon believe that the cat curls the end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to warn the doomed mouse. It is a much more probable view that the rattlesnake uses its rattle, the cobra expands its frill and the puff-adder swells while hissing so loudly and harshly, in order to alarm the many birds and beasts which are known to attack even the most venomous species. Snakes act on the same principle which makes the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... it up to the royal (the topmost sail), and there, sure enough, the corner of the sail was beginning to tremble in the coming breeze. "Don't you see the wind is coming? Look at the royal!" I exclaimed. "No, it is only a cat's-paw," he rejoined (a mere puff of wind). "Cat's-paw or not," I cried, "pray let down the mainsail, and let us ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... clothes upon our shoulders; some of us are only comfortable when they depend upon the hips. It cannot be denied that the heavily-weighted skirts now in vogue are uncleanly and unwholesome, even when worn short; and while school-girls elaborate, friz, powder, and puff their hair like their elders, and trim their dresses to such excess, it will be impossible for them to find time for consecutive study. Every separate curl, lace, or fold, becomes a separate cause of worry; and "worry" lies at the bottom of ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... see you about. Nice little puff we have had for a starting boost—about blown out, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... their wings and panted with exhaustion in the sickly heat of the fervid atmosphere. The sun had long passed the zenith, dinner was over, and the inmates were enjoying the siesta, so refreshing in this climate of the sun. Here and there the leaves would start and dally with a vagrant puff from vesper's lips, then droop again as if in grief at the vagaries of the little truant which now was fanning and stirring into lazy ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... little play upon words," Warrington remarked, with a puff "Amory—Amori. It showed proof of scholarship. Let us hear a bit of the rubbish." And he stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught hold of Pen's manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using in order to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... loaded his corn-cob, picked up a live coal, and, pressing it down on the tobacco with his thumb, commenced to puff vigorously. As soon as his withered old face was half hidden in a cloud of smoke, he opened his story in his stereotyped way. I relate it just as he told it, but divested of much of its dialect, so ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... now, there was no way of escape, and instinctively she shrank frightened to the earth. That was the crucial instant, and down went Gray on top of her as though she were a foot-ball, and the quarry was his. Jason saw him give her one blow behind her long ears and then, holding a little puff of down aloft, look about him, past Marjorie to Mavis. A moment later he saw that rabbit's tail pinned to Mavis's cap, and a sudden rage of jealousy nearly shook him from the fence. He was too far away to see Marjorie's smile, but he did see her eyes ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... about eight hundred yards off were a rebel parapet and battery. I could see the cannoneers preparing to fire, and cautioned the officers near me to scatter, as we would likely attract a shot. Very soon I saw the white puff of smoke, and, watching close, caught sight of the ball as it rose in its flight, and, finding it coming pretty straight, I stepped a short distance to one side, but noticed a negro very near me in the act of crossing the track at right angles. Some one ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... the work so as to double or treble it? 5. Is not this a delusion of Satan, an attempt to cast me down altogether from my sphere of usefulness, by making me to go beyond my measure? 6. Is it not also, perhaps, a snare to puff me up, in attempting to build ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller

... death, not life. By Esculapius! life and hope! you choke me, Agellius. Life and hope! you are beyond three Anticyras. Life and hope! if you were old, if you were diseased, if you were given over, and had but one puff of life left in you, then you might be what you would, for me; but your hair is black, your cheek is round, your limbs are strong, your voice is full; and you are going to make all these a sacrifice to Hecate! has your good genius fed that plump ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... his chair, and leaning his elbow on his knees, opened wide a pair of expectant eyes; the Natchalnik, after a long puff of his pipe, said, with some magisterial decision, "That was a moment when nature had her sleeves tucked up. I think our Kara Georg must also have been ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... asleep; and he had no idea what the bird would do in such a case as the present. He dug furiously in one direction, then fiercely in another, but all in vain. Then he lifted his head, panting, his pointed ears and ruddy face grotesquely patched with snow. At this moment a great puff of the white powder was flapped into his eyes, a feathery dark body jumped up from under his very nose, and the crafty old bird went whirring off triumphantly to the nearest tree. With his tongue hanging out, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... things to—I was running over their advertisement here, where they give a special puff of the publication in general and of several things in particular, and I saw—here they speak of 'A tale of thrilling interest by Mrs. Eliza Lothbury, unsurpassed,' and so forth and so forth; 'another valuable communication ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... she retorted. "Do you realize, young man, how much I've done the last three days? How about those muffins you had this morning for breakfast, and that cake last night? And didn't you yourself say that you never ate a better pudding than that date puff yesterday noon?" ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... "Faith, an' there's powder for both!" His hands shook as he hurried to cram the old pipe full of tobacco. The cartridges could wait. He struck a light and gave a deep sigh of content as he began to puff. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... who had been near assassinating him. This man never left the Tower, and was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... our master, but our servant; so that we may not follow blindly our own appetites, and do just what we like, as brute beasts which have no understanding. And our flesh is to be subdued to our spirit for a certain purpose; not because our flesh is bad, and our spirit good; not in order that we may puff ourselves up and admire ourselves, and say, as the philosophers among the heathen used, "What a strong-minded, sober, self-restraining man I am! How fine it is to be able to look down on my neighbours, who cannot help being fond of enjoying themselves, and cannot help ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... spread many a coat of tar, That sinewy hand the feathers scattered o'er Till Tories' jackets made their bellies sore. Say, for whose sake has Time, that Barber gruff, O'er his wise noddle shook his powder puff? Was the task hard to hear the sage's noise? Perhaps the awful sound had frightened boys; But we, the sons of wisdom, fond to hear, With joy had held the breath and oped the ear. Did we e'en doubt that Solomon had spoke? If so, has ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... Mr. Athel was relating a story of his early wanderings in Egypt, with a leisurely gusto, an effective minuteness of picturing, the result of frequent repetition. At the points of significance he would pause for a moment or two and puff life into his cigar. His anecdotes were seldom remarkable, but they derived interest from the enjoyment with which he told them; they impressed one with a sense of mental satisfaction, of physical robustness held in reserve, of life content ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... beside Jenny continued to puff steadfastly at his pipe, lost in the news, holding mechanically in his further hand the return ticket which would presently be snatched by the hurrying tram-conductor. He was a shabby middle-aged clerk with a thin beard, and so he had not the least interest for Jenny, whose eye was caught by ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... In a slight puff of wind, the smoke, lace-edged with the dawn light, swayed, seeming to twine about the figure of the King as he stood with the wand outheld, as if firmly hooked in the guts ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... There is no class of political lying which can want for illustration if we consult the records of our civil wars; there we may trace the whole art in all the nice management of its shades, its qualities, and its more complicated parts, from invective to puff, and from inuendo to prevarication! we may admire the scrupulous correction of a lie which they had told, by another which they are telling! and triple lying to overreach their opponents. Royalists and Parliamentarians were alike; for, to tell one great truth, "the father of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... schoolhouse of somebody doing something to the stove, which must have been Mr. Black finishing laying the fire, 'cause right that second I heard a sound like an iron door closing on the big round iron Poetry-shaped stove, and almost a second later, a puff of bluish smoke came bursting out through a crack where the board didn't quite cover the chimney on one side, and I knew that the fire was started. I knew that in a few jiffies that one-room school ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... For the trophies in Armenia, near the Parthian frontier, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis, and the great wealth brought from thence to Rome, with the captive crown of Tigranes carried in triumph, all helped to puff up Crassus, as if the barbarians had been nothing else but spoil and booty, and he, falling among the Parthian archers, soon demonstrated that Lucullus's triumphs were not beholden to the inadvertency and effeminacy of his enemies, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... up on Lennon's rifle. He put the butt to his left shoulder and rested the barrel across a rock. The first bullet raised a puff of dust a little to the left of the Indians. The second must have shrieked close over their heads. They wheeled their ponies and ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... and moral calumny, the complete art might be drawn from these archives of political lying, during their flourishing era. We might discover principles among them which would have humbled the genius of Machiavel himself, and even have taught Mr. Sheridan's more popular scribe, Mr. Puff, a sense of his ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... gown donned—oh, of course, powder! She applied it liberally, and then wiped away every grain, that being what she had seen older girls do in the Gymnasium dressing-room. Then with a last survey of her face, unaltered by the ceremonial with the powder-puff, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... The good man smoked on, and every puff appeared, as an evaporation of his anger. In due time he was as placid as herself, drew his breath in a grave composed manner, laid his pipe quietly on the hob, and went about his business as if nothing had ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... he spoke quite in the old way, and time and again made an effort to read, and reached for his pipe or a cigar which lay in the little berth hammock at his side. I held the match, and he would take a puff or two with satisfaction. Then the peace of it would bring drowsiness, and while I supported him there would come a few moments, perhaps, of precious sleep. Only a few moments, for the devil of suffocation was always lying in wait to bring him back for fresh tortures. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Lies running about; And if you don't put it out, ( That's positive) will increase: And any may spy, With half of an eye, That it comes from our priests and Papistical fry. Ye have one of these fellows, With fiery bellows, Come hither to blow and to puff here; Who having been toss'd From pillar to post, At last vents his rascally stuff here: Which to such as are honest must sound very oddly, When they ought to preach nothing but what's very godly; As here from this place we charge you to do, As ye'll answer to man, besides ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... elders seat themselves in a circle about the fire, turning toward the CHIEF. The others stand or sit attentively in the background. The CHIEF at the fire hands the ceremonial pipe to YAVI who lights it. RAIN WIND blows a puff of smoke to all the gods, returning to his place in the Council; the pipe passes from hand to hand; when it has passed all about, each tribesman blowing smoke and saluting, the CHIEF rises and stands before ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... line, among the Americans, there was a little stir, and then a pistol barked with that loud crash which black powder makes. Jack, on the instant when the smoke curled up in a little, balloon-like puff, turned and leaped into the saddle. The duel ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... mile and a half away, on a ridge that stood boldly against the sky. Running from the edge of the trees down across an open slope to the river was a brownish line that stood in a little contrast to the yellower grass. Suddenly, there slowly rose from this line a great puff of grayish-black smoke which melted away ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... giggling; the apple-cheeked Flemish girl carrying "Pervyse"; Hilda and Hinchcliffe closely following. They walked through the village street past laughing soldiers who called out, "Les Anglais!" They entered the church through the left door. A puff of damp air blew into their faces. In the chancel stood a stack of soldiers' bicycles. They kneeled and waited for the Cure. In the nave, old peasant women were nodding and dipping, and telling their beads. The nurse handed the baby to Hilda. Rene giggled. Three ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... hens soon after the Andersons were laid low. Now, of all unreasoning, stupid, obstinate, contrary beasts, a sitting hen is well qualified to carry off the first prize. Nannie had been told that when a hen began to puff up her feathers until she was swollen to about three times her natural size, and make a noise that sounded as if she had tried to say something and the word caught on a hook in her throat, she was ready to sit. Having three feathered animals ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... Jervis, "I will give you a masterly analysis of the case—leading to nothing." He continued to puff at his pipe for a time with slight embarrassment, as I thought—and I fully sympathised with him. Finally he blew a little cloud ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... its species by thousands of fertile germs. When the once thickly tenanted pool is dried up, and its bottom converted into a layer of dust, these inconceivably minute and light ova will be raised with the dust by the first puff of wind, diffused through the atmosphere, and may there remain long suspended; forming, perhaps, their share of the particles which we see flickering in the sunbeam, ready to fall into any collection of water, beaten down ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... the place in the household it had lost, it never could begin once more a new earthly existence. The necromancers, indeed, might snatch away death's prey for a few moments. The earth gaped at the words of their invocations, the soul burst forth like a puff of wind and answered gloomily the questions proposed to it; but when the charm was once broken, it had to retrace its steps to the country without return, to be plunged once more in darkness. This prospect of a dreary and joyless eternity was not so terrifying to the Chaldaeans as it was to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... very many people do so, themselves prompting and reminding their praisers of others of their own acts and virtues, till by their own praise they spoil the effect of the praise that others give them. For some tickle and puff themselves up by self-praise, while others, malignantly holding out the small bait of eulogy, provoke others to talk about themselves, while others again ask questions and put inquiries, as was done to the soldier in Menander, merely to ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... chained in one corner began to gibber and mow at me. A cloak of strange cut, stretched on a wooden stand, deceived me for an instant into thinking that there was a third person present; while the table, heaped with dolls and powder-puff's, dog-collars and sweet-meats, a mask, a woman's slipper, a pair of pistols, some potions, a scourge, and an immense quantity of like litter, had as melancholy an appearance in my eyes as the king himself, whose disorder the light disclosed ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... 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 Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... scarlet pointed crest and a loud voice, evidently considered the tanager cage common ground, open to everybody, until the goldfinch undertook its defense. It was amusing to see the small bird stand just inside, and rage, puff himself out, wave his wings, and fairly drive away the foe. So impertinent was the Brazilian that the finch declared general war upon him, and actually chased his big antagonist around the room and away from his favorite perches, hovering over his head, and ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... the smoke ascends on high, Think thou behold'st the vanity Of worldly stuff, gone with a puff: Thus think, then ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... she thought 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 ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gases rushed out of ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... spirit requires but slight causes; only a soft puff of a favoring wind will send up one like a kite into the ether. Jerome, with the prospect of two shillings per week, and that great, kindly strength of the Squire's underlying his weakness, went home as if he had ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... she pinched up a little end of the fluffy flax and touched her candle to it. She thought she would see how that little bit would burn off. She soon found out. The flame caught, and ran like lightning through the whole bundle. There was a great puff of fire and smoke, and poor Mrs. Dorcas' fine candle-wicks were gone. Ann screamed, and sprang downstairs. She barely escaped the whole ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... away, but not being able clearly to see in what position the reptile was lying, or which way his head was pointed, I controlled myself, and remained rooted breathless to the spot. Straining my eyes, but moving not an inch, I at length clearly distinguished a huge puff-adder, the most deadly snake in the colony, whose bite would have sent me to the other world in an hour or two. I watched him in silent horror: his head was from me—so much the worse; for this snake, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... decent smoke here," says one writer. An army airman "simply craves for cigarettes and matches." From a cavalryman comes the appeal that a few boxes of cigarettes and some thick chocolate would be luxuries. "Just fancy," to quote from another letter, "one cigarette among ten of us—hardly one puff a-piece." ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... had been silently gathering on its snowy plateau the delicate china, the golden butter, the loaf of faultless cake, a plate of crullers or wonders, as a sort of sweet fried cake was commonly called,—tea-rusks, light as a puff, and shining on top with a varnish of egg,—jellies of apple and quince quivering in amber clearness,—whitest and purest honey in the comb,—in short, everything that could go to the getting-up of a most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... the gate on her visit, I started for the barn. In a shed back of the barn I took out my cigars, determined to learn that day if it required the six cigars for my graduation. The first cigar was lighted and with every puff I felt the manhood coming; but in about five minutes I felt the manhood going. Just then my uncle called: "George, where are you?" When I answered he said: "Come here and hold this colt while I knock ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... the two sat down for a quiet smoke, Samuel chuckling to himself every now and again, Abe modestly seeking from time to time to cover his bare legs with the skirt of his pink-striped night-robe, not daring to reach for a blanket lest Samuel should call him names again. With the very first puff of his pipe, the light had come back into the invalid's eyes; with the second, the ashen hue completely left his cheek; and when he had pulled the tenth time on the pipe, Abe was ready to laugh at the sisters, the whole ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... hurried to the Vatican, and, as he knew the palace well, went up to the pope's bedroom, a light in his hand and attended by no servant. As he turned round a corridor a puff of wind blew out his lamp; still, as he knew the way, he went on, thinking there was no need of seeing to find the object he was in search of; but as he entered the room he recoiled a step, with a cry of terror: he beheld a ghastly apparition; it seemed that there ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... catalogue, will find it not so easy a task as he imagined. We should have perhaps entertained a higher opinion of the author's judgment, though not a higher of his descriptive power, supposing it to have been exercised as a disciple of the noted Mr Puff, who took a double first in those arts, had the translator kindly omitted an outline of a picture by Poelemburg—The Adoration of the Shepherds. It is certainly well described in generality and detail; but never was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... king himself. The marquis, perceiving Pierre's zeal, shrewdly sheltered himself behind him. What was the use of making himself conspicuous, when a man with such broad shoulders was willing to bear on them the burden of all the follies of a party? He allowed Pierre to reign, puff himself out with importance and speak with authority, content to restrain or urge him on, according to the necessities of the cause. Thus, the old oil-dealer soon became a personage of mark. In the evening, when they were alone, Felicite used to say to him: "Go on, don't be frightened. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... all the world goes to sleep. It awakes at about four o'clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans. They greet, or avoid. They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze. They coquet with one another like butterflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the principal charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks are gathered for ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... that has been crunched by Huffman coding. At least one widely distributed Huffman decoder program was actually *named* 'PUFF', but these days it is usually packaged with ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... to be in readiness for the puff, would you jam her up under a mainsail, or let her lie a little off ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... stoppin' at de gate, Brer Rabbit rid on by, he did, en den come gallopin' down de road en up ter de hoss-rack, w'ich he hitch Brer Fox at, en den he santer inter de house, he did, en shake han's wid de gals, en set dar, smokin' his seegyar same ez a town man. Bimeby he draw in a long puff, en den let hit out in a cloud, en squar hisse'f back en holler out, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... couldn't have swallowed another ant if he had tried. Of course they made his stomach stick out, but it wasn't the ants that puffed him out all over. Oh, my, no! It was pride. That's what it was—pride. You know nothing can puff any one up quite ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... using the crossbow on purpose to avoid attracting the attention of the Spaniards, Geoffrey. At this distance they could not see the crossbow, while a puff of smoke would be sure to catch ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... been effectually squelched, but a perfect hatred of smoking has been developed on account of the offensiveness of the odor of tobacco. I frequently cross the street, or change my seat in a car to escape the puff of smoke, or the fetid breath of a smoker. 'Thanks be unto God ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... gesture of his strangely slim hands. "This ain't an argument. It's facts. Another ten years on the road, and where'll you be? In the discard. A man of forty-six can keep step with the youngsters, even if it does make him puff a bit. But a woman of forty-six—the road isn't the place for her. She's tired. Tired in the morning; tired at night. She wants her kimono and her afternoon snooze. You've seen some of those old girls on the road. They've come down step by step until you spot 'em, bleached ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... Caw, Caw, Caw! to the little boys and girls. That was his way of talking. My voice is not so harsh as his. I have a note which some people think is quite sweet; then my throat gets rusty and I have some trouble in finishing my tune. I puff out my feathers, spread my wings and tail, then lifting myself on the perch force out the other notes of my song. Maybe you have seen a singer on the stage, instead of a perch, do the same thing. Had to get on his tip-toes to reach ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite in it. Alfred's was that kind. I felt warm and happy down to my toes as I read it and I turned around so old Lilac Bush couldn't peep over my shoulder ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... breathe tar and gasoline? Why should one have to keep one's eyes wandering from far ahead to back over one's shoulder for fifty-two weeks in the year? We wanted to get away from clang-clang and honk-honk and puff-puff. Since the real vacation is change, we welcomed the task of looking out for hostile dogs instead of swiftly moving vehicles. Our noses wanted whiffs of hay and pig, and our boots ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... He hurried back and forth between the tender and the fire-box, crouching to keep his balance, struggling with the heavy logs. He was covered with soot, and the sweat made tiny rivulets in the black as it streamed down his body. His shirt had been caught by a puff of wind and carried out of the cab. He lifted the lid of the fireman's seat and threw his coat and cape into ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... fire—for this was the kitchen as well as the reception room. The low ceiling was blackened with the smoke that filled the upper part of the room and escaped slowly through the hole over the fire, unless a puff of wind drove it back again. A row of bright copper casseroles hanging against the wall—like the burnished shields along the sides of the ancient triremes, if this comparison be not too noble for such a lowly subject—gleamed vaguely in the flashing ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... not care for continuous story; he could generally secure the favour of the audience by the wit of his dialogue and a quick succession of lively incidents. In the first act Lady Pentweazle sits for her portrait in a broadly humorous scene. Puff is an impudent trader in sham antiquities and objects of virtu; Carmine, an artist constrained by poverty to aid and abet him in his nefarious proceedings; Brush is another confederate. In the second act a sale by auction is represented. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... came the day when Fritz was to make his trial trip with the cajack. Completely equipped in swimming costume—trousers, jacket and cap—it was most ludicrous to see him cower down in the canoe and puff and blow till he began to swell like the frog in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... think not. It's only a shower of rain," replied Donald. "There may be a puff of wind in it. If there is, I can touch ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... at the lumber-yard. The ghastly blackness of the ruin glared against the snow-covered hills and the dazzling blue of the sky; here and there a puff of steam showed where the melting snow on the cooler beams dripped on the hot embers below. Some scattered groups of lumbermen and their forlorn wives braved the cold, and stood talking the fire over, for, after all, it was the immediate ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... they are destroyed! What shall I do?" Before I could move she had caught my two hands in hers, and turned the palms up. Indeed, they were only scorched, not burned deep, though they stung smartly enough; but black they were, and the skin beginning to puff into blisters. But now came the tap of a stick on the stone, and Mme. de Lalange came hobbling out. "What is this?" she cried, seeing me standing so, pale, it may be, with the young lady holding my blackened hands ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... point that he was able to produce with it many of the effects of the most virulent snake poisons."[19] Had they not been inflamed by the terror of the struggle for existence, "tigers and hyaenas, vultures and sharks, ferrets and polecats, wasps and spiders, puff-adders and skunks" might have turned their undoubted abilities in other more desirable directions.[20] Again, "it is the perpetual effort, generation after generation, through long ages, to repair the mischief inflicted by enemies," ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... glory of crushing it out. The heavier the cross, the brighter will be the crown, and with the greater rapture shall I wake the music of my golden harp through the countless years of eternity. What is this life? A puff, a breath of air. In it we must prepare for the real life, which lies beyond. When the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, what will it avail me that I passed with one whom I loved with an earthly love this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... tribute of a log, was the real object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on their stools, in the best places, and we others sitting on our heels formed a semicircle around those big cauldrons, full to the brim and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the master's eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work in my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... to be trapped rather than indicate her presence by voluntary flight. One of the most graceful of the sea-swallows this. Brown of back and greenish-white under surface; noisy, too, for it "yaps" as a terrier whensoever intruders approach the island during the brooding season; and its puff-ball chicken, crouching in dim recesses, takes the bluish-grey hue of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... to find quantities of face powder caked in the creases of the neck or behind the ears of an adult. The skin is first cleaned, then patted entirely dry, and, as a finishing touch, a bit of talcum is put on by means of a puff. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... how the job of casing a joint should be done. I did it the same way. I dug back and forth, collecting the layout from the back door of my building towards the nearest puff of dead area. This coign of safety billowed outward from the pattern towards the building like an arm of cumulus cloud and the top of it rose like a column to a height above my range. It sort of leaned forward but it did not lean far enough to ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... Simon, grimly. "Thinks he is a king! All puff up with wind lak a bull frog. He mak' me mad with his foolishness. What would you? You cannot deal with the Kakisas only what he say. Because only Watusk speaks English. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... smile Trudy began: "I'm cross. You were gambling again—yes, you were! Never mind how I know. I know!... I'll have macaroni, ripe olives, and a cream puff." ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... to add that her complexion was as honest as the day, but the fact is that the year before Judy had felt compelled, like the rest of us, to repair just a little the ravages of the climate. If she had never done it one would not have looked twice at the absurdity when she said of the powder-puff in the dressing-room, 'I have raised that thing to the level of an immorality,' and sailed in to dance with an uncompromising expression and a face uncompromised. I have not spoken of her beauty; for one thing it was not always there, ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... patient cannot wink, and the conjunctiva therefore becomes dry, and is irritated by exposure to cold and dust. The tears run over the cheek. From paralysis of the buccinator muscle there is inability to whistle or to puff out the cheeks and food collects between the cheek and the gums. The orbicularis oris being also paralysed, the patient is unable to show his upper teeth, and the labial consonants are pronounced indistinctly. The sense of taste is often impaired from involvement ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... the stuff was required to deal King Robert of Warbeach the capital stroke, and commonly he could hold on till a puff of cold air from the outer door, like an admonitory messenger, reminded him that he was, in the greatness of his soul, a king of swine; after which his way of walking off, without a word to anybody, hoisting his whole stature, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the English ship seemed to awake to what was going forward, and to take in the situation at once. That one felucca was flying and the other pursuing they could see at a glance. There was a puff of white smoke from her side, and a shot flew screaming over their heads and plunged into the water just in front of the pursuing felucca. Still she held on, gaining remorselessly. Her crew began to fire ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... opposing your shoulders to it: closely attach your ear to him if chatty. Is he immoderately fond of being praised? Pay him home, till he shall cry out, with his hands lifted up to heaven, "Enough:" and puff up the swelling bladder with tumid speeches. When he shall have [at last] released you from your long servitude and anxiety; and being certainly awake, you shall hear [this article in his will]? "Let Ulysses be heir to one fourth of my estate:" "is then my companion Damas now no more? where ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... compelled to make part of her toilet in a railway waiting-room under the eyes of half a score of enemies, that is to say, of ten other women, arranges her tresses, purchased or natural, uses powder-puff and hare's foot if she choose, and turns away from the mirror armed for conquest; but an American similarly situated, forgets half her hair-pins, does not dare to wash her face carefully lest some one should sniff condemnation of her fussiness, and looks worse after her efforts ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... side, pierced by a half-dozen ports, from which protruded as many saucy-looking guns, their red tompions contrasting prettily with the aforesaid white line and the black sides of the vessel. A flag hung negligently down from her gaff end, and, as a puff of wind stronger than the rest blew out its crimson folds, we saw emblazoned thereon the cross of St. George and merry England. The brig was the British cruiser on this station. To the northward stretched ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... King Cole, with many a puff That haloed his urbanity, Would smoke till he had smoked enough, And listen most attentively. He beamed as with an inward light That had the Lord's assurance in it; And once a man was there all night, Expecting ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... a fourth puff (see Nos. 223, 229, 290) of Addison's friend Ambrose Philips. The art of packing a house to secure applause was also practised on the first night of the acting of this version ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... what she was about, all the soldiers were set out, just like two armies, and Mrs. Graham called the gardener to lay a train of gunpowder, and called—mimicking Robert—"Present, Fire!" and set fire to it, and there was heard a tremendous "pop," followed by a "puff," and then; no! there wasn't a bit of one of all those soldiers and horses left large enough to make ...
— Sugar and Spice • James Johnson

... to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... head, blew a delicate puff of smoke toward the ceiling and looked across at his unsympathetic hostess. Then he brought his fist down on the table; "Marry me, Belle, and sleep in a ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... open the envelope which Mrs. Botz had given her, as she began to read the brief communication, a slight puff of wind stirred the wet maple boughs overhead. From the drenched leaves a wee shower of liquid sparks came flashing down about her and the little boy. Some of these pattering drops were caught ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... unfortunately remained a project. This was a Translation of the works of Lucian, to be undertaken in conjunction with his old colleague, the Rev. William Young. Proposals were advertised, and the enterprise was duly heralded by a "puff preliminary," in which Fielding, while abstaining from anything directly concerning his own abilities, observes, "I will only venture to say, that no Man seems so likely to translate an Author ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... and the author of this pamphlet believes his reputation will warrant the assertion and belief, that he could not be hired to puff an unworthy article, or write a book to induce American farmers, to purchase an article which would not prove highly beneficial ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... old women's marrow freeze Is the best sport the bike has given. To chase them as they puff and wheeze, On ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... nothing serious. The boy is all right again. [Walks about excitedly, panting.] But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would believe it that hadn't seen ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... Constance came strolling by and stopped to ask if we would join them. Hawberk looked at his watch. At the same moment a puff of smoke shot from the casemates of Castle William, and the boom of the sunset gun rolled across the water and was re-echoed from the Highlands opposite. The flag came running down from the flag-pole, the bugles sounded on the white decks of the warships, and the first ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... gentile councils are very informal, but the meetings of the tribal councils are conducted with due ceremony. When all the persons are assembled, the chief of the Wolf gens calls them to order, fills and lights a pipe, sends one puff of smoke to the heavens and another to the earth. The pipe is then handed to the sachem, who fills his mouth with smoke, and, turning from left to right with the sun, slowly puffs it out over the heads of the councilors, who are sitting in a circle. ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... frequently in an unknown time all which is to be followed by a system of mysterious sanctification, connected most mysteriously with final perseverance, together with all the intricate unknown items set down in the Westminister Catechism, have only served to perplex some, puff others up with spiritual pride and exalt them in the kingdom of spiritual wickedness in high places, to drive some to despair, and to disgust reason and common sense in others. There is not a word of all the above ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... Round her neck she had a string of beads, of red amber, as large as seagulls' eggs. She walked with a staff, knotted with amber; on her head was a hood of black lambskin, lined with white. There was a girdle round her loins made of dried puff-balls strung together, and a fishskin pouch hung from that, in which were the charms she used in her prophesying. Her shoes were calfskin with the hair outside, and were bound to her ankles with broad leather thongs. She had gloves ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett

... talked, I noticed that Kennedy evidently shared my own tastes, for he allowed his cigarette to go out, and, after a puff or two, I did the same. For the sake of my own comfort, I drew one of my own from my case as soon as I could do so politely, and laid the stub of the other in ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... game in the thickest shade. Often he imitates their cry, and decoys them from tree to tree, till they are within range of his tube. Then taking a poisoned arrow from his quiver, he puts it in the blow-pipe and collects his breath for the fatal puff. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... sticks of wood, those drawings, that piece of black cloth, were as ancient in a sense as the pyramids, and would retain their places while generations came before them, laboured their brief day, and then vanished as a puff of steam vanishes into blue sky. The clock had long since run down for good, and seemed by virtue of this very fact to have gained a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... see, but heard yesterday. The second seems very bad and Mr. P[erry] has placed it over your puff. I only hope that Mr. W. does not believe that I had any connection with either. The Regent is the only person on whom I ever expectorated an epigram, or ever should; and even if I were disposed that way, I like and value Mr. W. too well to allow ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... are called mixed feelings. The letter that he read and re-read as he walked about his library enchanted him. But the appearance of that library was maddening. It had been transformed into a ladies' cloak-room. On his own writing-desk were an oval silver mirror, a large powder-puff, and several packets of hairpins. All trace of politics seemed to have been completely wiped out. Sir James thoroughly enjoyed picturing to himself Mr. Ridokanaki in this room on the following morning, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... had a strong puff of wind from the south-east, which raised the dust and had exactly ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... replied: How like a flatterer you are! one would think you had set yourself to puff ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon

... went up in a puff of fire, and Erick felt the singe of the heat against his face. He and Jan made their way toward the girl. Mara's hand caught his ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick

... was becoming unbearable when the rifle cracked with a noise no louder than a Chinese cracker, and a faint puff of smoke curled upward from the muzzle of the weapon. At the same moment the Ghoojur at the front, on his black horse, flung up his arms and tumbled sideways into the water, which splashed over his animal's head. Frightened, the horse reared, pawed the air, and, ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... and, though peace reigned between his country and Great Britain, he no sooner saw an armed vessel approaching, than he put his vessel in trim for action, and sent the crew to the guns. Nearer and nearer came the great English man-o'-war; and, as she came within range, a puff of smoke burst from her bow-port, and a ball skipped along the water before Perry's unarmed convoy, conveying a forcible invitation to heave to. Perry at once made signal to his convoy to pay no regard to the Englishman; and, setting the American flag, the two ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... my road the groups become more numerous. I lift my head and see a shell burst over the Avenue of the Grande Armee, leaving a puff of white smoke hanging for a few seconds like a cloud-flake ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... take out the back-bone, starting at the head and working gently down toward the tail. Great care must be taken, that the fish may keep its shape. Cover with the cream, and bake about ten minutes, just to brown it a little. Garnish with parsley or little puff-paste cakes; or, you can cover it with the whites of three eggs, beaten to a stiff froth, and then ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... which some of them never forgot. He told his publisher that to him alone he should look for the only true account of the reception of his book. "The critics," said he in continuation, "may write as obscurely as they please, and look much wiser than they are; the papers may puff and abuse as their (p. 044) changeful humors dictate; but if you meet me with a smiling face I shall at once know that ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... 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 the reviewers will cut the happy writer to ribbons and decorate their ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... he remarked, and by the sound Frank imagined the fellow must be lighting a fresh cigarette, for he seemed to puff between the words; "just as you say, what's the use of carrying the joke on any longer. Let's be brutally frank with each other ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... simply a blowing out, as of a candle in the wind; a puff—then darkness, without a trace. A sense of your own safety may suggest the method. I leave ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... of high degree, The baser sort are vanity; Laid in the balance both appear Light as a puff of empty air. ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts

... eye, and followed it up to the royal (the topmost sail), and there, sure enough, the corner of the sail was beginning to tremble in the coming breeze. "Don't you see the wind is coming? Look at the royal!" I exclaimed. "No, it is only a cat's-paw," he rejoined (a mere puff of wind). "Cat's-paw or not," I cried, "pray let down the mainsail, and let us have ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor

... thrown more of herself into her philippic than she had realized. Possibly, some of her emphasis imparted itself to her touch on the tiller, and jerked the sloop too violently into a sudden puff as it careened. At all events, the boat swung sidewise, trembled for an instant like a wounded gull, and then slapped its spread of canvas prone upon the water with ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... of the pipe prevented the good Doctor from too quickly satisfying her natural curiosity. Another puff or ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... some remarkable passages; for example, when the Rabbin pronounces the words, "Praise the Lord with the sound of the trumpet," they imitate the sound of the trumpet through their closed fists. When "a horrible tempest" occurs, they puff and blow to represent a storm; or should he mention "the cries of the righteous in distress," they all set up a loud screaming; and it not unfrequently happens that while some are still blowing the storm, others have already ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... dark figure sprang from the shadow and a knife flashed in the moonlight; then he heard a heavy report and a puff of smoke blew past his head. The figure swerved and, staggering awkwardly, fell with a heavy thud. It did not move afterwards, and while Kit gazed at it dully a man in white uniform ran past and stooped beside the fellow on the ground. Kit vacantly noted that a little ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... of air from below overcomes the forces which approximate the edges of the cords and throws them into vibration. With each vibration of the membranous reeds the valve is opened, and as in the case of the siren a little puff of air escapes; thus successive rhythmical undulations of the air are produced, constituting the sound waves. The pitch of the note depends upon the number of waves per second, and the register of the voice therefore depends upon two factors: ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... look a little unto the monstrous towering of the Great Redoubt; and afterwards make strong mine heart, and go forward again. And always I did go warily, and chiefly among the low moss-bush; but sometimes out upon stony ground, and oft across places where sulphur did puff somewhat from the ground in a low smoke, very strong in the nostrils and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... matter of nerve. If you lose your head you are sure to play the fool at a critical moment. Fraulein was like that. The moment the game went against her she began to hop about, and puff and pant, and work herself into such a fever that she couldn't even see a ball, much less hit it. I kept calm, and so of course I ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... what you're feeling," he said, as Max threw himself back in his chair and inhaled a first deep breath of smoke. "You feel that that little white curl from the end of your cigarette is the last puff of smoke from the boats you have burned; and that, with your own four walls around you, you can snap your fingers at the world. I know! God, ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... boiled yucas, bananas, oranges, lemonade, and guayusa. Favored by a powerful current and the rhythmic paddling of our Santa Rosans, we made this day sixty miles; but our average daily run was fifty miles. The winds (doubtless the trades) were almost unchangeably from the east; but an occasional puff would come from the northwest, when we relieved our paddlers by hoisting a blanket for a sail. Six o'clock was our usual hour of departure, and ten or twelve hours our traveling time, always tying up at a plaia or island, of which there are hosts in the Napo, but never to the main land, for fear ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... lay shallow lakes of salt water, so shallow that they were invisible, except when a puff of wind blew a thousand ripples into the sun; whereupon they flashed as if a precipitous rain of stormy light had rushed down upon them. Lifting his eyes from one of these films of water, Herbert saw on the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... said Aurelle, "a great artist cannot paint with a powder-puff; you must be able to feel that the fellow with the pencil was not ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world has listened, ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... punishment.[275] This Marchmont Needham is sufficiently notorious, and his secret history is probably true; for in a Mercurius Politicus of this unprincipled Cobbett of his day, I found an elaborate puff of an edition published by the annuity-granter to this worthy and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Grandpapa and the Magister, whom we were to meet again a week or two later, we hurried on board, and found to our joy that the unsteady Finlanders were not allowed to follow us. With a puff and a whistle the steamer left such undesirable passengers behind, and the last we saw of them was fighting and struggling with one another, each man apparently imagining, in his muddled imbecility, that his own companion ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... concede that. This won't do, though." Out came a tiny powder-puff. "How's that?" she demanded, smiling up ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... a puff of breeze blew from eastward toward the collie; and it bore to him a faint scent that set his ruff a-bristle and his soft brown eyes ablaze. To a dog, a scent once smelled is as recognizable again as is the sight of a once-seen face to a human. Bruce ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... A single puff blew toward him, and it nearly cooked his face! The mournful Macaroni Man felt sadly out of place. But a happy thought occurred to him, "Ha, ha,—ho, ho!" said he,— "I'll just sail on around the world,—and then, it seems to ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... tall reed, and quivering for a moment high above. Other flames ran in and out among the withered white sheaths that had dropped off, and mounted up the smooth stems, and then there came a wandering puff of wind, which rustled over the bending tops and fanned the little serpent-tongues of fire ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... moment, he heard the sound of the withdrawing bolts, and his heart beat fast. Surely, his half-hour had not already expired; and if it had, would she be the person to conduct him to death? The door opened; a puff of wind extinguished his candle, but not until he had caught the glimmer of jewels, the shining of gold, and the flutter of long, black hair; and then some one came in. The door was closed; the bolts shot back!—and he was alone with Miranda, ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... and golden hues as they darted to and fro; the violet and blue medusae, and the cream-colored jelly-fish as big as a watermelon. There were angel fish of a bright blue tinge; yellow snappers; black and white sergeant majors; pilot fish; puff fish which could inflate their bodies until they were round as a ball, or flatten themselves to the shape of ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis

... as thick as the rest of the tube, as in Fig. 5. An inch or more is now heated white hot, the tube being turned continually to assure even heating and to prevent the hot end from bending down by its own weight. When very hot, a sudden puff into the open end of the tube will expand the hot glass into a bulb, as in Fig. 6. These can be made of considerable size, and, if not too thin, make very good flasks (Fig. 7) for physical experiments. The base of the bulb should be flattened by setting it, still hot, on a flat piece of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... tied and placed a close guard. All my questions were met with silence save by Madame Kanine who cried: 'Pity, pity for the children! They are innocent!' as she dropped on her knees and stretched out her hands in supplication to us. The short-haired girl laughed out of impudent eyes and blew a puff of smoke into my face. I was forced to threaten them ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... 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 ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the world would be quite right, and reasonable, and prudent, in telling us to push, and boast, and lie, and puff ourselves and our goods, if it were not for one thing which the foolish blind world is always forgetting, and that is, that there is a God who judges the earth. If God were not our King; if He took no care of us men and our doings; if mankind had it all their own way on earth, and were forced ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... Take some Puff-paste rolled thin, and lay it into your Baking-Pan, then lay in your Rasberries and cover them with fine Sugar, then close your Tart and bake it; then cut it up, and put in half a Pint of Cream, the yolks of two or three Eggs well beaten, and a little Sugar; then serve ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... 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 ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... he, lighting his pipe and crossing his legs, "I had a chat with Mrs Bowldler before supper. She came to me complainin' about"—(puff)—"about your parrot. It seems she has taken a dislike ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... waiting, Vanamee felt upon his cheek the touch of a prolonged puff of warm wind, breathing across the little valley from out the east. It reached the Mission garden and stirred the branches of the pear trees. It seemed veritably to be compounded of the very essence of the flowers. Never had the aroma been so sweet, so pervasive. It passed ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... girl, so like herself that they might almost have been sisters, passed in a high C-springed carriage. Looking from one to the other, the great difference made by little things was apparent. An application of powder-puff to the moist face of the girl at the railings would have worked improvement; her cotton gloves hung down flaccidly from the bare hand which held up her skirt; perhaps some such thought as that of the unfair distribution of C-spring carriages in this world crossed her mind, as she turned away ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... high indeed and apparent; and needs not to be introduced with a puff. It sits enthroned between Poetry and History. Even those who are ignorant of its laws feel its influence, and the soothing grace which it sheds, falling like the rain, equally upon the just and the unjust. Man's nature always responds to the truly high and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... breeze blew round the children's faces, and every fresh puff brought a waft of fragrance from the fir trees. Clara drew it in with delight and lay back in her chair with an unaccustomed feeling ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes a time when the joke is over, when the trick is done, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... transports were busily crossing Buell's army all of Sunday night. We could hear their boats ringing their bells, and hear the puff of smoke and steam from their boilers. Our regiment was the advance outpost, and we saw the skirmish line of the Federals advancing and then their main line and then their artillery. We made a good fight on Monday ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... suffocate, and scoff, Declare they are "smoked off," Is there no room inside? If smoke means Hades, We, "to oblige the ladies," Have taken outside seats this many a year, Cold, but with weeds to cheer Our macintosh-enswathed umbrella'd bodies; Now we are called churl-noddies Because we puff the humble briar-root. Is man indeed a "brute" Because he may upon the knife-board's rack owe Some solace to Tobacco? If so it be, then man's last, only chance, Is in the full advance Of the "emancipated" sex. Sweet elves, Pray learn to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 25, 1891 • Various

... '85. DEAR CHARLEY,—The Committee of the Public Library of Concord, Mass, have given us a rattling tip-top puff which will go into every paper in the country. They have expelled Huck from their library as "trash and suitable only for the slums." That will sell 25,000 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... what they are, and what they are doing, what is their nature and what their place in the great scheme, or do you peek and pry at them through the keyhole of a contemptible curiosity in order to discover what you think they can do for you, to set you on high, to puff you out into a personage and cause you to be noticed of the foolish ones of this world? Which are you, sir, a young man of parts whose hand I can grasp fraternally, or an insulter of planets, sir, a Peeping Tom upon the glorious nudity of Venus, ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... we're goin' to have a breeze, Bob," said he, as a sharp puff of wind crossed the deck, driving the black smoke to leeward, and making the fire flare up ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... mixed feelings. The letter that he read and re-read as he walked about his library enchanted him. But the appearance of that library was maddening. It had been transformed into a ladies' cloak-room. On his own writing-desk were an oval silver mirror, a large powder-puff, and several packets of hairpins. All trace of politics seemed to have been completely wiped out. Sir James thoroughly enjoyed picturing to himself Mr. Ridokanaki in this room on the following morning, asking for a blessing, on his knees, and to fancy himself saying solemnly, "Take her, my boy, ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... cosmic ray, imprisoned and adapted for human use. It was a million times more powerful than the highest known voltage of electricity. Beneath it, even the diamond, the hardest substance known, dissolved into a puff of dust; and yet the most fragile plant ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... more than I want already," said Jimmy, who was beginning to puff and pant. The others had no mercy on him, though, and when at last they reached the hospital poor Doughnuts was, as he himself said, ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman

... cigarette, drew a puff upon it and exhaled a cloud of smoke before she answered. Then ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... mountain abounding in wood; the gaunt smiths felled a tree, perhaps with the very axes which their own sturdy hands had hammered at a former period; with the wood thus procured they prepared the charcoal which their labour demanded. Everything is in readiness; the bellows puff until the coal is excited to a furious glow; the metal, hot, pliant, and ductile, is laid on the anvil, round which stands the Cyclop group, their hammers upraised; down they descend successively, one, two, three, the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... pardonable or venial in a young lady going to a ball or coming out in her first concert, but was simply shocking in a middle-aged man going out to Mass on a Sunday morning. Jem Deady actually powdered his face! I do not say that it was violet powder or that he used a puff. His methods were more primitive and more successful. He went to a pot where lime was seething, or rather had been seething. He took up the thick lumps and crushed them into dust. He made his face as white as if he were going to play the king in ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... about fifty patents for this object and with all of them before their eyes, the British Society for the Advancement of Art still hold the $5,000 reward for a pigment or covering which will perfectly protect from rust and fouling. However they may puff their products for selling, no one has the temerity to claim that ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... speech, difficult to translate into facts. They preferred to spin a coin. Madame Depine was to toss, the "Princess" to cry pile ou face. From the stocking Madame Depine drew, naturally enough, the solitary five-franc piece. It whirled in the air; the "Princess" cried face. The puff-puff of the steam-tram sounded like the panting of anxious Fate. The great coin fell, rolled, balanced itself between two destinies, then subsided, pile upwards. The poor "Princess's" face grew even longer; but for the life of her Madame Depine could not ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... good-naturedly. "Ja, that is right." He blew a puff of smoke toward the morning clouds; "the Bachs do not hurry, my child—no ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... up and down the aisles at the sides and in and out of the stalls, eating sweetmeats and visiting their friends. And there was scarcely a grown person in the entire audience of Japanese who was not smoking, for women as well as men smoke in Japan: one pinch of tobacco in a short pipe, one puff, a little whiff of smoke inhaled and the operation is over. Before the curtain rose, the Nesan flew busily from one box to the other with cushions and sweetmeats, baskets of oranges and boxes of sweet pickled black beans. Presently came the sound of ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... Dissenting Ministers (the Ultima Thud of the sanguine, visionary temperament in politics) stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it Radical Tobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at every puff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim blew up the army opposed to the Allies! They had deceived the Senate. Methinks I see them now, smiling as in scorn ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... holiday. The wind was a trifle light for sailing, so the gentlemen pulled, but very lazily and not at all in good "form," as the object of each oarsman seemed to be to do as little work as possible. However, we got on somehow, a light puff helping us now and then, but our progress was hardly perceptible. I had been for a long time gazing down into the clear blue depth of water, every now and then seeing a flash of the white sand shining at the bottom, when I was half startled by our host standing suddenly up in ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... east could be seen a great number of sailing-boats and steamers. Just at seven o'clock a great puff of white smoke broke out from the black side of the Invincible, which was carrying the admiral's flag, and even before the sound reached the ears of the little party on the hill similar bursts of smoke spurted out from the other vessels. Then came the deep roar of heavy ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... the temptation long. There was the sputter of a match, the puff of a flame, and the little stove was roaring away so effectively that one of old Jeremy's sayings rose to her lips. Jeremy had ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Zulu, declaring that he could be no enemy to them or to their race. But a loud mocking laugh drowned his words; and, seeing that the savages had suddenly half crouched behind their shields for a charge, his quick, resourceful brain grasped the situation at once. A puff of smoke, a jet of flame from behind the tree-fern. One of the warriors fell forward on his shield, beating the earth with his great limbs in ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... from which protruded as many saucy-looking guns, their red tompions contrasting prettily with the aforesaid white line and the black sides of the vessel. A flag hung negligently down from her gaff end, and, as a puff of wind stronger than the rest blew out its crimson folds, we saw emblazoned thereon the cross of St. George and merry England. The brig was the British cruiser on this station. To the northward stretched the broad blue expanse of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... Goats would make them an excellent Dish; they drest it in this manner. They would turn out all the Chopt Grass and Crudities found in the Maw into their Pots, and set it over the Fire, and stir it about often: This would Smoak and Puff, and heave up as it was Boyling; wind breaking out of the Ferment, and making a very savory Stink. While this was doing, if they had any Fish, as commonly they had 2 or 3 small Fish, these they would make very clean (as hating nastiness belike) and cut the Flesh from the Bone, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... was ready to leave next morning, Jim says: "Now, Mr. Morgan, I'll fix up them vouchers with you," and givin' me the wink, I let out a yell, and jabbin' the spurs into Black Hawk, we cleared the fence and was off like a puff of dust, with the rest of 'em shootin' and screamin' ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... her Reading Matter under the Mattress. Nearly every high-speed Bachelor in Town had been forbidden the Premises because of the Stories that were going around. The kind that Mother approved were of the Lilac Division with White Puff Ties and their Hair glued down. They talked about Choir Practice and sometimes, when they were sufficiently wrought ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... angry? I haue seen the Cannon When it hath blowne his Rankes into the Ayre, And like the Diuell from his very Arme Puff't his owne Brother: And is he angry? Something of moment then: I will go meet him, There's matter in't indeed, if he ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... crossed his features; the eagle eyes seemed to be burning into my brain. A puff of hot vapour struck me in the face—something which was expelled from the mysterious black tube. And with memories crowding to my mind of similar experiences at the hands of the Hashishin, I fell back, clutching at my throat, fighting for ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... try, to-day, the latest novelty in cookery, a ball of solid ice wrapped in puff-paste, and baked so adroitly that the paste shall be brown while the ice ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... Nothing was so frightful to him as to be fawned on by this grinning ogre, whose few lonesome, blackish teeth seemed ready to devour him. "He didn't stay poar, you bet a hoss!" and with this the coal was deposited on the pipe, and the lips began to crack like parchment as each puff of smoke escaped. "He married rich, you see," and here another significant look at the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy, as she puffed away reflectively. "His wife hadn't no book-larnin'. She'd been through the spellin'-book wunst, and ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... the adjacent chamber, whence he was to be heard at his ablutions, puffing and blowing, grampus-like. To whom thus the Viscount, raising his voice: "Oh, by the way, Sling, Beverley wants to go with you." Here the Captain stopped, as it seemed in the very middle of a puff, and when he spoke it was in a tone ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... deuce the other could tell such whoppers! As to Lucy Stewart, she quietly confessed to her origin and of her own accord spoke of her childhood and of the days when her father, the wheel greaser at the Northern Railway Terminus, used to treat her to an apple puff ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... little puff of wind arose, followed by another, and yet another—soft, warm wind, but we saw the folds of the banner begin to unfurl. Little by little the breeze strengthened; breathlessly we watched the gradual lifting of the silken standard, till, with an indescribably ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... improved since you made your first communion; you have become pious and obedient, you love God and your relations; I am satisfied with you. I don't say this to puff you ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... powder; it had poured into the windows that gaped widely in the insufferable heat; it lay thick upon the novel read by the passenger who had for the third or fourth time during the ascent made a gutter of the half-opened book and blown the dust away in a single puff, like the smoke from a pistol. It lay in folds and creases over the yellow silk duster of the handsome woman on the back seat, and when she endeavored to shake it off enveloped her in a reddish nimbus. It grimed the handkerchiefs of others, and left sanguinary streaks on their mopped foreheads. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... where a girl sat sketching. A puff of wind whirled her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up. She took it from him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... nor bows and spears, and no skins, not even under me, for I was lying on straw mats. I could hear the storm still raging outside; the rush and splash of rain, and, at intervals, the distant growl of thunder. There was wind, too; I listened to it sobbing in the trees, and occasionally a puff found its way in, and blew up the white ashes at the old man's feet, and shook the yellow flames like a flag. I remembered now how the storm began, the wild girl, the snake-bite, my violent efforts to find a way out of the woods, and, finally, that leap from the bank where recollection ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... ever hear of any body that was?" answered Oldbuck;"what reason has an old battered powder-puff like you to be easy in your mind, more than all the rest of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... more dressings are required. In many cases, with a properly adjusted dressing, that comes forward underneath so as to include the frenum, the simple dorsal slit is sufficient; but if any of the prepuce depasses the dressing underneath, it will puff and become oedematous and require frequent puncturing. To avoid it, it is better to make the Cloquet slit at once. This operation is of no value, and perfectly impracticable in a thick, pendulous prepuce. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... with contentment, our artist perused this puff. He saw his name in print,—a thing which was to him a complete novelty; and he could not help reading the lines at least a dozen times. He was particularly tickled with the comparison of his works to Vandyke and Titian. The use of his baptismal name, Andrei Petrovitch, also gratified him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... entitle her to live on earth; at least crusty Hannah often said so, and often made grievous complaint of disobedience, mischief, or breakage, attributable to little Elsie; to which the grim Doctor seldom responded by anything more intelligible than a puff of tobacco-smoke, and, sometimes, an imprecation; which, however, hit crusty Hannah instead of the child. Where the child got the tenderness that a child needs to live upon, is a mystery to me; perhaps from some aged or dead mother, or in her dreams; perhaps ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thin battens of bamboo. The roof is bamboo and thatch. Thatch fences surround all the little courtyards. Leaves, refuse, cowdung fuel, and wood are piled up round every hut. At each door is an open air fire, which smoulders all day. A stray puff of wind makes an inquisitive visit round the corner, and before one can half realise the catastrophe, the village is on fire. Then each only thinks of his own goods; there is no combined effort to stay the flames. In the hot west winds of March, April, and May, these ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... our guns, the fire bursting forth from the ship's side in the centre of puff-balls of smoke, accompanied by the hurtling sound of the shot through the air, and the dull intonation the shell gave out after the first report, when these missiles discharged their contents around their ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... happened to turn their heads at the same moment, and were looking at the double proa coming up with them very rapidly, when each uttered an exclamation, for they suddenly saw a red flash at the prow of the boat, a puff of smoke, and then the report of a musket reached them almost at the same instant that the whistle of the bullet through the rigging ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... grand house, too, the finest I had ever seen, with hangings of arras everywhere, many and parti-colored—red hunters who hunted, green foresters who shot, puff-cheeked boys blowing on hunting-horns; a house with mysterious vistas, glimpses into dim-lit rooms, wafts of perfume, lamps that were not extinguished even in the daytime, burning far within. All in mighty striking contrast to the bare stark strength of our Red Tower on ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... finished. A puff of smoke from behind a distant rock, the boom of a jezail, and Desmond fell beside the Boy, stunned by a well-aimed shot on the edge of the cheek-bone, the slug glancing off perilously close to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... know every speck and every cranny of my cavernous hearth, and it is rarely that it calls for any kindling wood of a morning. As a rule a puff from the bellows and a fresh log—one of the little fellows, no thicker than your leg, which I split for this purpose—is enough to set it on its way flaming and glowing for another day of comforting life. I often tell myself it would never do for me to think ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... the man at the door. We came again about eight o'clock at night. It seemed as late as Christmas Eve and sort of lonely without our Parents or any other presents. We had to climb a lot of stairs. It made Tiger Lily puff a little and look very glad. It made our Uncle Peter puff some too. It made the little boy's Mother puff a good deal. There wasn't any Father. The Mother was all in black about it. Her clothes looked very sorrowful. But her face was just sort of surprised. She had ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... Jan. He drew with extraordinary rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls "fateful lines." At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own wares as ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... evening before, and he was taking her back to her school. The sleighing was excellent, the day fine, and all went merry as a marriage bell until they reached the railroad. There the inevitable train of cars loomed in view, and the puff, puff of the engine, sending out great volumes of steam and its wild screech at the crossing, completely upset what few ideas of propriety and steady travel this horse may have had in his poor, bewildered head, and, with a leap and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... there came in through the window a puff of air, that scattered the papers on the table. One, seemingly part of a letter, was blown to Blake's feet. He picked it up, and, as he handed it back to Mr. Alcando, the lad could not help seeing part of a sentence. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... the week had been, he relapsed into his book; and she had to wait for a time to talk of anything else. Esther sat down with a piece of fancy work, and held her tongue till tea-time. The house was as still as if nobody lived in it. The colonel occasionally turned a leaf; now and then a puff of gas or a sudden jet of flame in the Liverpool coal fire gave a sort of silent sound, rebuking the humanity that lived there. No noise was heard from below stairs; the middle-aged and well-trained servants did their work with the regularity ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... before God, but also before all men." [Rom. 12:17] And II. Corinthians iv: "We walk so honestly that no man knows anything against us." [2 Cor. 4:2] But there must be great diligence and care, lest such honor and good name puff up the heart, and the heart find pleasure in them. Here the saying of Solomon holds: "As the fire in the furnace proveth the gold, so man is proved by the mouth of him that praises him." [Prov. 27:21] Few and most spiritual men must they be, who, when honored ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... Toby, who could see better than any of the others, because no little puff of white powder ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie

... body of a worm is sensitive to contact. A slight puff of air from the mouth causes an instant retreat. The glass plates placed over the pots did not fit closely, and blowing through the very narrow chinks thus left, often sufficed to cause a rapid retreat. They sometimes perceived the ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... to have a new suit." Helen May retrenched herself behind the declaration. "And it's going to be gray. And a gray hat with a dove-colored band and the bow in the back. And tan shoes," she added implacably, daintily lifting the roof off her cream puff to see how generous had ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... glassy smoothness of its surface. After a time, 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 ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... are very informal, but the meetings of the tribal councils are conducted with due ceremony. When all the persons are assembled, the chief of the Wolf gens calls them to order, fills and lights a pipe, sends one puff of smoke to the heavens and another to the earth. The pipe is then handed to the sachem, who fills his mouth with smoke, and, turning from left to right with the sun, slowly puffs it out over the heads of the councilors, who are sitting in a circle. He then hands the pipe to the man on his ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... came. Almost at the end of November; a true child of the month; it was dark, chill, gloomy. The wind bore little foretokens of rain in every puff that made its way up the river, slowly, as if the sea had charged it too heavily, or as if it came through the fringe of the low grey cloud which hung upon the tops of the mountains. But nobody spoke of Winthrop's staying his journey. Perhaps everybody thought, that the day before, and the night ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... serious. The boy is all right again. [Walks about excitedly, panting.] But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would believe it that hadn't seen it. It simply means that I shall have to ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... of Spain to die. He was the last of his race, last of the Spanish Hapsburgs descended from the Emperor Charles V, and so infirm and feeble was he that it seemed the flickering candle of his life must puff out with each passing wind. Who should succeed him? In Mazarin's time, that crafty minister had schemed that the prize should go to France, and had wedded young Louis XIV to a Spanish princess. The Austrian Hapsburgs of course wanted the place for themselves, though to establish a common ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... The sonorous puff of the steam-winch told us that the anchor had already parted from its hold of the land, the ship glided slowly through the deep waters like a huge sea-monster, the tremulous vibration of the hull caused ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... 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, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... plate. In the mean time, I broke up the grated cassava, and mixed it with a little milk; and giving each of them a cocoa-nut basin filled with the paste, I showed them how to pour it with a spoon upon the plate, and spread it about; when the paste began to puff up, I judged it was baked on one side, and turned it, like a pancake, with a fork; and after a little time, we had a quantity of nice yellow biscuits, which, with a jug of milk, made us a delicious collation; and determined us, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... folded object began to unfold itself and to puff itself up like a little mushroom. In a matter of seconds, Chris could see what it was becoming, and before he could wink ten times, a balloon with a basket hanging from it, quite big enough for two boys, hung swaying in the air. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... again, to his brethren of the Western metropolis—"I know many things in God, but I moderate myself that I may not perish through boasting; for now it is becoming to me that I should fear the more abundantly, and should not look to those that puff me up." Let us now hear a specimen of the mysticism of this dotard. "There was hidden from the Ruler of this world the virginity of Mary, and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the shout, which were done in the quietness of God by means of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen









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