"Bluff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where the road hugged close the concave outline of a bushy bluff, Bud slowed and turned out behind a fringe of ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... no laughing matter, Melchior," said the broad-shouldered, bluff, sturdy-looking Englishman. "I don't want to ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... measure. His hair was a sort of wolf's gray, was clipped all over within an inch of his head, and stood up like the bristles on a wild boar's back. His brows were bushy, and jutted, roof-like, over his deeply-sunken eyes; his nose was bluff as a bull-dog's; his cheek-bones were rough and high; his eyes were wide-set; his mouth was cut square across almost from ear to ear; his chin was square and massy; he had an Adam's apple as large as a gilly-flower ripening on his ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... They've always thried to reform man, an' they haven't yet got onto th' fact that maybe he's not worth reformin'. They don't undherstan' why a man shud be allowed to pizen himsilf into th' belief that he amounts to something, but thin they don't undherstand man. They little know what a bluff he is an' how 'tis on'y be fortifyin' himsilf with stuff that they regard as iv no use except to burn undher a tea-kettle that he dares to go on livin' at all. He knows how good dhrink makes him look to himsilf, an' he dhrinks. They see how it makes him look to ivrybody else, an' they want to take ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... thoughtful man in command—it wanted dash and bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a success—a brilliant, blinding success—but it stuck at the very moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come off"—and ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... old friend was a great blow to bluff Captain Cuttle, but, determined to do his part, he left his own lodgings and took up his place at the sign of the wooden midshipman to wait for news either of Walter or ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... anyone, least of all a traveler fresh from the rich luxuriance of South American vegetation. But the view that burst suddenly upon Eustace Le Neve's eye as he gained the summit of that precipitous serpentine bluff fairly took his breath away. It was a rich and varied one. To the north and west loomed headland after headland, walled in by steep crags, and stretching away in purple perspective toward Marazion, St. Michael's Mount, and the Penzance district. ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... island, running over seductive "riffles" and swirling into deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going further up-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score in ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... boat to Bluff Point; and the shore was so elevated here, that the skipper stood farther out into the lake so that he might not lose the wind. The Goldwing behaved so well, that Dory was beginning to have a great deal of confidence in her, so that he did not hesitate to venture ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... and we saw a schooner's sail over one of the small islets that lay about us. Taking our cue from that we poked into the next narrow channel we came to, and getting some sailing directions from a passing boat, and from the signal man stationed on a bluff to give assistance to strangers, we glided into an almost circular basin, hardly large enough for the vessel to swing in, set among steep rising sides, into which many ring bolts were seen to be fastened, and perfectly sheltered from every wind. The use ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... the war," said Sherman, "we no doubt should have done differently, but we got ready for them as they came on." "Was there not bad demoralisation," I said, "ten thousand or more skulkers huddled under the bluff on the Tennessee?" "Oh," said Sherman, "the rear of an army in battle is always a sorry place; but on the firing line, where I was, things did not look so bad."—"Your adversaries, General, were often good fellows, were they not, and you are ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... had little paragraphs of meagre information about the A. R. U. convention. One day there was a meeting in which a committee of the Pullman strikers set forth their case. At the close of that meeting the great boycott had been declared. "Mere bluff," said the newspapers. But the managers of the railroads "got together." Some of them had already cut the wage lists on their roads. They did not feel sure ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... put up a fight, Kit, it would have been a good deal more interesting," said Calvert, "but you always were one of the biggest cowards that ever made a bluff at being a bad man. Get ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... bluff! It may have been Fate, but I tho't you looked kind o' funny when Rance asked you if you hadn't missed the trail an' wa'n't on the road to see Nina Micheltorena—she that lives in the greaser settlement an' has the name ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... lady immediately set off for the cow-house. As she entered there was a scuttling of juniors, who sought safety behind the partition. Raymonde stared for a moment aghast, then whispered to Ardiune: "Bluff it out!" ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... main sweep of the east river, stole down along the bank in the gathering twilight, and softly beached their canoe below the white buildings of the Factory. With a muttered word of command to their captive, they disembarked and climbed the steepness of the low bluff to the grass-plot above. The dog followed ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... are not right!" cried Frankl, looking up with discovery: "Share and share alike, and shame the devil! That's the kind of little man I am, frank, bluff, and stalwart—Ha! ha! Give me your hand ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... where flowering wild weeds clustered at the bases of the brown ribs of rock that stood up starkly over all. We crossed the river by the ferry between Auche and Riviere, where the little Veude falls into the Vienne, and halted for a space on a bluff to survey the landscape. At this hour of the morning, with the air so gay, the sky so blue, and the sun so bright, the lights were still soft enough to allow the whole beauty of the scene to be strongly felt. At our feet the river went dancing along in a sweeping blue curve, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... me, Monsieur Fardet, that the siege of Khartoum and the death of Gordon and the rest of it was just one great bluff?" ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... leaden tempest which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... at him. "Very well, captain. I'll call your bluff, come along." He turned on his heel ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... This terrible speech was understood, and Darius withdrew to his own country with what speed he could. Substitute a letter for these symbols and the more threatening it was the less terror it would inspire; it would have been merely a piece of bluff, to which Darius would have paid ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... appearance of being well-to-do, and would be highly indignant if anyone suggested that he was really in a condition of abject, miserable poverty. Although he knows that his children are often not so well fed as are the pet dogs and cats of his 'betters', he tries to bluff his neighbours into thinking that he has some mysterious private means of which they know nothing, and conceals his poverty as if it were a crime. Most of this class of men would rather starve than beg. Consequently not more than a quarter of the men ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... time to play, Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you to keep ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... translucent, and durable porcelain. At Arita, in Hizen, there is a clay found which contains 783/4 per cent, of silica, and l73/4 per cent, of alumina; from this clay is made the delicate, translucent eggshell ware, without the addition of any other matter. From an adjoining bluff a clay is taken which has 50 per cent, of silica, and 38 per cent, of alumina; from this the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... a moment in silence, and then, turning away without a word, hurried from the house. He strode along the high rocky bluff, through tangled junipers and pine thickets, till he came above the rocky cove which had been his favorite retreat on so many occasions. He swung himself down over the cliffs into the grotto, where, shut in by the high tide, he felt himself ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Marthy herself had split and nailed in place; you followed a narrow, winding path through the sweet jungle—and if you were tall, you stooped now and then to pass under an apple branch. And unless you looked up at the black, lava-rock rim of the bluff which cupped this Eden incongruously, you would forget that just over the brim lay ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... off their cuffs. He was always at the head of any social plans in the school, and at the dances he rushed about wearing in his coat lapel a ribbon marked Floor Committee. The teachers all knew he was a bluff, but his engaging manner carried him through. When he went away to the state university he made Fanny solemnly promise to write; to come down to Madison for the football games; to be sure to remember about the Junior prom. He wrote once—a badly spelled scrawl—and ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... loved him most and she had nothing, nothing to give him. For he had to go back, oh, he had to go back to-morrow, and he hated it so—they all hated it—the best of them! How clearly she saw through the superb, pitiful bluff, that it was all sport, "wonderful"! Wonderful? She knew, but she would never dare let Leonard see that ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries—all of which will be better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature, bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off, opposite strand of Lake Conowingo; the luminous orb laid a flaming pathway across the shimmering waters, and golden bars of light, like gleaming fingers outstretched, fell athwart the tall pines that towered on the high bluff back of the camp. The glorious sunshine, succeeding a flood of rosy color, inundated the scene; it bathed in a gorgeous radiance the early autumn woods, it illumined the bunkhouse, and another rude shanty known to the squad as the grub-shack, it poured down on old Hinky-Dink, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... not ill at all," the chorus lady volunteered to inform Nan over the telephone. "She's only pretending, to bring the manager to his knees. He's called her bluff and the little one's going on in her part, and she's in ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... keenly over Agatha's engagement card. The look was not quite in keeping with his bluff and open manners. Moreover, a man who is, so to speak, not in keeping with himself ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... about this time when, as the whitened horses floundered through the lee of a bluff where there was shelter from the wind, the men in the sleigh ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... rich Dantzigers," wrote Napoleon to Rapp) trembled for their wealth, and stood aghast by their empty counting-houses; for their gods had been cast down; commerce was at a standstill. There were many, therefore, who hated the French, and cherished a secret love of those bluff British captains—so like themselves in build, and thought, and slowness of speech—who would thrash their wooden brigs through the shallow seas, despite decrees and threats and sloops-of-war, so long as they could lay them alongside the granaries of the Vistula. Lately the very tolls ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... English Consul in Rotterdam proved that the threat was no mere bluff. The marriage had ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... have stalked the Bluff Redoubt and have carried it with a rush! They are absolutely the boys for this class of country and for this ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... living. It is never a pleasant dream, either. I love to think about those days; but there's always something sickening about the thought that I have been obliged to go back to them; and usually in my dream I am just about to start into a black shadow without being able to tell whether it is Selma bluff, or Hat Island, or only a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the way he had several years before when he had bluffed his way into a gigantic pot during a Washington poker game, with only a pair of fours to work with. At the last moment, his bluff had been called. ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... game, poker, has given us abroad an unfair reputation. We are always supposed to be bluffing. A book was published in Germany about the President called, "President Bluff." ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... mainly comprised a fort on a high bluff, from which the town had been laid out on a level bench west and northward. It included a flour mill, owned by James Leithead. In August, 1868, the fort was almost destroyed by fire, which burned up nineteen rooms ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... in the position of attention is "chest lifted; and arched." There should be a stretch upward at the waist. The position should give the impression of a man as proud of himself as he can be. This is a bluff which works, not only by making a good first impression on others, but by causing the man himself ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... reaching there I received a message from my old friend Clarke, saying, "if I had improved any in my commercial work he would give me a job at seventy dollars per month." I hadn't improved much, but as this world is two-thirds bluff, I made mine, and said I'd come, trusting to luck to be able to ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... its equinox And bluff the North was blowing, A bleat of lambs came from the flocks, Green hardy things were growing; I met a maid with shining locks Where milky ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... animals, larger than cats or squirrels." Here the Wade carriage stopped. The congressional carriage drove up beside it. The two blocked a narrow way where as in the case of Horatius at the bridge, "a thousand might well be stopped by three." And then "bluff Ben Wade" showed the mettle that was in him. The "old Senator, his hat well back on his head," sprang out of his carriage, his rifle in his hand, and called to the others, "Boys, we'll stop this damned runaway." And they did it. Only six of them, but they lined up across that narrow road; ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... bandy-legged, with rat-eyes and a much-broken hooked nose. His defiant air was obviously a pretense, a weapon of protection borrowed from that world of snarl and snap, of physical bluff and physical menace, in which he had always lived. His ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... roasted on a stick, I started on the final lap of my journey. About a mile from Mr. Allen's home is a spot known to campers as "Rock House," where the mountains crowd the river bank, leaving a space of not more than thirty feet between the almost precipitous bluff and the roaring, foaming river. From an overhanging rock a spring of ice-cold water, rivaling the Hypocrene in purity, bursts forth and plunges into the river. The space had grown up with young maples, and the underbrush being cleaned ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... of the brine that laves Black rock and skerry; Where the great palm-leaved tangle waves Down in the green depths, And round the craggy bluff, pierced with ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... yards away, and not far from the bluff, a vigorous rivulet started from beneath the half-bared roots of a monster beech, and fell over an outcropping boulder into a pool so clear that sand on its bottom, worked mysteriously into a pattern by the action of the ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... less than he would have expected for cigarette money—well, it was an enterprise to test a fellow's courage and to dampen the most youthful optimism. His proposal to the firm to win all or lose all, he realized now, had been in the nature of a bluff, and the firm had called it. There was nothing to do, therefore, but go through and win; there could be no turning back, for he ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... though they might deny it to themselves. They could think of nothing but France. Now they realized that the best way to help France was by going on with their work at home. Paris was trying to be normal, but no Parisian was making the bluff that Paris was normal. The Gallic lucidity of mind prevented ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... saluted us as soon as we stepped on deck, and the bluff, brown-faced captain gave me a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... good humour and peals of burly oaths which might have suited "Garagantua's mouth" and satisfied the requirements of Hotspur, appeals in a ruder fashion to the survival of the same sympathies on which Shakespeare with a finer instinct as evidently relied; the popular estimate of the bluff and brawny tyrant "who broke the bonds of Rome" was not yet that of later historians, though doubtless neither was it that of the writer or writers who would champion him to the utterance. Perhaps the opposite verdicts ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... when they were attacked by the Turks in overwhelming force, and lost a large number in their retreat to the Beach and then to their boats. This was afterwards retaken by the Gurkhas, who pushed through from W. Beach, and the high cliff on the north side is now known as Gurkha Bluff. The Indian Brigade have their H.Q. here, and this morning there were about 2000 Gurkhas and Sikhs about. I was toiling up the "bloody cliff" when some Gurkhas passed me, thinking nothing of the steep ascent; ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... hour of watering, the men began to force the cattle to the opposite bank. There was a great scramble when the steers started to climb the steep bluff. The first ones to try it went half way ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... this way they got to Rilby Head, where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... were manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. Gresham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... personally that the main object of the Yuen-nan provincial government in employing two American engineers, who at the present moment (August, 1910) are surveying a route from Yuen-nan-fu to the Yangtze, is merely official bluff. It is preferable to pay two men a monthly stipend if the official "face" can be preserved and the Chinese dogged official procrastination be maintained, rather than to allow foreigners to come ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... east, in a place called Salem, and I was eager to visit them, for in that direction my universe died away in a luminous mist of unexplored distance. I had some notion of its near-by loveliness for I had once viewed it from the top of the tall bluff which stood like a warder at the gate of our valley, and when one bright morning my father said, "Belle, get ready, and we'll drive over to Grandad's," we all ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... great Bay tapered to stem-like dimensions as it flowed to the east of Staten Island and found its way to that greater sheet of water, the Lower Bay. On the opposite side of this passage rose the bluff shores of Brooklyn. But the Staten Island shore towered high above everything else. On opposite sides of the narrowest parts of the channel to the sea were forts. And it was to this very Narrows that the wireless detector had pointed ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... country seemed doomed that day to misunderstanding, whether by sparrows or by bigger birds of passage. Those which should have startled failed of effect, and those which should not have startled, did. For, on turning the face of the next bluff, we came upon a hamlet apparently in the high tide of conflagration. From every roof volumes of smoke were rolling up into the sky, while men rushed to and fro excitedly outside. I was stirred, myself, for there seemed scant hope of saving the place, such headway had the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... may seem to you, but to me it appears to be the land. That is the bluff-like termination of the celebrated high lands of Navesink. By watching it for half an hour you will perceive its form and surface grow gradually ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... high bluff, northeast from the village of Mackinaw, half a mile from the mission house. Soon after the settlement of the modern Mackinaw, Capt. Robinson, of the English army, then commanding this port, had a summer house built on the brow of this bluff, now called Robinson's ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 'So bluff!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'wasn't he? So burly. So truly English. Such a picture, too, he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... such circumstances, a bluff and hearty stoicism as remote as possible from Mrs. Peyton's deprecating evasion of facts. It was a bad business; he was sorry Kate should have been mixed up with it; but she would be married soon now, and then she would see that life wasn't ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... deg. up leaped of a sudden the sun, deg.19 And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland, at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... lengthy trudge, they reached a point where the ground sloped gently upward into a low bluff. Still keeping to the trail, they ascended this eminence, finding the forest not so dense, and the walking easier than it had been hitherto. Gaining the top, they emerged upon an open patch, which had been cleared of its erect, massive pines, ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... one of the tributaries of the Mississippi which enters that stream below the Des Moyens, and intended to take his son with him. As Black Hawk was approaching his village on Rock river, after his campaign on the lakes with Dixon, he observed a smoke rising from a hollow in the bluff of the stream. He went to see who was there. Upon drawing near to the fire, he discovered a mat stretched, and an old man of sorrowful aspect sitting under it, alone, and evidently humbling himself ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... river the hill descends by a double slope,—the upper gentle, the lower abrupt. The camp was spread upon the former,—the company streets looking off toward Harrisburg and terminating at the brow of the bluff. The latter was covered with timber, but so thinly toward the top as not to intercept the view. Looking down from the crest of this bluff the eyes rest upon a ribbon of land one hundred feet below, dotted over with small white houses ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... the farm-house spreads, Wherein it stands home-like, but desolate, 'Midst crowded and uneven-statured sheds, Alike by rain and sunshine sadly stained. A quiet country-road before the door Runs, gathering close its ruts to scale the hill— A sudden bluff on the New Hampshire coast, That rises rough against the sea, and hangs Crested above the bowlder-sprinkled beach. And on the road white houses small are strung Like threaded beads, with intervals. The church Tops the rough hill; then ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... like that; Noah's arks, an' guns, an' dolls, An' all kinds o' fol-de-rols. Then with frosty bells a-chime, Slidin' down the hills o' time, Right amidst the fun an' din Christmas come a-bustlin' in, Raised his cheery voice to call Out a welcome to us all; Hale and hearty, strong an' bluff, That was Christmas, sure enough. Snow knee-deep an' coastin' fine, Frozen mill-ponds all ashine, Seemin' jest to lay in wait, Beggin' you to come an' skate. An' you 'd git your gal an' go Stumpin' cheerily thro' ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted in his old, bluff way: "Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn't expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, of New ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Doctor Mayberry and come down over the Ridge from Warren County with him, he had his joke with me about my herb-basket and a-setting up opposition to him. It's in our blood. My own cousin Seliny Lue Lovell down at the Bluff follows the calling just the same as I do. I say the Lord were good to me to give me the love of it and a father and a husband and now a son to ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... is most frequently described is that known as the Basket trick, which is in my opinion the chef d'oeuvre of the Indian Jadoo-wallah. It is a wonderful bluff usually wonderfully shewn. ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... him unexpectedly. Trotting in opposite directions along the base of a high bluff, they rounded a corner of rock and found themselves face to face. They paused with instant alarm, and ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... no use for sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff." ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... it happened, from next morning's breakfast the Meadowcrofts sat next to us. Hilda was on one side of me; Lady Meadowcroft on the other; and beyond her again, bluff Yorkshire Sir Ivor, with his cold, hard, honest blue North Country eyes, and his dignified, pompous English, breaking down at times into a North Country colloquialism. They talked chiefly to each other. Acting on Hilda's instructions, I took care not to engage in conversation ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... us have an understanding about this," said Muhlenberg. "You are asking God to restore me, and I am asking God to take me home. There must not be any contradiction in our prayers, for it is evident that He cannot answer them both." This was characteristic of his bluff frankness, as well as of his heavenly-mindedness—he ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... before, been settled by the Mexicans, had they not been deterred by its exposure, and consequent inviting position for Indian depredations. The valley is about fifty miles east from Taos; and, for its scenery, cannot be surpassed by anything of the kind in America. Standing at the head of it on a blunt bluff, you look down and out on the prairies, and nothing can be more enchanting than the view that is thus presented. On each side there are lofty hills, which, when green with grass and foliage, add a magic beauty to the scene. Through the valley, as if it had been ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Temple is all hostility; and goes to the drawing-room to tell every body how angry he is with the court-but what is Sir Joseph Wittol, when Nol Bluff is pacific? They talk of erecting a tavern in the city, called The Salutation: the sign to represent Lord Bath and Mr. Pitt embracing. These ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... blame bad bargain," commented the rancher, with unruffled good humor. "I was figuring that I might help you. I thought you were a hobo after my chickens, or trying to bluff me into a free meal this morning. If you'd asked straight for it, I'd ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... bluff of lank trees reared its tousled snow-crowned head above the white heart of a wide valley. It was where the gorge of the Bell River opened out upon low banks. It was where the only trail of the region headed westwards. The bowels of the bluff were defended by a meagre undergrowth, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... up!" Lynda pressed her face to his shoulder, "they make a bluff at caring for us and defending us and all the rest—but we understand, we understand! I think women mother men always even when they rely upon them most, as I do upon you! It's so splendid to think, when we go home, of the great things ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... man—his noble proportions, his fine features, and his frank bearing—fitted in with that jovial, man-to-man manner which he affected. Here, one would say, is a bluff, honest fellow, whose heart would be sound however rude his outspoken words might seem. It was only when those dead, dark eyes, deep and remorseless, were turned upon a man that he shrank within himself, feeling that he was face to face with an infinite possibility of latent evil, with a strength ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Howard and his friends, nearly all of whom held some position of trust under the new government, and at nine o'clock, in obedience to a significant wink and nod from the skipper, he went below and put the saddle and bridle on his horse. Just then the whistle sounded for Cedar Bluff landing, and some of the passengers came down to bid him good-by ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... Draw Poker, or Bluff, is a favourite game with the Americans. It is played by any number of persons, from four to seven; four, five, or six players are preferred; seven are only engaged where a party of friends consists of that number, and all ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... my good friend," said he. "I hope last night has not upset you. It's all bluff, you know, on the part of the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... precaution to button up the box office 'take' in my inside pocket, and while Merritt was making a bluff at looking for the key to the cage door I looked around to see that there was a free exit, for the coon was standing there swelling out his chest and grinning as if he had the five hundred already in his jeans, and I knew he couldn't be bluffed out. Just then a ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... main sheet, handsomely, my lad—not too much. Now, take in the slack, afore she jibes;" and the master ducked under the main boom and took his station on the other side of the deck. "Steady as you go now.—Newton, take the helm.—D'ye see that bluff?—keep her right for it. Tom, you and the boy rouse the cable up—get about ten fathoms on deck, and bend it.—You'll find a bit of seizing and a marling-spike in the locker abaft." The sloop scuddled before the gale, and in less ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Connecticut, there is a steep and rocky bluff, the scene of one of Putnam's most extraordinary feats, performed only a short time before he was stricken down. An expedition, fifteen hundred strong, had been sent by the British against West Greenwich, and Putnam rallied a company to oppose the ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... dangers and hardships of the wilderness and the river, it seemed as if we had reached the end of our journey, though we were over two thousand miles from the Atlantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the Ambiyacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. Excepting Mr. Hauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two or three other whites, the inhabitants are Indians of the Orejones and Yagua tribes. The exportations ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... if I gave a million and a half dollars to these institutions I should still have the equivalent of about twenty thousand a year English, and I considered that Nancy could have a pretty good time on that or less. Anyhow, we had a stiff set of arguments up at the Hurlbird mansion which stands on a bluff over the town. It may strike you, silent listener, as being funny if you happen to be European. But moral problems of that description and the giving of millions to institutions are immensely serious matters in my country. Indeed, they are the staple topics for consideration ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... wholly unusual and startling; relieved of strain, the springs snapped and whined, there was a violent oscillation of the back, a shudder convulsed the thing, and it sprang after him, much as a tame rabbit thumps its feet upon the ground in an effort to bluff a kitten. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... seen a prettier place than this as we beheld it by the morrow's light. The house stands on a high bluff, worthy the name of hill, which slopes steeply but greenly down to the South Prong of Black Creek, better deserving the name of river than many a stream which boasts the designation. We crossed it upon a boom, pausing midway ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... ere the morning Rolls the fog from strait and bluff; Where the offing crimsons eastward There ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... pair followed the constable in uniform, now hurrying ahead to ring for the elevator. The big, bluff, bullet-headed Superintendent was physically well fitted for his responsible position, though he combined with the official demeanor some of the easy-going characteristics of a country squire; but ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... climate of Dunedin much resembles the climate of Edinburgh itself. Snow covers its streets in the winter, and the great Mount Cook, clad in snow, hovers away in the far distance. Down towards the south scenery which not even the fiords of Norway can rival extends from the bluff towards the north. Milford Sounds are well known for their great beauty to all those who have travelled in those waters. I doubt whether there is any part of the world which, within such distances, is more magnificently picturesque than that southern corner of the South ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Sam Weller said. Oh, here's Tommy May—Here, Tom, what do you think of the weather?" said the lad, addressing a bluff-looking seaman. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... with grown-up gals ez oughter be squared; that is—the boys mighter put in a few fancy touches among them—kinder take 'em buggy riding—or to church—once in a while—just to take the pizen outer their tongues, and make a kind o' bluff to the parents, d'ye see? That would sorter divert their own minds; and even if it didn't, it would kinder get 'em accustomed agin to the old style and their own kind. I want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in a giniral way. I don't say ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... way quickly back to Barbara with the poor spoils of my expedition. I rounded the bluff of cliff that protected her hiding-place. Again I stood amazed, asking if fortune had more tricks in her bag for me. The recess was empty. But a moment later I was reassured; a voice called to me, and I saw her some thirty yards away, down on the sea-beach. I set down pasty and jug ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... rushing into all parts of the valley. The Hermit hears a rumbling in the clouds, as he hoes his potatoes. He looks; a granite pilaster, hewn out by the hurricanes centuries ago, at last grown weary of clinging to that precipitous bluff, lets go its hold, and is dashed from crag to crag in a prolonged and horrible suicide. A pioneer once laid him out a garden, and marked the plan of his cellar; he was to begin digging the next day: that night, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... that not only animals here and there, but whole flocks and swarms of them, are often destroyed, even in the wild state, by mistaken fear; by such panics, for instance, as cause a whole herd of buffalos to rush over a bluff, and be dashed to pieces. And remark that this capacity of panic, fear—of superstition, as I should call it—is greatest in those animals, the dog and the horse for instance, which have the most rapid and vivid fancy. Does not the unlettered Highlander say ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... on the night of the 1st instant, with the avowed purpose of lynching them. But fortunately, the objects of their vengeance had escaped from town. Foiled in their purpose, the rioters repaired to the shantee where the murder was committed, and precipitated it over the bluff. The military of the city were ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the southwest side about one hundred feet high, and on the northeast another, lower. Between them, and also along the north shore, the land is low, and during the season of rains there is a row of ponds parallel to the shore. On the south side a conspicuous white bluff looks to the southward ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... said a bluff sailor to him; "if you mean to be a man, you must learn to toss off your glass. Your white face don't look as if you ever tasted anything stronger than tea. Here is a glass ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... fifty years, off and on—ever since, in fact, the press-masters of bluff King Hal denuded the Dorset coast of fishermen and drove the starving women of that region to sea in quest of food [Footnote: State Papers Domestic, Henry VIII.: Lord Russell to the Privy Council, 22 Aug. 1545.]—the press-gang had been laboriously teaching English ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson |
