"Ruff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... means, Master Paradise," I said courteously. "I desire your company and that of the gentleman from Lima. You will go with me to bring up the rest of my party. The three gentlemen of the broken head, the bushy ruff, which I protest is vastly becoming, and the wounded ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... Little Black Bull that came Over the Mountain, when he observed that Chum was no longer lying at his feet. Indeed, the dog was in a far corner of the room, pressed close to the closed outer door, and with crest and ruff a-droop. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... "'Prefaces,' said Charles Blount, Gent., 'Prefaces,' according to this flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, 'ever were, and still are, but of two sorts, let the mode and fashions vary as they please,—let the long peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff; presbytery, popery; and popery, presbytery again,—yet still the author keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning of his book he enters, either with a halter round his neck, submitting himself to his readers' mercy whether ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... scents with apple-blossom. Traces of her hand are to be seen on the weir beside the ruined mill; and even the canal, along which the barges come and go, has a great white water-lily asleep on its olive-coloured face. Never was velvet on a monarch's robe so gorgeous as the green mosses that be-ruff the roofs of farm and cottage, when the sunbeam slants on them and goes. The old road out towards the common, and the hoary dikes that might have been built in the reign of Alfred, have not been forgotten by the generous adorning season; for every fissure has its mossy cushion, and the old blocks ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Now Sihamba was wearing a fur cape made of wild dog's hide, and, crouched as she was upon her hands and knees, half-hidden, moreover, by a tuft of dry grass, the man took her to be a wild dog or a jackal, and the hair which stood out round her head for the ruff upon the ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... from Angora, in Syria. It is much larger than the common cat; its hair is very long, especially about the neck, where it forms a fine ruff, of a silvery whiteness and silky texture, that on the tail is three or four inches long; these cats frequently spread their tails on their backs, as squirrels do. The colour is generally white, but sometimes ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... sense. A skilful physiognomist would, at a single glance, have detected the sensible woman, in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm judicious step. Even her very garments seemed to partake of the prevailing character of their mistress: her ruff always looked more sensible than any other body's; her shawl sat most sensibly on her shoulders; her walking shoes were acknowledged to be very sensible; and she drew on her gloves with an air of sense, as if the one arm had been Seneca, the other Socrates. From what has been ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... losing a lawsuit for want of a little money (HARPAGON looks grave), and you can easily help me with it, if you have pity upon me. You cannot imagine how happy she will be to see you. (HARPAGON looks joyful.) Oh! how sure you are to please her, and how sure that antique ruff of yours is to produce a wonderful effect on her mind. But, above all, she will be delighted with your breeches fastened to your doublet with tags; that will make her mad after you, and a lover who wears tags will be most welcome ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... it along the length and breadth of Hemlock Ridge, as well as the fact of its being a legacy from the fair exile. No rifle had ever yet been raised against its lazy bulk or the stupid, small-eyed head and ruff of circling hairs made more erect by its well-worn leather collar. Consoling himself with the thought that the storm had probably delayed its return, Jack took off his coat and threw it on his bunk. But from thinking of the storm his thoughts naturally returned again to the impeded travelers ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... and large square sleeves, faced with black flowered damask, turned up above the elbow, from which descended a close sleeve of pearl-coloured satin, puffed out, and buttoned at the wrist; her bosom being covered with a fine flowered linen, gathered close at the neck like a ruff. Her hair, which was of a dark brown colour, was parted from the middle of the forehead; on her head was a plain coifure, surmounted by a gold lace, covered with a small, black, silk cap. In her right hand, which was richly decorated with rings, she held the fatal cup, with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... in Sussex. The vixen was still well within sight from Desdemona's cave when her time came. She leaped and snapped, and faced overwhelming odds without wavering, but her race was run when the wolfhound's great weight bore her to the earth and his massive jaw closed about her ruff ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... been posing for her photograph. Her sad-colored robe arranged itself in serpentine folds at her feet; her hands locked themselves listlessly together in front; and her chin rested upon a cinque-cento ruff. The first thing I did, after bidding her good-morning, was to ask her for news of her little nephew,—to express the hope that she had heard he was better. She was able to gratify this hope, and spoke as if we might expect to see him during the day. We walked ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... inquisitive chap, and will come stalking down to the wires to inspect you. If you like to walk up and down outside his inclosure he will take a turn with you, walking at your side and turning when you do. He is justly proud of his height and his ruff, but there is nothing objectionably haughty about the emeu; I have always found him ready for a quiet chat. He will eat various things, like the ostrich; so that one regards him with a certain respect, not to say awe, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... size he was, an' they come along an' told it. Then someone else sees him, er another one, an' he recollects that he heard tell of a monstr'us big wolf er dog, he cain't recollect which, so he splits the difference an' makes him half-dog an' half-wolf, an' he adds a big ruff onto his neck fer good measure, an' tells it 'round. After that yo' kin bet that every tin-horn that gits within twenty mile of Spur Mountain will see him, an' each time he gits bigger, an' his ruff gits bigger. It's like ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... for a fancy ball that was to come off that night. The two young ladies attired themselves with much care, each with a view to effect. Margaret looked particularly to the assumption of a certain dignity, and her costume for the evening had been chosen with that end in view. A ruff, and her grand-mother's rich silk brocade, did give to her tall person all the ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... head was bald; the hair on its sides short and frizzly. His beard was of a reddish tinge, trimmed square and bushy, beneath which his white ruff seemed to glisten from the sudden contrast. His forehead was high and retreating; his face pale, and-his cheek hollow and slightly wrinkled. His nose was small, looking ill suited to the other features, which were large and strongly-marked. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... extreme left of the stage the contralto, in tights and plush doublet, turned to the audience, extending her hands, or flinging back her arms. She raised her eyebrows with each high note, and sunk her chin into her ruff when her voice descended. At certain intervals her notes blended with those of the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the yellow tusks of eye-teeth, and the blackened stumps and shrunken gums revealed to me every time she spoke. She wore a print dress made neatly enough which was very clean, and a black crape ruff round her sallow neck. The shop was small but clean and at the back I saw, a kind of little sitting room. Into this I went while she ran up-stairs to prepare the room for my inspection. The carpet was the usual horribly ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... vill vander avay." So den Rudolph comes oud, und she vants to rush of his arms, but dot pluddy fool voodent allow dot. He chucks her avay, und says, "Don'd you touch me, uf you please, you deceitfulness gal." I dold you vot it is, dot looks ruff for dot poor gal. Und she is extonished, und says, "Vot is dis aboud dot?" Und Rudolph, orful mad, says, "Got oudsiedt, you ignomonous vooman." Und she feels so orful she coodent said a ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... velvet trimmed with silver. We had not come out of the convent when the King passed through the square on his way to see Quelus, who was then sick. He had with him the King my husband, D'O———, and the fat fellow Ruff. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... nose to the point of its tail, and lives principally in trees, although it can run very swiftly along the ground: when not provoked or disturbed it moves quietly about, with its frill lying back in plaits upon the body: but it is very irascible and, directly it is frightened, elevates the frill or ruff and makes for a tree; where if overtaken it throws itself upon its stern, raising its head and chest as high as it can upon the forelegs, then doubling its tail underneath the body and displaying a very formidable set of teeth. From the concavity of its large frill it boldly ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Gordon with her dark hair drawn back, in front, over a cushion, or some support that gave it waviness; round and round the head, between each rich mass, were two rows of large pearls, until, at the top, they were lost in the folds of a ribbon; a double row of pearls round the fair neck; a ruff, opening low in front, a tight bodice, and sleeves full to an extreme at the top, tighter toward the wrists, seem to indicate that the dress of the period of Charles I had even been selected for this most lovely portrait. The head is ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the dinner. This was the old Marechal de Bassompierre; he had preserved with his white locks an air of youth and vivacity curious to see. His noble and polished manners showed a certain gallantry, antiquated like his costume—for he wore a ruff in the fashion of Henri IV, and the slashed sleeves fashionable in the former reign, an absurdity which was unpardonable in the eyes of the beaux of the court. This would not have appeared more singular than ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... you end like a fat farmer, repeating annually the price of oats, and discussing stale newspapers? There have you got, I hear, into an old gallery, that has not been glazed since Queen Elizabeth, and under the nose of an infant Duke and Duchess, that will understand you no more than if you wore a ruff and a coif, and talk to them of a call of Serjeants the year of the Spanish Armada! Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them, as if you talked the dialect of Chaucer; for with all the divinity ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the scalps of the slain. The warrior wore no regalia so imposing as his war-bonnet with its crown of golden eagle feathers. Before the coming of the horse the flap at the back rarely extended below the waist, but when the warriors came to be mounted, the ruff of feathers was so lengthened that when the Indian was dismounted it trailed on the ground. The making of a war-bonnet was accompanied by song and ceremony. Each feather before it was placed in position was held in the hand and had recounted over it the story of some war honour. A bonnet ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... independent thinker. Osborne Gordon had recommended him to read Hooker, and he caught the tone and style of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" only too readily, so that much of his work of that winter, the more philosophical part of vol. ii., was damaged by inversions, and Elizabethan quaintness as of ruff and train, long epexegetical sentences, and far-sought pomposity of diction. It was only when he had waded through the chaos which he set himself to survey, that he could lay aside his borrowed stilts, and stand on his own feet in the Tintoret descriptions—rather stiff, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... said Steve suddenly, after they had walked on for another ten minutes; for Skene had suddenly seemed as if he had conceived it to be his duty to turn himself into as near a resemblance to an arctic wolf as he possibly could. His ears were laid back, his eyes lurid, his teeth bared, and the thick ruff above his neck and shoulders set up, bristling and waving as if swept by a ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... be eminently simple, for you will find the time coming when to button a cuff or arrange a ruff will be a matter of absolute despair. You lie disconsolate in your berth, only desiring to be let alone to die; and then, if you are told, as you always are, that "you mustn't give way," that "you must rouse yourself" and come on deck, you will appreciate the value of simple attire. ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... had just begun to apply the tar and feathers to him when Curtis had stopped the process. He had only a shaking ruff of long feathers around his neck. They lifted the runaways into their saddles. Purvis started off at a gallop, shouting "Come on, Bart," but ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... sleeves rolled back Making a salad in a big blue bowl. The thick tufts of his black rebellious hair Brushed into sleek submission; his trim beard Snug as the soft round body of a thrush Between the white wings of his fan-shaped ruff (His best, with the fine lace border) spoke of guests Expected; and his quick grey humorous eyes, His firm red whimsical pleasure-loving mouth, And all those elvish twinklings of his face, Were lit with ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... success, he looked round for Lady Delacour, from whom he expected the honours of his triumph. She had left the room, but soon she returned, dressed in the character of Queen Elizabeth, in which she had once appeared at a masquerade, with a large ruff, and all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... bottles parchment labels were tied that stuck out stiffly. A stout woman in very full skirts sat in a large armchair at the foot of the bed. She wore a queer white cap, the like of which Dickie had never seen, and round her neck was a ruff which reminded him of the cut-paper frills in the ham and beef shops in ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... puffed at the shoulders, the bodice tight across the breast and swelling at the waist, the skirt voluminous. On either side of her bosom, sheer linen, puckered by golden rosettes, mounted to form behind her neck a little ruff. Over her golden hair, every strand of which had been drawn back strictly from her brow, a white veil was clasped, behind her ears, by a band of pearls and amethysts cut ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... description. I incline to believe it to be the Demoiselle, Anthropoides Virgo, which is frequently seen as far north as Lake Baikal. It has a tuft of pure white from the eye, and a beautiful black pendent ruff or collar; the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... their gleams on vanished roses in the old brocade; on dingy armor of those who had fought with Charlie Stuart; on stately mahogany, old pewters, and on portraits of the fighting Ravenels of days long gone. There was Malcom, who died music-mad; Des Grieux, the one with ruff and falcon, said to be a Romney; and that Francis, fourth of the name (whom the present Francis most resembled), who had lost his life, the story ran, for a ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... been short at best, and convert his gait into an absurd waddle. His face was disfigured by a scar across one cheek that so drew that corner of his mouth downward as to produce a peculiarly forbidding expression. He also wore a bristling iron-grey beard that grew in form of a fringe or ruff, and added an air of ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... to Lord Hunsdon. This procession is led by Lady Hunsdon, who no doubt was the leader likewise of the fashion; but it is impossible, with our ideas of grace and comfort, not to commiserate this unfortunate lady; whose standing-up wire ruff, rising above her head; whose stays, or bodice, so long-waisted as to reach to her knees; and the circumference of her large hoop farthingale, which seems to enclose her in a capacious tub; mark her out as one of the most pitiable martyrs of ancient modes. The ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... which occurs in Bacon. 'Privado', signifying a prince's favourite, one admitted to his privacy (no uncommon word in Jeremy Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has 'quirpo' (cuerpo), the name given to a jacket fitting close to the body; 'quellio' (cuello), a ruff or neck-collar; and 'matachin', the title of a sword-dance; these are all frequent in our early dramatists; and 'flota' was the constant name of the treasure-fleet from the Indies. 'Intermess' is employed by ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the dark, lofty state chamber, lighted but little by six tall candles; there was the American in shirt and trousers, a smoking pistol in his hand; and there, advancing from the door of the powdering-room, a figure in doublet and hose, a ruff round its neck and no head! The head, sure enough, was there; but it was under the right arm, held close in the slashed-velvet sleeve of the doublet. The face looking from under the arm wore a pleasant smile. Both ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... was a well-known portrait of Henry III., King of France and Poland; a cap on his head, surmounting his long pale face and heavy eyes; a pointed beard, and a ruff round his neck. ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... flowers of the Indian mallow; and another beautiful ornament called eraie, which is generally put about the neck, but is sometimes tied like a garland round the hair, and sometimes worn in both these ways at once. It is a ruff, of the thickness of a finger, made in a curious manner, of exceedingly small feathers, woven so close together as to form a surface as smooth as that of the richest velvet. The ground was generally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... and Knee Buckles Fluke and Tongs, ruff and smooth Files, Bone Buckle Brushes, Freezing Punches, Binding Wire, Steel Top Thimbles, Cypher and Brilliant Button Stones, Cypher and Brilliant Ring Stones, Ring Sparks, Motto Ring Stones, Amethysts, Garnetts, Brilliant and Cypher Earing Stones, Amethysts Foyle, red & white do. Stone ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white smudge under the spot. There are members of this family—Aunt Eleanour, for instance—who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too—as he was before he died, of course. And very interesting details ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... nasty!" flamed Dick, burying the grubby fingers of his right hand protectively in the fluffy mass of the puppy's half-grown ruff. "She's the ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... beneath her canopy of state, sits Queen Elizabeth, in ruff and farthingale, her hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, while her sharp smile and keen glance take note of every incident. Nearest her person and evidently the chief favourite of the moment, is the man who has long been considered the Adonis of the Court. He ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... and the knowledge of that was comforting, as though it guaranteed the genuineness of his sacrifice. He lingered a little in the rooms below, to pack all the cigars he had, some papers, a crush hat, a silver cigarette box, a Ruff's Guide. Then, mixing himself a stiff whisky and soda, and lighting a cigarette, he stood hesitating before a photograph of his two girls, in a silver frame. It belonged to Winifred. 'Never mind,' he thought; 'she can get another taken, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... damned cheater, art thou not ashamed to be called captain? An captains were of my mind, they would truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you have earned them. You a captain! you slave, for what? for tearing a poor whore's ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain! hang him, rogue! he lives upon mouldy stewed prunes and dried cakes. A captain! God's light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word "occupy;" which was an excellent good word before it was ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... remains unaltered. There is a large ambulatory before it supported by columns, and a stone staircase leads to the hall and court-rooms. The ambulatory contains the recumbent figure of Richard Fishborne, Mercer, dressed in a fur gown and ruff. He was a great benefactor to the Company, and died ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... quart pail and hurried up to the flooded deestrick, which we commenced to bail out like a sinkin' boat, Royal, Karen and Rosy helpin' me, and Ury havin' his first fears squenched by the overflow of water (which he expected he said would blow off the hull ruff and top story of the house), he and Philury laid ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... and as he abruptly drew back, the picture fell into the hands I stretched forth to receive it. I turned the face to the light, and was surprised to see merely an old family portrait; it was that of a gentleman in the flowered vest mid stiff ruff which referred the date of his existence to the reign of Elizabeth,—a man with a bold and noble countenance. On the corner was placed a faded coat of arms, beneath which was inscribed, "Herbert De Caxton, Eq: Aur: ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noble Captain be affronted by a starch'd Ruff and Beard, a Coward in querpo, a walking Bunch of Garlick, a pickl'd Pilchard! abuse the noble Captain, and bear it off in State, like a Christmas Sweet-heart; these things must not be whilst Nicholas ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... buff-coloured walls. High over the loud-resounding double door hung one which, from some indications of a face looming out of blackness, might, by a great synthetic effort, be pronounced a Magdalen. Considerably lower down hung the similitude of a hat and feathers, with portions of a ruff, stated by Mrs. Bellamy to represent Sir Francis Bacon, who invented gunpowder, and, in her opinion, 'might ha' been ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... the seated figure; then pausing halfway, he began to shriek with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a tree, when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and perceived that there was an unnatural distortion in the fixedness of Colonel Pyncheon's stare; that there was blood on his ruff, and that his hoary beard was saturated with it. It was too late to give assistance. The iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a tradition, only worth alluding ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to that of the British sloop Reindeer.] The carpenter reported that he alone of his crew was fit for duty; the others were dead or disabled. Lieutenant Wilmer was knocked overboard by a splinter, and drowned; his little negro boy, "Ruff," came up on deck, and, hearing of the disaster, deliberately leaped into the sea and shared his master's fate. Lieutenant Odenheimer was also knocked overboard, but afterward regained the ship. A ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... haughty English queen. But he was just as haughty as she, and was not a bit afraid of her. She looked down on him from her throne (she was very stately, you know, and she wore a crown, and a great stiff ruff, and her dress was all covered with gold and precious stones), and asked him how he dared to undertake such a desperate and presumptuous enterprise. And Buccleugh—O Bubble, I always liked this so much!—Buccleugh just looked her ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... riding, in a gown of sapphire velvet, handsomely laced in gold across the stomacher, and surmounted at the neck, where it was cut low and square, by the starched band of fine linen which in France was already replacing the more elaborate ruff. On her head, over a linen coif, she wore a tall-crowned grey beaver, swathed with a scarf ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Ruff said. "You must still hold me blameless. She wrote to me. I went out with her once. The only advice I gave her was to return to you. So far as I am concerned, I have treated her with the respect that I would have ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... often the case, particularly on the eve of an insolvent act, two or three persons are obliged to sleep in a room. A prisoner who can pay for being alone, chuses two poor chums, who for a stipulated price, called chummage, give up their share of the room, and sleep on the stairs, or, as the term is, ruff it. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is more than ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... frown, Sir Richard, above your ruff, In the Holbein yonder? My deed ensures you! For the flame like a fencer shall give rebuff To your blades that blunder, ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... of the vultures, as the Indians call it, had a black tail, and white plumage on its back. Its neck was adorned with a ruff of pearl-gray feathers, and the top of its head was streaked in symmetrical lines with a dark down; on its yellow beak there was a fleshy protuberance, the utility of which ornithologists seek in ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... All at once, from what Dickenson judged to be some fifty feet away, there was the peculiar ruff! ruff! ruff! ruff! of some one walking slowly through the low scrub, which there was not unlike ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... very formall and civill after our English manner." The rigid figure caparisoned in the white woman's furbelows; the stiff, heavy hat upon the black hair; the set face, and the sad dark eyes—a dusky woodland creature choked in the ruff of ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... unaltered, rampant over them all, arrogant, impudent, insulting. She was in mourning, she had the most splendid black furs Mr. Britling had ever seen; her large triumphant profile came out of them like the head of a vulture out of its ruff; her elder brother was a wounded prisoner in Germany, her second was dead; it would seem that hers were the only sacrifices the war had yet extorted from any one. She spoke as though it gave her the sole ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, {240} Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The cousin! what does he ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the foe, but, with the true instinct of sporting blood, he would take no unfair advantage by stealthy advance on the preoccupied scratcher. He straddled, shook out his glossy ruff, and crowed shrilly. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... the white-haired patriarch with the big Bible upon his knees; the aged mother, tall and pale, spinning the flax grown by themselves, sitting as straight and immovable as her own distaff, her ruff up to her ears, her long waist compressed in a stiff black bodice; then there sat the fat and rosy children, with serious countenances and thoughtful blue eyes, leaning in silence with their elbows on the table; the dog ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the researches of O. Ruff, who has applied these oxidations with important results in the ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross
... beyond drawing attention to the curious fact that no woman had ever been permitted to inherit the Harden Library. The inspired pen of the chronicler evoked the long procession of those Hardens whose motto was Invictus; crossed-legged crusading Hardens, Hardens in trunk hose, Hardens in ruff and doublet, in ruffles and periwig; Hardens in powder and patches, in the loosest of stocks and the tightest of trousers; and never a petticoat among them all. It was just as well, Rickman reflected, that Poppy's frivolous little phantom ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... is decorated in front with a jewel set with pearls, from which three pear-shaped pearls depend. And, finally, she has large pearl-tassel earrings. In the Henham Hall portrait (engraved in vol. vii. of Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England), the ruff is confined by a collar of pearls, rubies, &c., set in a gold filagree pattern, with large pear shaped pearls depending from each lozenge. The sleeves are ornamented with rouleaus, wreathed with pearls ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... of my dress; and I shall also feel greatly obliged, if at the same time they will select the best-looking portrait of me for the likeness: a scarlet tunic, embroidered with gold-thread; a purple satin sash, with a deep gold fringe; a ruff a la Elizabeth; white satin pantaloons; shoes with crimson rosettes; black velvet hat and feathers. My hair, not naturally curling, had been put in graceful papillote the preceding evening. As I write in the reign of Queen ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... impression was of value to a cherisher of quaintness, and he must have wondered—not knowing me for such a character—why I stared at him. It wasn't him I was staring at, but some handsome Seymour or Dudley or Digby with a ruff and a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was an old person of Bude, Whose deportment was vicious and crude; He wore a large ruff of pale straw-colored stuff, Which perplexed all the ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... git a slice I mus' not cease to try, But keep a-movin' fas' es life To hol' my piece ub pie. Dis ruff ol' worl' has little use Fur dem dat chance to fall, An' while youze gittin' up ag'in 'Twill take de plate ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... from your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?—Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... along the bridge toward the town-hall a device prepared by the good rector, who, standing by, acted as showman, and explained anxiously to the bystanders the import of a certain "allegory" wherein on a great banner was depicted Queen Elizabeth herself, who, in ample ruff and farthingale, a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, stood triumphant upon the necks of two sufficiently abject personages, whose triple tiara and imperial crown proclaimed them the Pope ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the career of Mr. Payne. John Payne was born in 1842 of a Devonshire family, descended from that breezy old sea-dog, Sir John Hawkins. Mr. Payne, indeed, resembles Hawkins in appearance. He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit. Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even—a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master's neck, looking not unlike a lady's boa—and its name, Parthenopaeus, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... his hand into the ruff of shaggy hair about the neck of one of the collies beside him. There was a low growl from the other dog, who rose and rested his pointed ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... persecution. In each of the great islands of the Austro-Malayan region there is a distinct species of Tropidorhynchus, and there is always along with it an oriole that exactly mimics it. All the Tropidorhynchi have a patch of bare black skin round the eyes, and a ruff of curious pale recurved feathers on the nape, whence their name of Friar-birds, the ruff being supposed to resemble the cowl of a friar. These peculiarities are imitated in the orioles by patches of feathers of corresponding colours; while ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... broth, or water they were boiling in; he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, "See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that time has flung away; Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... heard a feller a talkin' about it yesterday. You know they are a havin' the big political convention here, and he said, (he wuz a real cute chap too,) he said, 'if the wind wasted in that convention could be utilized by pipes goin' up out of the ruff of that buildin' where it is held,' he said, 'it would take a man up to the moon.' I heerd him say it. And now, who knows but they have got it all fixed. There wuz dretful windy speeches there this mornin'. ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... tall, sallow guardsmen their horsetails have spread, Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and red; And behind go the lackeys in crimson and buff, And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet and ruff; Next, in red-legged pomp, come the cardinals forth, Each a lord of the church and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Boswell, "and it's rather amusing to watch them at it, too. Xanthippe with her Greek clothes finds it rather difficult; but for rare sport you ought to see Queen Elizabeth trying to keep her eye on the ball over her ruff! It really is one of the finest spectacles you ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni was entering the house, when two or three bottles came bang upon his head, smashing all to pieces, whilst the brown liquid ran in streams all down his face, and wig, and ruff. Hastily rushing into the house, he screamed like a madman, "Signer Salvator has gone out of his mind, he's become insane; no skill can save him now, he'll be dead in ten minutes. Give me the picture, Dame Caterina, give me the picture—it's mine, the scanty reward ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... with a sprig, a short cloak, great yellow ruff, his torch-bearer bearing a rope, a ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... down by himself to brood over his troubles, Hindenburg from a safe distance eyeing the bear, a dark ruff showing ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... pointed gable, flanked on either hand by slender, four-sided pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... posts and poles saved from ruined lodges, which the Iroquois had built for themselves, adding a ruff of freshly chopped trees, the two white men sat down in a ring of glowering savages. Six packs of beaver skins were piled ready for the oration; and the orator ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... out. They wore a cloak, which only reached as far as the hips, and was always much ornamented; they carried a smooth or ribbed cap on one side of the head, and a small upright collar adorned the coat. This collar was replaced, after the first half of the sixteenth century, by the high, starched ruff, which was kept out by wires; ladies wore it still larger, when it had somewhat the appearance of an open fan at the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... a score of the finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to lose, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should hear it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such publick places ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the captain play out trumps, of which he, Mr. Dale, has only two, wherewith he expects to ruff the suit of spades, of which he has only one, the cards all falling in suits, while he has not a single other chance of a trick in his hand).—"Really, Squire, we had better give up playing if you put out my partner in this ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coarsest dowlas, and a filthy rag tying up a broken head, yet wore velvet breeches, and wiped the sweat from his face with a wrought handkerchief; the other topped a suit of shreds and patches with a fine bushy ruff, and swung from one ragged shoulder a cloak of grogram lined with taffeta. On the ground, to one side of them, lay something ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... his lady, which the villagers point out as "old Fiddle o' God and his wife"—Fiddle o' God being his customary exclamation when angry, which tradition says was not seldom. The figures are kneeling—he in ruff and jerkin, she in black gown and hood, with tan-leather gloves extending up her arms. These figures, being highly colored, as was the fashion in the olden time, have a ludicrous appearance. We are told that ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... uf a buck's tail comes up nigger ag'in; goes down Injun ag'in. Yes, an' a leetle mo' dan dat: nigger an' Injun clean ober de turn uf de hill, an' now a-slidin', slidin' down whar it wus steep as a house-ruff. ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... gentlewoman of my acquaintance, wished me to devise her a new set for her ruff and an odd tire. I pray, sir, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... prelimmenerry derangements, till we finds ourselves on board a lovly steemer, bound for Old Ireland, as we allus calls her, tho' I don't spose as she's any older than the rest on us. It was that ruff that I perposed waitin till the sea got smooth; but my Master ony larft, and sed I shood be all rite if I follered his adwice, as he was used to the sea, and rayther liked it a little ruffish. So he got me a sheet of brown paper to put on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... Paris, where he was overwhelmed with invitations from counts and countesses; dining at Holland House in London with Lord and Lady Holland; a guest of honor at a ball given by a prince in Rome; presented at the brilliant Tuscan court at Florence, for which occasion he was decked in lace frills and ruff, with dress hat and sword;—such incidents of his foreign life began to be mentioned to account for Cooper's disinclination to encourage familiar acquaintance with the villagers ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... that we are needing now: The spring, the spring! These stifling fumes we bear Of royal incense and of monkish snuff, Of corpses in romantic cloak and ruff, Are bad for morals ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... man, standing trim and neat in his burgher's dress and little frill-like ruff, he looked quite out of place in the dark ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I care, so long as the stomach and the feet are sound!" replied the Queen, raising her hand to the high lace ruff, which oppressed the breathing of one so accustomed to the outdoor air. "But when, like him, a man must give up deer-stalking and at every movement makes a wry face and can scarcely repress a groan—it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that form the brim of the hat, and the soft, graceful arrangement of the hair in front that decreases the too broad effect of the brow, and the full fluffy ruff snuggled up closely to the chin, produce a pleasing transformation of the meagre-looking original that to the uninitiated seems little short of magical. The broad, cravat-like bows, and the flaring ones known ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... opened and a dejected apparition in a ruff and petticoats, like a rumpled remnant of a pre-war pageant, drifted in and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... and purity that was evidently natural to her—not assumed. A gray silk gown, simply made, showed to advantage her slender, graceful form, which seemed far too fragile to endure the hardships inseparable from the wandering life she was leading. A high Elizabethan ruff made a most becoming frame for her sweet, delicately tinted, young face, and her only ornament was a string of pearl beads, clasped round her slender, white neck. Though her beauty was less striking at first ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... why she won't let us go alone," said Beppo crossly. "I hate to go out on the street with Teresina all dressed up in her ruff and streamers so people will know she's a baby nurse. I'm big enough ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... an advantageous box, between the author and his friend M.G. sat cheerful and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who had perused the manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio, in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length appeared, starched out in a ruff which no one could dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John always dressed most provokingly correct on these occasions. The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It went off, as G. assured M., exactly as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... here while the evening shadows gathered in the tower, I might soon have seen the figure of a man in trunk-hose, doublet, and ruff, with pointed beard and pensive eyes, moving noiselessly between rows of spectral desks covered by spectral books; but, as it was, even in the most shadowy corner I could not detect the faintest outline of a ghost. Nobody knows what has become of all the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... was unprepared for the surprising appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers, short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... guest was a man as big as himself, clad wholly in black, save for a stiff cambric ruff worn rather fuller than the fashion. He was heavily booted, and sat sideways on a settle with his left hand tucked in his belt and a great right elbow on the board. Something in his pose, half rustic, half braggart, seemed familiar to Gaspard. The next second ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Sir Robert says they would have admired; a picture probably in a tawdry frame, representing Queen Bess, just as queens were always painted then, bedizened with 'browches, pearls, and owches,' satin and ruff, and probably with crown on head and sceptre in hand, made up, as likely as not, expressly for the purpose for which it was used. In the name of all simplicity and honesty, I ask, why is Raleigh to be accused of saying that the Indians admired Queen Elizabeth's beauty when he never even ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the prairie-dog town we found a settlement of five white men. They Proved to be the two Clifford brothers, Arthur Ruff, Dick Seymour, and John Nelson. To the last I have already referred. Each of these men had a squaw for a wife and numerous half-breed children. They lived in tents of buffalo skins. They owned a herd of horses and a few cattle, and had cultivated a small piece of land. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... syllable, "ruff," is derived from rofe, a wheel,—with the diminutive rouelle, a little wheel or rowel, like that of an ancient spur,—which the verticillate leaves of this herb closely resemble. They serve to remind us also ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... wearily on the dull December afternoon. The bare wall with its brown spiders no longer confronted her, but the colored print of a little girl dancing to the tune her father was playing on a guitar, while a stately lady, with satin dress, ruff, and powder, stood looking on, well pleased. The quaint figure, in its belaced frock, quilted petticoat, and red-heeled shoes, seemed to come tripping toward her in such a life-like way, that she almost saw the curls blow back, heard the rustle of the rich brocade, and caught ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... was a slight young woman in dark gray, and in no way notable but for a load of dull red hair, of which the shape somehow gave her pale face that triangular, almost peaked, appearance which was given by the lowering headdress and deep rich ruff of the Elizabethan beauties. Her surname seemed to be Gray, and Miss Hunt called her Mary, in that indescribable tone applied to a dependent who has practically become a friend. She wore a small silver cross on her very business-like gray clothes, and was the only member of ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... my host. The congregation, including their pastor, wore the costume of the middle ages; it was a most curious and interesting sight. I am never a good hand at describing the details of dress, but I know my impression was that the pastor—wearing a ruff, I think, or something like it—might just have walked out of a picture, such as one knows so well of the old Puritans in Cromwell's time. The dress of the peasants, though unlike the English fashion of any period, had an old-world look. The married women wore white kerchiefs ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... gauntlet. In one hand he carried his walking-stick and his hat, which he had removed, and the other hung heavily by his side. A quantity of grizzled hair descended in long tresses from his head, and rested upon the plaits of a stiff ruff, which effectually concealed his neck. So far all was well; but the face!—all the flesh of the face was coloured with the bluish leaden hue, which is sometimes produced by metallic medicines, administered ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... seemed, contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great Titian of the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred him, his hawk's eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while behind him ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... forehead. Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and "banging," as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called. Let us see the Madonna brow once more. The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers: the opera is filled with Copley's portraits. The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers. Every new fashion brings out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... Kilburn had trained his dog to scour the woods, and the faithful animal ever had his eyes and ears open, and was sniffing the wind if a wolf or bear was about. On this afternoon in August the dog came running in with his hair in a ruff, and growling. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Reykjavik. It is a moderate-sized, unpretending place, capable of holding three or four hundred persons, erected in very ancient times, but lately restored. The Icelanders are of the Lutheran religion, and a Lutheran clergyman, in a black gown, etc., with a ruff round his neck, such as our bishops are painted in about the time of James the First, was preaching a sermon. It was the first time I had heard Icelandic spoken continuously, and it struck me as a singularly sweet caressing language, although I disliked the particular cadence, amounting almost to ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... hopelessly removed from youth and beauty now, but later in the day, when her hair would be taken out of its crimping kids, her sallow cheeks touched with rouge, and her veined neck covered by a high collar, a coral chain, and an ostrich-feather ruff, some traces of her former good looks might be visible. She still affected tight corsets, high heels, enormous hats. But Emeline's interest in her own appearance was secondary now to her fierce pride and faith in ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the escutcheon was the figure of a woman, standing. It was an enchanting vision. She was tall and slim, and wore a robe of brocade which fell in ample folds about her feet, a ruff of many pleats and a necklace of large gems. On her head was an enormous and superb turban of blond hair on which rested a crown of filigree that was not round, and that followed all the undulations of the hair. The face, although somewhat too round and large, was exquisite. The eyes were those of ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... flung back the door of the lift, saluted and went before them along the plain flagged passage to where his comrade stood. Then he saluted again and went back. A Pontifical chamberlain, in all the sombre glory of purple, black, and a Spanish ruff, peeped from the door, and made haste to open it. It really seemed almost incredible ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... robust, and in the full vigor of life. His age might be anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five, for while his eye possessed the fire of youth, there were streaks of gray in his long hair and beard. His ruffled shirt of well-worn linen was met at the neck by a modest ruff faded and torn like the shirt, and both sadly in need of washing. On his head he wore a round black cap which, if it ever had a peak, had lost it. The trousers of dark stuff came just below the knee, Puritan fashion, and were met by coarse gray stockings. The feet were encased in coarse shoes with ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... of the stately housekeeper; but as she raised her eyes to the portrait she was conscious of a sensation of surprise. For in some vague way the portrait reminded her of Drake. The pictured Angleford wore a ruff, and was habited in satin and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... they are so close, he can see the ruff around their naked necks, bristled up; the skin reddened as with rage, and their beaks, stained with bloody flesh of some other banquet, getting ready to feast upon his. Soon he will feel them striking against his skull, pecking out ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... longer acted, he thought; he was no longer the soldier, but the philosopher. The domineering, forceful chin had the essentials of a man of justice, but it was lacking in that quality of mercy which makes justice grand. Over the Henri IV ruff fell the loose flesh of his jaws. Altogether, it was the face of a man who was practically if not actually dead. But in the eyes, there lay the life of the man. From under jutting brows they peered as witnesses of a brain which had accumulated a rare knowledge ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... night Without a light Upon an arc of white. If ruff it was of dame Or shroud of gnome, Himself, himself inform. Of immortality His ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... appearance had halted. Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... loose, he was let down once more, in order to tie it up and cover his face. Stripping him of one of the shirts he had on, they wrapped it about his head, and got him up a third time with loud huzzas and a ruff of the drum. After he had hung a long time, they nailed the rope to the tree; then formally saluting one another, grounding their arms, and another ruff of the drum, they separated, retired out of town, and numbers of them were seen riding off in bodies well mounted ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... presence of royalty, and the eccentric statesman was left with his chief valet. The toilet was completed in solemn silence. Then, the count walked to the mirror to take another look at his adored person. He gave a complaisant stroke to his ruff of richest Alencon, smoothed the folds of his habit, carefully arranged the lace frills that fell over his white hands, and then turning to his valet he ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to be specially common among birds. It was among birds that it attracted the attention of the ancients, and numerous interesting observations have been made in more recent times. Thus Selous, a careful bird-watcher, finds that the ruff, the male of the Machetes pugnax, suffers from sexual repression owing to the coyness of the female (the reeve), and consequently the males often resort to homosexual intercourse. It is still more remarkable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... have been the faithless Ignacio, a grave and decorous figure was seated. His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... the Gallery was open. Harry stood in the shadow unseen, watching intently every movement of the girl's. She was looking at a case of miniatures and medals, memorials of beauties and of warriors. She turned from them to the picture of an Elizabethan countess, splendid in ruff and rich in embroidery. She caught up a candle and held it over her head, up toward the picture. Then setting the candle down she ran to the end window and looked out on the night. Addie Tristram's tall arm-chair ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... William the Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown,—such as had been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, 'Fideles au roy jusqu'a la besace,' while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide slashed underclothes completed his ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... presently he drummed again on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would but come to his drumming ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... but, were it not for the reverences of obsequious beadles and the recognitions of respectful students, you would scarce surmise the academic dignitary. That old-fashioned divine,—his square cap and ruff surmounting the doctor's gown,—with whom he shakes hands so cordially, is a Royalist and Prelatist, but withal the Hebrew Professor, and the most famous Orientalist in England, Dr. Edward Pocock. From his little ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and crested hern, Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff, Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough, Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay, Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way. And the first man who walked the cliffs of Rame, As I this year, looked down and saw the ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... in a boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on a ruff. When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up a little higher than the right; and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to her lips in two lines of light. He had dashed past that ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... plural by a change of that termination into ves; as, half, halves; wife, wives: except grief, relief, reproof, and several others, which form their plurals by the addition of s. Those ending in ff, have the regular plural; as, ruff, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... children. The tombs of Westminster Abbey, the vaults at St. Paul's, the men in armor at the Tower, frowning ferociously out of their helmets, and wielding their dreadful swords; that superhuman Queen Elizabeth at the end of the room, a livid sovereign with glass eyes, a ruff, and a dirty satin petticoat, riding a horse covered with steel: who does not remember these sights in London in the consulship of Plancus? and the wax-work in Fleet Street, not like that of Madame Tussaud's, whose chamber of death is gay and brilliant; but a nice old gloomy ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be thrilled with horror. There were not many situations which would yield such a sensation to his seasoned nerves. He sat in silence while the babble of the card-table broke in upon them again. "We had a double ruff if you had returned a heart." "I was bound to clear the trumps." They were ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hiding-place for any intruder. Like the library below, its walls were of paneled oak, with three large portraits set into the wood-work. One, a Lisle of Queen Elizabeth's time, looked down benignly, attired in doublet and ruff. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... back to this forest runway, made by dreaded man; and because it is the work of a creature they dread and suspect, their curiosity ever draws them to man-made roads. A cock-grouse first stepped out of the thicket, crest erect, ruff spread; then a hare loped by, halting to sniff in the herbage. I watched them for a long while, listening intently. Suddenly the partridge wheeled, crest flattened, and ran into the thicket, like a great rat; the hare sat erect, flanks palpitating, then leaped twice, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... wear the blue first, then the green, and the red last, and yet you will give me the first which comes.—He's a handsome lord, that Duke of Portland; he was one of the bon—before King William went over and conquered England, and he was made a lord for his valour.—My ruff, Babette. The Dutch are a brave nation. My bustle now.—How much beer did you give the officers? Mind you take care of everything while I am gone. I shall be home by nine, I dare say. I suppose they are going to try him now, that he may ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... chancel. Under the tower arch is a curious monument to Christopher Blackhall, who died in 1635, and his four wives, who are kneeling one behind the other. The dates of their deaths are very clearly marked by the different fashions of their dresses—a compact and upstanding ruff adds to the stiff precision of the first wife's appearance; while the sloping lines of a 'Vandyke' collar embellish the dress of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... most sincerely apologise. I was misled by the unusual tone of the brown. But—no, it is undoubted. None other than Van Dyck painted that ruff." ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... draw water, and buy provisions. Ralegh reciprocated by keeping his men in perfect order. He sent a present of gloves to the Governor's wife, a lady of the Stafford family. She returned fruit, sugar, and rusks. Not to be outdone he rejoined with ambergris, rosewater, a cut-work ruff, and a picture of the Magdalen. He was in the habit of taking pictures with him on his voyages. This interchange of courtesies was the one gleam of human kindness which lighted up for Ralegh his dismal journey. He dwells upon it gratefully in the journal he kept. The manuscript, in twenty large ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... listened, and from midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and faster, till at length They ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... infected, may direct his own medicines out of the ordinary drugs and preparations. Only that," says he, "some recommend one thing as most sovereign, and some another. Some," says he, "think that Pill. Ruff., which is called itself the antipestilential pill, is the best preparation that can be made; others think that Venice treacle[341] is sufficient of itself to resist the contagion; and I," says he, "think as both these think, viz., that the first is good to ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... rolled-up banner, which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his right hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet and hose of black satin. He carried a roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two came a young man of very striking countenance and demeanor, with deep thought and contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... with too much jesting and lightness touching this matter, which should be right serious. A man's choice of a wife is a choice for life, and is hardly to be talked of, meseemeth, in the same fashion with his choice of a partlet [neck ruff]. I pray you, pardon me if in so speaking, I fail aught in the reverence ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... most guv out before, ole 'oman," he replied; "got a good ruff over de head now. Guess de white massar won't let ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... always make me laugh; I cannot help that; but I wish you would do yourself justice, nevertheless. You may not know it, but if you would only put on a ruff and satin doublet and hose and wig, and all the rest of it, you would look exactly like one of the courtiers of the court of Queen Elizabeth. You are a perfect type of ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... social summits he perhaps never knew so much, but he had not studied their humbler sisters in vain, and beneath all the width of ruff and opulence of silk, he knew well enough what primal feelings lurked, what affections, what jealousies, what caprices of the eternal feminine. As for the mere externals of their behaviour, he had abundant opportunities ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... board and gave himself up to the captain of one of our ships of the line, a seventy-four called the Bellerophon. I remember that owing to that event she was very commonly known amongst us as the "Billy Ruff'un," and we used to aggravate the people not a little on our march into the city, by singing, "God save Buonaparte, who has fled and given himself up to the Billy Ruff'uns," in opposition to their cry of "God save the king;" thousands of them having ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... cut shorter than the brow, With little ruff starch'd, you know how, With cloak like Paul, no cape I trow, With surplice none; but lately now With hands to thump, no knees to bow: See ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... in a town, Before them everything went down; Some tore a ruff, and some a gown, 'Gainst one another justling; They flew about like chaff i' th' wind; For haste some left their masks behind; Some could not stay their gloves to find; There ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... tissue-paper flowers in Tonto's wreath, and tied red tissue-paper streamers to the goat's horns. They put a green ruff around the cat's neck, and a red one on the dog; but the dog ran at once to the river and waded in and got it all wet, and the color ran out and dyed his coat, and the ruff fell off, before they were even ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... brings up the subject of hammicks; show me a guy who can ride one all nite without being turned out, and I'll back him to ride the best tricky mule that P.T. Bamum ever trained. About the only way to do, when the nite is ruff, and the ship is rockin, is to sit down and wait until your hammick comes around, and jump on it and choke it into insensibility. I made out to do this better than the balance of the bunch, as I had had more practice, owing to the fact I used to use this method after a nite with the ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... skilful physiognomist would at a single glance have detected the sensible woman in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm, judicious step. Even her very garments seemed to partake of the prevailing character of their mistress. Her ruff always looked more sensible than any other body's; her shawl sat most sensibly on her shoulders; her walking-shoes were acknowledged to be very sensible, and she drew on her gloves with an air of sense, as if the one arm had been Seneca, the other Socrates. From what has been said ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... "is the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... known with its dark brown mottled plumage and hoarse croaking note. These birds are very numerous in the reedy flats of the Murray, whence they call to one another like bull frogs. It is a higher bird than the above, with a ruff down the neck, which behind is naked. He has a fine bright eye, and darts with his bill with astonishing rapidity ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... stair, trooped the Motley train of the Lord of Misrule to open the Christmas revels. A fierce and ferocious-looking fellow was he, with his great green mustache and his ogre-like face. His dress was a gorgeous parti-colored jerkin and half-hose, trunks, ruff, slouch-boots of Cordova leather, and high befeathered steeple hat. His long staff, topped with a fool's head, cap, and bells, rang loudly on the floor, as, preceded by his diminutive but pompous page, he led his train around and around the great ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... continued, pointing to Madge, "this young woman, daughter of the Roman harlot, no doubt, she also is arrayed in silks, taffetas, and fine cloth. Look ye, friends, upon this abominable collar of Satan; this ruff of fine linen, all smeared in the devil's own liquor, starch. Her vanity is an offence in the nostrils of ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... small and very old. Her figure was bent and shrunken, a pitiful little bag of bones in a rich dress; her hair was as white as her ruff; her skin as yellow and dry as parchment, furrowed with a thousand wrinkles; but her black eyes ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle |
