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More "Whiff" Quotes from Famous Books



... go for the woods, her spotted fawn, which had been frolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped from it, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, and disappeared like a whiff too. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... the open shell and Charley emptied its contents of powder into the open cut. Quickly, he applied a match to the black grains and they caught with a hiss, there was a tiny cloud of black smoke and a whiff of burning flesh. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... eyeing me through the bush, he got a whiff of my wind, which at once alarmed him. Uttering a blowing noise, and erecting his insignificant yet saucy-looking tail, he wheeled about, leaving me master of the field, when I sent a bullet through his ribs to teach him manners. Of the rhinoceros there ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... come to-day. Get on with your work, for Heaven's sake! The new sailing-master is a man of ten thousand. He has got an Englishman whom he knows to serve as mate on board already; and he is positively certain of getting the crew together in three or four days' time. I am dying for a whiff of the sea, and so are you, or you are no sailor. The rigging is set up, the stores are coming on board, and we shall bend the sails to-morrow or next day. I never was in such spirits in my life. Remember me to your wife, ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... brought me a whiff of German air, which is all the more welcome to me here as I have not too much of it. One sees extremely few German papers in Rome—also I read them very irregularly—and my correspondents from Germany are limited to two, of whom friend Gottschalg, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... financially, than himself. The nurses and physicians in the hospital where he lay learned to like and admire him, and other patients, convalescents or newcomers who were able to move about, sought his cheerful rooms and brought into them a whiff of the outside world. Through it all, winding in and out of the neutral-colored weeks like a scarlet thread of life and hope, came the childish letters from Russia, and each week a thick letter went back, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... halls resounded the cacophonous clangour of a cracked gong announcing dinner. Sighing, P. Sybarite rose and knocked the ashes delicately from his pipe—saving the dottle for a good-night whiff ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... sich since dat same storm as de debbil come in to fetch ole marse's soul—dis berry night seven year past, an' he carried of him off all in a suddint whiff! jist like a puff of win'. An' no wonder, seein' how he done traded his ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... to you when you wish to drive the hens out of your garden-patch. The cow stopped abruptly, threw up her head and stared at the hunter. The sight of the crouching figure must have suggested to the stupid animal that every thing was not right, for with a frightened whiff, she bounded short around with the intention of joining ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... months there was not an open dram shop or distillery in Portland! He invited me to visit him, and drove me over the city, whose pure air was not polluted with the faintest smell of alcohol. It seemed like the first whiff of a temperance millennium. An invitation was extended to him to a magnificent public meeting in Tripler Hall, New York. At that meeting a large array of distinguished speakers, including General Houston, of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... truth when he speaks of his "whiff of song." All his notes are call-notes, and are addressed directly to his mate. The songbirds take up a position and lift up their voices and sing. It is a deliberate musical performance, as much so as that of Nilsson or Patti. The bluebird, however, never ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... over the hearth to put fresh logs on the fire, my face was so close to hers that I felt her breath on my cheek. It thrilled me to feel even the suggestion of that ineffable contact. Her breath was sweet—sweet as the breath of a calf, sweet as the whiff of a summer breeze across beds of mignonette. How could anyone believe for a moment that such sweet breath could come from the lips of the dead—the dead in esse or in posse—that corruption could send forth fragrance so sweet and pure? It was with satisfied happiness that, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of leisurely enjoyment which belongs to the man who knows and can afford to burn good tobacco and who has the sense to, burn it consciously, realizing in every whiff its rich fragrance. The Honorable Blake flicked a generous half-inch of ash from his cigar upon a porch support and glanced shrewdly at the ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... beautiful, to construct a uniform range of combs. When the hive is filled with honey, two or three, or more of the bars may be, at any time, removed, or exchanged for unoccupied bars, without much disturbing the brood combs, all annoyance from the bees being prevented by a whiff or two of tobacco smoke being blown into the hive at the time of the removal of the bars. With the protection of a bee-house these hives can be applied to many of the systems of bee-management, and prove equally profitable, and more manageable than ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn

... little Red Hen came quickly in, and shut the door and locked it. "I'm glad I'm safely in," she said. Just as she said it, she turned round, and there stood the ugly old Fox, with his big bag over his shoulder. Whiff! how scared the little Red Hen was! She dropped her apronful of sticks, and flew up to the big beam across the ceiling. There she perched, and she said to the old Fox, down below, "You may as well go home, for you can't ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... ashes from his cigar, took another whiff or two, then laid it down, and turned to his host, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... granddaughter of the good-wife Marcile. That petite personne, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady. One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... bit," Haddon answered over his shoulder. "We shall chloroform you. Your heart's as sound as a bell." And as he spoke, I had a whiff of the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... to the reader what the peace smoke is. We all took seats in a circle around the head Chief. He lighted the peace pipe, which is a special pipe kept to use on these occasions alone. He took the first whiff himself, blowing it up into the air, and the second whiff he blew into my face. I being his guest of honor, I sat at the right of him. The third whiff he blew into the face of the Chief who sat on his left, and then he passed the pipe to me. ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan

... about as fur off of his place as from here to the other side o' the river; an' a lagoon betwixt; an' not a particle o' grass for the fire to run on. Fact, I'm a man that's careful about fire. Mind you, I did set fire to a bit of a dead log on the reserve, but a man has to get a whiff o' smoke these nights, on account o' the muskeeters; an' there was no more danger nor there is with this fire o' yours. Called ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... slavery have quite reconciled the Dutch to the abdication of Napoleon. In answer to the question, "Etes vous content de ces changements?" you meet with no doubtful shrug of the shoulders, no ambiguous "mais que, oui"; an instantaneous extra whiff of satisfaction is puffed forth, accompanied with the synonimous terms, "Napoleon et Diable." On leaving Gorum we acquired an accession of passengers—a protestant clergyman and a fat man, who looked much ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... a moment to take a whiff at his pipe; but it had gone out: he put it in his pocket, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... everything was different now! The history of the world could show no epoch when pleasures so many and various were there for the man who carries the golden key. Today he was a looker-on, and the ice of his years of bitterness had not melted. Tomorrow, at any moment, he might catch a whiff of the fragrance of life, and the blood in his veins would move to a different tune. This was how it seemed to Aynesworth, as he studied his companion through the faint blue mist ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... voices rose to his ear and died away again. The front door opened to admit some one, but Orde could not see who it was. Twice a scurrying of feet overhead seemed to indicate the bustle of excitement. The afternoon waned. A faint whiff of cooking, escaping through some carelessly open door, was borne to his nostrils. It grew dark, but the lamps remained unlighted. Finally he heard the rustle of the portieres, and turned to see the dim form ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... mourned their faults and trembled at their perils, I have joyfully saluted the noble and manly policy of which the election of Mr. Lincoln is the symptom. Is it not true, that at the first news we all seemed to breathe a whiff of pure and free air from the other side of ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... puritanic frock of some blue material. His happiness thrilled him, and he lay staring into the darkness till the darkness withered, and the lines of the room appeared—the wardrobe, the wash-hand-stand, and then the letter. He rose from his bed. In all-pervading grayness the world lay as if dead; not a whiff of smoke ascended, not a bird had yet begun, and the river, like a sheet of zinc, swirled ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... sonnet is not so clearly worked out as I could wish. The thought is that as the seabird opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means the whirr of the motion, but also unaware gives you a whiff of knowledge about his plumage, the marking of which stamps his species, that he does not mean, so Purcell, seemingly ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins

... lines, half dissipating itself in twenty yards, until the steady outpour of the green smoke gave it reinforcement and it made headway. Then, creeping forward from tuft to tuft, and preceded by an acrid and parching whiff, the curling and tumbling vapor reached the English lines in a wall twenty ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... aristocrats. And what, if you please, was his grace's favorite historical episode, which he declared he never read without intense satisfaction? Why, the young General Bonapart's pounding of the Paris mob to pieces in 1795, called in playful approval by our respectable classes "the whiff of grapeshot," though Napoleon, to do him justice, took a deeper view of it, and would fain have had it forgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not a demon, but a man of like passions with ourselves, by no means rancorous or cruel as ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... the hall, while her hostess fumbled at the door. It opened and let in a whiff of cool air and sounds ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... clover, that warm whiff on the breeze," he remarked; "and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... attempts were made, now by reactionaries, now by extreme radicals, to interfere with the work, but they were suppressed with comparative ease. The last uprising of the Parisian populace which threatened the Convention was effectually quelled (October, 1795) by a "whiff of grape-shot" discharged at the command of a young and obscure major of artillery, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... distinct brightening in the east, and pale, streaky cirrus cloudlets gather to bar the sun's way. Broad, equal-blowing airs begin to draw to and fro through the woods. There is an earthy scent of wet leaves, sharpened with an unmistakable aromatic whiff of garlic, which has been trodden upon and rises to reproach us for our carelessness. Listen! Let us stand beneath ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... France. Dolores' father was dead. Uncle Peter was a bachelor. He had two brothers, and each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. The other two were home,—one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other with a leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two made nothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they were nearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... life! To-day all things are possible again! The fool has learned wisdom, and, I hope, become a man. But come," said he in a more natural tone, "let us get back to our ditch, and, while you tell me the particulars, if you don't object I should much like to try a whiff at that pipe ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... through English, French, Russian, Mongol, and Chinese, and after dinner smoked our pipes and cigars. The sargoochay had a pipe with a slender bowl that could be taken out for reloading, like the shell of a Remington rifle. A single whiff served to exhaust it, and the smoke passing through water became purified. An attendant stood near to manage the pipe of His Excellency whenever his services were needed. We endeavored to smoke each others' pipes and were quite satisfied ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... the Company who was not as generous to his fellows as the Senior Subaltern had been. He smoked the cigarettes he had been sent, persistently, and with obvious enjoyment. The men around him were hungry for a "whiff"; the sight of him calmly lighting a fresh "fag" at the stump of the old maddened them beyond endurance. At length one man could bear ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... each of the Indians, contrary to their usual custom of taking a whiff or two, smoked long and slowly. We knew it was a ruse to protract the ceremony and gain time; while we—I answer for Seguin and myself—were chafing at ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got into the boat and pushed off, in imitation of their daddy. It came on to blow, as it does down there, without a single whiff of warning; and when Robin awoke for his middle-day meal, the bodies of his little ones were lying on the table. And from that very day Captain Cockscroft and his wife began to grow old very quickly. The boat was recovered without much damage; and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... barrel, we are rounded and polished by mere attrition. Formerly, characteristics had more chance to emphasize themselves and throw out angles, as I believe they still do in long polar seclusions. Withal, there came from him from time to time a whiff of the naval atmosphere of the past, like that from a drawer where lavender has been. Going ashore once with him for a constitutional, he caught sight of a necktie which my fond mother had given me. It was black, yes; but with variations. "Humph!" he ejaculated; "don't wear a thing like that ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... that never must be disappointed, no matter how hard the times might be. She was glad to see so many turkeys on their way to garnish hospitable tables, and hoped that all the dear home circles might be found unbroken, though she had place in none. No Christmas-tree went by leaving a whiff of piny sweetness behind, that she did not wish it all success, and picture to herself the merry little people dancing in its light. And whenever she saw a ragged child eying a window full of goodies, smiling even, while it shivered, she could not resist playing Santa Claus ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... A whiff of this sesame opened like magic the three immense iron doors through anterooms in charge of trusties, in prison garb of the material of blue overalls and caps shaped like a low fez. Inside, a "preso de confianza" serving as turnkey led the way along a great ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... for he was listening: the whole house was listening. No other sound came from the drawing-room, and Helen fancied that Mr. Penderwell was standing on the stairs, held by the memory of days when he had taken his lady by her tiny waist and felt the whiff of her muslin skirts against him as they whirled. The children on the landing were wide-eyed and hushed in their quiet play. The sounds grew fainter; they faded away as though the ballroom had grown dark and empty, and for a little space all the listeners seemed to be easing themselves of ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... got a good whiff of the foaming ale in his nostrils, and he surrendered, sighed, and stretched out his hand for the jug, and then took such a hearty draught, that it seemed as though he never wanted ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... Venice; but since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and heard her breathless "I had to ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... memory jumped to a corridor of the Cheyenne hospital. He had been passing the operating-room on his way to see Wild Rose. The door had opened and there had been wafted to him faintly the penetrating whiff of chloroform. It was the same drug he ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... the boy who made up the affirmative side of the debate. Cora was prettily dressed in blue taffeta, with a yellow rose carelessly fastened in her belt. Her hair had been crimped and Jerry caught a whiff of perfume. Then she glimpsed a trim little foot thrust out the better to show a patent leather pump and a blue silk stocking. For the first time since she had come to Highacres, Jerry grew conscious of her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... sounds and scents from afar. You know you are abreast Grape Island now far you scent the wild roses on the point. Another breeze brings faint odors of the charnel house from Bradley's. A stronger chases it away and you have a whiff of an early breakfast, brown toast, fried fish and coffee, at Rose Cliff. The chuckle of oars in rowlocks tells you that the old fisherman is astir at Fort Point and the man with the new motor boat over at ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... the jockey, taking a whiff, "make your conversation as short as possible, whether in Latin or Dutch, for, to tell you the truth, I am rather tired of merely ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... an enemy to-morrow, as the saying is; and you may jist as well say it backwards; for, as things turn up, I'm no sich blasted enemy, jist now, no-way no-how. I'm for holding a peace talk, as the Injuns say, d—n 'em, burying the axe, and taking a whiff or two at the kinnikinick of friendship. So cuss away, if it will do you good; and I'll stand it. But as for being off, why I don't mean it noway. I've got a bargain to strike with you, and it is jist a matter ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... Diry, did you ever get a whiff of the smell, throne out by the paste-pot, in an edittur's offis, wot was 'stablished in '49? Cos, if you never did, you can't apreshiate how deliteful the consentrated 'xtract of half a dozen glew ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray

... association to which he belonged, of the pleasant hours he would spend in discussing with youthful shallowness the deepest subjects that can occupy the human mind, deciding, between a draft of brown ale and a whiff of tobacco, that Schopenhauer was right in one point, and that Kant was wrong in another. But, for the present, at least, none of those things could by mere anticipation distract his thoughts from ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... whiff of his cigarette. 'So you think the men will laugh the last? Do you think they'll burn ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... or hoping, or fearing, could keep off the dreaded Saturday afternoon, or Newman Noggs either; who, punctual to his time, limped up to the door, and breathed a whiff of cordial gin through the keyhole, exactly as such of the church clocks in the neighbourhood as agreed among themselves about the time, struck five. Newman waited for the last stroke, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... I was more than a bit down myself, for there were days when death was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a big strapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "I shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... necessarily keep one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot; and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself really asleep this time? He breathed ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... the eloquence of personal conviction. But, as to such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum negus, to imagine myself—a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn such a petty realm as the Solar ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... pieces of wood together, and we tried the same plan over and over again. Indeed we spent the better part of several days trying to get fire in that way, but without success; we could not even raise a whiff of smoke. That was about the worst misfortune that happened to us, for without fire to protect us at night, or to cook food during the day, we were continually in difficulties. But it was not long before ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... a piece. It must have gone off on a tangent through stores into the cooler. Clipped the coolant line, and let warm air in. All the fresh frozen stuff is contaminated and rotten." He gagged. "I got a whiff of it, sir. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer

... scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once. 3d Nantucket Sailor Spell oh! —whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm —give us a whiff, Tash. ( They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky darkens — the wind rises.) .. Lascar Sailor By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva! Maltese Sailor ( Reclining ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... decks, and in the immortal whiff, indefinable, of a fine ship just off the high seas, trod the beatified club. A ship, the last abiding place in a mannerless world of good old-fashioned caste, and respect paid upward with due etiquette ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... exuberance of Lavington's public personality into his host's contracted frame and manner. Mr. Laving ton, to whom Faxon's case had been rapidly explained by young Rainer, had welcomed him with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched his narrow face, his stiff hand, and the whiff of scent on his evening handkerchief. "Make yourself at home—at home!" he had repeated, in a tone that suggested, on his own part, a complete inability to perform the feat he urged on his visitor. "Any friend of Frank's... delighted... make ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... villainous device away, I say, Fitz, and surprise yo' nostrils with a whiff of this. Virginia tobacco, suh,—raised at Cartersville,—cured by my own servants. No? Well, you will, Major. Here, try that; every breath of it is a nosegay," said the colonel, ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... you can so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see—why, what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ... Like a whiff of thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch things innocent and quiet. The ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... her inner consciousness. Was the widower bent on making the most of his time in an endeavor to fascinate the Eastern belle? The ladies were hardly dressed when he reappeared, and was urging Miss Sanford to come out with him for a brief stroll to see the mountain prairie and take a whiff of Wyoming breezes, when the appearance of Mrs. Turner and others (who had just happened by, but hearing their voices could not resist rushing in to welcome Mrs. Truscott, etc., etc.) put an end to the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... a long whiff of smoke straight up towards the bright blue sky, where the sun was beginning to descend towards his western couch, "we shan't make much, I fear, of the men of this part ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... they found that they were unable to close out their immense holdings without breaking the price. In two days wheat that they had held at a dollar and ten cents collapsed to sixty. The two Milwaukee men were ruined, and two-thirds of Cressler's immense fortune vanished like a whiff of smoke. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the crowd seething in the streets, shrinking from the idea of stripping the rags off the beggar in order to see his tanned and gnarled limbs; shuddering at the thought of seeking for muscles in the dead, cut-open body; fearful of every whiff of life that might mingle with the incense atmosphere of his chapel, of every cry of human passion which might break through the well-ordered sweetness of his chants. No; the Renaissance did not exist ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... Marshall Wace, frankly, couldn't be depended on. Not only was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... the sun had shifted, and it was far less hot. But he opened a small window on a level with the roof, and inhaled, with an air of profound relief, the whiff of warm air that entered. Then he took up his sketch of Christine's head and for a long while he lingered ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going on.—Oh,—oh,—oh! do ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... you remember the /Taduki/ herb?" she asked. "I have plenty of it safe upstairs, and not long ago I took a whiff of it, only a whiff because you know it had to ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the coal-blackened floor, Toomey, with his big shovel flinging open the iron gate to the blazing furnace for every new mouthful he fed it, and snapping it shut when he turned away for another, for not a whiff of the draught could be wasted. Once past the deserted station at the Fort there would come eight miles of twisting and turning and struggling up-grade, and every pound of steam would be needed to pull even this baker's dozen of heavily laden cars ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... on the carpet, with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman being in the meantime sent for a doctor. But there seemed to be not a whiff of life left in either of the bodies. Then Thomasin, whose stupor of grief had been thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to Clym's nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... exuberantly, as they sat by the fire of many-coloured flames, after a slender cup of tea and as hearty a meal as Graeme would allow them in view of possible contingencies. "Do please smoke, Mr. Graeme. It just needs a whiff of tobacco ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... grass a big She-wolf, like his mother, yet different, a stranger, and instinctively the stray Cub sank to the earth, as the old Wolf bounded on him. No doubt the Cub had been taken for some lawful prey, but a whiff set that right. She stood over him for an instant. He grovelled at her feet. The impulse to kill him or at least give him a shake died away. He had the smell of a young Cub. Her own were about his age, her heart was touched, and when he found courage enough to put his ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... swing-door (through which issues a whiff of hot air charged with a combination of greasy smells that might knock down a rhinoceros), our hero enters the long, low, dingy room, and is instantly relieved of his coat and cap by half a dozen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... One day a whiff of celery coming from a garden near by, reminded Miss Swallow-tail of the time when she was a baby and liked ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... out of the heat On that lowest shelf beside the door, Have a sort of Ideal, "couleur d'or". Every castle of the air Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there Are seeds for every romance, or light Whiff of a dream for a summer night. I supply to every want and taste." 'Twas slowly said, in no great haste He seemed to push his wares, but I Dumfounded listened. By and by A log on the fire broke in two. He looked up quickly, "Sir, and you?" I groped for something I should say; Amazement held me numb. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... speedily forget him; but now her despairing look frightened him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... Prussic acid of his speech. She was as used to it as to his other little mannerisms. She did not think of the old couple as fat and awkward. She did not analyze their attributes or think of their features in detail. She thought of them simply as them. But Easton was new; he brought in a subtle whiff of the hated Germany that had done ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... is one of my hobbies, and I spend hours a day in my laboratory yonder. I have only just struck work, and as I had inhaled some not-over-pleasant gases, I thought that a turn down the road and a whiff of tobacco might do me good. That was how I came to meet you, and my toilet, I fear, corresponded only too well with my smoke-grimed face. But I rather fancy I know you by repute. Your name is Robert McIntyre, is ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the husks of human greatness and ambition to want any more of them. They never did satisfy me, and in the light and heat of the terrific ordeal through which I have just passed they shrivelled into utter nothingness. I want something that I cannot lose in a whiff of smoke and flame, and I think I have found it. Henceforth I claim no other character than that of a simple Christian girl." Then bowing her head on her friend's shoulder she added, in a whisper, "If I could climb to true ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... delightful than the odours which filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling the wide world with invisible sweetness. A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experience. I never smell daisies without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... and were ready to sail again on the following Sunday. I went ashore to my old quarters, and found the gang at the hide-house going on in the even tenor of their way, and spent an hour or two, after dark, at the oven, taking a whiff with my old Kanaka friends, who really seemed glad to see me again, and saluted me as the Aikane of the Kanakas. I was grieved to find that my poor dog Bravo was dead. He had sickened and died suddenly the very day after I sailed ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... sun rose bright and charming as on the seventh day of March it did three years ago in the sunny land of Florida. For the first time in many weary months did I a whiff of the outside air inhale. Oh! how delicious! 'Twas like a prisoner's whiff of the air of freedom. But this was not the best. To sit again with the brethren around the table of the Lord and hear ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen

... no smoker himself and dislike the odour of tobacco, I tell him that if he objects, I will postpone my harmless whiff until after captivity. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... Women toiled over the fires, smoke-curing the meat, on their backs infants that stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of tallow. Dogs, full-kin to wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the menace of the short club he carried and to whiff the odor of this newcomer whom they must accept by virtue of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... a light gleaming from a group of mudhuts a short distance off the road. From the numerous flocks around it, we took it to be a shepherds' village. Everything was quiet except the restless sheep, whose silky fleece glistened in the light of the rising moon. Supper was not yet over, for we caught a whiff of its savory odor. Leaving our wheels outside, we entered the first door we came to, and, following along a narrow passageway, emerged into a room where four rather rough-looking shepherds were ladling the soup from a huge bowl in their midst. Before they were aware of our presence, we uttered ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making privy ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... words, and they "disturbed" him, to put it mildly. Evidently he had forgotten the peril to which all persons are exposed in tropical waters, and, as the truth was impressed upon him with such suddenness, he uttered a "whiff" like a porpoise and began swimming with fierce energy toward the shore. In fact, he never put forth so much effort in all his life. The expectation of feeling a huge man-eating monster gliding beneath you when in the water is enough to shake the nerves of the strongest swimmer. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... he had heard this, or something very like it, many times in old days, and it brought back a whiff of the romance of the past, of solitary freedom, of his bachelor life, when he was young and thought he could do anything he chose, when he had neither love for his wife nor memory ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe And a scornful laugh ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the great poles in leathern sockets slung from the shoulders, and their acolytes before and behind who kept the banner upright by straining at crimson halyards, sweated most of all. Every foot was grey with dust, and the dark trousers of boys and men showed dust. The steamy whiff of humanity struck Edwin's nostrils. Up hill and down dale the procession had already walked over two miles. Yet it was alert, joyous, and expectant: a chattering procession. From the lorry rose a continuous faint shriek of infantile voices. Edwin was ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... the oldest of the council rose, re-lit the calumet, and, after taken a whiff from the tube, handed it to the Indian seated on his left. This one, in like manner, passed it to the next, and he to the next, until the pipe had made the circuit of the fire, and was returned to the old warrior who had ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... the elder, with another calm whiff. "I have always had a kind of respect for your father, for there is something remarkable in his appearance, something heroic, and I would fain have cultivated his acquaintance; the feeling, however, has not been reciprocated. I met him, the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... 'Give her a whiff of fresh air with the bellows, Charley,' said Mr. Dawkins; 'and you slap her hands, Fagin, while Bill ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... through the clean and heavy stench of cow pasture, and a steady-eyed, white-haired capitalist, rolling on his rolling-stock, leans back against the upholstery and gazes with eyes tight closed upon a steady-eyed, brown-haired youngster herding in at eventide. The whiff of violets from a vender's tray, and a young man dreams above his ledger. The reek of a passing brewer's wagon, and white faces look ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... daroga, I couldn't carry HIM up like that, at once. ... He was a hostage ... But I could not keep him in the house on the lake, either, because of Christine; so I locked him up comfortably, I chained him up nicely—a whiff of the Mazenderan scent had left him as limp as a rag—in the Communists' dungeon, which is in the most deserted and remote part of the Opera, below the fifth cellar, where no one ever comes, ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... Mr Ellis,' she said brightly, shaking hands with me when Andy and I were going to turn in. 'And don't forget your pipe. Here it is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn in. Walter smokes in bed. I don't mind. You can smoke ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... came to see me the other day," Mrs. Bates continued, "it was like a whiff of air from the old times. It was like one of the Old Settler receptions that the Calumet people used to give—only better. Why did they stop them, I wonder? Are the old settlers giving out? Or has the town become too proud and indifferent? ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... so curiously were they lying that it was useless to attempt a shot. In their happy dreams they must have been suddenly disturbed by the scent of an enemy, for, without the least warning, they suddenly sprang to their feet with astonishing quickness, and with a loud and sharp whiff, whiff, whiff! one of them charged straight at me. I fired my right-hand barrel in his throat, as it was useless to aim at the head protected by two horns at the nose. This turned him, but had no other effect, and the two animals thundered off together ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... forth into the street to get a whiff of fresh air. He, the demon, pertinaciously stuck to us; he familiarly linked his arm through mine, and, suggesting coffee as rather a good thing to take after dinner, took us over to the Cafe du Cardinal, where he, however, took none of the Arabian beverage himself (there being only three ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... and pipes you square, Gogglin' at you through his glasses, Swings you in the barber's chair, Tilts you this end up with care, Lets you have a whiff of gasses ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something—doubtless very nice and succulent—that was being cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils; at all events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... eyes half-closed in a luxurious lighting up. "Very wise indeed. But just to-night—don't you think you'd better have a whiff to-night?" The colonel shook his head, but Jeff sent out an advance signal of blue smoke. "Where is it?" ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... the Council, to accept a regular commission, and to raise new forces. On his way to the town Bacon is attacked by an ambush of soldiers, whom he beats off with the help of one of his lieutenants, Fearless, backed by Lieutenant Daring and a troop of his own men, who capture Whimsey and Whiff, two very prominent justices, instigators of the plot. He accordingly appears before the Council with a couple of prisoners. The populace, who are all for their hero, realizing the treachery, raise a riot, and throw the Councillors into a state of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... to Soames. Left them! Was he sorry? Was he fond of his father? It seemed to him that he did not know. Then, suddenly—as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars—his heart twitched within him, and he was sorry. One's father belonged to one, could not go off in this fashion—it was not done! Nor had he always been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade. There were precious memories of tailors' shops and horses, tips ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a cab, rushed down to the depot, checked my trunks to Colorado Springs, and jumped on the train just as she was pulling out. I spotted the old man as I went into the coach. He was sitting in a double seat with his feet up on the cushions. I got a whiff of his 'Lottie Lee' ten feet away. Luckily for me, all the seats in the car except the one the old man had his feet on, were occupied, so I marched up and said, 'Excuse me, sir, I dislike tol make you uncomfortable,' and sat down in ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson

... about two hours: the principal person then rang a little bell, and the tables and chairs all vanished in a whiff, leaving the company standing on their feet. The birds now struck up a most lively air, and the little people began to dance, jumping and leaping and whirling round and round, as if the world were grown dizzy. And the pretty little girls ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance always received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one to whom a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain than he received delight in the clouds of it which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honors; and his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... we returned, let us say from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by rancid air. I have stood on a platform while the whole train was shunting; and as the dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a whiff of pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men instead of monkeys. I think we are human only in virtue of open windows. Without fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the Queen's English, to become such another as Dean Swift; a kind ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not become somewhat unsettled by his misfortunes. But no, there was the ringing peal of laughter again. This time it was accompanied by a strange chattering sound such as he had never heard before. At the same moment a most delicious whiff of frying bacon reached the hungry boy, mingled with the unmistakable and equally enticing odor of coffee. There was no doubt as to the direction from which these came, and plunging into the cotton-wood thicket, Winn made his way diagonally ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... birds!" cried Aleck, indignantly. "Why, I do call that cool. You'll be telling me next that the fish in the sea are yours, and that I mustn't whiff or lay a ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... win the love of a lover at her age;—she might even resent it,—no one could tell. And so the days of April paced softly on, in bloom and sunlight, till May came in with a blaze of colour and radiance, and the last whiff of cold wind blew itself away across the sea. The "biting nor'easter," concerning which the comic press gives itself up to senseless parrot-talk with each recurrence of the May month, no matter how warm and beautiful that month may be, was a "thing foregone ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... of wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a minute in his work of inspection—standing by an open window, where a whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool—just to review again the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their row of electric cranes, as regular as a line ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... as the worthy neighbour was about to retire and leave them to the enjoyment of their letters. "You have not had a whiff with me for a long time, and here is a new church-warden waiting to ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... remained the possibility that Bower was really a traveler that day by idle chance; but Spencer blew aside this alternative with the first whiff of smoke from the cigar he lit mechanically as soon as ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... and for a moment stood still; then, gathering headway, moved on again, though with much ominous grating beneath her keel. Soon after she passed out of the smoke and heat, and all hands rushed on deck for a whiff of the fresh, cool air. Their first thought was of the cause of the collision; and, looking eagerly astern, they saw a heavy bridge, about fifty feet of which had been demolished by the tremendous power of the ram. This gave Porter a hint as to the force ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... astride a chair in the midst of his friends and talking; he held a cigar in his hand, and from time to time took a whiff and blew out ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... at any rate during the first few weeks of the occupation, had the substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential section of the world's press. People declared that they were glad to see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little weight ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... realization that it was the end. For him the old life on the range was dead—for had not Dill made him see it so? And did not every raw-red fencepost proclaim anew its death? For every hill and every coulee he buried something of his past and wept secretly beside the grave. For every whiff of breakfast that mingled with the smell of clean air in the morning came a pang of homesickness for what would ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... down on his hands and knees, grovelling fiercely upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his pipe with dead willow leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he spat in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on Corrigan—one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet of Gabriel blow. He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... saice, and brought round from his open-sided thatch stable in the rear. The violet and mauve, that precede the aching yellow glare of day were fading; a coppersmith began his everlasting bong-bong-bong, apparently reverberating from every direction; the last, almost indetectable, warm whiff of night wind moved and died away, and the monkeys in the near-by baobab chattered it a requiem. Almost on the stroke of sunrise Rosemary McClean stepped out—settled her sun-helmet, with a moue above the chin-strap that ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... floated back to them across the spot where its mother lay at rest. Whether Theobald's intense consciousness of the situation had, in some way, affected Hadria, or whether his expression had given a clue, it would be difficult to say, but suddenly, as a whiff of scent invades the senses, she became aware of a new and horrible fact which had wandered into her mind, she knew not how; and she took a step backwards, as if stunned, breathing shortly and quickly. Again he interpreted this as ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... So's there won't be even a whiff of you left. And if you come another time, then I won't let youse in at all. You are wise guys, you are! You gave the old hound money for whiskey—so now ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... because there was a lilac-tree by the gate, which had one large bunch of flowers on it in the summer when Eleanor and I and Matilda were at school there. As we left the house in double file to take our daily exercise on the high-road, the girls would bob their heads to catch a whiff of the scent as they passed, or to let the cool fragrant flowers brush their foreheads. On this point Madame, our French governess, remonstrated in vain. We took turns for the side next to the lilac, and sniffed ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Instead of asking your husband what he does with every cent you give him, learn to trust him. Teach him that you have confidence in him. Make him think you have anyway, whether you have or not. Do not seek to get a whiff of his breath every ten minutes to see whether he has been drinking or not. If you keep doing that you will sock him into a drunkard's grave, sure pop. He will at first lie about it, then he will use disinfectants for the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Rattazzi; an alliance not pleasing to the Pure Right or to the Advanced Left, but necessary to give the Prime Minister sufficient strength to command the respect, both at home and abroad, which can only be won by a statesman who is not afraid of being overturned by every whiff of the parliamentary wind. The 'Legge Rattazziana' certainly aimed at asserting the supremacy of the state, but in substance it was an arrangement for raising the stipend of the poorer clergy at the expense of the richer benefices and corporations, and save for the bitter animosity ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... entrance and waited. When the door opened a whiff of fresh air struck her, which was pleasant to her, and she took in deep breaths. Heavily dressed people came in with bundles in their hands; they clumsily pushed through the door, swore, mumbled, threw their things on the bench or on the floor, shook off the dry rime from the ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... embraces. You have been so consistent a philosopher, that I am sure you will make a steady Christian. You're not the man to be led by the nose by a sophistical mumbler. You could never be made the prey of a grasping proselytism; you are not the sport of every whiff of doctrine, nor the facile slave of whatever superstition is last buzzed in your ear. No, no: you've got a masculine intellect, and think ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... gentlemen practised archery. Just that—and not the art even, but the mere spectacle—might have been one of the substitutes in question; if not for the languages at least for one or another of the romantic connections we seemed a little to have missed: it was such a whiff of the old world of Robin Hood as we could never have looked up from the mere thumbed "story," in Fourteenth Street at any rate, to any soft confidence of. More than I can begin to say, that is by a greater number of queer small channels, did the world ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... as interpreters, secretaries and others, there was quite a gathering. After M. Briand had welcomed us cordially and in felicitous terms, Mr. Asquith got a charming little speech in French off his chest; it may perhaps have had a whiff of the lamp about it and had probably been learnt by heart, but the P. M. undoubtedly managed to serve up a savoury appetitif, and we felt that in the matter of courtesy and the amenities our man had held his own. In the course ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... chair nearest to Rathbury's right hand. He lighted a cigarette, and having blown out a whiff of smoke, nodded his head in a fashion which indicated that the detective might consider his question answered in ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... now joining in conversation with a passenger, shrewd, sensible, and respectful; now exchanging a little elegant badinage with the coachman; now bowing to a pretty girl; now quizzing a passer-by; he was off and on his seat in an instant, and, in the whiff of his cigar, would lock a ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... virtue—it helps to destroy the gêne and awkwardness which one sometimes feels at being in company with one’s dependents; for whilst the amber is at your lips, there is nothing ungracious in your remaining silent, or speaking pithily in short inter-whiff sentences. And for us that night there was pleasant and plentiful matter of talk; for the where we should be on the morrow, and the wherewithal we should be fed, whether by some ford we should regain the western bank ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... out of Belward's nose, his head thrown back, his eyes on the ceiling. It stopped, and came out of his mouth on one long, straight whiff. Then the painter brought his head to a natural position slowly, and looking with a furtive nonchalance ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... compunctions and mortifications due to his consciousness of his own futility. Or you may fall back upon the simple and general promptings that are smoothly current in the minds of us all. My own notion, however, is this: he never would have married at home; only an insidious whiff of romance, encountered in France or Italy, could ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... you do not tire your horses or yourselves. For yourselves, very likely ten miles will be enough for the first day. It is not distance you are after, it is the enjoyment of every blade of grass, of every flying bird, of every whiff of air, of every cloud that hangs ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale

... hardly remember him. He used to lie in state on a board on the sidewalk on hot days, half covered with ice, and his scales looking as bright as silver. Some mornings, I am afraid I used to catch a faint whiff of his breath, but of course this was not to be remembered against him in his great trouble now. His troubles had greatly changed him. From the aristocratic exclusiveness of the ice-board he had been reduced to being strung up by a string through ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley

... had a golden ring, And tonight no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a scornful laugh ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... we may, through city or through town, Village or hamlet of this merry land, Though lean and beggar'd, every twentieth face, Conducts th' unguarded nose to such a whiff Of state debauch, forth issuing from the sties That law has licensed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... it will be to get back to it. Wish I could get a whiff of the air right now. Yes, indeed! I am American to the ends of my fingers, and hallelujah to the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... belts or neck-hung sheaths. Women toiled over the fires, smoke-curing the meat, on their backs infants that stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of tallow. Dogs, full-kin to wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the menace of the short club he carried and to whiff the odor of this newcomer whom they must accept by ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... and roaring staves of the High Barbaree, ballads of the gale, and lullabies of west winds and summer nights. And your children, Guy, will grow up none the less brave gentlemen and fine ladies for the strengthening salt of the sea in their blood and the clearing whiff of the gale in their brains. So a fair, fair Trade to you and Shiela—the fair warm Trades which kiss even as they bear us on—and do not forget the tides of youth are flooding for you. Take them and let them bear you on to ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... the air—once, then vanished; unforgettable, however, for he had known it already weeks ago upon the steamer. And before the gardened woods about him smothered it with their richer smells of a million flowers and weeds, he recognized in it that peculiar pungent whiff of horse that had reached him from the haunted cabin. This time it was less fleeting—a fine, clean odor that he liked even while it strangely ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... the top of the valley, and the gloom was deepening steadily, when there stole to me upon the calmness of the evening air, a faint smell; something quite different from that of the surrounding fungi. A moment later I got a great whiff of it, and was near sickened with the abomination of it; but the memory of that foul thing which had come to the side of the boat in the dawn-gloom, before we discovered the island, roused me to a terror beyond that of the sickness of my stomach; for, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... commission of captain of this craft, in a whiff," returned the sailing-master. "That is as much as to say, here comes one who will command when he gets on board. Well, well, it is Mr. Griffith, and I can't say, notwithstanding his love of knee-buckles and small wares, but I'm glad he's out of the hands of the English! ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... benchland beyond. Facing him in an old, cane rocking chair, the Honorable Blake smoked with that air of leisurely enjoyment which belongs to the man who knows and can afford to burn good tobacco and who has the sense to, burn it consciously, realizing in every whiff its rich fragrance. The Honorable Blake flicked a generous half-inch of ash from his cigar upon a porch support and glanced shrewdly at the Old Man's ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... sure the long window aided the deception, and was fitted up solely with goods in the grocery line; but enter the dark low door-way, and get an odorous whiff from within, and one's olfactory nerves would soon convince one of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... have read in the papers that the Thames in London is most horrible. I have to cross Waterloo or London Bridge to get to the railroad when I come down here, and I can certify that the offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head-and-stomach-distending nature. Nobody knows what is to be done; at least everybody knows a plan, and everybody else knows it won't do; in the meantime cartloads of chloride of lime are shot into the filthy stream, and do something I hope. You will know, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... now and then a whiff from the sewers over which he lived, but this was the first time that he had ever been splashed by their filth. This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime—there were murderers, "hold-up men" and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, "shoplifters," ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... I soon became great friends with the king and queen, and I used to go up to the palace every day and sit and smoke a pipe with his majesty in a cosy way, and frequently the queen would come and take a whiff out of my pipe, till she learnt to smoke too, and I then taught her to chaw baccy. She was very fond of a quid, let me tell ye, and we became as friendly as two mice. All the time little Chickchick used to sit up in a corner by herself, making a mat ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... and talk at the same time," he explained. "I know you must be longing for a whiff ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill

... I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before,—swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey.—Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... on a lope, freshened by the rest, and Bud's followed. They topped the rise, and, then as the animals came within sight and smell of their stables, and caught the whiff of ever-welcome water, they dashed down the slope toward the green valley in which nestled the corral and ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... one is a true "hoary sire," Bowed, time-beaten, grey, yet alert and responsive to kindness of speech; And see how old eyes can light up if you promise a pipe-charge a-piece. For the comforting weed KINGSLEY eulogised is not taboo in this place, Where the whiff aromatic brings not cold reproval to Charity's face. Ah! the tale is o'erlong for full telling; but never a bright afternoon In London's chill leaf-strewn October was better bestowed. 'Tis a boon To be able to speak on behalf of Samaritan kindness so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various

... weeds and were forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or to be nosed and chewed at. There were stray and half-wild pigs that had ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the words, and they "disturbed" him, to put it mildly. Evidently he had forgotten the peril to which all persons are exposed in tropical waters, and, as the truth was impressed upon him with such suddenness, he uttered a "whiff" like a porpoise and began swimming with fierce energy toward the shore. In fact, he never put forth so much effort in all his life. The expectation of feeling a huge man-eating monster gliding beneath you when in the water is enough to shake the nerves of ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... forgetting her desire to tear the bed covering, a cart stopped outside the house, and a whiff, the hint of an odour, drifted in through the open door of the den, and caused the great hound's nose to wrinkle ominously. Next moment she gave a savage bark, deep, threatening, and sonorous, and sprang to her feet. She was not quite sure what ailed her, but she was conscious of an access ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... over his shoulder. "We shall chloroform you. Your heart's as sound as a bell." And as he spoke, I had a whiff of the pungent ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... begun to burst in their midst. Like the guns of the Royal Artillery, they found themselves before they were prepared in the midst of a close and deadly fusillade—the more deadly and unnerving because on the clearest of days not a whiff of smoke betrayed the quarters from whence the murderous assaults ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... coast seemed to beat like steam against our faces. The pitch bubbled like caviare in the seams of the white deck, and the shrouds and ratlines ran with tears of tar. To touch the brass rail of the poop was to blister the hand, to catch a whiff from the cook's galley was to feel sick for ten minutes. The hens in their coops lay with eyes glazed and gasped for air. If you hung forward over the bulwarks you stared down into your own face. The sailors ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... unlike, the Secretary of State. Both had the look of hunted animals; but where Palme was a rabbit, twitching to take flight at the first whiff of danger, Hutchinson was a cat who hears hounds baying—ready to run if he could, or claw ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... to hear the swinging door whiff after Skip's syncopated feet, then she whispered sharply across the table ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... time eyeing me through the bush, he got a whiff of my wind, which at once alarmed him. Uttering a blowing noise, and erecting his insignificant yet saucy-looking tail, he wheeled about, leaving me master of the field, when I sent a bullet through his ribs to teach him manners. Of the rhinoceros there are four varieties in South Africa, distinguished ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... its own children, and the scum rises to the top of the boiling pot. Then comes, in the language of the picturesque historian of the French Revolution, the type of them all—then comes at the end 'the whiff of grapeshot' and the despot. First the government of a mob, and then the tyranny of an emperor, crush the people that shake off the yoke of reasonable law. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... the granddaughter of the good-wife Marcile. That petite personne, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady. One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... them? The answer was supplied a little later, for as the Flying Fish, with stopped engines, slowly drifted to within about a quarter of a mile of her, the party of curious gazers suddenly caught a whiff of horrible odour that told the whole story. She was a ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... soft black muck behind the spoil bank were still sharply defined. Their departure must have occurred during the darkest hours of early morning. They had left behind them a flask full of colorless liquid, one whiff of which proved its contents ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... wrapped in the atmosphere which had surrounded him all day. He felt still the lift of the boat over the short swell, he smelled the pleasant combination of salt, and gasolene, and the whiff of the hayfields, and his eyes still kept the glare and the blue, and the swinging dark shape of the Dutchman's bows as he headed her down the bay. Just before he reached Winterbottom Road, he saw, rather vaguely through the twilight, the figures of ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... Anon he finds him, Striking too short at Greeks: his antique sword, Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, Repugnant to command: unequal match'd, Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide; But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for lo! his sword, Which ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... now, would ye, Telly?" he continued after drawing a long whiff of smoke and slowly emitting it in rings. "It's been so many years, an' since I got thinkin' 'bout it I'd like to take a look at 'em, jest to remind me o' that fortunate day ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... a spire in the centre, in which is placed a lamp filled with clarified butter and containing a wick of twisted tow. Incense is thrown into the flame and offerings of cakes and sweetmeats are made. A lighted huqqa is placed before the altar and as soon as the smoke rises it is understood that a whiff has been drawn by the hero." A cock is offered to Lalbeg at the Dasahra festival. When a man is believed to have been affected by the evil eye they wave a broom in front of the sufferer muttering the name of the saint. In the Damoh District the guru ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... laughed, indulgently. "You can't expect to achieve all at once. Come, we'll step out on the veranda for a whiff of outdoors, and then come back ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... law, the guarding against a conflagration, or a tidal wave or cyclone. At the Cercle Militaire many of the bureaucrats, and especially the doctor who had treated the cow-boy, were for martial law, anyway. Napoleon knew, said the fierce medecin. "A whiff of grapeshot, and the reef would be again gleaming with lights, and the diligences would pour ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... this vast prairie country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren waste, different from the beautiful, still, green garden spot that she called home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the odor of new-mown grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different as ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... parole. The Monarchy has fallen; and not so much as honourably: no, ignominiously; with struggle, indeed, oft repeated; but then with unwise struggle; wasting its strength in fits and paroxysms; at every new paroxysm, foiled more pitifully than before. Thus Broglie's whiff of grapeshot, which might have been something, has dwindled to the pot-valour of an Opera Repast, and O Richard, O mon Roi. Which again we shall see dwindle to a Favras' Conspiracy, a thing to be settled by the hanging of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... range was dead—for had not Dill made him see it so? And did not every raw-red fencepost proclaim anew its death? For every hill and every coulee he buried something of his past and wept secretly beside the grave. For every whiff of breakfast that mingled with the smell of clean air in the morning came a pang of homesickness for what would soon ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... Kettle Point. The old woman lighted up her pipe, and whiffed away with her eyes half shut; after enjoying it for about twenty minutes or so, her old husband thought she had had enough, and taking it from her put it in his own mouth and had his whiff. When he had done, he restored it again to his wife. Underneath another old bedstead were a couple of large dogs, which occasionally let their voices be heard in a dispute; some of the stones on one side of the fire-place had broken ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... as a small brown hen and a big gray owl, and they had been married sixty years! They had toiled and grown old together, but that did not mean that wifey was to walk anywhere but three feet to the rear, nor to speak except when her lord and ruler stopped talking to take a whiff of his pipe. I tried to walk behind with the old lady but she threatened to stand in one spot for the rest of the night. Then I vainly coaxed her to walk with me at her husband's side. But her face was so full of genuine ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... during the lesson the fire began to smoke, and Mr. Gordon told Owen to open the window for a moment. No sooner was this done than the mischievous whiff of sea air which entered the room began to trifle and coquet with the perdulous half sheet pinned in front of the desk, causing thereby an unwonted little pattering crepitation. In alarm, Duncan thoughtlessly pulled out the pin, and immediately the paper floated gracefully over Russell's ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... reached the street, a narrow side-street in which like a glacier the ice of the whole winter was still heaped, a whiff of soft air, perfumed with a suspicion of spring, struck him gently in the face. He drew it in deep within his lungs, and exhaled it in a long sigh. And then he stopped abruptly, and was standing very still, listening; listening to this sigh, to the echo of it still within his consciousness, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... the third ink-bottle I have tried, and still it's nothing to boast of. My journey went off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits. Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety was going away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little. The influence of this place is assuredly all that can be worst against one; mais il faut lutter. I was haunted last night when I was in bed by the most cold, desolate recollections of my past life here; I was glad to try and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Billy!" reiterated the owner of Big Shanty enthusiastically. Think of the poor people in the city who have none of it. I must send for Randall as soon as we get settled, and some of those fellows we met at The Players that day, and let them have a whiff of it—do them a lot of good. Randall loves it. Poor boy—he needs a change now worse than I did. And have you seen Mrs. ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... Watts blew a whiff of tobacco from his mouth. "It was a remark of Ricard's, I believe, 'that in woman, one should always expect ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... sponge, saturated with that stuff, in your letters. The whiff of it I got accidentally in one I received some days ago was very pleasant, but the quantity you send me to-day is too much, and has given me a headache, and made me sick. Such virtue is there in proportion! Such immense difference ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... What yo' all want?" asked Dinah, opening the oven door, to let out a little whiff of a most delicious smell, and then quickly closing it again. "Ef yo' wants a piece ob cake, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... again brought me a whiff of German air, which is all the more welcome to me here as I have not too much of it. One sees extremely few German papers in Rome—also I read them very irregularly—and my correspondents from Germany are limited to two, of whom friend Gottschalg, my legendary ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... might safely put out to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high, and boisterous. There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sail-cloth, which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulfur, dispersed the rest of the party, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as I conjecture, by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... keep one awake in such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot; and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did Stingaree; and yet was there ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly overrated by specialists. The epigram, with its faint whiff of the eighties, meant nothing. But he might have let it off now if his sister had not ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... the idea. He talked about it to his clerks at the store. He looked into restaurant windows, humming a tune in the excess of his delight. He looked into bakers' windows and confectionery shops, and a whiff of frying bacon from a little blind court he passed almost set him dancing. Indeed, Mr. Grapewine was a man of juvenile impulse. In figure as well as character he seemed rather to have expanded into a larger sort of babyhood ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... was gloomy and sullen, and there was an expression on his face which Dan did not like to see there, for it made him fear that a storm was brewing. But after they had been a few minutes in the camp, and Godfrey had filled his pipe and smoked a whiff or two, the scowl faded away and ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon

... while I was still hesitating what to do, either they got a whiff of my wind, or they wearied of standing still, and determined to start in search of game. At any rate, as though moved by a common impulse, they bounded suddenly away, leap by leap, and vanished in the depths of the forest to the left. I ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled— Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd— But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillated my olfactory nerves. The heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating, a perfume ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... a whiff of the sweet on the spring air, and his nose had told him what was going on. The bear's scent is very keen, and this and his acute hearing make up for his ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... o'clock that night Snorky Green deserted the communal laboratory, bag and baggage, announcing that he was through once and for all, and sought asylum of Dennis de Brian de Boru. Finnegan, after the first whiff, barricaded the door and seized a baseball bat to repel any ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... grinned: "Plenty close enough I'll say, when you get a whiff of the hell-fire. Better wait here 'til I find a way through the brush. An' keep out of reach of the horse's heels with that slicker on. You can't never trust a cayuse, 'specially when they can't more'n half see. They're liable to take a crack ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... over to the abandoned car. There they let her get a good whiff of the bottom of the car about the driver's feet, and a moment ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... yes, a new life, a new life! To-day all things are possible again! The fool has learned wisdom, and, I hope, become a man. But come," said he in a more natural tone, "let us get back to our ditch, and, while you tell me the particulars, if you don't object I should much like to try a whiff at ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... with half a hundred young bloods and beaux, who looked in during lounging hours, being students of law, physic, and divinity, half-pay ensigns, and theatrical understrappers, to replenish their boxes with Lundyfoot, whiff a Havannah cigar, or masticate pigtail. No wonder that she was spoiled by flattery, Miss Diana, for she was a bit of a beauty; and though she had but one eye—by heavens, what an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... MacRae went to France. Dolores' father was dead. Uncle Peter was a bachelor. He had two brothers, and each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. The other two were home,—one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other with a leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two made nothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they were nearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. And with the younger boys and their fathers they came to old Peter's ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... he had got a whiff of his Cleo there, but, just as he was about to deliver the polite reply to which she had forced him, they happened to turn round the side of a great wood-stack and, at the same moment, an impressive chorus of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... seemed of itself to have come to an end for that evening. Presley lighted another cigarette from the butt of the one he had been smoking, and the cat, Princess Nathalie, disturbed by his movement and by a whiff of drifting smoke, jumped from his knee to the floor and picking her way across the room to Annixter, rubbed gently against his legs, her tail in the air, her back delicately arched. No doubt she thought it time to settle herself ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... of the expedition up the west coast, and of the towns they sacked; and the opulent names rolled oddly off his tongue, and seemed to bring a whiff of southern scent into this panelled English room,—Valparaiso, Tarapaca, and Arica—; and of the capture of the Cacafuego off Quibdo; and of the enormous treasure they took, the great golden crucifix ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... his eyes half-closed in a luxurious lighting up. "Very wise indeed. But just to-night—don't you think you'd better have a whiff to-night?" The colonel shook his head, but Jeff sent out an advance signal of blue smoke. "Where is it?" ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... as white as eyeballs, rank on rank, Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud, Lonely among the lolling tongues of flames— The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, The greedy noise of fire grew loud, Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: The dead man's eyes looked down Like china moons upon the crowd. They saw him slowly shake his head, The thing denied that it was dead, While from the blacks arose a babblement of prayer. Surely the head must stop— Not till the fire caved! Then from the very top ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... enough to respect the bitter leaves' desire to be let alone; but many a pail of milk has been spoiled by a mouthful of Helenium among the herbage. Whoever cares to learn from experience why this was called sneezeweed, must take a whiff of snuff made of ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... death of your well-groomed gods, your make believe and your show; I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shakedown in the snow; A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another bout ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... fared the seas with Jonadab Kilroot, master of the stolid barque, "Merchant of London," I say nothing, or as good as nothing. Master Kilroot was a noisy, bulky man, with a whiff of the tar-barrel ever about him and a heart as stout as a ship's biscuit. He feared God always, and drubbed his men whenever it was necessary; in his estimation the office of sea-captain was the most important under heaven, and Master John Freake ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... is in joy, but not in sorrow. My second is in lend, but not in borrow. My third is in fast, but not in slow. My fourth is in whiff, but not in blow. My fifth is in whole, but not in half. My sixth is in heifer, but not in calf. My seventh is in song, but not in hymn. My eighth is in hoop, but not in rim. My ninth is in fancy, but not in whim. My hidden whole, when ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference because they are greener?... I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the law of good faith.... It is observed by barbarians—a whiff of tobacco smoke or a string of beads gives not merely binding force but sanctity to treaties. Even in Algiers a truce may be bought for money, but, when ratified, even Algiers is too wise or too just to disown and annul its obligation." ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... that a strange sail was reported on the starboard bow; and, as they neared her, it was evident that her foremast was gone, and that she was otherwise in a disabled state.—When the Indiaman was within a mile, the stranger threw out neutral colours, and hoisted a whiff, half-mast down, as a signal that she was in distress. Newton ordered the ship to be kept away, and when alongside of the vessel, lowered down a boat, and sent the third mate to ascertain what assistance could be afforded. With sailors, thank God! distress, is sufficient to obtain ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... about Mark Lane there was a dry whiff of wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, there was sometimes a subtle flavour of wine; sometimes of tea. One church, near ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... already flying along the side street, already a whiff of cool air was meeting us—and the river lay before us, and the steep muddy descent to it, and the wooden bridge with a train of waggons stretching across it, and a garrison soldier with a pike beside the flagstaff; soldiers used to carry pikes in those days. David reached ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the halting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler and glanced up apprehensively. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... the memory of the people, had such a snowfall been seen in that section. Yet it could scarcely be called a snowstorm, for there was no wind, not a single whiff, and therefore, of course, no snowdrifts. The snow fell slowly, evenly, steadily, dropping over the earth a ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... answered, after another whiff or two, "it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at full gallop. There's nothing like it ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... the fool's coat shall have a cast of martins and a whiff. To the health of Captain Rinocerotry! Look to it; let ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... say here that the characteristic flavor of the humor and fun-making of the average English people, as it impressed my sense, is what one gets in Sterne,—very human and stomachic, and entirely free from the contempt and superciliousness of most current writers. I did not get one whiff of Dickens anywhere. No doubt it is there in some form or other, but it is not patent, or even appreciable, to the sense of such ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... before were astonished at her capacity, discretion, and dignity. She had a part to play at Le Mans, where Richard kept his Easter, which would have taxed a wiser head. She moved warily, a poor thing of gauze, amid those great lights. King Philip had a tender nose; a very whiff of offence might have drawn blood. Prince John had a shrewd eye and an evil way of using it; he stroked women, but they seldom liked it, and never found good come of it. The Duke of Burgundy ate and drank too much. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... not surprise me. But I was not prepared for what occurred soon afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an overturned tree, I walked to the hole to learn the cause of it. One whiff of the vapor stiffened my hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep slope, dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was rank with ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... the idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of course I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going: for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but above all of business. Why then should ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... or you'll get apoplexy sure," Andy soothed, giving himself another luxurious push and pulling the last, little whiff from his cigarette before he threw away the stub. "Fat men can't afford to get as excited as ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... hillside before them sloped up to meet the blue sky, the golden gorse spread its splendid tapestry against the green pasture. There was the tiny house, the one house in Ireland for Nora; its very windows watched her coming. A whiff of turf-smoke flickered above the chimney, the white walls were as white as the clouds above; there was a figure moving about inside the house, and a bent little woman in her white frilled cap and a small red shawl pinned about ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... the most delicate of literary tasks and the utmost test, where it is successfully encountered, of nobility,—the practice, namely, of self- revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, that from the writer ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... Whiff! Though Pete tried, too late, to dodge the stone, it landed against his sombrero, carrying that ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock

... by the largest computation; some time that night, or, at latest, before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island. We were heading S.S.W., and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. The Hispaniola rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; every one was in the bravest spirits, because we were now so near an end of the first part ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... then a third, as you turn the corner to enter the passage; then you come plump upon another from the hall door; then comes another, fit to knock you down, as You turn to the upper passage ; then, just as You turn towards the queen's room, comes another; and last, a whiff from the king's stairs, enough to blow ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... the following language in its defence: "We quarrel," says the Examiner, "with Mr. McCulloch, for bestowing offensive epithets on tobacco, which he is pleased to call 'this filthy and offensive stimulant.' Why it should be more filthy to take a pinch of snuff or a whiff of tobacco smoke, than to swallow a quart of port wine, is not to us intelligible. Of all the stimulants that men have had recourse to, tea and coffee excepted, tobacco is the least pernicious. For the life of you, you cannot get drunk on it, however well disposed, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... that which comes natural to you when you wish to drive the hens out of your garden-patch. The cow stopped abruptly, threw up her head and stared at the hunter. The sight of the crouching figure must have suggested to the stupid animal that every thing was not right, for with a frightened whiff, she bounded short around with the intention ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... an occasional glimpse of snow, only a very far-off view, for it lay away up on the top of a mountain, but it made his heart long for just one breath of good dry Canadian air, just one whiff ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... beaked ships from the Baltic; pirate-adventurers who had sailed and sacked under the Conqueror; pioneers of new-found lands: blood of his blood, and brain of his brain, they lived again, roused from centuries of sleep by the stir and whiff and secret business ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... arches above the roadway on both sides, enclosing a covered-in pathway for foot-passengers. The roadway in the centre, thirty feet wide, is well paved with stone, and perfectly level. Every thirty yards or so are stalls for the sale of kababs, fruit, sweetmeats, and the kalyan, for a whiff from which passers-by pay a small sum. Ispahan is noted for its fruit; apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, mulberries, and particularly fine melons, are abundant ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... to me, my bucko—to me and to the rest of the boys. Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn's tub we can drink and sing if we want to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you've had it, you'll get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to go, and this was a kind of safety valve. Already half of them are beginning to ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... that lies white and dull over the ground on a winter's morning, which will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away, and the sun would shine down upon men again. If you want to be a happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as a specific by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... that—and not the art even, but the mere spectacle—might have been one of the substitutes in question; if not for the languages at least for one or another of the romantic connections we seemed a little to have missed: it was such a whiff of the old world of Robin Hood as we could never have looked up from the mere thumbed "story," in Fourteenth Street at any rate, to any soft confidence of. More than I can begin to say, that is by a greater number of queer small channels, did the world about us, thus ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... shell and Charley emptied its contents of powder into the open cut. Quickly, he applied a match to the black grains and they caught with a hiss, there was a tiny cloud of black smoke and a whiff of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... A faint whiff of gas from the kitchen made her turn pale with dread. Then it flashed into her mind what must have happened—that sudden gust of wind had blown out the gas! As she ran to the kitchen, she realized that she had caught the same faint smell several times before. "Oh!" ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey

... me, friend. I want a whiff of reason and the weed; I haven't smoked for three whole days on end. My blood was pulsing in such agitation, I trembled for rejection all ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding. Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse. Then he went on, carefully and silently, on ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... especially about the excessively earnest attitude which the emperor assumes, with regard to the most trivial questions. Absolutely unconventional, save on his own quarter-deck, he carries about with him an atmosphere of brightness and breeziness which is almost as infectious and as bracing as a whiff of sea air. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... the tramp, putting back the pipe with a look of disappointment. "If you had a match now, I wouldn't mind letting you have a whiff or two. ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... where two of the guards had held watch. The forms where the men had lain in the soft black muck behind the spoil bank were still sharply defined. Their departure must have occurred during the darkest hours of early morning. They had left behind them a flask full of colorless liquid, one whiff of which proved its contents ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen

... of the train at Welsley Station, and saw Robin's pal, the Archdeacon, getting out too, and a couple of minor canons, who had come up for the evening papers or something, greeting him with an ecclesiastical heartiness mingled with just a whiff of professional deference, Mrs. Clarke's verdict of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... Walter, lighting his pipe for a hurried whiff, "ten brace of white grouse, four rabbits, six red foxes and a black one, and two wolves. We can't eat ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... the rate of more than $10,000 a pound for the odoriferous oil it contains; the rest is mere water and alcohol. But you would not want the pure undiluted oil if you could get it, for it is unendurable. A single whiff of it paralyzes your sense of smell for a time just as a loud ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... to come to, sonny. When these goods are sold I'm going to quit." Mr. Simon Hook paused long enough to take an extra whiff from his ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... it was many, many times more, and he asked for names. Jerry know the names of Bashti, of Agno, and of Lamai, and Lumai. He did not pronounce them with the slightest of resemblance to their customary soundings, but pronounced them in the whiff-whuff of shorthand speech ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... spray-laden breath of the marsh. It seems fairly to line the lungs with ozone. I know how grass-fed cattle feel at the smell of salt. I have the concentrated thirst of a whole herd when I catch that first whiff of the marshes after a winter, a year it may be, of unsalted inland air. The smell of it stampedes me. I gallop to meet it, and drink, drink, drink deep of it, my blood running redder ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... the humourist in all his departed glory, and still venerated him as a temple where the deity yet breathed, though the altar was overthrown, made to this extraordinary remonstrance no other reply than a long whiff, and a "Well, Russelton, dash my wig (a favourite oath of Sir W.'s) but you're ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... reception was very enjoyable, we thought, as we took a last glance at the serene, old-time faces and caught a last whiff of ambergris from ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... from a group of mudhuts a short distance off the road. From the numerous flocks around it, we took it to be a shepherds' village. Everything was quiet except the restless sheep, whose silky fleece glistened in the light of the rising moon. Supper was not yet over, for we caught a whiff of its savory odor. Leaving our wheels outside, we entered the first door we came to, and, following along a narrow passageway, emerged into a room where four rather rough-looking shepherds were ladling the soup from a huge bowl in their midst. Before they were aware ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... herself. The whole central and splendid idea of the drama is the fact that Pippa is utterly remote from the grand folk whose lives she troubles and transforms. To make her in the end turn out to be the niece of one of them, is like a whiff from an Adelphi melodrama, an excellent thing in its place, but destructive of the entire conception of Pippa. Having done that, Browning might just as well have made Sebald turn out to be her long ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... of the bucket and let him get a whiff," answered Mr. Crabtree, shaking with amusement. "'Tain't no use to offer a man no kind of young lollypop when he have got his mouth fixed on a nice old-fashioned pound-cake woman," he added in a ruthful tone of voice as he and Rose Mary both laughed ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... sure you will make a steady Christian. You're not the man to be led by the nose by a sophistical mumbler. You could never be made the prey of a grasping proselytism; you are not the sport of every whiff of doctrine, nor the facile slave of whatever superstition is last buzzed in your ear. No, no: you've got a masculine intellect, and think for ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... three rows of holes, one above another; then I bored out the interstices between. I thus succeeded in making one hole about an inch long and an inch broad. I sat by it till late into the night, to enjoy the little whiff of air that floated in. In the morning I watched for my children. The first person I saw in the street was Dr. Flint. I had a shuddering, superstitious feeling that it was a bad omen. Several familiar faces passed by. At last I heard the merry laugh of children, and ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... or to the Advanced Left, but necessary to give the Prime Minister sufficient strength to command the respect, both at home and abroad, which can only be won by a statesman who is not afraid of being overturned by every whiff of the parliamentary wind. The 'Legge Rattazziana' certainly aimed at asserting the supremacy of the state, but in substance it was an arrangement for raising the stipend of the poorer clergy at the expense of the richer benefices and corporations, and save for the bitter animosity of Rome, it would ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... the flesh-pots?" She broke off with a sudden irresistible laugh, and rising went to the window. Someone was sauntering down the road on the other side of the high privet hedge. There came to her a whiff of cigarette-smoke wafted on the sea-breeze. She leaned forth, and at the gap by the gate caught a glimpse of a trim young man in blue serge wearing a white linen hat. She scarcely saw his face as he passed, but she had a fleeting vision of ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... heard rumors of suicide, but this is the first whiff of murder I've caught." He hesitated slightly. "I must say, I'm not greatly surprised. Lane Fleming's death was very convenient to a number of people. You know about this Premix ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... is pushing through into the inner court, where mass is going on in the curious old church. One has now to elbow his way to enter, and all around the door, even out into the middle court, contadini are kneeling. Besides this, the whole place reeks intolerably with garlic, which, mixed with whiff of incense from the church within and other unmentionable smells, makes such a compound that only a brave nose can stand it. But stand it we must, if we would see Domenichino's frescoes in the chapel within; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... shore to see if they might safely put out to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high and boisterous. There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sail-cloth, which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulphur, dispersed the rest of the party, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapor, having always had a weak throat, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... went on and in the middle of it Tom O'Donnell came driving in. He was like a whiff of a no'the-easter out to sea. "Whoo!" he said. "Hulloh, Wesley-boy—and Patsie Oddie—and Tommie Ohlsen—and, by my soul, Tommie Clancy again. Lord, what a night to come beating down from Boston! What's that, Wesley?—did the Colleen outfoot the cutter down the Cape shore ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... his watch. It was nearly half-an-hour since he had entered the mine. He stamped his feet on the plank and rubbed his hands together to get up the circulation, and then he pulled out a cigar and lighted it. The first whiff permeated his being with a sense as of food and drink, sunshine ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... as to how to get rid of the exhalations from drainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever found its way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he had built in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feet square all the way up. At ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... "Got a whiff o' smoke. They was strung out from the pond landing over 'crost the trail. They didn't cover the swamp. Must 'a' had a fire for tea early in the evenin'. Wherever they's an Englishman, thar's got ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... third ink-bottle I have tried, and still it's nothing to boast of. My journey went off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits. Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety was going away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little. The influence of this place is assuredly all that can be worst against one; mais il faut lutter. I was haunted last night when I was in bed by the most cold, desolate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a word, the aspirate h precedes w in pronunciation: as in what, whiff, whale; pronounced hwat, hwiff, hwale, w having precisely the sound of oo, French ou. In the following words w is silent:—-who, whom, whose, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... wool in a long, brick-walled, iron-roofed shed in Buenos Aires when the thought came to him how easy it had all been. He paused for a minute in his work of inspection—standing by an open window, where a whiff of fresh air from off the mud-brown Rio de la Plata relieved the heavy, greasy smell of the piles of unwashed wool—just to review again the past eighteen months. Below him stretched the noisy docks, with their row of electric cranes, as ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... handkerchief from his inner pocket, and as he did so a whiff of violets came remindingly, but he paid no heed. Gila's letter lay in his pocket, still unread. The antiseptics were at work upon his senses and the violets ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... and manner. Mr. Lavington, to whom Faxon's case had been rapidly explained by young Rainer, had welcomed him with a sort of dry and stilted cordiality that exactly matched his narrow face, his stiff hand, the whiff of scent on his evening handkerchief. "Make yourself at home—at home!" he had repeated, in a tone that suggested, on his own part, a complete inability to perform the feat he urged on his visitor. "Any friend of Frank's ... delighted ... ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... personne, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady. One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a cruche cassee. She is as fresh as a March wind. Let us believe ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... had hoped there was a mill in the wind. I've a nose for these things, Mr. Spring, and I thought I had a whiff of it. But, of course, you should know best. Perhaps you will drive round with me this afternoon and view the hop-gardens—just the right time of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Excuse me five minutes, while I run over to the guard-house. Then I'll rejoin you, and we'll have a whiff together." Another moment, and Mr. Holmes was sole occupant of ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... the window looking over roofs and traffic and the glow-worm light of shipping in the stream. He could smell the sea, the brown kelp bared on rocky beaches by a falling tide. And he fancied that even at that distance he could get a whiff of the fir and cedar that clothed the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... he had known it already weeks ago upon the steamer. And before the gardened woods about him smothered it with their richer smells of a million flowers and weeds, he recognized in it that peculiar pungent whiff of horse that had reached him from the haunted cabin. This time it was less fleeting—a fine, clean odor that he liked even while it ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... of artillery looks on meditatively. His silent thought is sensed by a bystander who remarks: "I suppose, Napoleon, you think you could manage things better!" The man grins. But Napoleon Bonaparte—he who snuffed out Revolution later by whiff ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... which, according as they are bestowed with an affluent or a niggardly hand, go so far to determine the station and degree which each shall occupy in the subsequent competitions of the world. It is especially mysterious how into a soul here and there, as it passes forth, she breathes an extra whiff of the breath of life, and so confers on it the power of being and doing what others attempt to be and do ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are plays: Nor with that dull supineness to be read, To pass a fire, or laugh an hour in bed. How do the Muses suffer every where, Taken in such mouth's censure, in such ears, That 'twixt a whiff, a line or two rehearse, And with their rheume together spaul a verse? This all a poem's leisure after play, Drink, or tobacco, it may keep the day: Whilst ev'n their very idleness they think Is lost in these, that lose their time in drink. Pity then ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... happened to see any, except two or three that ran into the brush soon as they got a whiff of me. And this one I hunted out of a hole under a big tree root. It's a lie about them wintering in ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... "Give him a whiff of ether." The tenderest arms stole around my head and the softest possible voice—Ulysses must have heard it long ago—"Now do take a deep breath." I resisted. I had been told that I would see ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... hang together when the whiff of a smell, a band playing in the street, a face seen in the fire, or on the gnarled stem of a tree, will lead them into such vagaries ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... dew-ponds, at which cloaked shepherds were watering their flocks. Once an encampment in the gorse caught their eyes. A yellow van, an ancient horse or two hobbled in the gorse-bushes, a patch of brown tent, and a whiff of blue smoke rising from an unseen fire, betrayed the nature of ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... walk in," said I, as I took the first delightful whiff; and F——, darkening the window that looked out on the verandah, gave me a fugitive look of recognition, and then entering and making his salutation in a kindly hearty manner, asked me to eat my mid-day ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... parade who was hailing Roderick so gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a whiff of violet perfume. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... we'll settle that on shipboard," said Mr. Iff promptly. "As for knowing me—business of introducing myself. Mr. Staff, I want you to shake hands with my friend, Mr. Iff. W. H. Iff, Whiff: sometimes so-called: merry wheeze based on my typographical make-up; once a joke, now so grey with age I generally pull it myself, thus saving new acquaintances the mental strain. Practical ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... reared straight up like a maddened horse. Full-throated angry barks, interspersed with sharp, querulous yaps, filled his roaring, swaying prison. How long since he had got so much as a whiff of untainted air, or a glimpse of wild fields and woods! Out there oceans of such air filled all the space between the gliding earth and the sky. Out there miles on miles of freedom were rushing forever out of his life. He ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very kind to little white children below the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... immense holdings without breaking the price. In two days wheat that they had held at a dollar and ten cents collapsed to sixty. The two Milwaukee men were ruined, and two-thirds of Cressler's immense fortune vanished like a whiff of smoke. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... the other, immediately. "Suppose there was any truth in that fairy story about the fires away down in the earth here; don't you think a fellow might get a whiff of the brimstone if he was Johnny on the spot? Why, honest now, Bob, it was on my mind to find some sort of cave up here, and go in just as far as we could. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... alarm and trunks came lifting out of the tall grass like serpents. One-Tusk moved silently, prod-prodding; we could hear the click of ivory and the bunting of shoulder against shoulder. Then some silly cow had a whiff of the skin that bounded along in their tracks like a cat, and raised the cry of 'Tiger! Tiger!' Far on the side from us, in the direction of the Squidgy Islands, Scrag trumpeted, followed by frantic splashing as the frightened herd plunged into the reed-beds. ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... round mouth wide to get the end in. It is not filled with pure tobacco, but a chopped mixture of all sorts; even you could smoke it without any harm. Why yes, women smoke here almost all day, and children too. They do say the mothers give the babies-in-arms a whiff, but ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... abominably. Several yards away, as we returned, let us say from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by rancid air. I have stood on a platform while the whole train was shunting; and as the dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a whiff of pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as from men instead of monkeys. I think we are human only in virtue of open windows. Without fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and a remarkable command of the Queen's English, to become such another as Dean Swift; a kind of leering human ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... interrupted, jumping up and coming between the two men. Ned leaned eagerly forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes flaming, his face quivering, his teeth showing. Geisner leaned back quietly, alternately sipping his wine and water and taking a whiff from ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... seemed remote until that night. Had the day's adventure unsettled his nerves, or had he hitherto always underrated it? How ghastly it would be if—His thoughts broke off short. A figure had detached itself from the vagueness in front of him, and a whiff of rank tobacco smoke came suddenly to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... by the simplest process of causation, be traced back to the first shot fired by Washington's command against a petty officer on the frontier. That shot echoes on the Plains of Abraham, at Lexington and Bunker's Hill, at the taking of the Bastille, and with the "whiff of grape-shot"; we may hear it at Waterloo and in the autumn horrors of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... we have no further use for it," he was told, "and there's always a small chance that some soldier would be sent this way on an errand, when he might get a whiff of the smoke, and take a notion to investigate. For one I'm not hankering to be sent a prisoner of war to some detention camp on ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... in his arm-chair as he spoke, apparently about to deliver himself to the calm delights of a retrospective reverie. But he was not destined to enjoy it. At that moment a whiff of stifling smoke, quite choking in its intensity, forced itself under the door. In another moment the matter was soon explained. With a wild rush the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... saw a pea-green world all around me. Then I heard the doctor say: "Give 'er another whiff or two." His voice sounded far-away, as though he were speaking through the Simplon Tunnel, and not merely through his teeth, within ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some few square ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... said he thought he would go out and see how Fanny was, she looked so very unwell; and besides, what a lovely moonlight evening it was for a drive! He sat himself down comfortably in the carriage, and had just taken a long whiff of his cigar, when all at once he leant forward and said, "Stop! what ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or to ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... "You little whiff of thistle-down, why can't you get fat and rosy as you ought? There, kiss your sister Kate, and ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... paper—so. It leaves no mark. But it has the remarkable property of becoming red in vapor of sulpho-cyanide. Here is a long-necked flask of the gas, made by sulphuric acid acting on potassium sulpho-cyanide. Keep back, Dr. Waterworth, for it would be very dangerous for you to get even a whiff of this in your condition. Ah! See—the scratches I made ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... colour of the sky, as we call the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for Dick's old battered briar rarely left his mouth; and whilst the odoriferous Boer equivalent for the "divine weed" held out, food and drink were but minor considerations. But something must be done now, so, knocking out the ashes from his last whiff, and with one more futile grope in his capacious pocket, he stuck his empty pipe in his mouth, rose, stretched himself, and, glancing once more at the pageant of the western sky, turned back towards the contemptible collection of tin shanties, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... crossed with items of interest, and Anne almost felt herself back in Avonlea while reading it. Marilla's was a rather prim and colorless epistle, severely innocent of gossip or emotion. Yet somehow it conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome, simple life at Green Gables, with its savor of ancient peace, and the steadfast abiding love that was there for her. Mrs. Lynde's letter was full of church news. Having broken up housekeeping, Mrs. Lynde had ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... were perniciously heretical). Thus in a single hour he so prevailed upon those miserable negroes that their hearts became quite as black as their faces. An especially offensive practice of the Hollanders, in the eyes of the good shepherds, was that of asking the feminine sheep for a whiff of tobacco—it being a country custom to consider the taking a pipe from a woman's mouth a "probable earnest of future favours." When an English ship entered the river, the priests forbade by manifesto the sale of slaves to the captain, he being a Briton, ergo a heretic, despite the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... a battle now 'twixt pride and conscience, 'twixt fierce desire and a loathed duty—doubly detested since I had spied a way to freedom and had half tasted a whiff of good free air, untainted ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... He had breathed a whiff of perfume of which he said nothing either- -of some perfume he did not know. Her voice was low and distinct. Her shoulders and her bare arms gleamed with an extraordinary splendour, and when she advanced her head into the light he saw the admirable contour of the face, the straight fine nose ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... told, means the land of Ire; And why she's so, none need inquire, Who sees her millions, martial, manly, Spat upon thus by me, Lord Stanley. Already in the breeze I scent The whiff of coming devilment; Of strife, to me more stirring far Than the Opium or the Sulphur war, Or any such drug ferments are. Yes—sweeter to this Tory soul Than all such pests, from pole to pole, Is the rich, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... said his host, putting his long clay to the candle, and puffing out volumes of smoke. Tom felt more and more unequal to the situation, and filled his pipe in silence. The first whiff made him cough as he wasn't used to the fragrant weed in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... Everything alarmed him now. He was afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not go to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and who feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted gesture the lock of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his mother, alas! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Monsieur de Haan, was as glad to see me as a banker away from home is to see a copy of The Wall Street Journal. I brought him a whiff of that great outside world from which he was an exile, with whose doings he kept in touch only through the meager despatches in the papers brought by the fortnightly mail-boat from Java, or through occasional travelers like myself. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... a smile in official quarters, it was short-lived, except in the Sanitary Bureau, where I fancy it lurked. For the Bend was under its windows. One whiff of it was enough to determine the kind of report the health inspectors would have to make when forced to act. That night, before they got around, some boys playing with a truck in the lots ran it down into one of the cellar holes ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... unworthy of a commercial traveller that as the book was not briskly selling he did not give a copper farthing for its merit. It must not be supposed that the person to whom this answer was addressed received it as a profession of faith; he knew, on the other hand, that it was only a whiff of irritation; just as we know, when a respectable writer talks of literature as a way of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is only debating one aspect of a question, and is still clearly conscious of a dozen others more important in themselves and ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... board a ship is the same as the slave smell. An experienced investigator can detect it immediately, and when I climbed over the low bulwarks of The Waif I got a whiff. I couldn't tell exactly where it was, but I knew that Dame Trouble was aboard the craft. It's a sort of sixth sense with a sailorman to be able to detect a stormy atmosphere, and I felt that the yacht wasn't the place ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... on the Canada shore up past the Clifton House, towards the Burning Spring, which is not the least wonder of Niagara. As each bubble breaks upon the troubled surface, and yields its flash of infernal flame and its whiff of sulphurous stench, it seems hardly strange that the Neutral Nation should have revered the cataract as a demon; and another subtle spell (not to be broken even by the business- like composure of the man who shows ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... queer sort of a place," said Brother Bart, doubtfully. "But it might do Laddie good to get a whiff of the salt air and a swim in the sea. He isn't well, Brother Timothy says, and as everyone can see. He has a touch of the fever every day; and as for weight, Dan Dolan would make two of him. And his mother died before she was five and twenty. God's holy will be done!" ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... him away. Almost every one remembers how in this light company he first came across the little word ranch. It had in its youth distinctly the cachet of the verbal flying squadron, the "nameless something," the oenanthic whiff which flies to the head. There are signs that its best days as a word are now over, and in contemplating it at present one has a vision of a passee brunette, in the costume of Fifine at the Fair, solacing herself with thoughts of early ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... the last cigar is smoked and the box is splintered and gone, And only the faintest whiff of the dear old smell hangs on, In the times when he's idle or thoughtful, When he's lonesome, jolly or blue, And he fingers his useless matches, What is a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... said brightly, shaking hands with me when Andy and I were going to turn in. 'And don't forget your pipe. Here it is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn in. Walter smokes in bed. I don't mind. You can smoke all night ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... hear the swinging door whiff after Skip's syncopated feet, then she whispered sharply across ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... what he said, but it seems it was monstrously to the point, and so rudely conceived that the old duke never recovered the indignity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and died two days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year of his age. And so a whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of melodious rondels to the end ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scholars alike are apt to feel the depression of such circumstances; and when you add to the other discomforts, that of a steady, pouring rain, with a sound of fall in every whiff of wind, you will understand that Marion was to have comparatively little help from outside influences. She felt the gloom in her heart deepen as the day went on. She was astonished and mortified at herself to find that the old feelings of irritability ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his direction, and before we reached the end of the street he was ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... was not prepared for what occurred soon afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an overturned tree, I walked to the hole to learn the cause of it. One whiff of the vapor stiffened my hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep slope, dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was rank with ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... and mostly blinding me, made me doze like a tottum. At the same time, to clear his way, and the better to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that made him stoiter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at the same blessed moment—"Hold out o' my road, ye long withered wabster. Ye're a pair of havering idiots; but I'll have pennyworths out of both your skins, as I'm ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... was silent. The lump of coal in the grate suddenly split and fell apart; there was a crackling leap of flames, and from between the bars a spurt of bubbling gas sent a whiff of acrid smoke ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot; and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself really asleep this time? He breathed as though he were; but so did Stingaree; and yet was there hope in the fact that his own greatest ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... liked. Couldn't she spend time to walk down there across lots and get some? Sally thought the onions could not be left. Truth to tell, her heart was in her mouth. She had been playing with edge-tools; but just then she smelt a whiff of smoke from Long Snapps's pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the result was, that Sally washed her hands at the well, and away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... toward the door? No, a fortunate whiff of breeze seemed to blow her aside like a little seed-puff, and she went drifting by. She was apparently ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... in their work, and look after the comfort of her husband. Her place in the lodge is on his right-hand side, while the others have their places or seats near the door-way. This wife is even allowed at informal gatherings to take a whiff at the pipe, as it is passed around the circle, and to ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... he rasped back, "the same gas that overcame Granville Barnes. These masks are impregnated with a glycerin solution of sodium phosphate. It was chlorin that destroyed the red coloring matter in Barnes's blood. No wonder, when this action of just a whiff of it on us is so rapid. Even a short time longer and death would follow. It destroys without the possibility of reconstitution, and it leaves a dangerous deposit of albumin. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... If we 'adhere to one point,' he says (in Southey's person), 'it is a disquisition, not a conversation.' And he adds, with one of his wilful back-handed blows at Plato, that most writers of dialogue plunge into abstruse questions, and 'collect a heap of arguments to be blown away by the bloated whiff of some rhetorical charlatan tricked out in a multiplicity of ribbons for the occasion.' Possibly! but for all that, the perfect dialogue ought not, we should say, to be really incoherent. It should include digressions, but the digressions ought to return upon the main ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... plainly to the third set of which we have spoken; Miss Todd was an amalgamation of the two first. Miss Baker, however, was a point of union, a connecting rod. There was about her a savouring of the fragrance of Ebenezer, but accompanied, it must be owned, by a whiff of brimstone. Thus these three ladies were brought together; and as it was manifest that Miss Todd had news to tell, the other two ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... Salem town With silver buckled shoon? No lovely witch to drown Or burn beneath the moon? Not even a whiff of tea, On ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... bravoes, and well-to-do burgesses, we passed from one ambush to another, by dark gullies, stinking traps, and twisted stairways, to the Via Deliziosa, without ever a hint of the broad sunshine or whiff of the balmy air which we had left outside on the plain. In a little mildewed court, where one patch of light did indeed slope upon a lemon-tree loaded with fruit and flowers, I found my man in a droll pass with his young wife. ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... or sport, or the softest, daintiest refinements of man's invention given me the half of luxury I drank in from that little breeze. So the commonest things—a dash of cool water on the wrists, a gulp of hot tea, a warm, dry blanket, a whiff of tobacco, a ray of sunshine—are more really the luxuries than all the comforts and sybaritisms we buy. Undoubtedly the latter would also rise to the higher category if we were to work for their ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... some smack of youth Hath influence antiseptic. Pessimists prate, and prigs be-rate The time of mirth and holly; But why should time-soured sages "slate" The juvenile and jolly? "Though some churls at our mirth repine" (As old GEORGE WITHER put it), We'll whiff our weed, and sip our wine, And watch the youngsters foot it. They did so in quaint WITHER'S time, When wassail-bowls were humming, And still girls laugh, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various

... strolled homeward from an evening walk, a long ramble among the peaceful hills which inclosed their rustic home. Into these peaceful hills the young man had brought, not the rumor, (which was an old inhabitant,) but some of the reality of war,—a little whiff of gunpowder, the clanking of a sword; for, although Mr. John Ford had his campaign still before him, he wore a certain comely air of camp-life which stamped him a very Hector to the steady-going villagers, and a very pretty fellow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... spire in the centre, in which is placed a lamp filled with clarified butter and containing a wick of twisted tow. Incense is thrown into the flame and offerings of cakes and sweetmeats are made. A lighted huqqa is placed before the altar and as soon as the smoke rises it is understood that a whiff has been drawn by the hero." A cock is offered to Lalbeg at the Dasahra festival. When a man is believed to have been affected by the evil eye they wave a broom in front of the sufferer muttering the name of the saint. In the Damoh District the guru or priest who is the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... was daintily busied with making a supper of no dainty proportions; and he cocked his head and scowled in deliberation, and he stood irresolute on the brink of the cliff, playing with the temptation to descend and cross, as though a whiff from Peggy Lacey's kitchen stove had invited and challenged him over. It was not so much the visionary whiff of Peggy Lacey's supper, however, that challenged his courage: it was Peggy Lacey's letter in the pack on his ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... regular commission, and to raise new forces. On his way to the town Bacon is attacked by an ambush of soldiers, whom he beats off with the help of one of his lieutenants, Fearless, backed by Lieutenant Daring and a troop of his own men, who capture Whimsey and Whiff, two very prominent justices, instigators of the plot. He accordingly appears before the Council with a couple of prisoners. The populace, who are all for their hero, realizing the treachery, raise a riot, and throw the Councillors into a state of the utmost confusion ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... to such real risk of poisoning myself, and of making I wot not how actual a mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum negus, to imagine myself—a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn such a petty realm as the Solar ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... dinner at a teeny place like Caudebec in France was delicious. I wonder why food at country hotels in England is so bad? At Retby Lady Theodosia won't touch anything unless it is absolutely perfect. She sent a dish away yesterday just because a whiff of some flavouring she does not like came to her, but at the "Red Lion" she did not grumble at all; it must be for the same reason that wetting their feet doesn't give French people cold if it is at a national sport, that made her put up with the lunch ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... had been opened, somewhere. The next moment brought a new whiff of cold, fresh air and the sound of a motor, then silence again, sudden and profound, from the street-side. A deep, almost dramatic voice silenced ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... carefully stored away and jealously guarded, each in its imprisoning test-tubes. Jealously guarded they have been, to be sure, but there has not been, by any means, the solitary confinement that the words might seem to imply. On the contrary, each little whiff of gas has been subjected to a variety of experiments—made to pass through torturing-tubes under varying conditions of temperature, and brought purposely in contact with various other substances, that its physical and chemical properties might be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... much about porcupines to dream of attacking them. It was what they were eating that interested him. They seemed to enjoy it so much. He crept a few inches nearer, and caught a whiff of the herring-tub. Yes, it was certainly fish. A true cat, he doted on fish, even salt fish. He made another cautious advance, hoping that the porcupines might retire discreetly. But instead of that they merely stopped gnawing, put their noses between their forelegs, squatted flat, and ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the frail little hand of the elder Tryst and ran. They ran at the child's pace, the one so very massive, the other such a whiff of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... told them of the expedition up the west coast, and of the towns they sacked; and the opulent names rolled oddly off his tongue, and seemed to bring a whiff of southern scent into this panelled English room,—Valparaiso, Tarapaca, and Arica—; and of the capture of the Cacafuego off Quibdo; and of the enormous treasure they took, the great golden crucifix with emeralds of the size of pigeon's eggs, and the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... was just then more a matter of ceremony than for any other purpose, a whiff or two suffices for each chief; the smoker passing the pipe to his neighbor as soon as he had inhaled a few puffs. The Indians are models of propriety, in their happiest moods, and every one in that dark and menacing ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the respect that is paid among nations to the law of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period when it is violated, there are none when it is decried. It is the philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians—a whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding force but sanctity to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money, but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... halted on the outskirts of the site of the contemplated city, and tossed up a series of engirdling hills, whose slopes and crests covered with verdure might afford in the days to come a beautiful sight to the inhabitants when riding forth to get a whiff of country air. These same forces of nature, evidently in love with their work, arranged, it seems, for all the beautiful clouds with their varying hues to pass in daily review over the head of the city ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... lately," grinned Oldsmith, though whether he really believed such a thing himself or not was a question, for he seemed to be a practical joker. "Old Hendrix is always hatching up something fresh, for the other side. You fellows needn't expect to do much running today, for most of you will only whiff out at the rubber. He's got your number, ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... contour of her nose and rested on that dimple, his gaze did not wander. He did not even wink—it would have been a complete loss of looking. When she removed the lid from the saucepan a spicy aroma spread itself abroad. Dog and herder sniffed the evening air, sampling the new odor. It was a whiff of Araby the Blest. ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... there in this simple announcement of Sylvie having gone on a charity-school picnic with Jack Darcy that should so rouse the art-cultured pulses of Fred Lawrence? He had always liked Sylvie: her freshness and piquancy stirred him like a whiff of mountain air,—a sure sign that all healthy tone had not been cultivated out of him. It would be very foolish for Sylvie to commit a mesalliance with this young man, who was no doubt good enough in his way,—a rather ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... this had happened on the journey, or whether it came from care, no one could say. He looked at the little girl and she looked at him. He felt that he was melting, but still he stood steadfast, musket in hand. Then a door opened. A whiff of air caught the dancer, and she flew like a sylph right into the tile-stove to the tin soldier, blazed up in flame, and was gone. Then the tin soldier melted to a lump, and when the maid next day took out the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and beyond, stretched this vast prairie country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren waste, different from the beautiful, still, green garden spot that she called home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the odor of new-mown grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... how many links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... in straight avore the vier; But now, a man's a-kept at door At work a pirty while, avore He's screaep'd an' rubb'd, an' cleaen and fit To goo in where his wife do zit. An' then if he should have a whiff In there, 'twould only breed a miff: He c[a]nt smoke there, vor smoke woon't goo 'Ithin the footy little flue. Ah! gi'e me, if I wer a squier, The settle an' the ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... from Ohio, he fills nearly every place he's got to give away with lean, hungry Ohio men, so that you can get a "whiff" of that state all over Washington, and in a good many other places too, any time of ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding

... "A whiff that would dissipate the musical malaria of this," I cried, for I saw I had musicians to deal with. There was hearty laughter at this, and as young laughter warms the cockles of an old man's heart, I invited ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... I never looked on a girl to make a man comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous, like that one. And away she goes! We'll not say another word. But you're a Grecian, friend Vernon. Now, couldn't you think her just a whiff of an idea of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... chapter would have gone off capitally. As things turned out, there was a fatal unreality in situation, which House quick to realise. Pretty to see Members, as BIRRELL struggled with his notes, involuntarily sniffing, as if they recognised familiar whiff of midnight lamp. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various

... the whole Rumania, at any rate during the first few weeks of the occupation, had the substantial sympathy of the largest and most influential section of the world's press. People declared that they were glad to see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint themselves with the impression ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... An unmistakable whiff of tobacco-smoke awoke her from her dream of delight. She turned swiftly, the lily in one hand, her skirt clutched ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... pitchers against the wall Hold a lighter kind of bright conceit; And those old Saxe vases, out of the heat On that lowest shelf beside the door, Have a sort of Ideal, "couleur d'or". Every castle of the air Sleeps in the fine black grains, and there Are seeds for every romance, or light Whiff of a dream for a summer night. I supply to every want and taste." 'Twas slowly said, in no great haste He seemed to push his wares, but I Dumfounded listened. By and by A log on the fire broke in ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... way to the town Bacon is attacked by an ambush of soldiers, whom he beats off with the help of one of his lieutenants, Fearless, backed by Lieutenant Daring and a troop of his own men, who capture Whimsey and Whiff, two very prominent justices, instigators of the plot. He accordingly appears before the Council with a couple of prisoners. The populace, who are all for their hero, realizing the treachery, raise a riot, and throw the Councillors into a state of the utmost confusion and alarm. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... downhill. The lady was voluble. Into your triangular group broke a newcomer whose speech had in it a flippant, or at least a superficially clever, fluency. He was glib. Leaving these three to fight (or talk) it out as best they might, you grabbed your hat and hurried outside for a fresh whiff of air. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... and the primordial elements became strong within him. In effect he was transported far back into those dim ages, when man fought with the stone axe, and his five senses were so preternaturally acute to protect his life that he had a sixth and perhaps a seventh. A whiff came on the wind. It was faint, because it had traveled far, but he knew it to be the odor of the panther. The big cowardly beast was crouched in a little valley to his right, and he was trembling, trembling at the approaching warriors, trembling ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... a mystery that greatly intrigued us. One morning the mystery was solved. A whiff of tobacco from an upper window came along with a puff of wind. It was a heated whiff, in spite of the cooling breeze. It was from a pipe, a short, black pipe, owned by some one in the Mansard window next door. There was the round disk of a dark-blue ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... Missis the idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of course I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going; for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... the Federal infantry fell back to the foot of the hill on which I stood; all the batteries were clustering around me, and suddenly a column of men shot up from the long sweep of the abandoned hill, with batteries on the left and right. Their muskets were turned towards us, a crash and a whiff of smoke swept from flank to flank, and the air around me rained buck, slug, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... cover, and a whiff of the freshest fragrance regaled the seven eager noses bent to inhale it, as a general murmur of pleasure greeted the nest of great, rosy mayflowers that lay ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... his fore legs and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face with ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... the hearth to put fresh logs on the fire, my face was so close to hers that I felt her breath on my cheek. It thrilled me to feel even the suggestion of that ineffable contact. Her breath was sweet—sweet as the breath of a calf, sweet as the whiff of a summer breeze across beds of mignonette. How could anyone believe for a moment that such sweet breath could come from the lips of the dead—the dead in esse or in posse—that corruption could send ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... winked at me and I knew he was kidding Pee-wee. Well, believe me, we hit a plan all right; we more than hit it, we gave it a knockout blow. All the while we were talking, he was taking us across the lawn till pretty soon we came to a little patch of woods and as soon as I got a whiff of those trees, good night, I felt as if I was up at Temple Camp already. That's a funny thing about trees—you get to know them and like ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... warn you perfectly frankly that I am distinctly pro-dog and distinctly pro-Christmas, and would like to bring to this little story whatever whiff of fir-balsam I can cajole from the make-believe forest in my typewriter, and every glitter of tinsel, smudge of toy candle, crackle of wrapping paper, that my particular brand of brain and ink can conjure up on a single keyboard! And very large-sized dogs shall romp through every page! ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... him, the boy ran for dear life, trying to make the school door before Billy could overtake him. He did, but that was all. Billy had gotten a good whiff of the apples, and that settled it. He would have one of those apples, even if he had to chase the boy all over the school. He was hoping the boy would be so afraid of him that he would throw one of the apples at him. But no such good luck. Up the stairs ran the boy, trying to reach ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... fire were the stalks of the creosote plant—the ideodondo of the Mexican table lands, well known for its power to cause asphyxia. Walt Wilder recognised it at the first whiff. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... there were more than 50,000 Chinese, in the State of California alone. These people, very industrious at gold-washing, very patient, living on a pinch of rice, a mouthful of tea, and a whiff of opium, did an immense deal to bring down the price of manual labour, to the detriment of the native workmen. They had to submit to special laws, contrary to the American constitution—laws which regulated their ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... professed to be ill this morning, and I was alarmed. I dosed her with the medicine which Dr. S—— had given me when the epidemic first appeared, and sent for the Doctor himself. But I discovered, before he came, that she had gotten too close a whiff of the chloride-of-lime bag, and it nauseated her. She is more afraid of the disinfectants ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... blamed them for that, because none of the other Congregational ladies was half as pretty. To-night Aunt Isabel had on a billowy pale-blue organdy, and she looked more like an angel than ever. An ethereally radiant, laughing, vivacious angel. And whenever she moved near you, you caught a ghostly whiff of that delicious perfume. (Missy now knows Aunt Isabel got it from little sachet bags, tucked away with her clothes, and from an "atomizer" which showered a delicate, fairy-like spray of fragrance upon her hair.) There was one young man, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... have been back of a lot o' tricks Central never got hold of. I'll bet that each time that you went over with him, he took loot an' disposed of it. I may be pig-headed sometimes, but I'm dead sure o' this. Wait some day an' see. Say, take a whiff o' this an' tell me what y' think it is." ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... and victuals. He is of that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a cockatrice, and making ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... no sich since dat same storm as de debbil come in to fetch ole marse's soul—dis berry night seven year past, an' he carried of him off all in a suddint whiff! jist like a puff of win'. An' no wonder, seein' how he done traded his ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... There was the smell of the good red soil in the little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... every rifle within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day and abate no whit of their zeal at the end; English regiments sometimes sulk under ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... peace. Of this Pere Henepin has given a long account in his voyage, and the pipe is as follows: they fill a pipe of tobacco, larger and bigger than any common pipe, light it, and then the chief of them takes a whiff, gives it to the stranger, and if he smoke of it, it is peace; if not, war; if peace, the pipe is ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... question they began to fall in streams, while the little bosom heaved with sobs. She pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her eyes, and a strong whiff of perfume greeted Violet's nostrils, telling a tale that sent ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... of roast apples steeping in hot toddy came wafting out the portals of Malachi's pantry—a smell of such convincing pungency that even the most infrequent of frequenters having once inhaled it, would have known at the first whiff that some musical function was in order. The night was to be one ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was that of the favorite cell in the convent of vice; an elegant room reserved for distinguished patrons; and she was a healthy, robust creature, who seemed to bring a whiff of the pure mountain air into the heavy atmosphere of this closed house, saturated with cheap cologne, rice powder and ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of captain of this craft, in a whiff," returned the sailing-master. "That is as much as to say, here comes one who will command when he gets on board. Well, well, it is Mr. Griffith, and I can't say, notwithstanding his love of knee-buckles and small wares, but I'm glad he's out of the hands of the English! ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... chill doth circumscribe the dreaming man, because the spring is cold. The fragrant whiff, which wafts itself into man's nose, is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... got out of the train at Welsley Station, and saw Robin's pal, the Archdeacon, getting out too, and a couple of minor canons, who had come up for the evening papers or something, greeting him with an ecclesiastical heartiness mingled with just a whiff of professional deference, Mrs. Clarke's verdict of "stifling" recurred to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... benignly with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat. Before the Major's own doorway the myrtles were in bloom, and a few China roses on the well-trimmed standards. By the Broad Ship as of old his nostrils caught the odours of tar and hemp with a whiff of smoke from a schooner's galley (the Ranting Blade, with her figure-head repainted, but otherwise much the same as ever). Miss Jex, the postmistress, still peered over her blind. She studied the Major's wooden leg with interest. He, on ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... world. It hasn't gotten in far yet; only into the top soil, and about the edges, so far. The progress in this regard has seemed both rapid and slow. When the great mass of these peoples have not yet gotten even a whiff of the purer, better civilization air of the western nations the progress seems slow. But when we remember the incalculably tremendous inertia, and the strangely stagnant spirit of heathen lands, ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... the external decoration of sorely-exasperated souls. The exertion of the long ascent in the steaming heat requires six coolies for every chair. The red road mounts through enchanting vistas of palms and creepers, on the edge of the dark jungle, each turning point bringing a whiff of cooler air, as the evening gold flickers through the velvety fronds of tree-ferns, and the green feathers of spreading bamboos. From the white hotel near the summit, the blue Straits and the flats ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... was in Oakland, a California town, filling a summer's engagement with a street railway company. The company owned a large park outside the city, and of course it was to its interest to provide attractions which would send the townspeople over its line when they went out to get a whiff of country air. My contract called for two ascensions weekly, and my act was an especially taking feature, for it was on my days that ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit would never disturb his consciousness of originality; for the ministrations of books and of other minds are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... Eveleigh, coming into Elizabeth's room and bringing a whiff of cold air with her. "It's a mean month," she continued. "There's nothing but disagreeable things about it. The leaves are all gone, and the snow hasn't come. You can't even go out riding with any comfort, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... women, or talks of books or scenery or adventure or sport, or the softest, daintiest refinements of man's invention given me the half of luxury I drank in from that little breeze. So the commonest things—a dash of cool water on the wrists, a gulp of hot tea, a warm, dry blanket, a whiff of tobacco, a ray of sunshine—are more really the luxuries than all the comforts and sybaritisms we buy. Undoubtedly the latter would also rise to the higher category if we were to work for their essence instead of merely signing club cheques or ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... yield thy works so mean a praise; More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are plays: Nor with that dull supineness to be read, To pass a fire, or laugh an hour in bed. How do the Muses suffer every where, Taken in such mouth's censure, in such ears, That 'twixt a whiff, a line or two rehearse, And with their rheume together spaul a verse? This all a poem's leisure after play, Drink, or tobacco, it may keep the day: Whilst ev'n their very idleness they think Is lost in these, that lose their time in drink. Pity then dull we, we that better know, Will a more ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... returned to the library, and after a few minutes Mr. Townsend joined him. The detective was sitting in an easy-chair drawn up to the table, smoking as coolly and calmly as though taking a last whiff just before going ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... become tinged with blue; I see some big ones that are crumbling into rot and swarming with worms. Others, shaped like pears, are dry and open at the top with a round hole, a sort of chimney whence a whiff of smoke escapes when I prod their under side with my finger. These are the most curious. I fill my pockets with them to make them smoke at my leisure, until I exhaust the contents, which are at last reduced to a ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... thinks he has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and you'll soon throw him into ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... the people, had such a snowfall been seen in that section. Yet it could scarcely be called a snowstorm, for there was no wind, not a single whiff, and therefore, of course, no snowdrifts. The snow fell slowly, evenly, steadily, dropping over the earth a soft, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... gulped a great breath of the fresh air into my suffocating lungs, tore the buckskin covering from my broncho's head and we raced on in a swirl of smoke, always following the dust which revealed the tracks of the retreating Sioux. There was a whiff of singed hair, as if one of the horses had been burnt, and Little Fellow gave a shout. Looking back I saw his horse sinking on the blackened patch; but La Robe Noire and I rode on. The fugitives were ascending rising ground to the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... deep weeds and were forgotten until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... she rustled in again like a whiff of fresh air, "I had to go clear to the bottom of the last trunk I looked in. Lucky I only have three to my name, for it would have been in the last one just the same, if I'd had two dozen and had ransacked them all. But I found it, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... your living that way you would be no worse than you are now, selling drinks to people—beastly beer and spirits, rotten stuff fit to make an old he-goat yell if you poured it down its throat. Pooh! I can't stand the confounded liquor. Never could. A whiff of neat brandy in a glass makes me feel sick. Always did. If everybody was like me, liquor would be going a-begging. You think it's funny ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... in his mantle, plunged into the hurricane and darkness; and was sensible, with a throb of angry regret, of a whiff of punch rising from the footpath, as he turned ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... as with a whirl of the covers she sat up and took her knees into her embrace. "No, sweetie, in I go! The colder the better after I'm in. How grand and Burne-Jonesy you look in that linen pinafore—indulging in the life domestic? I think I catch a whiff of your culinary ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... pack-strings and dropped it noiselessly on the ground. At that precise instant I heard a stealthy movement on my left hand. It was so dark that I could not see an inch in front of my face, but a little eddy of the breeze brought me the merest whiff of stale tobacco—the sort of smell that comes from a pipe that has been put out before it has completely burnt away. It was that dead scent that always seems to hang about the vicinity of a newly quenched fire. I was so close ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... LOVE. Whiff in with your sister, brother boy. [EXEUNT KAS. AND DAME P.] That master That had received such happiness by a servant, In such a widow, and with so much wealth, Were very ungrateful, if he would not be A little indulgent to that servant's wit, And help his fortune, though with some ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... experienced a prescient vicarious qualm to note their lack of heed or secrecy—the noisy shifting of heavy weights (barrels, kegs, bags of apples, and peaches for pomace), the loud voices and unguarded words. When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean air that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most unobservant inmate, that the still was ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... motionless face Schinner breathed in the smoke of his cigar and let it out through his nose without the slightest contraction of feature. Then he took another whiff, kept the smoke in his throat, removed the cigar from his lips, and allowed the smoke slowly and gracefully ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... Barrel—a rare beauty, who was on the most intimate talking terms with half a hundred young bloods and beaux, who looked in during lounging hours, being students of law, physic, and divinity, half-pay ensigns, and theatrical understrappers, to replenish their boxes with Lundyfoot, whiff a Havannah cigar, or masticate pigtail. No wonder that she was spoiled by flattery, Miss Diana, for she was a bit of a beauty; and though she had but one eye—by heavens, what an eye ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... madden us. Fie, ma'am, why do you clothe yourself in such beauty but to flaunt upon our senses that sex of yours?" My lady was duly shocked and hid behind her fan. "Aye, there it is! We catch a whiff of paradise and straightway it is denied us. Our nightingale there is silent when we draw near. Our Venus here hides herself when our eyes would enjoy her. As His Grace said to me, you women are like heaven to ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... trouble odour on board a ship is the same as the slave smell. An experienced investigator can detect it immediately, and when I climbed over the low bulwarks of The Waif I got a whiff. I couldn't tell exactly where it was, but I knew that Dame Trouble was aboard the craft. It's a sort of sixth sense with a sailorman to be able to detect a stormy atmosphere, and I felt that the yacht wasn't the place that the dove of peace would choose as a permanent abode. I ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... put the crooked straight and to raise a lamp to banish the dark. Very good this white satin is," said Mother Cockleshell irrelevantly, and alluding to the gin. "And terbaccer goes well with it, as there's no denying. You wouldn't mind my taking a whiff, sir, would you?" and she produced a blackened clay pipe which had seen much service. "Smoking is good for the nerves, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... without knowing that a society in which wealth is distributed rests on an incomparably safer foundation than one in which it is concentrated in the hands of a few. British plutocracy has its cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens to take fancies into his head the "whiff of grapeshot" ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... a shot for you, fire away," said the Devil. "Of course I'll fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else our agreement is cancelled, Old Boy." There was no help for it; the Devil had to own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... and had fallen in behind the two Indians. I stuck to the trail until the diminished sunlight warned me it would soon be too dark to continue. Then I caught a whiff of burning wood and in ten minutes I was ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... have said many a fine and lovely thing about lusty spring. From their pages there seems to come a whiff of clean and healthy perfume from many dead Mays. In sweet and matterful verse they have sung their praises; but, oh! no singer, old or new—none, at least, that was but human—none but a God-intoxicated man could tell the glories of that ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... of the professor's engagement Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Hiram Look kept sullenly to their castles, nursing indignant sense of their wrongs. They got an occasional whiff of the scandal that was pursuing their names. Though their respective wives strove with pathetic loyalty to disbelieve all that the seeress had hinted at, and moved in sad silence about their duties, it was plain that the seed of evil had been planted deep in their imaginations. Poor ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... shot in a barrel, we are rounded and polished by mere attrition. Formerly, characteristics had more chance to emphasize themselves and throw out angles, as I believe they still do in long polar seclusions. Withal, there came from him from time to time a whiff of the naval atmosphere of the past, like that from a drawer where lavender has been. Going ashore once with him for a constitutional, he caught sight of a necktie which my fond mother had given me. It was black, yes; but with variations. "Humph!" he ejaculated; "don't wear a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... that made Calhoun react as he did. He jerked the girl Maril to her feet and rushed her toward the Med Ship. Smoke from the flung bomb upwind barely swirled around him and missed Maril altogether. Calhoun, though, got a whiff of something strange, not scorched or burning vegetation at all. He ceased to breathe and plunged onward. In clear air he emptied his lungs and refilled them. They were then halfway to the ship, ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... sight of the crowd seething in the streets, shrinking from the idea of stripping the rags off the beggar in order to see his tanned and gnarled limbs; shuddering at the thought of seeking for muscles in the dead, cut-open body; fearful of every whiff of life that might mingle with the incense atmosphere of his chapel, of every cry of human passion which might break through the well-ordered sweetness of his chants. No; the Renaissance did not exist ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... winter's morning, which will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away, and the sun would shine down upon men again. If you want to be a happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as a specific by itself. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... point of superior brilliancy perceptible in the comet's head, which is termed its nucleus, and it is necessarily a matter of pressing interest to determine what this bright nucleus is; whether it is really a kernel of hard, solid substance, or merely a whiff of somewhat more condensed vapor. Newton, from the first, maintained that the comet is made partly of solid substance, and partly of an investment of thin, elastic vapors. If this is the case, it is manifest that ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... filled with pure tobacco, but a chopped mixture of all sorts; even you could smoke it without any harm. Why yes, women smoke here almost all day, and children too. They do say the mothers give the babies-in-arms a whiff, but I haven't seen ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... that?" Nellie interrupted, jumping up and coming between the two men. Ned leaned eagerly forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes flaming, his face quivering, his teeth showing. Geisner leaned back quietly, alternately sipping his wine and water and taking a whiff from his cigarette. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... motion] Wind — N. wind, draught, flatus, afflatus, efflation^, eluvium^; air; breath, breath of air; puff, whiff, zephyr; blow, breeze, drift; aura; stream, current, jet stream; undercurrent. gust, blast, squall, gale, half a gale, storm, tempest, hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, samiel, cyclone, anticyclone, typhoon; simoon^, simoom; harmattan^, monsoon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the pulse of memory is stirred Out of a chronic state of coma By just a poignant tune, a rhythmic word, A whiff of some refined aroma, And lo! the brain is made aware Of records which it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various

... knew too much about porcupines to dream of attacking them. It was what they were eating that interested him. They seemed to enjoy it so much. He crept a few inches nearer, and caught a whiff of the herring-tub. Yes, it was certainly fish. A true cat, he doted on fish, even salt fish. He made another cautious advance, hoping that the porcupines might retire discreetly. But instead of that they merely stopped gnawing, put their noses between their forelegs, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... graded path strewn with roses that invites us in this part, but, let me hope, something better, a rugged trail through the woods or along the beach where we shall now and then get a whiff of natural air, or a glimpse of ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... Jewess, a draggled prostitute—no crimson flower for her hair, poor girl!—regards us with a momentary speculation, and we get a whiff of foul language from two newsboys on ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... the cedars on the lawn, the haystacks just beyond the stables, and the fields where the rabbits sometimes fell asleep as they sat after enormous meals too stuffed to move. He saw the old gravel-pit that led, the gardener told him, to the centre of the earth. A whiff of perfume from the laurustinus in the drive came back, the scent of hay, and with it the sound of the mowing-machine going over the lawn. He saw the pony in loose flat leather shoes. The bees were humming in the lime trees. The rooks were cawing. A ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... largest computation; some time that night, or, at latest, before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island. We were heading S.S.W., and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. The Hispaniola rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; every one was in the bravest spirits, because we were now so near an end of the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... A whiff! Ah, that's the thing. How it makes me gay! Now I want to sing, Leap, laugh, play. Ha! I've had my fling! Mistress of a king In my day. Just another snuff . . . Oh, the blessed stuff! How the wretched room Rushes from my sight; Misery and gloom Melt into delight; Fear ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... had thrust The Pageant of Alexander into his handbag on the night of his Bight from Venice; but since then he had never looked at it. Too many memories and illusions were pressed between its pages; and he knew just at what page he had felt Ellie Vanderlyn bending over him from behind, caught a whiff of her scent, and heard her breathless "I had ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... afternoon of the third day, as the three women and myself sat conversing as usual over the brasero, a shabby looking fellow in an old rusty cloak walked into the room: he came straight up to the place where we were sitting, produced a paper cigar, which he lighted at a coal, and taking a whiff or two, looked at me: "Carracho," said he, "who is ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... and instead of effort and weariness, there is repose upon the restful couches prepared by Him. Threadbare and old as the hills as the thought is, it comes to us toilers with ever new refreshment, like a whiff of fresh air or the gleam of the far-off daylight at the top of the shaft to the miner, cramped at his work in the dark. What a witness the preciousness of that representation of future blessedness as rest to us all bears to the pressure of toil and the aching, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... irregularly jagged line of tree-tops stood unchanging, as if traced by an unsteady hand on the clear blue of the hot sky. In the space sheltered by the high palisades there lingered the smell of decaying blossoms from the surrounding forest, a taint of drying fish; with now and then a whiff of acrid smoke from the cooking fires when it eddied down from under the leafy boughs and clung lazily about the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... moment of enthusiasm, during conversation, referred to as a horse. I put the cheeses on the top, and we started off at a shamble that would have done credit to the swiftest steam-roller ever built, and all went merry as a funeral bell, until we turned the corner. There, the wind carried a whiff from the cheeses full on to our steed. It woke him up, and, with a snort of terror, he dashed off at three miles an hour. The wind still blew in his direction, and before we reached the end of the street he was laying himself out at the rate of ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... pipe and gave a long whiff of smoke, then replacing it in his mouth, he continued "We were all jest talkin' of him as ye came along, an' if ye wan't sport ye'll have to ask the old fellow, to let ye through his grounds, and then mebbe ye'll know more about him than we ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... over them, and to the north, the south, the east and the west; and told them that this stone was red, that it was their flesh, that they must use it for their pipes of peace, that it belonged to them all, and that the war club and the scalping knife must not be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the rock for several miles was melted and glazed. Two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women, guardian spirits of the place, entered them in a blaze ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... of lightning. Merely the colour of a hill at sunset was enough to flash back her thoughts to an hour when she was looking for Evan; or a certain sort of starlight night would recall a particular walk along the meadow fence; or a gust and whiff of the wind would bring with it the thrill that belonged to one certain stormy September night that never faded in her remembrance. Or the smell of coffee sometimes, when it was just at a certain ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... frankly, couldn't be depended on. Not only was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... The first whiff seemed to break the magic spell which had hitherto kept them silent. With another emphatic "Waugh!" the elder savage declared that the goose was good; that it distended him pleasantly, and that it warmed the cockles of his heart—or words ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... honey, two or three, or more of the bars may be, at any time, removed, or exchanged for unoccupied bars, without much disturbing the brood combs, all annoyance from the bees being prevented by a whiff or two of tobacco smoke being blown into the hive at the time of the removal of the bars. With the protection of a bee-house these hives can be applied to many of the systems of bee-management, and prove equally profitable, and more manageable than ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn

... It was nearly half-an-hour since he had entered the mine. He stamped his feet on the plank and rubbed his hands together to get up the circulation, and then he pulled out a cigar and lighted it. The first whiff permeated his being with a sense as of food and drink, sunshine and ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... happening in the house. Everything alarmed him now. He was afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not go to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and who feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted gesture the lock of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his mother, alas! of his mother, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... shrinking figure in the shadow and the hat was doffed in a profound bow. Undoubtedly a good looking young man, but as undoubtedly a fop of the first water with his ruffles and bosom of Mechlin lace, red heels to his shoes, gold clocks on his silk stockings and the whiff of ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... southern side of the house. It was in a perfectly melted condition that I at last dropped from Tolly's grasp into a pair of new arms which cradled me against a broad breast with such gentleness that I might have thought it was mother come to the dance if I hadn't caught a whiff of cedar woodsiness when I turned my nose into a miniature brier-patch of blue-berried cedar in the buttonhole of the coat against which my face was pressed as my feet caught step with a pair of smart shoes bearing a smear of moss loam ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... front of me, there swung a flaunting sign—"A l'Irlandois"— at which I cheered up. Here, at any rate, in the midst of this noisome babel, seemed to come a whiff from the old country, and I felt like a ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... the house with a cigarette in his mouth and wearing a cloth-covered sheep-skin coat tightly girdled low at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and stopped. Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up, began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the moustache, so that his breath ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy

... mood, I was unfortunate enough, simply perhaps, but, I could not help thinking, undeservedly, to come within 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword'. I asked him, if he had ever been accustomed to wear a night-cap. He said 'No.' I asked, if it was best not to wear one. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I had this custom by chance, and perhaps no man shall ever know ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome" except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's page. Salome is the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... where it is successfully encountered, of nobility,—the practice, namely, of self- revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... summer's morning," to quote a favorite metaphor of the day, in regard to the guiding spirit of an often-killed but still living and breathing "monster." As the writer entered his apartment, he took a long pipe from his mouth with the most easy deliberation, while the last whiff from the aromatic Virginia weed curled upward in an azure cloud, and mingled with the ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... apples steeping in hot toddy came wafting out the portals of Malachi's pantry—a smell of such convincing pungency that even the most infrequent of frequenters having once inhaled it, would have known at the first whiff that some musical function was in order. The night was to be ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... were you, who vow you cannot suffer Whiff of the best,—the mildest "honey dew," I would not dance with smoke-consuming Puffer, If I ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... they shivered on their hard board seats. The wintry wind blew in gusts through the plentifully broken window panes—for glass was as brittle then as now and costlier to replace,—and every now and then sifted a whiff of snow down the backs of the sitters in the gallery. Fathers and mothers essayed to still their little one's chattering teeth by taking them in their laps and holding them tight, and where a woman was provided ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... know enough to respect the bitter leaves' desire to be let alone; but many a pail of milk has been spoiled by a mouthful of Helenium among the herbage. Whoever cares to learn from experience why this was called sneezeweed, must take a whiff of snuff made of the dried ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... is, but one. That brought Pemberton back to the problem of his mysterious assailant. Why had this Ganymedan tried to whiff him out of existence? Grant frowned. No one on board knew of his mission, not even the captain. On the passenger list he was merely Dirk Halliday, an inconspicuous commercial traveler for Interspace Products. Yet someone had manifestly penetrated his disguise ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner

... Boy's hand, and before he could more than draw back, a whiff of winter blew into the room, and a creature stood there such as no man looks to find on his way to an Arctic gold camp. A girl of twenty odd, with the face of a saint, dressed in the black habit of ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... to hum itself in his head as he walked toward Water Street—Ca ira—ca ira—les aristocrats a la lanterne. A whiff of the wind that blew through Paris streets in the terrible times had come across the Atlantic and tickled his ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... lounge and hover, sip champagne and whiff Mild cigarettes; these too, in secret sniff At 'the whole queer caboodle.' Why do they meet? How shall I say, good friend? Modern symposiasts seem a curious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... beyond, and on the handsome promenade the best-gowned of Europe, all in the brilliant sunshine of a soft spring day—what could be more charming? And then, suddenly, your unwilling nostrils breathe in a strong whiff of sewage. Have you been mistaken? Surely you are dreaming. The Casino dances on the water. A bevy of girls come out of the Hotel Ruhl to join the Lenten noon-day throng. Nothing disagreeable like sewage—but there it is again! Whew! Where can that sewer empty? Fault of ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... the room Cora Stanton, a Senior, stood with Jerry and the boy who made up the affirmative side of the debate. Cora was prettily dressed in blue taffeta, with a yellow rose carelessly fastened in her belt. Her hair had been crimped and Jerry caught a whiff of perfume. Then she glimpsed a trim little foot thrust out the better to show a patent leather pump and a blue silk stocking. For the first time since she had come to Highacres, Jerry grew conscious of her own appearance. Over her, in a hot wave of mortification, swept the realization ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... go by the Great Britain, many interruptions force me to close, unflavored by one whiff from the smoke of Auld Reekie. More and better matter shall my next contain, for here and in the Highlands I have passed three not unproductive weeks, of which ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Seraph took a long-drawn whiff from his silver meerschaum, and then a deep draught of soda and brandy to refresh himself after the narrative—biggest, best-tempered, and wildest of men in or out of the Service, despite the angelic character of his fair-haired head, and blue eyes that looked as clear and as innocent ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... south, the east, and the west, and told them the stone was red, that it was their flesh, that they must use it for their pipes of peace, that it belonged to all alike, and that the war-club and scalping-knife must never be raised on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the ledge for miles was melted and glazed; two great ovens were opened beneath, and two women—the guardian spirits of the place—entered them in a blaze of fire, and they are heard there yet answering to the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... time came. But there was nevertheless a considerable leavening of new members—young, enthusiastic and uncontaminated by the feuds and paltry personalities of an older generation. They brought, as it were, a whiff of the free, democratic air of the country to Parliament with them, and gave an example of fine unselfishness and devotion to duty which did not fail to have their influence on their elder and more cynical brethren. The feud between the Dillonites ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... endurable even on the oyster bank itself, which was about a mile to leeward of the island, although, by berthing the schooner every night right up in the weather corner of the lagoon, we managed to avoid getting more than an occasional whiff of it during ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... where here and there a dull-red poppy peered at me through withering tangles; lilac and locust had already shed foliage too early blighted, but the huge and forbidding maples were all aflame in their blood-red autumn robes. Here the year had already begun to die; in the clear air a faint whiff of decay came from the rotting heaps of leaves—decay, ruin, and the taint of death; and, in the sad autumn stillness, something ominous, something secret and sly—something ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... from the last meet of the Pytchley that you and I rode to," remarks one brawny, blue-shirted and ankle-jacked giant to another, as they squat on a log, comfortably enjoying an early whiff of "Venus" from their short, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... Attwood, his blue eyes shining with delight. "Hurrah, hurrah, for the Admiral's men!" And high in the air he threw his cap, as a wild cheer broke from the eddying crowd, and the arches of the long gray bridge rang hollow with the tread of hoofs. Whiff, came the wind; down dropped the hat upon the very saddle-peak of one tall fellow riding along among the rest. Catching it quickly as it fell, he laughed and tossed it back; and when Nick caught it whirling in the air, a shilling jingled ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... fetchin' 'em now, would ye, Telly?" he continued after drawing a long whiff of smoke and slowly emitting it in rings. "It's been so many years, an' since I got thinkin' 'bout it I'd like to take a look at 'em, jest to remind me o' that fortunate day ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... the salty, spray-laden breath of the marsh. It seems fairly to line the lungs with ozone. I know how grass-fed cattle feel at the smell of salt. I have the concentrated thirst of a whole herd when I catch that first whiff of the marshes after a winter, a year it may be, of unsalted inland air. The smell of it stampedes me. I gallop to meet it, and drink, drink, drink deep of it, my blood running redder with ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... light from the gunboat, a whiff of smoke. This time the shell finds its target. Myriads of sparks are whirled in a mad dance to the heavens, then drop again like golden rain into the river. Shell followed shell. The old warship, engaged in its last great battle, fought grimly on. Like the old Guard, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... have given to either Phorenice or myself little enough of concern, as they are the trivial and common incidents of every siege; but the mammoth on which we rode had not been so properly schooled. When the first blue whiff of smoke came to us down the windings of the street, the huge red beast hoisted its trunk, and began to sway its head uneasily. When the smoke drifts grew more dense, and here and there a tongue of flame showed pale beneath the sunshine, it stopped ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... me, my bucko—to me and to the rest of the boys. Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn's tub we can drink and sing if we want to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you've had it, you'll get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to go, and this was a kind of safety valve. Already half of them are beginning to knock in ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... fool's coat shall have a cast of martins and a whiff. To the health of Captain Rinocerotry! Look to it; let him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... levels for the granddaughter of the good-wife Marcile. That petite personne, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady. One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a cruche ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... absolutely the thing itself! Prince Ludwig had come with a sincere desire to see America. Every one knew that he was not seeing it at all. He would go back with memories of bands and flags and people all dressed up standing before him making polite speeches. But would he carry back one small whiff of the spirit of the country? Again Senator Bruner looked about him. The Speaker of the House was just beginning laying the stair carpet; a judge of the Supreme Court was contending hotly for a better hammer. "It's an insult to expect any decent man to drive tacks with a hammer like this," he ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... forgot all about Ike, but we once smelt a whiff of tobacco, which seemed to be mingled with the sweet scent of the ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... that, because none of the other Congregational ladies was half as pretty. To-night Aunt Isabel had on a billowy pale-blue organdy, and she looked more like an angel than ever. An ethereally radiant, laughing, vivacious angel. And whenever she moved near you, you caught a ghostly whiff of that delicious perfume. (Missy now knows Aunt Isabel got it from little sachet bags, tucked away with her clothes, and from an "atomizer" which showered a delicate, fairy-like spray of fragrance ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... set herself to build the foundations of a nation. She did not know whether she could do what she had set herself to do; but she began with that same dogged idealism and faith in the future which had buoyed up her first settlers; and there were dark days during her long hard task, when the whiff of an adverse wind would have thrown her into national bankruptcy—that winter, for instance, when the Canadian Pacific had no money to go on building and the Canadian government refused to extend aid. Had the Kiel Rebellion of '85 not compelled the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... as he stood in his office, hat in hand, and a finger pointing to a prescription on his desk, which he was directing Narcisse to give to some one who would call for it, there came a sudden hurried pounding of feminine feet on the stairs, a whiff of robes in the corridor, and Mary Richling rushed into his presence all tears ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... from his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding. Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse. Then he went on, carefully and silently, on foot. Soon he heard voices. Again ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... Mussorgsky—a discovery which one finds some difficulty in crediting. Later, Debussy was undoubtedly affected, in a slight degree, by Cesar Franck; and there were moments—happily infrequent—during what one may call his middle period, when a whiff of the perfumed sentiment of Massenet blew disturbingly across his usually sincere and poetic pages. But for traces of Liszt, or Berlioz, or Brahms, one will search fruitlessly. That he does not, to-day, touch hands at any point with his brother musicians of the elder school ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... that brings a whiff of burning powder to one's nostrils.... In some way he blazons the scene before our eyes, and makes us feel the very impetus of bloody war."—Chicago ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... countries made fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and we tried the same plan over and over again. Indeed we spent the better part of several days trying to get fire in that way, but without success; we could not even raise a whiff of smoke. That was about the worst misfortune that happened to us, for without fire to protect us at night, or to cook food during the day, we were continually in difficulties. But it was not long before we discovered a method of cooking after a fashion without fire. Of course you will ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... One has a whiff of fragrant woodlands and serene hay-cocks, a breath of cool air from the Jungfrau's snows, a sniff of delectable bacon and toast—and a zest for breakfast. And one sets about it with interest, with the breakfast of the next day as a thing to ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... moment, not without a whiff about him of the cigarette over which he had lingered so. It relieved him to see the two ladies seated opposite each other in the bow window, and to hear something like a laugh in the air. Perhaps they were discussing other things, and not this momentous marriage ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... bread and stirred up her griddle cakes for morning. It was early in the season to start with them, but with the first cold whiff Mr. Leverett began to beg for them. Then she fixed her fire, turned down her sleeves, took off the big apron that covered all her skirt, and rejoined the three by ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... his hat in the closet, opened the incubator on his culture tubes, trying to look busy. He slammed the door after one whiff and gripped the edge of the work table with ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not go to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and who feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted gesture the lock of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his mother, alas! of his mother, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... end. For him the old life on the range was dead—for had not Dill made him see it so? And did not every raw-red fencepost proclaim anew its death? For every hill and every coulee he buried something of his past and wept secretly beside the grave. For every whiff of breakfast that mingled with the smell of clean air in the morning came a pang of homesickness for what would ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... could you take me for anything but a workman? So I am. Chemistry is one of my hobbies, and I spend hours a day in my laboratory yonder. I have only just struck work, and as I had inhaled some not-over-pleasant gases, I thought that a turn down the road and a whiff of tobacco might do me good. That was how I came to meet you, and my toilet, I fear, corresponded only too well with my smoke-grimed face. But I rather fancy I know you by repute. Your name is Robert ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... ourselves down according to custom in the same manner. The attendants were constantly on the move, some carrying fans made of feathers to whisk away the flies; another a lighted pipe, which was passed from one prostrate figure to another, each taking a whiff or two, while the rest were engaged in shampooing the royal personages.... Conversation, it may readily be imagined, was not well maintained under these trying circumstances, and had it not been for some excellent watermelons which were handed to us, the tedium of the interview would ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... your eye on a man. And I know him, zat man! When he is tired of you—whiff, away you go, a puff of smoke! And you zat I should make a Queen of Opera! A Queen? You shall have more rule zan twenty Queens—forty! See" (Mr. Pericles made his hand go like an aspen-leaf from his uplifted wrist); "So you shall set ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... living that way you would be no worse than you are now, selling drinks to people—beastly beer and spirits, rotten stuff fit to make an old he-goat yell if you poured it down its throat. Pooh! I can't stand the confounded liquor. Never could. A whiff of neat brandy in a glass makes me feel sick. Always did. If everybody was like me, liquor would be going a-begging. You think it's funny in a man, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... is nursed until it is two years old or older, and learns to smoke and to walk about the same time. The family pipe is laid upon the couch, and papa, mamma, and the children take a solacing whiff as the spirit moves them. These pipes are identical with those used by the Chinese, and hold but half a thimbleful of tobacco, the smoke being inhaled and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... had a most generous and broadly open nose, and who was not blest with hands to hold it fast with, grew restive as the first whiff struck him; which resulted less, I suppose, from the intrinsic vileness of the smell than from the fact that he, in common with all peace-loving animals, had aroused in him an instinctive terror by the odor of blood. Pablo's voice, ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... Red Hen came quickly in, and shut the door and locked it. "I'm glad I'm safely in," she said. Just as she said it, she turned round, and there stood the ugly old Fox, with his big bag over his shoulder. Whiff! how scared the little Red Hen was! She dropped her apronful of sticks, and flew up to the big beam across the ceiling. There she perched, and she said to the old Fox, down below, "You may as well go home, for you ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... but the smell of her is the most unpleasant thing about her. She's been tubbed and scrubbed and massaged and perfumed twice a day ever since I came here and she smells worse than a polecat, anyhow, all day long, even the moment after her maid has finished her toilet. A whiff of Meffia sets me frantic. I'd be capable of any crime to ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... fight, an' did. What's more, they were three good barks and nigh three hundred men to our sixty-eight men paddlin' in canoes. Ah, that was a day's work, if you will! I saw Peter Harris, as brave a commander as ever flew the black whiff, shot through both legs, but he was a-swingin' his cutlass and tryin' to climb the Spaniard's side with the rest when our canoe boarded. Through most of that battle we was standin' in bottoms leakin' full of bullet holes, a-firin' into the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... taken it from any one else, but the whiff of burning tobacco, as Carlsen lit up, gave him an irresistible craving for a smoke. Besides, it wouldn't do for the doctor to know he mistrusted him. If he was to be a part of the ship's life, there was small sense in acting ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... critic is in his reception of contemporary work; and Lamb must have found it much easier to be right, before every one else, about Webster, and Ford, and Cyril Tourneur, than to be the accurate critic that he was of Coleridge, at the very time when he was under the 'whiff and wind' of Coleridge's influence. And in writing of pictures, though his knowledge is not so great nor his instinct so wholly 'according to knowledge,' he can write as no one has ever written in praise of Titian (so that his very finest sentence describes a picture of Titian) and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... I shall come to you. I have heaps of work pour manger. Till the spring I must work—that is, at senseless grind. A ray of liberty has beamed upon my horizon. There has come a whiff of freedom. Yesterday I got a letter from the province of Poltava. They write they have found me a suitable place. A brick house of seven rooms with an iron roof, lately built and needing no repairs, a stable, a cellar, an icehouse, eighteen acres of land, an excellent meadow ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... surprise me. But I was not prepared for what occurred soon afterward. Noticing a steamy vapor rising from a hole in the snow by the protruding roots of an overturned tree, I walked to the hole to learn the cause of it. One whiff of the vapor stiffened my hair and limbered my legs. I shot down a steep slope, dodging trees and rocks. The vapor was rank with the odor ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... road; now joining in conversation with a passenger, shrewd, sensible, and respectful; now exchanging a little elegant badinage with the coachman; now bowing to a pretty girl; now quizzing a passer-by; he was off and on his seat in an instant, and, in the whiff of his cigar, would lock a wheel, or unlock ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... the victory was felt everywhere. Not only were Max and Pete and Hilda jubilant over it, but the under-foremen, the timekeepers, even the laborers attacked their work with a fresher energy. It was like the first whiff of salt air to an army marching to the sea. Since the day when the cribbing came down from Ledyard, the work had gone forward with almost incredible rapidity; there had been no faltering during the weeks when Grady's threatened catastrophe was imminent, but now that ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin

... To-day all things are possible again! The fool has learned wisdom, and, I hope, become a man. But come," said he in a more natural tone, "let us get back to our ditch, and, while you tell me the particulars, if you don't object I should much like to try a whiff at that pipe ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... Roger had left the neighbourhood. In spite of all that Mrs. Gibson had said about Roger's visits being ill-timed and intrusive, she began to feel as if they had been a very pleasant variety, now they had ceased altogether. He brought in a whiff of a new atmosphere from that of Hollingford. He and his brother had been always ready to do numberless little things which only a man can do for women; small services which Mr. Gibson was always too busy to render. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... me such a bundle of nerves as I am now, that I couldn't have done it," he said. "But when I'm doing the doctor job I'm a different being; I lose myself. I just gave him another whiff of A.C.E., called to the nurses to fetch candles and got on with it. He's walking about London ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... him like that?" Nellie interrupted, jumping up and coming between the two men. Ned leaned eagerly forward, his hands on his knees, his eyes flaming, his face quivering, his teeth showing. Geisner leaned back quietly, alternately sipping his wine and water and taking a whiff from his cigarette. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... the corner to enter the passage; then you come plump upon another from the hall door; then comes another, fit to knock you down, as You turn to the upper passage ; then, just as You turn towards the queen's room, comes another; and last, a whiff from the king's stairs, enough to blow you half a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... It seems to me such an invention ought to be of vast use in a forced march. Then at night it might be used as a sort of tent, or in a heavy rain it would form a temporary shelter. What do you think of the idea?" His friend had listened with half-closed eyes. He blew a whiff of cigarette smoke from ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... might be arrested and the fair hopes of the missionary pioneers yet be justified. So long as they soak maize in the streams until it is rotten and eat it together with dried shark—food the merest whiff of which will make a white man sick; so long as they will wear a suit of clothes one day and a tattered blanket the next, and sit smoking crowded in huts, the reek of which strikes you like a blow in the face; so long as they will cluster round dead bodies during their tangis ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... hoarse and red-eyed from the whiff of phosphorus smoke, spoke with him. The U.P. man had sagged drunkenly into a chair, but the other newsmen noted that Dr. Barnes glanced at them as he spoke, ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth

... the truth when he speaks of his "whiff of song." All his notes are call-notes, and are addressed directly to his mate. The songbirds take up a position and lift up their voices and sing. It is a deliberate musical performance, as much so as that of Nilsson or Patti. The bluebird, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debt which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... sacrilegious adaptation, to a respectable-looking old gentleman, sitting out of doors upon a chair, and smoking his pipe—"c'est dommage, Monsieur, qu'on a converti l'eglise a"—He stopped me: raised his left hand: then took away his pipe with his right; gave a gentle whiff, and shrugging up his shoulders, half archly and half drily exclaimed—"Mais que voulez vous, Monsieur?—ce sont des evenemens qu'on ne peut ni prevoir ni prevenir. Voila ce que c'est!" Leaving you to moralize upon this comfortable morceau of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... enough I'll say, when you get a whiff of the hell-fire. Better wait here 'til I find a way through the brush. An' keep out of reach of the horse's heels with that slicker on. You can't never trust a cayuse, 'specially when they can't more'n half see. They're liable to take a crack ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... inhaled this air freely, I sought the conduit pipe, which conveyed to us the beneficial whiff, and I was not long in finding it. Above the door was a ventilator, through which volumes of fresh air renewed the impoverished atmosphere ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... long whiff from his pipe, "I must have been a great way off; and these same offers must have been ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... white and dull over the ground on a winter's morning, which will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away, and the sun would shine down upon men again. If you want to be a happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as a specific by itself. There are other things to be taken in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... the void of space, from where it showed a reddish grey behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedlar, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... she caught a whiff of burnt syrup, she hurried to the kitchen, where she found that her berries had boiled over, and were hissing and sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of smoke so dense that she did not see the person who stood on the threshold of the door until ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... deliberation Bob returned the pipe to his mouth. He emitted another whiff or two ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... after a long and thoughtful whiff from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... tears and rejecting smoke through her nose. The Markgraf, feigning to kiss her, had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not get angry, did not utter a single word, but glared at her possessor with anger aroused way down at the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... results the glass must be placed in dry air before it has appreciably cooled. This is easily done in the case of electrometer jars, and so long as the air remains perfectly dry through the action of sulphuric acid or phosphorus pentoxide, the jar will insulate. The slightest whiff of ordinarily damp air will, however, enormously reduce the insulating power of the glass, so that unvarnished glass surfaces must be kept for apparatus ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... notions as to how to get rid of the exhalations from drainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever found its way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he had built in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feet square all the way up. At its bottom it widened out into a chamber fully ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... the first time, he had got a whiff of something unwholesome about the fellow—bad nerves, bad company, something on hand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who must have had a key to Cavenaugh's apartment, for he was evidently there when Cavenaugh returned at seven o'clock. Probably it was the same man ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... chance for a fair shot. Sneaking forward with the utmost caution, they were surely within twenty-five yards, but still the bushes screened the crab-eaters. As the hunters sneaked, the old bear stopped and sniffed suspiciously; the wind changed, she got an unmistakable whiff; then gave a loud warning "Koff! Koff! Koff! Koff!" and ran as fast as she could. The hunters knowing they were discovered rushed out, yelling as loudly as possible, in hopes of making the bears tree. The old bear ran like a horse with Skookum yapping bravely in her rear. The ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... had that jerky interjectional quality which belonged to people with a common grievance, but a different individual experience. Mr. Winslow had been unable to shave. Mrs. Markham, incautiously and surreptitiously opening a port-hole in her state-room for a whiff of fresh air while dressing, had been shocked by the intrusion of the Pacific Ocean, and was obliged to summon assistance and change her dress. Jack Crosby, who had attired himself for tropical shore-going in white ducks and patent leathers, ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... on his bicycle, and came in bringing a whiff of heartiness, self-complacency, and fresh air, saying, "Hallo! hallo! hallo! Priceless to find you in, Gillie!" All he got for it was that ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... radicals, to interfere with the work, but they were suppressed with comparative ease. The last uprising of the Parisian populace which threatened the Convention was effectually quelled (October, 1795) by a "whiff of grape-shot" discharged at the command of a young and obscure major of artillery, Napoleon ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... Quilp, turning to the boy; 'fill your pipe again and smoke it fast, down to the last whiff, or I'll put the sealing-waxed end of it in the fire and rub it red hot upon ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... some minutes later Dorothea was pouring her uncle's coffee, and as he took the cup she brought him he bowed ceremoniously, then put it down to light a cigar. There were times when he wished Dorothea were his. If she were his— He took a long whiff of his cigar and threw ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher

... — N. wind, draught, flatus, afflatus, efflation^, eluvium^; air; breath, breath of air; puff, whiff, zephyr; blow, breeze, drift; aura; stream, current, jet stream; undercurrent. gust, blast, squall, gale, half a gale, storm, tempest, hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, samiel, cyclone, anticyclone, typhoon; simoon^, simoom; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... said his father. 'If you are satisfied, I shall try to be the same. Have you your pipe with you?—At your age I hadn't begun to smoke, and I should advise you to be moderate; but we'll have a whiff ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... for nothing," said his host, putting his long clay to the candle, and puffing out volumes of smoke. Tom felt more and more unequal to the situation, and filled his pipe in silence. The first whiff made him cough as he wasn't used to the fragrant ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... always liked. Couldn't she spend time to walk down there across lots and get some? Sally thought the onions could not be left. Truth to tell, her heart was in her mouth. She had been playing with edge-tools; but just then she smelt a whiff of smoke from Long Snapps's pipe, and the resolve of last night came back; her face relented, and George, seeing it, used his utmost persuasiveness; so the result was, that Sally washed her hands at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... She-wolf, like his mother, yet different, a stranger, and instinctively the stray Cub sank to the earth, as the old Wolf bounded on him. No doubt the Cub had been taken for some lawful prey, but a whiff set that right. She stood over him for an instant. He grovelled at her feet. The impulse to kill him or at least give him a shake died away. He had the smell of a young Cub. Her own were about his age, her heart was touched, and when he found courage ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the bulletin boards. She knew by heart that first list after Las Guasimas. One glance had burned it in forever. It had become one of the indelible scars of a lifetime. Yet those were the names of strangers. If a whiff from an avalanche can fell trees a mile away, how if ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... coming toward him, the boy ran for dear life, trying to make the school door before Billy could overtake him. He did, but that was all. Billy had gotten a good whiff of the apples, and that settled it. He would have one of those apples, even if he had to chase the boy all over the school. He was hoping the boy would be so afraid of him that he would throw one of the apples at him. But no such good luck. Up the stairs ran the boy, trying to reach the room ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... Look out! What's the matter with you?" the cab-driver yelled, pulling his horses back and sidewise, but not before the pole of the hack had grazed Blair's shoulder. There was a screech of laughter, a woman's vociferating fright, a whiff of cigar smoke, and a good-natured curse: "Say, darn you, you're too happy to be out alone, sonny!" Blair did not hear them. Shantytown, black and silent and wet, huddled before him; from the smokestacks of the Works banners of flame flared out into ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... "that merely to catch a whiff now and then of a fragrance which is singularly pleasant to me, but which I am denied producing for myself, would add to the things that give me comfort. If you wouldn't mind smoking in the hall now and then, or, better yet, by my fireside, I ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have expected to find him. I think ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... true enough, Colonel," replied the man, ignoring the title of "major," and taking a whiff from his pipe. "That may be true enough, but I calculate nature's got somethin' to say in this world. And I calculate I ain't a-going to risk my life, and the happiness of my wife and five children, by tryin' to stem the ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... dimly lit windows here and there, and the shadows upon the ugly and often patched and crooked blinds of the people cooped within. Nor can you presently pass the beerhouse with its brighter gas and its queer, screening windows, nor get a whiff of foul air and foul language from its door, nor see the crumpled furtive figure—some rascal child—that slinks past ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as you scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, you're young; I was once. 3d Nantucket Sailor Spell oh! —whew! this is worse than pulling after whales in a calm —give us a whiff, Tash. ( They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky darkens — the wind rises.) .. Lascar Sailor By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... are hot and damp, and my legs are stiff with cramp, And the office punkahs creak! And I'd give my tired soul, for the life that makes man whole, And a whiff of the jungle reek! Ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear boys, With office stool and pew, For it's time to turn to the lone Trail, our own Trail, the far Trail, Dig out, dig out on the old trail— The trail that is ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... her to Soames. Left them! Was he sorry? Was he fond of his father? It seemed to him that he did not know. Then, suddenly—as at a whiff of gardenias and cigars—his heart twitched within him, and he was sorry. One's father belonged to one, could not go off in this fashion—it was not done! Nor had he always been the 'bounder' of the Pandemonium promenade. There were precious ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... towns, Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on, From Maine to utmost Oregon; The factory-wheels a rhythmus hum; From brawling parties concords come;— All this I hear, or seem to hear; But when, enchanted, I draw near To fix in notes the various theme, Life seems a whiff of kitchen-steam, History a Swiss street-singer's thrum, And I, that would have fashioned words To mate that music's rich accords, By rash approaches startle thee, Thou mutablest Perversity! The world drones on its old tum-tum, But thou hast slipped from it and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... read in the papers that the Thames in London is most horrible. I have to cross Waterloo or London Bridge to get to the railroad when I come down here, and I can certify that the offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head-and-stomach-distending nature. Nobody knows what is to be done; at least everybody knows a plan, and everybody else knows it won't do; in the meantime cartloads of chloride of lime are shot into the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... Are they hot with you? Here they are heavenly. When the windows are open, the sweet warm air blows up from the river and across the White Lot, and we get a whiff of roses from the gardens back of the President's house; and when I reach home at night, the fragrance of the roses in our own garden meets me long before I can see the house. We have wonderful roses this year, and the hundred-leaved ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... was frightened. He walked in a big circle round and round the place where the plump chicken and the duck had been, and the more he walked, the more suspicious he became. He wrinkled and wrinkled his little black nose in an effort to smell the intruder, but not a whiff could he get. All was as still and peaceful as could be. Little Joe Otter's trout lay shining in the moonlight. The big head of cabbage lay just where Peter Rabbit and Jumper the Hare had left it. Reddy Fox rubbed his eyes to make sure that ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... men in frock-coats and shiny black hats, their women in most delicate veils over European dresses. The figures move quietly and speak softly, and the air is full of the rattle of crickets or cicadas and a pleasant scent of night flowers, and cheroot smoke, with a whiff of old ocean. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... davits, therefore it was to be assumed that her crew had not abandoned her; yet what had become of them? The answer was supplied a little later, for as the Flying Fish, with stopped engines, slowly drifted to within about a quarter of a mile of her, the party of curious gazers suddenly caught a whiff of horrible odour that told the whole story. She was a ship with a ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... a "Hamlet-hesitating monarch," who had it not been for the burly giant Bismarck would have been swept into oblivion by the first whiff of gunpowder. A stickler for religious dogma, the pietists adored him, but the classes despised him; he was one of those men who discuss trifles with elegant ease, but who have no conception of what is behind this present widespread ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... dark: then the veil fell from her eyes and she saw. The truth spoke to her senses first—in the sordid disarray of breakfast, in the fusty smell of the room with its soiled curtains, its fly-blown mirror, its outlook on the blank court. A whiff of air crept in at the open window—flat, with a scullery odour which sickened her soul. In her ears rang the laugh of the woman ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... that does not injure him, is a fool, and he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That's a nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it, pansies? Let me smell of it," and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... at Kettle Point. The old woman lighted up her pipe, and whiffed away with her eyes half shut; after enjoying it for about twenty minutes or so, her old husband thought she had had enough, and taking it from her put it in his own mouth and had his whiff. When he had done, he restored it again to his wife. Underneath another old bedstead were a couple of large dogs, which occasionally let their voices be heard in a dispute; some of the stones on ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... sculpture, for, in addition to the draughtsman's and anatomist's sense of form, he had a strong sense of colour. To good music he was always susceptible. (To one breaking in upon him at certain afternoon hours in his room at South Kensington, "a whiff of the pipe" (writes Professor Howes), "and a snatch of some choice melody or a Bach's fugue, were the not infrequent welcome.") He played no instrument; as a young man, however, he used to sing a little, but his voice, though true, was never strong. But he ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... was shabby and dusty, and the trousers were worn at the heels. He threw his basket into a corner, and then himself on the rough bench nailed against the wall, and there, without speaking another word, he lay sniffing the odour of the meat like an animal going to be fed. Suddenly a whiff from the beer jug came into his nostrils, and reaching out his rough hand he looked into the jug to assure ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... silence. Andrew stood quite still. All around them was the soft weeping of dripping shrubs. An odorous whiff from the walled rose-garden ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... against a conflagration, or a tidal wave or cyclone. At the Cercle Militaire many of the bureaucrats, and especially the doctor who had treated the cow-boy, were for martial law, anyway. Napoleon knew, said the fierce medecin. "A whiff of grapeshot, and the reef would be again gleaming with lights, and the diligences would pour in with loads ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien









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