"Whiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had array'd himself in poor Le Fever's regimental coat; and with his hair tuck'd up under his Montero-cap, which he had furbish'd up for the occasion, march'd three paces distant from his master: a whiff of military pride had puff'd out his shirt at the wrist; and upon that in a black leather thong clipp'd into a tassel beyond the knot, hung the corporal's stick—my uncle Toby carried his cane like ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to be the fate of the unfortunate messenger, for, in spite of the sudden shutting of the door by the Russian, she caught a glimpse of the man lying face downwards on the floor of his stifling room. She also had received a whiff of the sweet, heavy gas which had been used, that seemed now to be tincturing the whole atmosphere of the car, especially in the long narrow passage. It was not likely they intended to kill the man, for his death would cause an awkward investigation, while his statement that he had been rendered ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... until morning by the harassed family; and they rolled their eyes occasionally, with apprehension lest the grinding of the wheels should cease, and some ghostly wall loom up at one side of their way, unlighted by a single glimmer and unperfumed by any whiff of supper. It was a fine thing to be movers' dogs when the movers went into camp or put up in state at a tavern. Around a camp were all sorts of woodsy creatures to be scratched out of holes or chased up trees, or to be nosed and ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... at Mrs. Handsomebody and marvelled that she should suspect nothing. Did she get no whiff of the furry smell of Anita? Did no faint echo of Tony's music disturb her thoughts? What were her thoughts? Deep ones I was sure, for her brow was knit. Was she thinking of that brother on whom the Scotch ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... and the ruled— Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd— But yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, and down rolls ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and never an open window or any kind of ventilation; this, however, does not inconvenience the Spaniard in the least. It is usual to smoke during the intervals of the dances—cigarettes as a rule; but I have often known a man to lay his cigar on the edge of a table, and give it a whiff between the rounds of a valse to keep ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... more than a bit down myself, for there were days when death was very near, and one night it really broke me up to hear a big strapping chap saying to the man who shared his two-man sack, "I shouldn't care a whiff if it wasn't for the wife and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... sick to death of your well-groomed gods, your make-believe and your show; I long for a whiff of bacon and beans, a snug shake-down in the snow, A trail to break, and a life at stake, and another ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... halted on the outskirts of the site of the contemplated city, and tossed up a series of engirdling hills, whose slopes and crests covered with verdure might afford in the days to come a beautiful sight to the inhabitants when riding forth to get a whiff of country air. These same forces of nature, evidently in love with their work, arranged, it seems, for all the beautiful clouds with their varying hues to pass in daily review over the head of the city to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the jockey, taking a whiff, 'make your conversation as short as possible, whether in Latin or Dutch, for, to tell you the truth, I am rather tired ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... compunctions and mortifications due to his consciousness of his own futility. Or you may fall back upon the simple and general promptings that are smoothly current in the minds of us all. My own notion, however, is this: he never would have married at home; only an insidious whiff of romance, encountered in France or Italy, could ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... see," said a voice, which to Lord Henry appeared to reveal the arrogance of its owner, "is that your Inner Light is but a vague and vapid abstraction, a mere whiff of the whisky bottle, but not the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... library some minutes later Dorothea was pouring her uncle's coffee, and as he took the cup she brought him he bowed ceremoniously, then put it down to light a cigar. There were times when he wished Dorothea were his. If she were his— He took a long whiff of his cigar and threw the match in ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... mornings! We have nothing like it, even when the worst mistral is blowing, in our winters here in Provence. Down in the ravine there was a thick mist, into which I could not see at all; but every now and then a whiff of wind would come in from the seaward and thin it a little, and then I would give a good look below me, for it was along the ravine that any party sent out to surprise ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... of her inner consciousness. Was the widower bent on making the most of his time in an endeavor to fascinate the Eastern belle? The ladies were hardly dressed when he reappeared, and was urging Miss Sanford to come out with him for a brief stroll to see the mountain prairie and take a whiff of Wyoming breezes, when the appearance of Mrs. Turner and others (who had just happened by, but hearing their voices could not resist rushing in to welcome Mrs. Truscott, etc., etc.) put an end to the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... goes my commission of captain of this craft, in a whiff," returned the sailing-master. "That is as much as to say, here comes one who will command when he gets on board. Well, well, it is Mr. Griffith, and I can't say, notwithstanding his love of knee-buckles and small wares, but I'm glad he's out of the hands of the English! Ay, here they all come ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... may be induced to ship as mate, for a down east voyage! I remember of sailing by Nantucket many years ago, on my return from Liverpool, (he did not add that he had worked his passage) and though some twenty miles distant, we fancied that we got a whiff of the hump-backs. Our captain was a jolly sort of fellow, and would have us land-lubbers believe that his experienced eye could see half across the ocean, but he found we were too smart for him, when he told us ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... I were an invalid, Patty. I'm sensitive to the heat, I admit, and this weather is excessive. But I'm not ill, and once I get a whiff of mountain air ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... little Red Hen came quickly in, and shut the door and locked it. "I'm glad I'm safely in," she said. Just as she said it, she turned round, and there stood the ugly old Fox, with his big bag over his shoulder. Whiff! how scared the little Red Hen was! She dropped her apronful of sticks, and flew up to the big beam across the ceiling. There she perched, and she said to the old Fox, down below, "You may as well go home, for ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... That strong whiff disturbed pussy's and "the Captain's" (so I have called my old setter friend) nap, for puss stands up on her morocco bed and arches her back like a horseshoe, and then springs, with a jolted-out "mew-r-r-r," right on my table, and proceeds to walk over this manuscript, carrying her tail up ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... with the brightest of silver, and "found" a dainty lunch. There was a bit of fried chicken breast, some crisp bacon, browned potatoes, little round beaten biscuit, and rose-colored sherbet with a whiff of wine in it. Miss Taylor wondered a little at the bounty of Southern hospitality; but she was hungry, and she ate heartily, then leaned back dreamily and listened to Mr. Cresswell's smooth Southern r's, adding a word here and there that kept the conversation going and brought ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... than time to leave the porch, before the doors burst open, and the people streamed forth. A whiff of evil-smelling air issued from the building, at the same time. The dog was howling more piteously than ever. Someone complained of the disturbance that had been caused by the creature's cries, during ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... white-capped mountains beyond, and on the handsome promenade the best-gowned of Europe, all in the brilliant sunshine of a soft spring day—what could be more charming? And then, suddenly, your unwilling nostrils breathe in a strong whiff of sewage. Have you been mistaken? Surely you are dreaming. The Casino dances on the water. A bevy of girls come out of the Hotel Ruhl to join the Lenten noon-day throng. Nothing disagreeable like sewage—but there it is again! Whew! ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... comes after Stonehenge. Rome will be poorly represented, but that may come the day after at Bath. And the next day too I want to show you something of our old River Severn. We will come right up to the present if we go through Bristol. There we shall have a whiff of America, our new find, from which the tobacco comes, and we shall be reminded of how we set sail thither—was it yesterday or the day before? You will understand at Bristol how it is that the energy has gone out of this dreaming land—to Africa ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... my wrists, and I saw that one of the men who had sprung from his place of concealment was pouring some liquid from a bottle upon a sponge. I caught a whiff of its odour—an odour too familiar to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the war the German Crown Prince got a very neat call-down from Miss Bernice Willard, a Philadelphia girl. It was during the Emperor's regatta, and the two mentioned were sitting with others on the deck of a yacht. A whiff of smoke from the Prince's cigarette blowing into the young lady's face, a lieutenant ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... had noticed the alias, and took it as a kindly act that she passed no remark on it. He was equally well aware that Mrs. Haxton was alive to the fact that there were letters for him. Stump, who made his appearance at the moment, added a whiff of awkwardness when he saw the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... of the good-wife Marcile. That petite personne, moreover, was a rather sophisticated young lady. One would never have seen her, in the mornings, munching a hunk of bread-and-butter "as long as from here to Easter." No; Jeannette has fulfilled her part, providing a whiff of marjoram and cottage flowers for the castle chambers. She has read, written and said her prayers. She has the firm outline, the rosy cheeks, the simplicity of a Watteau peasant-girl—nothing of the Greuze languish, with its hint of a ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... your nose is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... delightful than the odours which filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling the wide world with invisible sweetness. A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experience. I never smell daisies without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... as to be able to go out, one day his mother got her sister's husband, who had a little pony-cart, to carry them down to the sea-shore, and leave them there for a few hours. He had some business to do further on at Ramsgate, and would pick them up as he returned. A whiff of the sea-air would do them both good, she said, and she thought besides she could best tell Diamond what had happened if she had ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... went on. As we went past one of the doors it opened all of a sudden and Mrs. Lee herself came out, still in her dress and her jewels, and her face all a-daub with paint, and the blood on her arm and dress, and ran through another door further along, leaving behind her a great whiff of coarse perfume. It was but for an instant that we saw her; yet, even in that instant, a sort of horror came on me again as if she were something monstrous and ominous, though—poor woman!—I have never heard ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... very close to the street, so that I could hear everything any one said in passing, and it seemed to bring me right into the thick of things, as I so often wished to be, back there in the desert. The warm, wet smell of the freshly sprinkled streets, the whiff of an occasional cigar, the sound of a street piano in the next block, all seemed so strange yet so friendly and sociable. It made me feel for a little while—oh, I can hardly explain it—as if the old Mary Ware that I used to be was a million miles away, and as if the Mary Ware sitting here ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... when "personal relations" came under discussion. Ought Margaret to know what Helen knew the Basts to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly overrated by specialists. The epigram, with its faint whiff of the eighties, meant nothing. But he might have let it off now if his sister had ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... elegant suburb they had inhabited for four or five years, might have been elated at a less brilliant match than that she had made. The "best people" of the aforesaid suburb were exclusive; slow to form intimacies with their unaccredited neighbors, and very hasty in breaking them at the faintest whiff of a doubtful or tainted reputation. And of the second best the Dorrances had kept themselves clear. Having met and captivated her wealthy lover on a rarely fortunate summer jaunt, made in company with her eldest brother, his wife, and ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... 'em now, would ye, Telly?" he continued after drawing a long whiff of smoke and slowly emitting it in rings. "It's been so many years, an' since I got thinkin' 'bout it I'd like to take a look at 'em, jest to remind me o' that fortunate day ye came ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... ink-bottle I have tried, and still it's nothing to boast of. My journey went off all right, and I have kept ever in good spirits. Last night, indeed, I did think my little bit of gaiety was going away down the wind like a whiff of tobacco smoke, but to-day it has come back to me a little. The influence of this place is assuredly all that can be worst against one; mais il faut lutter. I was haunted last night when I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... workers are quite aware that the absolute monarchy does not and cannot hesitate one moment to greet them with a whiff of grapeshot in the service of the bourgeoisie. Why then should they prefer the direct rule of the bourgeoisie to the brutal oppression of absolute government, with its semi-feudal retinue? The workers know that the bourgeoisie must not only make them wider concessions ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... afraid of the old woman who smelled of snuff, and who, when she dressed him in the morning, looked at him with a pitying air; he was afraid of the doctor, who climbed the five flights of stairs twice a day now, and left a whiff of perfume behind him; afraid of his father, who did not go to his office any more, whose beard was often three days old, and who feverishly paced the little parlor, tossing back with a distracted gesture the lock ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... another whiff or two, "it isn't a brave bouncing girl like you who asks that? Why, I always go down at full gallop. There's nothing like ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... past me suddenly." "Yes, but what was it?" said Father Thomas trying to smile; "a dog or cat, methinks." "It was a beast," said Henry slowly, in a trembling voice—"a beast about the bigness of a goat. I never saw the like—yet I did not see it clear; I but felt the air blow, and caught a whiff of it—it was salt like the sea, but with a kind of dead smell behind." "Was that all you saw?" said Father Thomas; "belike you were tired and faint, and the air swam round you suddenly—I have known the like myself when weary." "Nay, nay," ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with half a hundred young bloods and beaux, who looked in during lounging hours, being students of law, physic, and divinity, half-pay ensigns, and theatrical understrappers, to replenish their boxes with Lundyfoot, whiff a Havannah cigar, or masticate pigtail. No wonder that she was spoiled by flattery, Miss Diana, for she was a bit of a beauty; and though she had but one eye—by heavens, what an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... the smell of bacon frying over the camp-fire, or the crack of a fine, mealy Arizona potato, roasting in the ashes, or a whiff from the coffee-pot, just about to topple over on the burning sticks. The fire is made of driftwood washed down possibly from some storm-swept region where a Mormon dwells with his numerous family; or, mayhap, from a forest where the elk of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... otherwise crowded and crossed with items of interest, and Anne almost felt herself back in Avonlea while reading it. Marilla's was a rather prim and colorless epistle, severely innocent of gossip or emotion. Yet somehow it conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome, simple life at Green Gables, with its savor of ancient peace, and the steadfast abiding love that was there for her. Mrs. Lynde's letter was full of church news. Having broken up housekeeping, Mrs. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... morning the passengers awoke to find themselves at anchor in Colombo harbour, and the soft warm air brought them a delicious whiff of the celebrated cinnamon gardens. Many were landing for Southern India and a quantity of cargo had to be discharged. As this was bound to be a lengthy process, the remnant who were bound for Rangoon had ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... what it is when you are fishing off the rocks, and there is no breaking of waves, only a rising and falling of the water; and it comes swelling up about you with a sort of sob that brings with it a whiff of fresh air every time, and makes you take in your breath with a sort of sob too, every time—and at last you seem to be the sea, or the sea seems to be you—it's all one; but you ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... said, has been done in a corner. We do not deny it. But, verily we believe, that New England is the corner lot of our national estate. Our poets have preserved for us in ballads our homespun legends. They have imaged in verse the beauty of New England's hills and waters. As we read there comes the whiff of fragrance which transports us to the hillside pasture where the sweet fern and sorrel grow, or the salt breeze of the sea blows again on our cheeks, or the rippling Merrimac sings in our ears, or the heights of Katahdin or Wachusett, lift our eyes upward. Finally, our poets, in their characters, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... flowers, those who camp in places where the plant is plentiful being apt to be seized with violent sickness. An attractive fruit with an exalted title (DIOSPYROS HEBECAPRA) scalds the lips and tongue with caustic-like severity, and a whiff from a certain species of putrescent fungus produces almost instantaneous giddiness, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the sea; and when the billowing fields and neat hedges changed to chalky downs, a sudden whiff of salt on the air blowing through a half-open window made her heart leap. She nearly cried, "The sea!" but controlled herself because ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and third acts, Helen asked Robert for a pencil and made a note on the margin of her program, which she laughingly refused to let him read. It was all that was needed to crystallize his resentment, and muttering something about "a whiff of tobacco," he got up ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... A whiff of steam—hot, damp, terrifying—passed across his face, in which the veins were starting from the oily skin. His eyes, half closed, bulged from the sockets. He knew the pit was very close now; dully he heard its ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... seems it was monstrously to the point, and so rudely conceived that the old duke never recovered the indignity. He got home as far as Amboise, sickened, and died two days after (Jan. 4, 1465), in the seventy-fourth year of his age. And so a whiff of pungent prose stopped the issue of melodious rondels to the end ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were the Morenos from all but the archives of California, but the willows and Dr. Hiram Webster were full of years and honors. The ranchos were ranchos no longer. A somnolent city covered their fertile acres, catching but a whiff at angels' intervals of the metropolis of nerves and pulse and ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... trees shone the red glow of the camp-fires. Through the dusk came the pleasant odors of frying fish and roasting pork, with now and then a whiff of savory garlic. Alwin turned on ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a whiff of ether." The tenderest arms stole around my head and the softest possible voice—Ulysses must have heard it long ago—"Now do take a deep breath." I resisted. I had been told that I would see ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... it. I have been longing for a cigarette all day, and, when I came by accident upon this one, finding myself all alone, I could not resist the desire to have a whiff." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... temporary camp. He was gloomy and sullen, and there was an expression on his face which Dan did not like to see there, for it made him fear that a storm was brewing. But after they had been a few minutes in the camp, and Godfrey had filled his pipe and smoked a whiff or two, the scowl faded away and Dan ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... doze like a tottum. At the same time, to clear his way, and the better to enable him to take a good mark, he gave James Batter a shove, that made him stoiter against the wall, and snacked the good new farthing tobacco-pipe, that James was taking his first whiff out of; crying, at the same blessed moment—"Hold out o' my road, ye long withered wabster. Ye're a pair of havering idiots; but I'll have pennyworths out of both your ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... forms where the men had lain in the soft black muck behind the spoil bank were still sharply defined. Their departure must have occurred during the darkest hours of early morning. They had left behind them a flask full of colorless liquid, one whiff of which proved its ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... bottle. I handles mah licker!" The Wildcat uncorked the bottle and held it to the Mud Turtle's chattering lips. The Mud Turtle took a whiff of the liquid. Its perfume seemed to inspire a new set of internal calisthenics in the Mud Turtle. After he had quit writhing the Wildcat again pressed the remedy upon him. "Drink it, fo' I drips it on you. Go ahead an' drink. I'll hol' yo' nose." He succeeded ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... in the corridor outside. Somebody sprang past me in the darkness, and, for a second, amazement kept me motionless. The thing was impossible, or I could have sworn that my feet were brushed by the skirts of a woman's gown, and that a whiff of perfume—it was like the scent of dying violets—floated past me. Then the door of my room, from which I had withdrawn the bolt, was flung suddenly open, and almost simultaneously my fingers touched the knob of the electric light fittings. The whole place was ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in belts or neck-hung sheaths. Women toiled over the fires, smoke-curing the meat, on their backs infants that stared round-eyed and sucked at lumps of tallow. Dogs, full-kin to wolves, bristled up to Smoke to endure the menace of the short club he carried and to whiff the odor of this newcomer whom they must accept by virtue of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... fatigued discontent, and the conversation had that jerky interjectional quality which belonged to people with a common grievance, but a different individual experience. Mr. Winslow had been unable to shave. Mrs. Markham, incautiously and surreptitiously opening a port-hole in her state-room for a whiff of fresh air while dressing, had been shocked by the intrusion of the Pacific Ocean, and was obliged to summon assistance and change her dress. Jack Crosby, who had attired himself for tropical shore-going in white ducks and patent leathers, shivered in the keen northwest Trades, and bewailed ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... was husky. Truth to tell, he was rather beside himself. He had played for a high stake and had nearly won. Even now the issue hung on a word, a mere whiff of volition: and if he knew exactly how much depended on that swing of the balance he might have been startled into a more ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... it will be to get back to it. Wish I could get a whiff of the air right now. Yes, indeed! I am American to the ends of my fingers, and hallelujah to the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... of the people, had such a snowfall been seen in that section. Yet it could scarcely be called a snowstorm, for there was no wind, not a single whiff, and therefore, of course, no snowdrifts. The snow fell slowly, evenly, steadily, dropping over the earth a ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... in and waited for evening. I bored three rows of holes, one above another; then I bored out the interstices between. I thus succeeded in making one hole about an inch long and an inch broad. I sat by it till late into the night, to enjoy the little whiff of air that floated in. In the morning I watched for my children. The first person I saw in the street was Dr. Flint. I had a shuddering, superstitious feeling that it was a bad omen. Several familiar faces ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... new forces. On his way to the town Bacon is attacked by an ambush of soldiers, whom he beats off with the help of one of his lieutenants, Fearless, backed by Lieutenant Daring and a troop of his own men, who capture Whimsey and Whiff, two very prominent justices, instigators of the plot. He accordingly appears before the Council with a couple of prisoners. The populace, who are all for their hero, realizing the treachery, raise a riot, and throw the Councillors into a state of the utmost confusion ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... began to froth at the lips, and in another hour he lay dead. His son and companion, as well as rival in all rat and lizard hunts, softly approached the body, lifting each foot with almost solemn deliberation. He sniffed, and catching a whiff of the scent of death, sat on his haunches, threw back his head, and in loud and piercing tones lamented the tragedy until from very hoarseness he could howl no longer. He stood the solitary spectator of the burial, and as the soil was patted down tenderly, sniffed ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... grew so choking that he was forced to move, but it followed him till he could bear it no longer, and he dashed out of another of the ways that led into the cavern. As he went he caught a distant glimpse of a man throwing wood on the fire by the in-way, and the whiff that the wind brought him said: "This is the man that was last night watching the sheep." Strange as it may seem, the woods were clear of smoke except for a trifling belt that floated in the trees, and Jack went ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... life! To-day all things are possible again! The fool has learned wisdom, and, I hope, become a man. But come," said he in a more natural tone, "let us get back to our ditch, and, while you tell me the particulars, if you don't object I should much like to try a whiff ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... I don't trespass—Mr. Osborn, the kind way you're receiving me makes me venturesome. I see an ash-tray over there, proving you sometimes favor the weed. Would you mind if I took a whiff of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... still actively astir, and Wyatt experienced a prescient vicarious qualm to note their lack of heed or secrecy—the noisy shifting of heavy weights (barrels, kegs, bags of apples, and peaches for pomace), the loud voices and unguarded words. When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean air that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most unobservant inmate, that the still was operated in a cellar, peculiarly immune to ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... has been torn by a wild animal, and the beasts would have been busy enough to-night. Then some of 'em were left lurking about, and they spied Me Dain coming, didn't see us behind, and thought he was coming to the village alone. Of course they slipped out of the bushes and nabbed him, thinking to whiff off his head and turn the ponies' packs out at their own leisure. But Jack upset their little plan, and Me Dain's head stops in the ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... (which was nothing to brag of,) and a cigar, (which would have been a great deal to brag of, if he had succeeded in smoking it,) and, after a whiff or two, asked his companion how it was that he came to send such a message to Congress ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... of the other side. I gulped a great breath of the fresh air into my suffocating lungs, tore the buckskin covering from my broncho's head and we raced on in a swirl of smoke, always following the dust which revealed the tracks of the retreating Sioux. There was a whiff of singed hair, as if one of the horses had been burnt, and Little Fellow gave a shout. Looking back I saw his horse sinking on the blackened patch; but La Robe Noire and I rode on. The fugitives were ascending rising ground to the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... go up?" he asked eagerly; "I'd like a whiff of a pipe, anyway. It'll be something to ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... ways. Instead of asking your husband what he does with every cent you give him, learn to trust him. Teach him that you have confidence in him. Make him think you have anyway, whether you have or not. Do not seek to get a whiff of his breath every ten minutes to see whether he has been drinking or not. If you keep doing that you will sock him into a drunkard's grave, sure pop. He will at first lie about it, then he will use ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... herd's on its toes waiting for the signal; an' the wink of an eye'll send 'em off. God only knows what'll happen between now and daylight! If the wind should change an' blow down from the north, they'll be off as shore as shooting. One whiff of Bennett's Creek is ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... of the professor's engagement Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Hiram Look kept sullenly to their castles, nursing indignant sense of their wrongs. They got an occasional whiff of the scandal that was pursuing their names. Though their respective wives strove with pathetic loyalty to disbelieve all that the seeress had hinted at, and moved in sad silence about their duties, it ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... on it in the summer when Eleanor and I and Matilda were at school there. As we left the house in double file to take our daily exercise on the high-road, the girls would bob their heads to catch a whiff of the scent as they passed, or to let the cool fragrant flowers brush their foreheads. On this point Madame, our French governess, remonstrated in vain. We took turns for the side next to the lilac, and sniffed away as long as there was anything to smell. Even ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... for a whiff now!" chuckled Ditson. "I know you are. I got along a whole day, but it was a day of ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... began to slough off, giving rise to a dry, hacking cough. Any unusually severe exertion precipitated spells of coughing, during which he was almost like a man in a fit. The blood congested in his eyes till they bulged, while the tears ran down his cheeks. A whiff of the smoke from frying bacon would start him off for a half-hour's paroxysm, and he kept carefully to windward when Daylight ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... "Give me a whiff of it, too, Parks," I said, unsteadily, and in an instant my eyes were streaming; but I had escaped hysteria. "Straighten Rogers out and let him lie there," I gasped, and sat dizzily down upon the floor. But I dared not look at Hornblower. I felt that another glance at his dazed countenance ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over the hearth to put fresh logs on the fire, my face was so close to hers that I felt her breath on my cheek. It thrilled me to feel even the suggestion of that ineffable contact. Her breath was sweet—sweet as the breath of a calf, sweet as the whiff of a summer breeze across beds of mignonette. How could anyone believe for a moment that such sweet breath could come from the lips of the dead—the dead in esse or in posse—that corruption could send forth fragrance so sweet and pure? ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... anything as incongruous as Sioux Falls and luxury in the same breath—it's a slam on luxury! Big and luxurious hotels—Mr. Fitch ought to be mobbed. Wonder if he got a whiff of the lobby of the only thing that can be called an hotel here, or if he had a cold during his prolonged stay of twelve hours, nine of which he slept through. At the hotel yesterday I mentioned to the elevator boy that many children were stopping there. He answered: "Yes, there is more ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... prison supported by the soldiers; the snow creaked under foot; the night was very dark, and the sharp fresh air almost took away his breath, yet it was infinitely welcome to him after the heavy atmosphere of his cell, and he inhaled it with keen pleasure, thinking that each whiff was almost the last. He was led into a large, faintly-lighted room, where officers of various grades were smoking around a large table. It was only the committee of investigation, for hitherto his examinations had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car was winding its way up the hill upon which the ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... cigar there remained only the end between my lips, and taking a last whiff, I threw ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... livings in his own gift, no doubt. I've got a new thing running in my head this very minute that you shall hear though, all the same, as soon as I've hammered it into shape—a sort of villanette in music, a little whiff of country freshness, suggested by the new ethereal acquisition, little Miss Butterfly. Have you ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... more point which we feel bound to notice in closing our article. While going about the premises, we were asked to look to the top of the tall engine-chimney, where, to our surprise, none but the faintest whiff of vapour was visible. 'There is no need,' said our conductor, 'that any chimney in Birmingham should smoke more than that. I have told the people so over and over again, but to little use, for they will persist in wasting fuel, and blackening the atmosphere. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... hotels, prices of furnished houses, hours of trains, dates of sailings and arrangements for being "met"; she found them for the most part prosaic and coarse. The only thing was that they brought into her stuffy corner as straight a whiff of Alpine meadows and Scotch moors as she might hope ever to inhale; there were moreover in especial fat hot dull ladies who had out with her, to exasperation, the terms for seaside lodgings, which struck her as huge, and the matter ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... seem to have had their attention attracted by the unusual stir among their turbulent subjects, and especially by this suspicious gathering at Mizpeh, and they come suddenly up the passes from their low-lying territory to disperse it. A whiff of the old terror blows across the spirits of the people, not unwholesomely; for it sets them, not to desire the outward presence of the ark, not to run from their post, but to beseech Samuel's intercession. They are afraid, but they mean to fight all the same, and, because they are afraid, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... A faint whiff of gas from the kitchen made her turn pale with dread. Then it flashed into her mind what must have happened—that sudden gust of wind had blown out the gas! As she ran to the kitchen, she realized that she had caught the same faint smell several ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... smoked his meerschaum to the last whiff, he put it carefully away, and disposed himself to follow Ducie's example in the matter of sleep. He rearranged his wraps, folded the arms, shut his eyes, and pressed his head resolutely against his cushion; but at the end of five minutes ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... '90's, when Sergeant Williamson came out from the house, carrying a pair of the Colonel's field-boots and a polishing-kit. Unaware of the Colonel's presence, he set down his burden, squatted on the floor and began polishing the boots, humming softly to himself. Then he must have caught a whiff of the Colonel's cigar. Raising his head, he saw the Colonel, and made as though to pick up ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper
... final test of a critic is in his reception of contemporary work; and Lamb must have found it much easier to be right, before every one else, about Webster, and Ford, and Cyril Tourneur, than to be the accurate critic that he was of Coleridge, at the very time when he was under the 'whiff and wind' of Coleridge's influence. And in writing of pictures, though his knowledge is not so great nor his instinct so wholly 'according to knowledge,' he can write as no one has ever written in praise of Titian (so that his very finest sentence describes a picture of Titian) and can instantly ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... choked, and began to cough until the tears came into her eyes, while smoke came through her nostrils. Under pretense of kissing her, the count had blown a whiff of tobacco into her mouth. She did not fly into a rage, and did not say a word, but she looked at her possessor with latent hatred in her ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... laughed. "Do you remember the /Taduki/ herb?" she asked. "I have plenty of it safe upstairs, and not long ago I took a whiff of it, only a whiff because you know it had ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... as she drags herself painfully across the room, catching a glimpse of a white, wild-looking face in the tall pier-glass as she clutches the handle of the door, and then the sight of the empty hat-rack in the hall, the absence of coat and stick, or fragrant whiff of cigar, bring the irrevocableness of the parting home to her more vividly than anything—more than the few words of farewell, the cold handshake, and the slam of the hall door half-an-hour ago. "Was ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Pineta, which, beginning a couple of miles from the city, extends some twenty-five miles along the sands of the Adriatic. I drove out to it for Byron's sake, and Dante's, and Boccaccio's, all of whom have interwoven it with their fictions, and for that of a possible whiff of coolness from the sea. Between the city and the forest, in the midst of malarious rice- swamps, stands the finest of the Ravennese churches, the stately temple of San Apollinare in Classe. The Emperor Augustus constructed hereabouts a harbour for fleets, which ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... smells, as the salty, spray-laden breath of the marsh. It seems fairly to line the lungs with ozone. I know how grass-fed cattle feel at the smell of salt. I have the concentrated thirst of a whole herd when I catch that first whiff of the marshes after a winter, a year it may be, of unsalted inland air. The smell of it stampedes me. I gallop to meet it, and drink, drink, drink deep of it, my blood ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... down comfortable, baits my hook wid a nice bit of fresh mate as any dacent fish would like to have, and then I says to meself, 'Dinny,' I says, 'while ye're waiting to hook a nice fish for the masther's dinner, I'd have jist a whiff o' tibakky if I were you.' 'Ye're right and I will,' I says; and I outs wid my pipe, fills it, and was just going to light up, when splash! There was a great big stone thrown in ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... then, after an hour's solitary bitterness in his room, went out and passed the evening at the theatre. The play was one of those fleering comedies which render contemptible for the time all honest and earnest intention, and which surely are a whiff from the bottomless pit itself. It made him laugh at the serious strain of self-question that had mingled with his resentment; it made him laugh even at his resentment, and with its humour in his thoughts, sent him off to sleep in a sottish acceptance ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... river came a whiff of gloom and depression. Covered over with sodden slush, it stretched with irksome rigidity towards the misty quarter whence blew a languid, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... such heat. He stifled a yawn that was no part of his performance. His pipe was out; he struck a match noisily on his boot; and Stingaree just stirred, as naturally as any infant. But Stingaree's senses were incredibly acute. He smelt every whiff of the rekindled pipe, knew to ten seconds when it went out once more, and listened in an agony for another match. None was struck. Was the Superintendent himself really asleep this time? He breathed ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... Universities. The buildings around were charming in their grey tones and shady nooks. They had a noble history, too, and their scholarly sons were (and are) not unworthy successors of their ancestral renown. The sun shone warmly, and most of the casements were open. From one came curling a whiff of tobacco; from another the hum of conversation; from a third the tones of a piano. A couple of undergraduates sauntered on the shady side, arm in arm, with broken caps and torn gowns—proud insignia of their last term. The grey stone walls were covered with ivy, except where an old dial with ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... a narrow side-street in which like a glacier the ice of the whole winter was still heaped, a whiff of soft air, perfumed with a suspicion of spring, struck him gently in the face. He drew it in deep within his lungs, and exhaled it in a long sigh. And then he stopped abruptly, and was standing very ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... she said brightly, shaking hands with me when Andy and I were going to turn in. 'And don't forget your pipe. Here it is! I know that Bushmen like to have a whiff or two when they turn in. Walter smokes in bed. I don't mind. You can smoke all night if ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... professed to be ill this morning, and I was alarmed. I dosed her with the medicine which Dr. S—— had given me when the epidemic first appeared, and sent for the Doctor himself. But I discovered, before he came, that she had gotten too close a whiff of the chloride-of-lime bag, and it nauseated her. She is more afraid of the disinfectants ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... night. Sweat prickled on Bartley's forehead. His nose itched. He lit a cigar. It tasted bitter, so he asked Cheyenne for tobacco and papers, and rolled a cigarette. He inhaled a whiff, and felt more comfortable. The Mexicans, who had ceased to talk when Bartley and Cheyenne entered, were now at it again, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... I'll fire, but do you first tell me what kind of a bird it is; else our agreement is cancelled, Old Boy." There was no help for it; the Devil had to own himself nonplussed, and off he fled, with a whiff of brimstone which nearly suffocated the Freischutz and his ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... himself from without and his fellows from within: to know his own for one among the thousand undenoted countenances of the city street, and to divine in others the throb of human agony and hope. In the meantime he will avoid the hospital doors, the pale faces, the cripple, the sweet whiff of chloroform—for there, on the most thoughtless, the pains of others are burned home; but he will continue to walk, in a divine self-pity, the aisles of the forgotten graveyard. The length of man's life, which is endless to the brave and busy, is scorned by his ambitious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through one of the floor ports and I followed suit. We were falling, unhampered by air resistance, and our bodies were practically weightless with reference to the Pioneer. It was a strange sensation: there was the feeling of exhilaration one experiences when inhaling the first whiff of nitrous oxide in the dentist's chair—a feeling of absolute detachment and care-free confidence in the ultimate result of our ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... (it was John who collected the beetles). Even on the second day its legs were supple. But the butterflies were dead. A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows which came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to the moor, now lost behind a furze bush, then off again helter-skelter in a ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... A few subsequent attempts were made, now by reactionaries, now by extreme radicals, to interfere with the work, but they were suppressed with comparative ease. The last uprising of the Parisian populace which threatened the Convention was effectually quelled (October, 1795) by a "whiff of grape-shot" discharged at the command of a young and obscure major of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... There is not a whiff of fresh and healthy air blowing through "Salome" except that which exhales from the cistern, the prison house of Jochanaan. Even the love of Narraboth, the young Syrian captain, for the princess is tainted by the jealous outbursts of Herodias's ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... has again brought me a whiff of German air, which is all the more welcome to me here as I have not too much of it. One sees extremely few German papers in Rome—also I read them very irregularly—and my correspondents from Germany are limited to two, of whom friend Gottschalg, my legendary Tieffurt Cantor, is the ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... got a whiff of the sweet on the spring air, and his nose had told him what was going on. The bear's scent is very keen, and this and his acute hearing make up for his ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... scholars alike are apt to feel the depression of such circumstances; and when you add to the other discomforts, that of a steady, pouring rain, with a sound of fall in every whiff of wind, you will understand that Marion was to have comparatively little help from outside influences. She felt the gloom in her heart deepen as the day went on. She was astonished and mortified at herself to find that the old feelings of irritability ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... stand waiting for his portion; his the freedom of the forbidden, of everything beyond him, of all withheld, denied by this bright, loose-robed, wanton-eyed goddess from whose invisible altar he had caught a whiff of sacrificial odours, standing there through the wintry years in the squalor and reek ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... been lying very low during the days, but nights he has done a lot of traveling. You know Old Man Coyote has a mighty good nose, but not once since the day those hounds chased Lightfoot has he found so much as a tiny whiff of Lightfoot's scent. I thought he might have found the place where Lightfoot was killed, but he hasn't, although he has looked for it. Well, the hunting season for Lightfoot is over, but I am afraid it has ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... labours we should hope better, and of the proficiency which their flock reaps by them, than that after all this light of the Gospel which is, and is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should still be frequented with such an unprincipled, unedified and laic rabble, as that the whiff of every new pamphlet should stagger them out of their catechism and Christian walking. This may have much reason to discourage the ministers when such a low conceit is had of all their exhortations, and the benefiting of their hearers, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... the last batch of the returning crowd, wearing on his face the virtuous look of one who has been snatching a whiff of fresh air after a ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the high stone-wall near which I walked rapidly, I met Dinah, so nearly face to face that the whiff of the pipe she was smoking was warm upon my cheek. Wrapped in her old cloth shawl and quilted hood, she muttered as she went, and staggered too, I thought, though here the northeast wind, that swept her along before it, might have been at fault, while, blowing ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... mouth and wearing a cloth-covered sheep-skin coat tightly girdled low at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and stopped. Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up, began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his ruddy face, clean-shaven ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... enchanting voyage brought us to Lake Umbagog. Whiff's of mist had met us in the outlet. Presently we opened chaos, and chaos shut in upon us. There was no Umbagog to be seen,—nothing but a few yards of gray water and a world of gray vapor. Therefore I cannot criticize, nor insult, nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... forgot all about sleep, you may be sure, for those footsteps sounded familiar. They sounded to Danny very, very much like the footsteps of—whom do you think? Why, Reddy Fox! Danny's heart began to beat faster as he listened. Could it be? He didn't dare peep out. Presently a little whiff of scent blew into the old tomato can. Then ...
— The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess
... shell and Charley emptied its contents of powder into the open cut. Quickly, he applied a match to the black grains and they caught with a hiss, there was a tiny cloud of black smoke and a whiff of burning flesh. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... finger, lay one's hands upon; spot; get at the truth, arrive at the truth &c. 494; put the saddle on the right horse, hit the right nail on the head. be near the truth, be warm, get warmer, burn; smoke, scent, sniff, catch a whiff of, smell a rat. open the eyes to; see through, see daylight, see in its true colors, see the cloven foot; detect; catch, catch tripping. pitch upon, fall upon, light upon, hit upon, stumble upon, pop upon; come across, come onto; meet with, meet up with, fall ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... A whiff of this sesame opened like magic the three immense iron doors through anterooms in charge of trusties, in prison garb of the material of blue overalls and caps shaped like a low fez. Inside, a "preso de confianza" serving as turnkey led the way along a great stone corridor to a ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... heard some animal squall in the woods behind them. She looked up at the stars,—millions of them, and brighter than she had ever seen them before. Insensibly she quieted, watching the stars, listening to the night noises, catching now and then a whiff of smoke from Al Woodruff's cigarette. Before she knew that ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... all about Ike, but we once smelt a whiff of tobacco, which seemed to be mingled with the sweet scent of the pines in the ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... occurred four times, until Paul and Marguerite finally parted. And, as he watched her little heels disappear up the wooden stairs to her work-room above, Paul blew a kiss to the pretty milliner at the window next door, and, taking a long whiff of his cigarette, sauntered off in the direction of his ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... his arm-chair as he spoke, apparently about to deliver himself to the calm delights of a retrospective reverie. But he was not destined to enjoy it. At that moment a whiff of stifling smoke, quite choking in its intensity, forced itself under the door. In another moment the matter was soon explained. With a wild rush the butler burst ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... school-booky way, and hence was not thought much of. However, Laura felt drawn to her at once—even though Cupid treated her as quite a little girl—and they sometimes got as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a hidebound character, and was ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... which wealth is distributed rests on an incomparably safer foundation than one in which it is concentrated in the hands of a few. British plutocracy has its cannoneer; but if the cannoneer happens to take fancies into his head the "whiff of grapeshot" ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... led down a ravine to a wide valley. Suddenly there arose from the grass a big She-wolf, like his mother, yet different, a stranger, and instinctively the stray Cub sank to the earth, as the old Wolf bounded on him. No doubt the Cub had been taken for some lawful prey, but a whiff set that right. She stood over him for an instant. He grovelled at her feet. The impulse to kill him or at least give him a shake died away. He had the smell of a young Cub. Her own were about his age, her heart was touched, and when he found courage ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... cavaliers, monks, fair-haired girls carrying pitchers and baskets, bullies, bravoes, and well-to-do burgesses, we passed from one ambush to another, by dark gullies, stinking traps, and twisted stairways, to the Via Deliziosa, without ever a hint of the broad sunshine or whiff of the balmy air which we had left outside on the plain. In a little mildewed court, where one patch of light did indeed slope upon a lemon-tree loaded with fruit and flowers, I found my man in a droll pass with his young wife. He ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... upon him, bent the lad backward and stretched him upon the levee path. In a little while the gust of passion was spent, and he was allowed to rise. Calm now, but a powder mine where he had been but a whiff of the tantrums, Victor extended his hand toward the dwelling house ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... stretching before her astonished eyes, was a great, as it were, encampment of brown blankets, slung and looped up anyhow, dividing from each other countless sordid beds, which were almost touching, and a whiff of huddled humanity came out to her keen nostrils, and a hum of sound to her ears. So that was where her man had dwelt these thirty months, in that dirty, crowded, noisy place, with dirty-looking men, such as those she could see lying on the beds, or crouching by the side of them, over their ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... heard this, or something very like it, many times in old days, and it brought back a whiff of the romance of the past, of solitary freedom, of his bachelor life, when he was young and thought he could do anything he chose, when he had neither love for his wife nor memory ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... day to be alive; but to smell dying fir is very heaven. That's two thirds Wordsworth and one third Anne Shirley. It doesn't seem possible that there should be dying fir in heaven, does it? And yet it doesn't seem to me that heaven would be quite perfect if you couldn't get a whiff of dead fir as you went through its woods. Perhaps we'll have the odor there without the death. Yes, I think that will be the way. That delicious aroma must be the souls of the firs . . . and of course it will be just souls ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... your living that way you would be no worse than you are now, selling drinks to people—beastly beer and spirits, rotten stuff fit to make an old he-goat yell if you poured it down its throat. Pooh! I can't stand the confounded liquor. Never could. A whiff of neat brandy in a glass makes me feel sick. Always did. If everybody was like me, liquor would be going a-begging. You think it's funny in a man, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... pink from excitement, fluttered behind the curtain for a last, flurried survey of stage properties and actors. "Isn't Johnny here, yet?" she asked of Annie Pilgreen who had just come and still bore about her a whiff of frosty, night air. Johnny was first upon the program, with a ready-made address beginning, "Kind friends, we bid you welcome on this gladsome day," and the time for ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... for the woods, her spotted fawn, which had been frolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped from it, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, and disappeared like a whiff too. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... first time, he had got a whiff of something unwholesome about the fellow—bad nerves, bad company, something on hand that he was ashamed of, a visitor old and vicious, who must have had a key to Cavenaugh's apartment, for he was evidently there when Cavenaugh returned at seven o'clock. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... sorry when his cool, calculating mind refused to believe his eyes, which saw shapes; his flesh, which felt creeps; his ears, which heard voices; and his nostrils, which caught a whiff of a faint, sweet perfume more exquisite than any which he remembered. He knew that when he had kissed the river goddess whose eyes were blue, whose flesh was fair, whose grace was lovely, he had tasted ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... tea-table she had already given a tingle to the air. Madame de Chantelle still remained invisible above stairs; but Darrow had the impression that even through her drawn curtains and bolted doors a stimulating whiff must have entered. ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... there was a prospect before them of a prosperous future and everything they wanted, they were supple enough and loud to laud the good gentleman who was conveying them to comfort. But with the break in our luck their praises and their patience went in a whiff, and they showed themselves to be such a parcel of wrong-headed, grumbling, disheartened and dispiriting knaves as ever helped to shake a good man's courage. They were as ready to imprecate Captain Amber now as they had been to load him with ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the ship would allow me. Well, I soon became great friends with the king and queen, and I used to go up to the palace every day and sit and smoke a pipe with his majesty in a cosy way, and frequently the queen would come and take a whiff out of my pipe, till she learnt to smoke too, and I then taught her to chaw baccy. She was very fond of a quid, let me tell ye, and we became as friendly as two mice. All the time little Chickchick used to sit up in a corner by herself, making a mat or ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... LOVE. Whiff in with your sister, brother boy. [EXEUNT KAS. AND DAME P.] That master That had received such happiness by a servant, In such a widow, and with so much wealth, Were very ungrateful, if he would not be A little indulgent to that servant's wit, And help his fortune, though with some small strain ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... and anchor, for the blow had settled into a hurricane, and raised such a fearful sea that they had to heave-to for twenty-four hours. It was two weeks before we met again, after they had had to tow and 'sweep' back to my little island, against a dead calm and a strong current, gettin' a whiff of a land breeze at night now an' agin', which let 'em use their canvas. As for the cutter, she ran before it for New Britain, and brought up at Matupi in Blanche Bay, two hundred miles away, where old Horn knew there was a white settlement of Germans—his own kidney. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... perspicacity which our wives have to put up with, "he'd have been a Drake or a Dampier; in the seventeenth, the commander of a privateer or slaver; in this age, I shall not be at all surprised if he turns out a great railway or financial magnate. It's like a whiff of boyhood to talk with him; though he's a greatly different sort of man from what I should have expected to find him. I think ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... stop, and thrust his muzzle further out as though to get a better whiff of the queer animals against which he ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... on meditatively. His silent thought is sensed by a bystander who remarks: "I suppose, Napoleon, you think you could manage things better!" The man grins. But Napoleon Bonaparte—he who snuffed out Revolution later by whiff of grapeshot—nods gravely yes. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... I wot not how actual a mooncalf, of my present sound mind and body, I herein would reasonably demur: and, if I wanted dreams, would tax my fancy, and not my apothecary's bill. Dreams? I need not whiff opium, nor toss off laudanum negus, to imagine myself—a young Titan, sucking fiery milk from the paps of a volcano; a despot so limitless and magnificent, as to spurn such a petty realm as the Solar System, with Cassiopeia, Booetes, and his dog, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Are they hot with you? Here they are heavenly. When the windows are open, the sweet warm air blows up from the river and across the White Lot, and we get a whiff of roses from the gardens back of the President's house; and when I reach home at night, the fragrance of the roses in our own garden meets me long before I can see the house. We have wonderful roses this year, and ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... gone away, so we were later than usual at our laundry work. Leslie and Harry went round with Rosamond to the front door; Ruth slipped in at the back, and mother came down when she found that Rosamond had not been released. Barbara finished setting the tea-table, which she had a way of doing in a whiff, put on the sweet loaf upon the white trencher, and the dish of raspberry jam and the little silver-wire basket of crisp sugar-cakes, and then there was nothing but the tea, which stood ready for drawing in the small Japanese pot. Tea ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney |
