"Bluff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vulgar. This idea (in the main) was agreed to by Woolston, although his violent "Discourses," which were addressed to the unlearned, contained within them the germ of their intrinsic popularity. Yet even Woolston's works, notwithstanding their bluff exterior, had something more within them than what the people could appreciate, or even the present race of Freethinkers can always understand; for underneath that unrivalled vein of sarcasm, there was in every instance an esoteric view, which comprehended the meaning by which the earlier Christians ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... those of all the towns we have seen put together, begin with the palm-orchard on the left bank. The Jebel el-Safra shows the foundations of what may have been the arx. It is a double quoin, the taller to the south, the lower to the north, and both bluff in the latter direction. The dip is about 45 degrees; the upper parts of the dorsa are scatters of white on brown-yellow stone; and below it, where the surface has given way, appear mauve-coloured strata, as if stained by manganese. Viewed ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... into the canoe in haste, but when we had once rounded the turn of the bluff we floated home slowly. The light of late afternoon is warm and yellow. It cradled the woman in lapping waves, and she sat glowing and fragrant, and her eyes were mirrors of the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... in charge of five different sextons during its existence. Mr. McFarlane was its caretaker in its early years. Owing to his bluff manner he was never very popular with the young people, and one instance I shall never forget. One evening Charles Dickens was to lecture in the church. As the price of the tickets was from one to ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... only a nine days' wonder when the Birkenholts had come to London, but the approaching tournament at Westminster on the Whitsun holiday was the great excitement to the whole population, for, with all its faults, the Court of bluff King Hal was thoroughly genial, and every one, gentle and simple, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... they could soon get to an ostrog that was only about twenty or thirty versts distant. They had not proceeded far before Spiridon saw the tracks of some reindeer; he therefore made his companions stop, and, taking his gun, walked gently round a high bluff on the coast, whither the deer had gone, and had the good fortune to shoot one of them. His companions no sooner heard the noise of the gun than they came to him. They cut the throat of the deer immediately, and drank his blood while warm. Spiridon said that they felt their strength revived almost ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... consideration, his heart failed him. He could not, he said, communicate the details of a tragedy so appalling and he begged to be excused. Another, formed it was thought of sterner stuff, was then fixed upon: but he too, rough and bluff as he was in his ordinary manners, possessed the heart of a generous and sympathetic human being, and also respectfully declined. A third made a like objection, and at last a female friend of the family was ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... feel full of an intense and childish interest. She began herself to watch for Posy, as her mother described her; and whenever the form of a grown-up girl darkened the doorway, she held her breath to listen if Mrs Blossom called her by that pet name. Mr George also was very good to Meg in his bluff way, and bought her a pair of nearly new shoes with his first week's wages, over and above the threepence a day which he paid her. With Mrs Blossom she held many a conversation about the lost girl, who had grown up wicked, and was therefore ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... to, I'd make a great citizen. I don't lay my arrest up against Cavanagh. I'm ready to pass that by. And as for this other business—this free-range war in which the old man is mixed up—I want you to know that I'm against it. Dad knows his day is short; that's what makes him so hot. But he's a bluff—just a fussy old bluff. He knows he has no more right to the Government grass than anybody else, but he's going to get ahead of the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the kind of sea-captain that is found in story-books, but not always in real life. He was stout and grizzled and brown and kind. He had a bluff weather-beaten face, lit up with a pair of shrewd blue eyes which twinkled when he was pleased; and his manner, though it was full of the habit of command, was quiet and pleasant. He was a Martinet on board his ship. Not a ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... I have since learnt, had the conscience to contend that we left the ship sooner than was necessary, and have suffered themselves to be sued for the sums they had severally insured. It was a little after midday when we reached the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves. Our dress, appearance, language, and the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives, and the liveliest curiosity; but with these sentiments ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... extremely picturesque in the pale moonlight, with the grand sandstone bluff of the island of Balhalla standing out boldly in the foreground against the starlit sky; but the coast-line seemed still more beautiful in the bright morning sunshine. The brilliant light was relieved ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... fashion and trudged briskly onward. What romance her hard nature was capable of, was uppermost now, but it had to do strictly with her personal feelings and did not require the picturesque autumn landscape to improve or help it in any way. One man's name suggested romance to bluff, breezy Clara Greeby, and that name was Noel Lambert. She murmured it over and over again to her heart, and her hard face flushed into something almost like beauty, as she remembered that she would soon behold its owner. "But he won't ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... necessary to descend to do this, to arrange the storage battery and the clock switch. Then, so as to throw their enemies off their track, they made landings in several other places, though they did nothing, merely staying there as a sort of "bluff" as ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... have bluffed your way through ticklish situations; that I know. You are looking back on troubles past and gone; Now, turn the tables, and as you have fought and won before, Just BLUFF YOURSELF to keep on holding on! (Try it once.) Just bluff YOURSELF to ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... from Gaston's Bluff, now called Hamilton's Bluff, a London merchant, partner of Mr. Couper. We were four in the carriage; the three ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... two miles inland, when they were attacked by the Turks in overwhelming force, and lost a large number in their retreat to the Beach and then to their boats. This was afterwards retaken by the Gurkhas, who pushed through from W. Beach, and the high cliff on the north side is now known as Gurkha Bluff. The Indian Brigade have their H.Q. here, and this morning there were about 2000 Gurkhas and Sikhs about. I was toiling up the "bloody cliff" when some Gurkhas passed me, thinking nothing of the steep ascent; while I straightened my knees slowly at each ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... that those very savages rode out on the plains in a roundabout way, so as to get in advance of the Cheyennes, and then had hidden themselves on the top of a bluff overlooking the trail they knew the Cheyennes to be following, and had fired upon them as they passed below, killing two and wounding a number of others. You can see how treacherous these Indians are, and how very far from noble ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Sierras, every roll of the billows of the mountains and canyons wedged in between is redolent of memories of the argonauts and emigrants. Yonder are Yuba, Dutch Flat, the North Fork, the South Fork (of the American River), Colfax, Gold Run, Midas, Blue Canyon, Emigrant Gap, Grass Valley, Michigan Bluff, Grizzly Gulch, Alpha, Omega, Eagle Bird, Red Dog, Chips Flat, Quaker Hill and You Bet. Can you not see these camps, alive with rough-handed, full-bearded, sun-browned, stalwart men, and hear the clang of hammer ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... not seen this cottage, but I've seen plans, elevations and photographs of it, and of views from it. It stands on a bluff, close to the lake, the Green Mountains far in the east, and the Adirondacks some twelve miles to the west. The people who own it will answer further questions and state facts fully on request, both ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... of the two valleys stood an enormous building, half manorial, half monastic in appearance. The shore formed, at this point, for an extent of several hundred feet, a bluff whose edge plunged vertically into the river. The chateau and its outbuildings rested upon this solid base. The principal house was a large parallelogram of very old construction, but which had evidently been almost entirely rebuilt at the beginning of the sixteenth ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as a sort of bluff, for a bluff is often as good as a fight if it's properly backed up. As Quantrell and his men rode away in the direction of Dave Daily's neighborhood, I told Elkins to hit out West until he came to the Kansas ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... find a rhyme for "scissors." The following is dated July 7th: "I should not forget to say that the gentle Mr. Bauer seldom forgets to add 'and Mrs. Flinders' good health' after the cloth is withdrawn, and even the bluff Mr. Bell does not forget you...Thou wilt write me volumes, my dearest love, wilt thou not? No pleasure is at all equal to that I receive from thy letters. The idea of how happy we MIGHT be will sometimes intrude itself and take away the little spirits that thy melancholy situation leaves me. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... authority, declared himself supreme head of the Church, and proceeded to confiscate its property, the intention of presentation was abandoned. This is at least plausible, as I do not mean that it was originally designed for a present to "bluff Harry," because it was produced before he was born. But the arms were a work for any time; and I think they were executed just before his rupture with the Pope was known. To pay him a compliment afterwards from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... comparison with the stormy interview of the day before, when the Superintendent attacked me most fiercely. When I began the second interview by saying I wished to resign, he changed front altogether. It had been purely a game of bluff on his part. ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... the head of Circular street, and near the base of a high limestone bluff, in the northerly part of the village, a few rods above the Star Spring, and about three-fourths of a mile from the Congress. Owned by the Congress and Empire ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... last wasn't any bluff. It was just the girl in her talking to another girl. I seen Bonnie Bell give her another look, kind of asting like—she herself was free and friendly every way; but she hadn't been used to this right along lately. So she looks at this Katherine ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... said the admiral, a bluff, harsh-looking old gentleman; "but we were not aware, till we saw Mr. Merton, of the honour Lord Vargrave has done us. I can't think how we missed ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Charlton's manner—bluff, unceremonious, candid, at times rude. He treated women exactly as he treated men, and he treated all men as intimates, free and easy fellow travelers afoot upon a dusty, vulgar highway. She had found charm in that manner, so natural to the man of no pretense, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... attack, or a reconnaissance in force to drive the enemy in. At this time scarcely a day passed without its "affair" of one sort or another. If it was not a night attack, then it was a miniature siege, or a flanking movement—or a piece of bluff! His men were in the saddle night and day. One of those present has related how he practically lived on his horse ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... point of land, and to its now seldom used churchyard the body of the poor sailor was conveyed. His grave was one of the first points of interest to us when our visit to the cape commenced; and many a time that season did I sit and watch the brown headstone topping the bleakest part of the sea-bluff, and as the great voice of the sea, dashing and foaming on the stony beach beneath, sang in its eternal melancholy grandeur, I fancied long, long histories of what might have been that sailor's life; and I wondered sadly if the poor mother knew where ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Bluff!" Var read the words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... the play isn't mine, of course I'll help you, and—" Miss Adair agreed, with the tears dried by the anger and a degree of sanity returning at Mr. Vandeford's skilful appeal to her generosity, which he made when he saw that his attempt to bluff her about calling off the play had failed. Mr. William Rooney came into the box. His hat was tilted on the back of his head and in the corner of his mouth was a large cigar, which he was chewing and not smoking. He ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Senate was "bluff Ben Wade" of Ohio, an old-time anti-slavery man, radical, vigorous, a stout friend and foe. Another conspicuous radical was Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He was born in New Hampshire, went West early in life, and was a chief organizer and leader ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the Mound-Builders was found near the Waterbury mine. Here, in the face of a vertical bluff, was discovered "an ancient, artificial, cavern-like recess, twenty-five feet in horizontal length, fifteen feet high, and twelve feet deep. In front of it is a pile of excavated rock on which are standing, in full size, the forest trees common to this region." Some of the ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... ripping the earth open with their heads in soft, oozy spots, and the burrowing of that sharp and watchful little animal the prairie dog, cause both horse and horseman to run considerable risk when taking a spin over the flat. Hill and dale, bluff and level, the landscape broke upon the eye in one of those infinite and fruitful wastes, which strikes the mind with awe at ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the cannery opened. He had never asked Kaye to hold fish for him. He knew instantly what was in Kaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae was making good the loss of salmon held for him, and Kaye was going to get in on this easy money if he could bluff it through. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... quarter of a mile when I saw two more horseshoes right together in the road. "It seems as if some one is working me," I said. I looked around and could see no one. "And anyway, I accept the bluff," I said to myself, as I picked up the two horseshoes. Then I had two horseshoes in each hand, but I wasn't four times as happy ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... Epsom Downs had gone, and could even settle, possibly, the long-doubtful question, "Who struck Billy Patterson?" Sandy believed in Byrne as it did in no one since the days of General Crook. With two exceptions, all Sandy society was out on the parade, the porticoes, or the northward bluff, as the sun went down. These two were the Misses Wren. "Angela," said Miss Janet, "is keeping her room to-day, and pretending to keep her temper"—this to Kate Sanders, who had twice sought admission, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... "Oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "We never turn loose on anything but the surface of things. Why, if any one started in really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most of our best citizens to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... means. You see, the amputees didn't believe that they would lose their hands. Their superiors didn't believe it, either; they assured each other and their underlings that it was just capitalistic bluff and nonsense. And since they are all even more materialistic and hidebound and unbelieving than you are, they all are now highly confused—at a ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... is a steadily recurring phase of the fixed hallucination in his blood. Ireland never is, but only always has been cursed by English rule. He himself, the Englishman of the day, is always a simple, bluff, good-hearted fellow. His father if you like, his grandfather very probably, misgoverned Ireland, but never he himself. Why, just look at him now, his hand never out of his pocket relieving the shrill cries of Irish distress. There she stands, a poverty-stricken virago at his door, shaking ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... impossible to discover what dire misfortune had thus shaken her nature to its depths; so that the stewards had admitted her to the table, not from any acquaintance with her history, but on the safe testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, a certain Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many a rich feast within him, and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a disposition to break forth into uproarious laughter for little cause or none. It turned out, however, that, with ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the drawing-room opened and a bluff, hearty, round-faced man of fifty, his iron-gray hair standing straight up on his head like a shoe-brush, dressed in a short pea-jacket surmounted by a low sailor collar and loose necktie, stepped cheerily ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dumpy pillars—his native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility. For he was increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism. He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost. There was plenty more where all this came from, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw.) They had not run a mile from shore — they heard no shots behind — When the skipper smote his hand on his thigh and threw her up in the wind: "Bluffed — raised out on a bluff," said he, "for if my name's Tom Hall, You must set a thief to catch a thief — and a thief has caught us all! By every butt in Oregon and every spar in Maine, The hand that spilled the wind from her ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... is pretty all the way from Christiania, but not very striking till the train passes the narrow gorge in which the saw-mill is situated, where there is a tunnel of a few hundred feet that penetrates a bluff on the left. Emerging from this, we are close upon the charming little village of Eidsvold, one of the loveliest spots in this land of beauty. A few minutes more brought us to the station-house, where the railway ends. Here we found ourselves at a good hotel, picturesquely ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... top of the bluff and he made her sit down to rest. A pale moon suffused the country, and in that stage set to lowered lights her pallor was accented. From the colorless face shadowy, troubled eyes spoke the misery through which she was passing. The man ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... Carolina was the arrival, in 1739, of a "shipload," under the guidance of Neil McNeill, of Kintyre, Scotland, who settled also on the Cape Fear, amongst those who had preceded him. Here he found Hector McNeill, called "Bluff Hector," from his residence near the bluffs ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... my notice recently by Mr. William Klingbeil, of Philadelphia. On the New Jersey bank of the Delaware River, a short distance below Gloucester City, the skeleton of a man was found buried in a standing position, in a high, red, sandy-clay bluff overlooking the stream. A few inches below the surface the neck bones were found, and below these the remainder of the skeleton, with the exception of the bones of the hands and feet. The skull being wanting, it could not be determined whether ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... town occupied by enemy troops does not look at its best; but the fact that it was under such conditions when I first knew Swakopmund makes no important difference. The place in its essentials must always be the same. If ever there was a work of bluff Swakopmund is that thing. One fancies the German commercial expert, a Government official, or, maybe, a representative of the ubiquitous Woermann, Brock & Co., looking along this ferocious and awful coast for a spot to found a town that should appear on the maps and be esteemed a seaport. The ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... his eyes to meet the bulging, colorless eyes of Penton. Henty blushed, but his gaze was unwavering. The dogs barked uproariously, scampering to and fro like rats. Mrs. Penton, from the manager's office, tried to quiet them, but they seemed bent on carrying out the bluff they had started, imitating in that respect their ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... he gave no sign of recognition; very likely he was thinking about the cargo of liquor and how he could best counteract its baleful influence. He looked toward the "river house," as the inhabitants had named a large shanty, which stood on a bluff of the Wabash not far from where the road-bridge at present crosses, and saw men ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,—a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... didn't have no trussels 'cross either river, an' they had a passages boat by the name of Walker Moore, an' the warf was up there by the Charlotte railroad (S.A.L.) The Boat would take you from there to the bluff an' then you would have to catch the train to go to Greensboro, and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... too sure," said "Stump." "There's many a slip between the muzzle and the target. Maybe we won't do much after all. Just to make it interesting I'll bet you a dinner at Del's that we will only chuck a bluff. What ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... head like a toy in a window. People tried to get past him in all the ways people try to get through life, in the ways that Saint Peter must grow very tired of at the gate of heaven—bluff, whine, bribery, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... in!" came in a loud, bluff, rather rich voice; and the next minute Archie was face to face with the fine-looking, white-haired, florid Major in command of the infantry detachment stationed at Campong Dang in support of Her Majesty's ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... from streams, it is advisable to select a position in which one or more sides of the encampment shall rest upon the crest of an abrupt hill or bluff. The prairie Indians make their camps upon the summits of the hills, whence they can see in all directions, and thus ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... was a good guesser, for just as he decided it fell to the Harmony halfback to make the attempt. The bluff was dazzling, and deceived nearly all the Chester players, so that it looked as though Oldsmith with the pigskin oval in his grip would have a clear field to the coveted place in the line where he could drop ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... of white hair. He looked not unlike one's fancies of the typical English yeoman, while withal having a strong Yankee flavor. Wearing always a frock-coat, buttoned up as high as any one then buttoned, he carried with it a bluff heartiness of manner, which gave an impression of solidity not, I fear, wholly sustained on demand. There was no such doubt about the fun, however, or his own huge enjoyment of his own stories, accompanied by a running fire of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... them. These Gaelic herders, perhaps in negligible numbers, were in the Yadkin Valley before 1730, possibly even ten years earlier. In 1739 Neil MacNeill of Kintyre brought over a shipload of Gaels to rejoin his kinsman, Hector MacNeill, called Bluff Hector from his residence near the bluffs at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville. Some of these immigrants went on to the Yadkin, we are told, to unite with others of their clan who had been for some time in that district. The exact time of the first ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... to think she had said enough, for her son was generally a very obedient boy, and she turned to walk up the bluff towards the house. But she knew enough about the management of a boat to perceive that, in this instance, her order was ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... equivalent of about twenty thousand a year English, and I considered that Nancy could have a pretty good time on that or less. Anyhow, we had a stiff set of arguments up at the Hurlbird mansion which stands on a bluff over the town. It may strike you, silent listener, as being funny if you happen to be European. But moral problems of that description and the giving of millions to institutions are immensely serious matters in my country. Indeed, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Biff. "By the way, Bobby, I saw a certain party before I left town and she gave me this letter for you. Certain party is as cheerful as a chunk of lead about your trip, Bobby, but she makes the swellest bluff I ever saw that she's tickled ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... the sheepman. One can had a clean hole in it. The other had two holes through it. Those nearest the marksmen wondered why Shoop had not shot twice at his own can. But the big sheepman knew that Shoop had called High Chin's bluff about ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... him up to a fictitious size, and clothed him with imaginary qualities. Col's idea of him was equally extravagant, though very different: he told us, he was quite a Don Quixote; and said, he would give a great deal to see him and Dr Johnson together. The truth is, that Lochbuy proved to be only a bluff, comely, noisy old gentleman, proud of his hereditary consequence, and a very hearty and hospitable landlord. Lady Lochbuy was sister to Sir Allan M'Lean, but much older. He said to me, 'They are quite Antediluvians.' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... deportment. Suavity, repose, that kindliness which is the very marrow and pith of high-breeding, shock you in his manners as acutely by their absence as if they were rents in his waistcoat or gapes in his boot-leather. The "bluff," impudence, and swagger of the Stock Exchange cling to him in society like burrs to the hair of horse or dog. He would be far more endurable, this socially rampant and ubiquitous Wall Street man, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... with no one but myself," he uttered in a bluff tone. "An old bird like me should not have allowed himself to be caught in a pigeon-trap. I am inexcusable. But we want to get rich. It's slow work getting rich by working, and it's so much easier to get the money already made out of our neighbor's pockets! I have been unable to resist ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... BLUFF. But? Look you here, boy, here's your antidote, here's your Jesuits' powder for a shaking fit. But who hast thou got with thee? is he of mettle? [Laying his hand upon ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... feet that amazing chair behaved in a manner wholly unusual and startling; relieved of strain, the springs snapped and whined, there was a violent oscillation of the back, a shudder convulsed the thing, and it sprang after him, much as a tame rabbit thumps its feet upon the ground in an effort to bluff ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... corporal and his squad being ordered to illustrate this for the benefit of the rest of us, the corporal forgot to stand fast, and so away the eight of them went, heading directly for the lake, the captain watching them with amusement, the rest of us snickering. Over the edge of the bluff they went, we heard crashes in the bushes, and presently, when the rest of us were beginning our demonstration, we saw the sheepish return of our lost squad. No one in our company will ever now forget that when we begin our deployment at ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the left, extending from a small bluff near Scott's Dam on the Rappahannock, and covering the roads on the river, along a crest between Mine and Mineral Spring Runs towards and within ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... thought. Change the course two points to starboard. We will go astern unless she gets curious and I suppose she will. Yes, see, she is heading up for us. Hold your course; it would be folly to change it now. If we can't bluff it through, why we can—well, do the next best ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... faces still. They were the women of Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fishing in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. On these ashen, weather-beaten features indigence was drawn in its most ghastly outlines. Every eye was aglow with the wild gleam of fever; and the odors that came from clothes, here, had not the vigorous pungency of the open seashore, but ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bad, did not think it safe to stand into it. From the Friars the land trenches away about N. by E. four leagues: We had smooth water, and kept in shore, having regular soundings from twenty to fifteen fathoms water. At half-past six we hauled round a high bluff point, the rocks whereof were like so many fluted pillars, and had ten fathoms water, fine sand, within half a mile of the shore. At seven, being abreast of a fine bay, and having little wind, we came-to, with the small bower, in twenty-four fathoms, sandy bottom. Just after we anchored, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... to occupy a station at the mouth of the St. Peters, on the Mississippi, have established themselves there, and those who were ordered to the mouth of the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, have ascended that river to the Council Bluff, where they will remain until the next spring, when they will proceed to the place of their destination. I have the satisfaction to state that this measure has been executed in amity with the Indian tribes, and that it promises ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a little bit longer than the reform crowd that went before them, but that's because they learned a thing or two from us. They learned how to put up a pretty good bluff—and bluff Counts a lot in politics. With only a few thousand members, they had the nerve to run the whole Fusion movement, make the Republicans and other organizations come to their headquarters ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... the coast, from one end to the other, varies but slightly in appearance. It is everywhere low, and either sandy or marshy. An occasional bluff of moderate height is to be seen. A large proportion of the line is skirted by low sandy islands, sometimes joined by narrow necks to the mainland, forming inland sounds of considerable extent, access to which is generally impracticable for vessels of much draft ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... his open hands high to the stars, and then ran across the level to the foot of the bluff. It was high and very steep, but wings seemed his—his heart was on the summit, and his body must follow—must get there before the white flame sank into the west—must send his greeting to answer the greeting ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... poise at seventeen, and who crib their exams off their cuffs. He was always at the head of any social plans in the school, and at the dances he rushed about wearing in his coat lapel a ribbon marked Floor Committee. The teachers all knew he was a bluff, but his engaging manner carried him through. When he went away to the state university he made Fanny solemnly promise to write; to come down to Madison for the football games; to be sure to remember about the Junior prom. He wrote once—a badly spelled scrawl—and she ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... cabins whitewashed an' lookin' like new pins, an' look arter dere chillen. Sometimes she'd try to git ole Marse to take dere part when de oberseer got too mean. But she might as well a sung hymns to a dead horse. All her putty talk war like porin water on a goose's back. He'd jis' bluff her off, an' tell her she didn't run dat plantation, and not for her to bring him any nigger news. I never thought ole Marster war good to her. I often ketched her crying, an' she'd say she had de headache, but I thought it ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... imagination felt that he had reached the first slope, up which he was climbing, and then felt when he passed up the second, showers of shale and earth following every moment, till, all at once, there was a cessation of noise, and of the shower, and Samson's bluff voice exclaimed— ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... behind a jutting spur of a bluff a horde of shadows sweep forth upon the open prairie towards the trail on which the solitary rider has disappeared. Here and there among them swift gleams, like silver streaks, are plainly seen, as the moonbeams ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... you are only polite, there is nothing that you may not do. This is a school of manners, you know!" One of the men, Rose by name, laughed—a pleasant musical laugh. "I remember," he said, "that when I was a boy at Eton, my excellent but very bluff and rough old tutor called upon us, and was so much taken up with being hearty, that he knocked over the coal-scuttle, and didn't let anyone get a word in; and when he went off in a sort of whirlwind, my old aunt, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who were friendly believed that if one of the trusted Indians could be brought down to talk with his friends he could satisfy the others that it would be better to remain on the reservation. It was my job to go up and bring him down. We came down the beach past the mouth of the Klamath, Gold Bluff, and Trinidad, to Fort Humboldt, and interviewed many white settlers friendly to the Indians until the representative was satisfied as to the proper course ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... by their heavy oil skins, their progress was slow, although the water barely reached their knees. The Three Brothers was bumping when they reached her and clambered on board over the bluff sides, sticky with ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... sentimental encounter came at the end of a long day's picnicking on the hot sands of the lake beach. Harold—ultimately she forgot his last name—had taken her up the shore after supper. They had scrambled to the top of the clayey bluff and sat there in a thicket, looking out over the dimpled water, hot, uncomfortable, self-conscious. His hand had strayed to hers, and she had let him hold it, caress the stubby fingers in his thin ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you to keep out ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... a bluff on the north side of York River. Here came Smith and his captors, around them the winter woods, before them the broad blue river. Again the gathered Indians, men and women, again the staring, the handling, the more or less uncomplimentary ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... itself. Snow covers its streets in the winter, and the great Mount Cook, clad in snow, hovers away in the far distance. Down towards the south scenery which not even the fiords of Norway can rival extends from the bluff towards the north. Milford Sounds are well known for their great beauty to all those who have travelled in those waters. I doubt whether there is any part of the world which, within such distances, is more magnificently picturesque than that ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... and being joined by other bands, a concerted and deliberate attack was next made on Fort Ridgely. Like too many of our frontier forts, it is a fort only in name. Situated on a projecting spur of the river bluff, it is almost completely encircled by deep and wooded ravines, the edges of which are within a stone's throw of the buildings. A long, two story stone building with an ell, standing in the centre, and a number of log and frame houses ranged ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Upon the bluff of Wreckers' Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling Ball homestead. Tunis pointed it out ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... for other places where more has been spared. Avranches, like Coutances, is a hill-city, and, as regards actual elevation, it is even more of a hill-city than Coutances. But then the hill of Coutances is an isolated hill, while Avranches stands on the projecting bluff of a range. Seen from the sands of Saint Michael's Bay, the site proclaims itself as one which, before the fall of its chief ornament, must have been glorious beyond words. It might have been Laon, as it were, with, at favourable tides at least, the estuary washing the foot of its hill. What the ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... are commonplace, with bourgeois cunning written on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a third bloated, a fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly with all, and not one has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo Solari's statues of Lodovico Sforza and his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the palm of excellence in art and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... mission, lord Basil,' he pursued, with bluff good-humour. 'Dullard that I was, the talk of a fair lady travelling in Marcian's charge never brought to my mind that old story of Surrentum. Here is our royal Totila all eagerness to see this maiden—if maiden still she be. What say you ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... River from its junction with the Dvina River. It is by far one of the most substantial and prosperous in the province of Archangel. It differs very materially from all the surrounding country in that it is located on good sandy soil on a high bluff overlooking the river and is comparatively dry, even in wet weather. It is quite a summer resort town, has a number of well constructed brick buildings, half a dozen or more schools, a seminary, monastery, saw ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... must assume that he has no intention of building, that he is only making an elaborate bluff. How do you know but that he wants to get this right of way and charter so that he can blackmail you and your concerns, not merely once, but year after year? You'd gladly pay him several hundred thousand a year not to use his charter and ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... captured; the battle was lost to all except the black soldiers; they, with their terrible loss, had won and conquered a much greater and stronger battery than that upon the bluff. Nature seems to have selected the place and appointed the time for the negro to prove his manhood and to disarm the prejudice that at one time prompted the white troops to insult and assault the negro soldiers in New Orleans. It was ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... looked upon in high quarters as a big bluff that should have been "called" by Meade while the Army of Northern Virginia was north of the Rappahannock. Meade, however, acted persistently and conscientiously on his own judgment, formed in the light ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... I tried to pursue him, my horse bolted and nearly broke my neck. I caught the guide at last. After a very rough journey we reached the village of Finisterra, and wound our way up the flinty sides of the huge bluff head which is called the Cape. Certainly in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore. There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around, which strangely captivates the imagination. After gazing from the summit ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... west of the Rio Grande, between the head waters of the San Jose and Zuni rivers, a bluff or ridge rises in a valley two hundred feet high. The Spaniards named it "El Moro." One side of this bluff is vertical, and shows yellowish-white sandstone rock, on the face of which are inscriptions; "Spanish inscriptions and Indian hieroglyphics." ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the leaders of the little columns on his left: "Push ahead; cross the stream; gallop northward when you reach the western bank, and attack that end of the village while I strike from the east." He never dreams that behind that solid curtain of bluff Ogallalla, Sans Arc, Uncapapa, and Blackfoot lurk in myriads. "The biggest Indian village on the continent!" they say, he shouts to the nearest column; but only the northern limits of it could he see. Far, far away in the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... to put you in this, so you can watch. I'm going to make a bluff that we're both gone. You'll be as safe as a church in this. No one would ever think of looking for one of us in this armor. You watch, and when he starts to work, then yell ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... so mad," was the bluff response of the guest. "It was just after crossing the creek to the southwest, which doesn't lie in your way. A lot of the beasts took fright at something, and away they went on a bee line for Arizona. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... Ransome not to notice something queer about his father-in-law, something utterly unlike the bluff and genial presence he had known. Mr. Usher seemed to have shrunk somehow and withered, so that you might have said the catastrophe had hit him hard, if that, his mere bodily shrinkage, had been all. What struck Ransome as specially queer about Mr. Usher was his manner and the expression of ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... with the grave and gay, With hoi polloi and with the elite; I've been all over the U. S. A. From Dorchester Crossing to Kearney Street. But aye when I sit in the morning seat Comes to my notice the self-same bluff, Plenty of food, but in this they cheat: Why don't they ever have ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... door—gentlemen of the Life Guards, clad in scarlet, with blue facings, and laced with gold at the seams; gentlemen of the Horse Grenadiers, in their caps of sky-blue cloth, with the garter embroidered on the front in gold and silver; men of the Halberdiers, in their long red coats, as bluff Harry left them, with their ruffs and velvet flat caps. Perhaps the king's Majesty himself is going to St. James's as we pass. If he is going to Parliament, he is in his coach-and-eight, surrounded by his guards and the high officers of his crown. Otherwise his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their salt! But how was Chicago, shut off from the rest of the world, to know? Then there was a ragged telegram describing an outbreak of the populace in New York City, in which the labor castes were joining, concluding with the statement (intended to be accepted as a bluff*) that the troops had the ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... And it was plain they should be landed in the light of day, with a discouraging openness, and even with parade. To sneak ashore by night was to increase the danger of resistance and to minimise the authority of the attack. The thing was a bluff, and it is impossible to bluff with stealth. Yet this was what was tried. A landing-party was to leave the Olga in Apia bay at two in the morning; the landing was to be at four on two parts of the foreshore of Vailele. At eight they were to be joined by a second landing-party from the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the farm-house spreads, Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate, 'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds, Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained. A quiet country-road before the door Runs, gathering close its ruts to scale the hill— A sudden bluff on the New Hampshire coast, That rises rough against the sea, and hangs Crested above the bowlder-sprinkled beach. And on the road white houses small are strung Like threaded beads, with intervals. The church Tops the rough hill; then comes the ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... "You can't bluff him and you can't beat his system," continued the Tennessee Shad. "If you guess don't hesitate; jump at it. The only thing you can do is to wait for his jokes, and then grab the desk and weep for salvation—it's his one ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... with Aunt Josephine. I don't understand why I'm sandwiched in between Havens and Aunt Josephine. Otherwise the arrangement is neat. There is a veranda outside our windows. We sit upon it. Aunt Josephine is a great bluff, but she's clever. She's never napping. I've tried to pump her. Miss Crozier is harmless. She doesn't care. Havens never takes his eyes off Mrs. W. when they are together. She looks at him a good bit, too. They don't pay much attention to me. Aunt Josephine's husband is very ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... you're going to play; just pretend you're getting interested. Then when you're dead sure of a card, crack your fist down on it. Glue yourself right to it, and get out your money with the other hand. When he sees you do that he'll try to bluff you; say you ain't in on it, but you just tell him that don't go, this is an open game and he's got to come through, and the crowd'll back you up. I stuck him one—a whole hundred first crack—and then ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... to project himself into the future. I am quite sure, as we accompany him, he will expatiate on the improvement in the soil which he has effected; that he will point out eagerly not only the domestic but the wild animals about the place; and that he will stand for a few moments on the high bluff overlooking the sea and the marshes and let the wind blow through his dark hair. He is carefully dressed—he always dresses to fit the occasion—and to-day, as he stands in his long boots reaching to ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... the-edge of the bluff and gave a long, quavering cry which could be heard far in the still evening air. Instantly out of the group of jacals came a crowd of men and ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... He enters: a bluff stern warrior, in his undress, that is, without his panoply of armour and arms, in the long flowing robe affected by his Norman kindred at the festal board. She, with the comely robe which had superseded the gunna or gown, and the couvrechef ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... some position of trust under the new government, and at nine o'clock, in obedience to a significant wink and nod from the skipper, he went below and put the saddle and bridle on his horse. Just then the whistle sounded for Cedar Bluff landing, and some of the passengers came down to bid him good-by and ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon |
