"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think the gain of having you for a wind buffer would make up for losing you as a crutch," he said, as he hobbled slowly along in his stockinged feet. He had kicked off his shoes when he went to the aid of Mary, and the rising ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... we will, Jack!" announced Bobolink, triumphantly; "for I can see the big timber he said was acting as a buffer above him. Hey! we've got to be extra careful now, because one end of that beam is balanced ever so delicately, and if it gets shoved off its anchorage—good-bye ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... von Rosen, wife or widow of a cloudy count, no longer in her second youth, and already bereft of some of her attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of the Baron's mistress. I had thought, at first, that she was but a hired accomplice, a mere blind or buffer for the more important sinner. A few hours' acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever dispelled the illusion. She is one rather to make than to prevent a scandal, and she values none of those bribes - money, honours, or employment - with which the situation ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... language of legations, so cold, dry, and elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down, those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; it is unnecessary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... more like it. I was in Bick's room just now with a letter to sign, and I tell you, the fur was flying all over the bally shop. There was old Bick cursing for all he was worth, and a little red-faced buffer puffing out his cheeks ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... other gains really out-balance my losses? Henceforth I should, it was true, be leader and chief; but I should also be the buffer between the Olympians and my little clan. To Edward this had been nothing; he had withstood the impact of Olympus without flinching, like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved. But was I equal to the task? And was there not rather a danger that for the sake of peace and quietness ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... morning were reborn as he left the study, unattended. Had he any right to inflict this specimen on Creighton? He could only hope that the detective's sense of humor would prove a buffer between him and his patron's boorishness. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... "it will be time enough, surely, to see the admiral when we are upon the ground. I'll warrant the old buffer is a true brick as ever was: there's no flinching ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... hear about one Fin M'Cool who was a great buffer in his day, and how his wife put the trick upon a big bosthoon of a giant that came down from Munster to bother Fin? Did you ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that as the train was about to start he observed a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her and shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the buffer of the engine and fell ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... a fair hope that the Government would be in a position to solve the Adriatic problem. The Italian delegates in Paris had suggested that, in the independent buffer State, Rieka should have a separate municipal status, and that a narrow strip of land should join the buffer State to Italy. On December 9, a memorandum was signed by the representatives of Great Britain and America, which was the best compromise which anyone had yet proposed. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the Red programme Ontario, and especially industrial Toronto, was regarded as the buffer state. But if the Soviet had succeeded in Winnipeg and further West, then the whole weight of that success marching upon Ontario, with Quebec bringing up the eastern end, would form a sort of nutcracker device from which Ontario would have ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... the Judge's anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting, and shall shoot him the first time he comes to town. An Independent Press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old buffer with a crooked nose, and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not as long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... at all!" returned the boy indignantly. "I'm just here for a blessed buffer, that's what I'm here ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... of the trailing wheels are formed of two 1/2 inch plates, with cast iron blocks between them to serve as guides. The ends of the rectangular frame are formed of plates 3/4 thick, and at the front end there is a buffer beam of oak 4-1/2 inches thick and 15 inches deep. The draw bolt is 2 inches diameter. There are two strong stays on each side, joining the barrel of the boiler to the inside framing, and one angle iron ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... tale, of a somewhat grisly character, which Abner had composed during the holiday season. Bond had taxed him with using this work as a buffer to stave off other work of a practical nature such as was abundantly offered by Giles and his father about the farm; and, to tell the truth, Abner had limited his physical exertions to half-hour periods ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the air every minute some forty tons of water in the form of steam in a high state of elasticity. There were also 24,644 passenger-carriages, 9128 vans and breaks attached to passenger-trains, and 329,163 trucks, waggons, and other vehicles appropriated to merchandise. Buckled together, buffer to buffer, the locomotives and tenders would extend from London to Peterborough; while the carrying vehicles, joined together, would form two trains occupying a double line of railway extending from ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Now for a good fight! It'll be old Welwyn-Baker, after all, you'll see. They won't have the courage to set up a new man at a moment's notice. The old buffer will come maudling once more, and we'll bowl him off ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... said, when I pointed out to him quietly but plainly my opinion of his tactlessness, "what does it matter? There are other people in the world besides the old buffer. And we haven't time to waste making friends, as a matter of fact. The farm ought to keep us busy. I've noticed, Garny, old boy, that you haven't seemed such a whale for work lately as you might be. You must buckle ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... little further, and he met another old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word "buffalo," had evidently conveyed to her mind an old "buffer" whose name was "Lo," probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound. Then, not knowing of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young narrator completed the picture ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the far corner of the cell. A man of peace, this place of blood and confusion was beyond his conception. He was in a daze, his mind having thrown up a buffer against horror. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side will know ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... "Well, old buffer, so you are popular," said he to him. "Your phiz is sold on the heads of pipes and on liqueur bottles and every drunkard in Alca spits out your name as he rolls in the gutter. . . . Chatillon, the hero of the Penguins! Chatillon, defender of the Penguin glory! . . . Who would ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... help her now. Hugo's fortifying love was no buffer against this extraordinary moment. All alone Cally stood with the contemned religious fellow who had unhorsed and disarmed her once again, and now there would be no more weapons. And there was a worse thing here than her mean looking for hypocrisy, and the discovery, instead, of a mad generosity, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... where poor debtors who had regained their freedom might find a refuge and make a new start in life. He decided to found this colony to the south of South Carolina, so that it might not only be a refuge for the oppressed, but also form a buffer state between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. So from George II Oglethorpe got a charter for the land lying between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, and in honour of the King ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the pendulum swung in a strong steel collar and carrying at its end three or more air-compressing pumps set radially, with the piston-rods thrust outwards by a strong spring on each, but with the ends perfectly free from any attachment, yet fitted with a buffer or wheel. As the pendulum moves it throws one or more of these piston-rod ends into contact with the inner surface of the ring, driving it into the compressing pump. At the top of the pendulum there ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... thoughtfully, "that you were the Samson who pulled down the pillars, or will they merely hail you as the deliverer? Will they think of that ghostly ride of yours on the locomotive, I wonder, when you tore screaming through the darkness, with the risk of a buffer on the line at every mile; stepped from the engine, grimy, with your breath sucked out of—you by the wind, and the roar of the locomotive still throbbing in your ears—stepped out to deliver your message to the waiting throngs? Magnificent! A subject worthy of me and my prose! I shall write ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... motionless, I realized that we would have the storm full upon us in a few moments. I had nothing to meet for more than thirty miles, and there was nothing behind me; so I stopped, turned the headlight up, and hung my white signal lamps down below the buffer-beams each side of the pilot—this to enable me to see the ends of the ties and ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... of that very ancient propaganda in England. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 left Europe very much taken aback. Up to that date nobody was afraid of Prussia, though everybody was a little afraid of France; and we were keeping "buffer States" between ourselves and Russia in the east. Germany had indeed beaten Denmark; but then Denmark was a little State, and was abandoned in her hour of need by those who should have helped her, to the great indignation of Ibsen. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... provided with a rusty old musket with a very long barrel. I examined this weapon with much curiosity. China is our neighbour in Eastern Asia, and is, it is often stated, an ideal power to be intrusted with the government of the buffer state called for by French aggression in Siam. In China, it is alleged, we have a prospective ally in Asia, and it is preferable that England should suffer all reasonable indignities and humilities at her hands rather than endanger any possible relations, which may subsequently ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... two Daimler motor engines of 16-horse power, working aluminium propellers of four blades at the rate of 1,000 revolutions a minute. Finally, firmly attached to the inner framework by rods of aluminium, were two cars of the same metal, furnished with buffer springs to break the force of a fall. The trial trip was not made till the summer following—June, 1900—and, in the meanwhile, experiments had gone forward with another mode of flight, terminating, unhappily, in the death of one of the most expert and ingenious ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... you, my gay buffer. I have got a weak, soft place somewhere in my gizzard; I don't know where; if I did, I'd cut it out. About three months ago, just after I brought from Portland one hundred of these new fifty-dollar bills, there was a great cry here for money for some missionary concern. I read something ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... to and fro, as in a street or on a railway; but if he prefers another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a "bumper ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... memory is retained in this register. In arithmetic operations it holds the addend, subtrahend, multiplicand, or divisor. The left 6 bits of this register communicate with the Instruction Register. The address portion of the Memory Buffer Register communicates with the Index Adder, the Memory Address Register, and the Program Counter. In certain instructions, the address portion of the control word does not refer to memory but specifies variations of an instruction, thus, the address ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... the rich Texan grain-fields, from whence he fondly hoped an inexhaustible supply of flour[787] for the Confederates was to come. In short, the great and wonderful expanse that had been given to the Indian for a perpetual home was a mere buffer. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... into two de facto autonomous areas, a Greek Cypriot area controlled by the internationally recognized Cypriot Government (59% of the island's land area) and a Turkish-Cypriot area (37% of the island), that are separated by a UN buffer zone (4% of the island); there are two UK sovereign base areas within the Greek Cypriot ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... majority of the congressional districts. Thus the blunders of Douglas and Chase in 1854 had started the dogs of sectional warfare, and now a solid North confronted a solid South, with only two or three undecided buffer States, like Maryland ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... banishing the ex-conqueror to his island exile, but wished to present any possibility of another Napoleon arising to renew the wars which had devastated and impoverished them. Consequently they agreed to make a kingdom which might act as a buffer between France and the rest of Europe; and to this end they decreed that Belgium and Holland should be one. But in doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in the course of time, undermine their ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... problems for discussion at supper under the stars and on the way to bed at four o'clock in the morning—problems not easily solved by a company of gesticulating freebooters who are for ever making raids, first into stage-land, then into real life, and lifting incidents across the border into that buffer-state where they lead a ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... acceptance of legislation curbing and crippling, if not abolishing, the Upper House, he can either assent or refuse. Assent means the destruction of a portion of the Constitution—and a portion very close to the Throne and which acts as a real buffer against the hasty action of an impetuous and sometimes imperious Commons. Refusal means that the Ministry must resign or go to the country on an issue in which it is quite possible the people will not ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... nearest inhabited star system months away. The secret of the drive couldn't be kept, of course, but the races who used it to build war fleets found it easier to fight with each other than with distant Earth. Later, when faster drives were developed, Earth was protected by the buffer worlds she ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... went on, "do you think you're the only one that's got to work? Suppose you were shut up all day in a factory? Have you ever been to a factory? Do you know the life of a metal-buffer girl at Sheffield, standing in front of her wheel, from morning till ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to ornithology as the flyupithecrick, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a clothes line to it and used ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... having the position of a "buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary. Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar could destroy, is still a great factor ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... rather despised, showed great forebearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to "encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states which protected ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... a month to rest them," insisted the buffer, becoming a trifle panic-stricken; and he tapped the sole of ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages. To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the one, he will protect ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... a lathe or other convenient revolving shaft is available, a buffer made of many thicknesses of cotton cloth is very valuable for polishing tools. The addition of a little tripoli ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... governments. The old Kaiser Franz Josef was a man who guarded everything he had as jealously as a baby guards his toys. At one time when it was suggested to the aged monarch that Germany and Austria-Hungary could establish a great kingdom of Poland as a buffer nation, if he would only give up Galicia as one of the states of this kingdom, he ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... a volume in itself. Briefly, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were represented. Montenegro, with characteristic laisser faire, never appointed a commissary at all, and the work all fell on me. Fortunately, in fact, for I was the buffer state between Serbia and Bulgaria, who were at daggers-drawn. At the necessary meetings the Serb Commissioner talked German and Serb into one of my ears, while the Bulgar shouted French and Bulgar into the other, and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... similar advantage to Russia in Northern Persia. Nothing but a friendly understanding between England and Russia, which should clearly define the respective spheres of influence, will save the integrity of Persia. That country should remain an independent buffer state between Russia and India. But to bring about this result it is more than necessary that we should support Persia on our side, as much as Russia does on hers, or the balance is bound to ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... saith, that he was present at the close of a bruising match between James Cochran Esq., and William Cooper Esq., on or about the sixteenth of October last, when the said James Cochran confessed to the said William Cooper these words: "I acknowledge you are too much of a buffer for me," at which time it was understood, as this deponent conceives, that Cochran ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Cloisterham, "a white-headed personage with black eyebrows, BUTTONED UP IN A TIGHTISH BLUE SURTOUT, with a buff waistcoat, grey trowsers, and something of a military air." His shock of white hair was unusually thick and ample. This man, "a buffer living idly on his means," named Datchery, is either, as Mr. Proctor believed, Edwin Drood, or, as Mr. Walters thinks, Helena Landless. By making Grewgious drop the remark that Bazzard, his clerk, a moping owl of an amateur tragedian, ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... which the Holy War is full. And, besides, it is with Mansoul and her neighbour states of Heaven and Hell just as it is with some of our great European empires in this also. There is no neutral zone, no buffer state, no silver streak between Mansoul and her immediate and military neighbours. And thus it is that her statesmen, and her soldiers, and even her very common-soldier sentries must be for ever on the watch; they must never say peace, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Christ and thou shalt be saved,' the Bible says. It tells us that we have all broken God's holy law, that we all deserve his wrath and curse forever, and cannot be saved by anything that we can do or Buffer; but that 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' He offers this salvation to us as his free gift, and so we are to take it, for we can have it in ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... which influences their policy to the present time. The principality of Dioclea, or Zeta, as it soon became called, was one of the confederate Serb states formed by Heraclius in 622 A.D., to act as a buffer state against the inroads of the Avars. Each state was ruled by a Zupan or Prince who owed allegiance to the Grand Zupan, the head of the heptarchy. But the confederation was very loose, the rival chieftains ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... extravagant rascal, I know it, and I 'm thundering sorry, but that don't help a fellow, I 've got to tell the dear old buffer, and there 's ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... poor old buffer!" her husband answered complacently, his temper restored. "By the way, I've brought in the last number of Dickens. Shall ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... seconds you arrive at the ground-floor, reading your file of the 'Daily Advertiser;' not an egg broken nor a drop spilled. I saw it done in a New York hotel. The air is compressed under the elevator, and acts as a sort of ethereal buffer." ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... Golan Heights is Israeli-occupied with the almost 1,000-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) patrolling a buffer zone since 1964; Lebanon claims Shaba'a farms in Golan Heights; international pressure prompts the removal of Syrian troops and intelligence personel stationed in Lebanon since October 1976; Syria protests Turkish hydrological projects regulating upper Euphrates waters; ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... poured into Europe their flood of black, white, and yellow men. Little Denmark, catching the festive spirit, reached out for Schleswig-Holstein; and the rest, coveting the Kiel Canal, lent a willing hand to the useful tool. Holland, sore from being the frail buffer between the struggling combatants, placed her interests in the British hands, and opened another gate to the heart ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... settlement that will enable us to be more supremely great as nationalists. This is the significance of the League of Nations. It is a plan of hope. It is the only plan which the mind of man has evolved which any number of nations has ever been willing to accept as a buffer against devil-made war. ... It is a monumental experiment which this century and other centuries will talk of and think of and write of because it involves the lives of men and women under it, and there is the possibility of giving our full thought and energy and wealth ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... more's the pity, for it is not only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy tramontana that sweeps along the Chiaja in winter and early spring. Invalids used at one time to inhabit Pozzuoli on account of its mild atmosphere, and even to visit the Solfatara daily on mule-back, in order to inhale its sulphureous fumes, which were then believed to be ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... snow-bank upon which he had fallen, a prisoner to the spot, from the fact that there was no possible way of retreat from it either upward or downward; but in other respects very little the worse for his terrible fall, the snow, happily, proving so deep that it served as a cushion or buffer, allowing the baronet to escape with only a few somewhat severe bruises. The adventure being thus happily terminated, the ship was quickly navigated to the berth she had occupied on the preceding night; ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... keen, nervous, forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche—his adipose serving as a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his insight into the heart of things ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... meet each other in public. Ware a fight! Get them into different parts of the room! Our friends hustle round us. Capulet and Montague are not more at odds than the houses of Roundabout and Wrightabout, let us say. It is, "My dear Mrs. Buffer, do kindly put yourself in the chair between those two men!" Or, "My dear Wrightabout, will you take that charming Lady Blancmange down to supper? She adores your poems, and gave five shillings for your autograph ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fight this big bully in his own fashion without calling on me, but I've taken a hand in the game and put Crothers wise as to principles. I may have to get a few knocks before I am done, but Sandy won't be the buffer. I guess the boy will pick up from now on. He's nervy and stronger than ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... authorities at Camp McDowell, about fifteen miles northward, for a time commanded by Capt. Adna R. Chaffee, Sixth Cavalry. Trouble was known with Pima Indians, who lived across the river, where they had been placed a few years before by Tempe settlers, as a possible buffer against Apache raids. This reservation's extension cost ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... appointed royal governor, and made peace with the tribes; and in 1729 the crown bought out the claims of the proprietors. North Carolina, without a revolt, enjoyed the benefits obtained by their southern brethren. The Cherokees became a buffer against the encroachments of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... might give way under their combined weight, and allow them to plunge downward. A solid phalanx of the sturdy football players had formed directly beneath, and they seemed determined that if anything of this sort took place they would serve as a buffer, so that those who fell through ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... can't be sidetracked," he said. "That K isn't in his name by accident. Look at it,—a regular buffer of a letter! Tell you what, you may monkey with Charles; but when you hit the K look ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... asked any one to drink; and, strange to say, no one resented this. As Vic said: "He was different." Dicky Merritt, the solicitor, who was hail-fellow with squatter, homestead lessee, cockatoo-farmer, and shearer, called him "a lively old buffer." It was he, indeed, who gave him the name of Old Roses. Dicky sometimes went over to Long Neck Billabong, where Old Roses lived, for a reel, as he put it, and he always carried away a deep impression of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ground—I have seen them up to ninety feet in favourable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the coco-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted amid numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... I seemed to have some success, but before long it became clear that the current was too strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I am so constituted that factious thought and effort dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life I have acted as a "buffer'' between conflicting cliques and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was otherwise. But, as Kipling says, "that ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... be served anyhow if it was to be funny, he opined. Otherwise when elegantly and conventionally done you might as well feed in good society, where you were not more bored than here. Had it not been for Bordenave, who was still bawling away, everybody would have fallen asleep. That rum old buffer Bordenave, with his leg duly stretched on its chair, was letting his neighbors, Lucy and Rose, wait on him as though he were a sultan. They were entirely taken up with him, and they helped him and pampered him and watched over his glass and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... charged highest for the lowest seats. Wonder whether a lion ever nipped up and helped himself to some fat old buffer in the Stalls when the martyrs turned out a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... with never relaxing activity until it was driven home to the required depth. One of the most ingenious contrivances employed in the driver, which was also adopted in the hammer, was the use of steam as a buffer in the upper part of the cylinder, which had the effect of a recoil spring, and greatly enhanced the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of prancer; No swigman, swaddler, clapperdudgeon; Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon; No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarkman, be he high or low; No dummerar, or romany; No member of "the Family;" No ballad-basket, bouncing buffer, Nor any other, will I suffer; But stall-off now and for ever, All outliers whatsoever: And as I keep to the foregone, So ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... for the colonies, expressed the policy, when he declared, in 1792, that the object was to interpose an Indian barrier between Canada and the United States; and in pursuance of this policy of preserving the Northwest as an Indian buffer State, the Canadian authorities supported the Indians in their resistance to American settlement beyond the Ohio. The conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve strikingly exhibits England's inability to foresee ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... there has been a renewal of Turkey's vigor and prestige; then again its situation has been rendered yet more precarious. It has been a buffer between the clashing interests of the great powers. Speaking of Turkey's difficult position in this respect, the London Fortnightly Review, May, 1915, ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... ask for a more specific statement. What had His Majesty's Government in mind when it referred to an Indian territory? With evident reluctance the British commissioners admitted that the proposed Indian territory was to serve as a buffer state between the United States and Canada. Pressed for more details, they intimated that this area thus neutralized might include ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... you have guessed—by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... word with Grace. The girl, looking very white and worn, leaned on the arm of Captain Nat, whose big body acted as a buffer between her and over-sympathetic Come-Outers. Mrs. Coffin silently held out both hands ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mamma slam him before you put in the buffer," rejoined the girl. "See here, Vievie. It's too bad, but you must have tattled something to Uncle Herbert, ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... course. There is machinery as well as hay. I think he's the grandest old buffer out, and I'm awfully glad that I've dined with him. I couldn't make out whether he really put anything to eat ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Gatehouse, but, with the usual novelist's license, some points in all three Gatehouses have been utilized for effect. So we can imagine the three friends in succession going up the "postern stair;" and, further on in the story, we can picture that mysterious "single buffer, Dick Datchery, living on his means," as a lodger in the "venerable architectural and inconvenient" official dwelling of Mr. Tope, minutely described in the eighteenth chapter of Edwin Drood, as "communicating by an upper stair with Mr. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... "Hullo, you old buffer!" was equally free from any gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he made it, and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... ROLLERS, and these are the original and only genuine MASSAGE ROLLERS made. The making of others that are infringements on our patents have been stopped or they are inferior and practically worthless. In these each wheel turns separately, and around the centre of each is a band or buffer of ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... THE BUFFER. This rig consists in feeding a man and a dog for nothing, and is carried on thus: Three men, one of who pretends to be sick and unable to eat, go to a public house: the two well men make a bargain with the landlord for their dinner, and when he ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... conversations of 'small-talk' which an exacting society occasionally demands. Who has not suffered from their enervating effects? We are not all possessed of that mental abstraction which La Fontaine succeeded in carrying with him throughout life, forming a buffer from which all idle talk rebounded. He was once asked to dinner by a 'fermier-general' to amuse the guests. Thoroughly bored, La Fontaine ate much and said little, and rising very early from the table said that he had to go to the Academy. 'Oh,' said his host, 'but you are much too early ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... addressed to Russia, Prussia, and Austria, that it had always been England's desire that an independent Poland, possessing a dynasty of its own, should be established, which, separating Austria, Russia, and Prussia, should act as a buffer State between them; that, failing its creation, the Poles should be reconciled to being dominated by foreigners, by just and liberal treatment which alone would make them satisfied. His note, which is most remarkable for its far-sightedness, wisdom, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... estate, weaned from tobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas on the mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboard ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... was undoubtedly true. And he then showed his absorbing interest in literary studies by neglecting the society of Mr. Verdant Green and immersing himself in the perusal of one of those vivid accounts of "a rattling set-to between Nobby Buffer and Hammer Sykes" which make "Bell's Life" the favourite reading of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Parliamentary Papers: Afghanistan, 1878.] (as the late Sir H. Rawlinson told us) of almost uninhabited desert, stretching 2,000 miles from west to east, and nearly 1,000 from north to south, which had hitherto acted as a buffer between Russia and the Mahomedan ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... the rails, would have brought it to without any collision at all; as it was, the shock had not been severe enough to damage the rolling-stock to any greater extent than twisting or straining a buffer or coupling-chain here and there, though it had thrown him against the corner of the net-rail with sufficient violence to slightly graze his forehead, and leave him stunned and a little faint for ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... stepped nearer to the window, and was observing the interior of the room with curious eyes. "Who's the old buffer ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... he'll come on all right," answered the batteryman, with easy assurance. "Maybe he has gone round by the road. Even if he hasn't, I've seen him make that in one jump many a time. He's an active old buffer for his years." ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... thus by their position the barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted as a buffer between us and the French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and immediately the mirror swung noiselessly inwards on its great castor, until it stood diagonally across the closet, where it was stopped by a rubber buffer. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... go up, I wear them," said Dick composedly. "Why not? It's a roomy suit, and I hate a great topper on my head; I've had enough of that here on Sundays. But it's slow up at your office. The chaps there aren't half up to any larks. I made a first-rate booby-trap, though, one day for an old yellow buffer who came in to see you. He was in a bait when he found the waste-paper basket on ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... sheer inability to part from boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness. One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without any ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... too brutal to tell him myself," thought Horace, "when he was so keen on having his case reheard. And it gives him an object, poor old buffer, and keeps him from interfering in my affairs, so it's best ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... woman has to suffer she never loses her faith in man. Remembering what her father was, she always believes there are good men and true in the world somewhere. The recollection of her father becomes a buffer between that woman and the shocks and jars of her after life; because of him, there is nothing distorted in her point of view, and she remains sane. It rather spoils a woman in some ways to have a good husband as well as a good father, because then ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... a line of contact between the two guaranteeing states, such as now existed in their common boundary. The collisions incident to intercourse between red and white men were easily transferred from side to side of such a conventional line, causing continual disputes. The advantages of a buffer state, to use the modern term, would be secured by the proposed arrangement. Writing to the prime minister, the Earl of Liverpool, he said, "The question is one of expediency; and not of principle, as the American commissioners have endeavored to make it. It does not follow, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... an acquisition, and so long as he reigned at the Wells, people made the best they could of him, though it was painfully apparent to the livery-stable keepers, and others, who had the best interest of the place at heart, that such a red-faced, gloveless, drab-breeched, mahogany-booted buffer, who would throw off at the right time, and who resolutely set his great stubbly-cheeked face against all show meets and social intercourse in the field, was not exactly the man for a civilized place. Whether time might have ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... should think that, as an old hand at playing the buffer in family jars, you had a much greater experience. Yesterday she was like an electric eel! And she gave her shock, too! The boy has not been home since. I am almost glad of that; it shows he has some sense of shame. I was ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... fairly spouted out—got her in the leg, and she lost her temper, and began lashing out. Hunt, with great presence of mind, threw a bucket of water over them both. And as soon as they were quiet, dear, good, demure little Tank was put in between them as buffer. ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... remain in Boston he might have held his charge against the ravages of time, secreted a curate, taken on a becoming buffer of adipose, and glided off by imperceptible degrees on to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... she had been struck by a heavy sea. In a moment she righted and shot ahead, and, turning, presented her port side to the enemy. Instant examination of the armour on her other side showed that the two banks of springs were uninjured, and that not an air-buffer had exploded or failed to spring back to ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... temper is tried in humouring one person and conciliating another, he learns to be cautious and reserved and diplomatic, to drop hints and suggestions, to become in a word the first District Visitor of his parish. He flies to his wife for protection, and finds in her the most effective buffer against parochial collisions. Greek meets Greek when the vicar's wife meets the District Visitor. But the vicar himself sinks into a parochial nobody, a being as sacred and as powerless as ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... of his magnificence Hamilton Burton had regarded life-insurance as a poor man's buffer ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... on the W. by Persia, and on the E. and S. by Kashmir and the independent tribes of the North-West Frontier of India and Baluchistan. The chief importance of Afghanistan in modern days is due to its position as a "buffer state'' intervening between the two great empires of Asiatic Russia and British India. During the last quarter of the 19th century our knowledge of the country was greatly increased, and its boundaries on the N., E. and S. were ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the meditative occupation of manicuring her nails. As she rubbed them back and forth on a chamois buffer her thoughts were busy in far ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... left, it must simply be pushed from the opposite side, and the contents are at once emptied clean out. In order that the bodies of the wagons may not touch at the top, when several are coupled together, each end of the wagon is furnished with a buffer, composed of a flat iron bar cranked, and furnished with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... still included the original patrimony of Assur and its ancient colonies on the Upper Tigris, but the buffer provinces, containing the tribes on the borders of Syria, Namri, Nairi, Melitene, had thrown off the yoke, as had the Arameans, while Menuas of Armenia and his son Argistis had by their invasions laid waste the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Paris, would not join the French family and enter into the spirit and body of that great civilization on their borders, whose language was that of their own literature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality was the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, nor German, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... these days of largely corporate proprietorship, the owners of mines are guided in their relations with labor by engineers occupying executive positions. On them falls the responsibility in such matters, and the engineer becomes thus a buffer between labor and capital. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... east of Europe. Poland, Bohemia, Serbo-Croatia (the South Slavs) are the natural adversaries of Germany, of her Drang nach Osten; to liberate and strengthen these smaller nations is the only real check upon Prussia. Free Poland, Bohemia and Serbo-Croatia would be so-called buffer states, their organisation would facilitate and promote the formation of a Magyar state, of Greater Rumania, of Bulgaria, Greece and the rest of the smaller nations. If this horrible war, with its countless victims, has any meaning, it ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... enemies—as British Resident and protector of the infant prince occupying the uneasy throne. The task of regenerating Granthi society from the top, much against its will, and welding its discordant elements into a peaceful, prosperous, and contented buffer state (the thing was known, though not as yet the name) against encroaching Ethiopia on the north, promised to be no easy one, but Colonel Antony was undertaking it confidently, with the support of two or three of his brothers ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... reflects the power of a new idea over the ancient form. The Allied expeditions into Russia met with hostility instead of welcome. The counter-revolutionary forces were overwhelmed by the red army. The buffer states made peace. The Allied soldiers mutinied when called upon to take part in a war against the forces of revolutionary Russia. "Holy Russia" became holy Russia indeed—recognized and respected by ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... "Buffer" is the term used in the English story. Its nearest native equivalent is, probably, our Dead-Beat;" meaning, variously, according to circumstances, a successful American politician; a wife's male relative; a watering-place correspondent ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... "Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from rebuffs," said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had spoken the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... law of subtlety, Knocks our look for moietie, Knocks that Jersey property! So much whisky all set free: Where is SHIELDS to get his fee? Think of melancholy PUFFER, What the aged CHILDS must suffer! JOSHUA F., the noble buffer, "Lost to sight, to memory dear," Think of energetic VAIL Looking round to get his bail, While you're riding on a rail, Or on ocean gayly sail For UNCLE BULL'S dominion! How could you thus fly the track With so many stores ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... the Chief Constable, Knox. Aylesbury must be superseded at whatever cost. If the Chief Constable fails I shall not hesitate to go higher. I will get along to the garage. I don't expect to be more than an hour. Meanwhile, do your best to act as a buffer between Aylesbury and the women. You ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... had no particular colour. Monday was black, and Saturday was gold, but Sunday never had been painted anything. Though a buffer- day between a vanished week and a week of labour coming, it was of uncertain character. Queer, grave people came back to lunch. There were collects and a vague uneasiness about the heathen being unfed and naked. There was a collection, too—pennies emerged from stained leather purses and dropped ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... appearance of an anachronism. He was a stocky man with a round, solid head, small eyes, an undershot jaw, and a nose which ill-treatment had reduced to a mere scenario. A narrow strip of forehead acted as a kind of buffer-state, separating his front hair from his eyebrows, and he bore beyond hope of concealment the badge of his late employment, the cauliflower ear. Yet was he a man of worth and a good citizen, and Ann had liked him from their first meeting. As for Jerry, he worshipped Ann and would have done ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse |
