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Buff   /bəf/   Listen
Buff

verb
1.
Strike, beat repeatedly.  Synonym: buffet.
2.
Polish and make shiny.  Synonyms: burnish, furbish.  "Buff my shoes"



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"Buff" Quotes from Famous Books



... pinkish-gray-buff, which may be called old ivory. It is not garish, as a dead white would be, especially in the strong California sunlight, but soft and restful to the eye. It harmonizes with the other colors selected, and, most important of all, it avoids ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... Chief, it has become a matter of doubt with me, (although, as it respects myself personally, I was against all embroidery,) whether embroidery on the Cape, Cuffs, and Pockets of the Coat, and none on the buff waistcoat would not have a disjointed and awkward appearance." Probably nowhere did he show his good taste more than in his treatment of the idea of putting him in classic garments when his bust was ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... about on hands and knees in the dampness of the rhododendrons. Suddenly he reached his long arm in among the shrubs and picked up a little reed stick. On the end of it was a small cylinder of buff brown. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... yeh were gone away fer good," began Pete, at once. "When did yeh git back? How did dat Buff'lo bus'ness turn out?" ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... felt that there was horrible truth in this. Stripped to the buff, he would have escaped without a doubt, for he could go through the water like a fish. But he was now fully clothed, and the water-sodden garments clung round him like a coating of lead, impeding his strokes, and cutting down his ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... saloon, dining-room, breakfast-room, library, and chapel. The ceilings are finely worked into compartments with escutcheons and pendants. The walls of the saloon are covered with crimson silk, sprigged with yellow flowers; those of the dining-room, with pale buff, and white moldings, rich tracery and elegant compartmented ceiling. In the center of some of the arches you see the crescent, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... the Earl of Essex was chosen general, and the several members of the House stood up, and declared, what horse they would raise, ... one saying he would raise ten horses, and another twenty, he stood up and said, "he would provide a good horse, and a good buff coat, and a good pair of pistols, and then he doubted not but he should find a good cause;" and so went out of the House, and rode post into Cornwall.—Swift. Another loyall ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... Larve, fine black; head black; white hairs on the back; spines, whitish, buff, or yellowish at the base, and black at the extremities; other larv of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... by the iron from the sandstone walls above. There were a thousand feet of these sandstone layers, red in all its varying hues, capped by the four-hundred foot cross-bedded sandstone wall, breaking sheer, ranging in tone from a soft buff to a golden yellow, with a bloom, or glow, as though illuminated from within. As we proceeded, another layer could be seen above this, the same limestone and with the same fossils—an examination of the rock-slides told us—as the topmost formation at the Grand Canyon. This ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... conscious of having weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his buff-colored waistcoat. But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... many cakes as they choose to take and some raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle of shrub treated them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation they retired, firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played at Blind-man's-buff, concluding the fete by a supper in the Hall. I also gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco and a ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... they reached the hall above, pandemonium broke loose. To judge from the sounds, they were playing blindman's buff with scampering of heavy shoes, scraping of chairs, banging against walls, flopping on mattresses. Even reluctant Robbie Belle looked upward in fear that the ceiling might fall. When a deputation of wild eyed sophomores from an adjacent ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... importance, yet at the same time was such an odd looking fellow. He was quite a little bigger than Welcome Robin, his tail was short, his legs were short, and his neck was short. But his bill was long enough to make up. His back was a mixture of gray, brown, black and buff, while his breast and under parts were a beautiful reddish-buff. It was his head that made him look queer. His eyes were very big and they were set so far back that Peter wondered if it wasn't easier for him to look behind him than in ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... "And I would send no man to be a servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved such a shauchling son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and where's the hairm? It doesna play buff on me! And if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But there's no splairging possible in a camp; and if you were to go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton approves of caapital ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... small vase, light buff in color, holding roses—red and white—relieved by pansies, of intermingled purple and golden dyes, and by sprigs of the lemon verbena, of dainty ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the Andes. This was long supposed to be a variety of the black bear, but later observations prove it to be a different species. Its habits are very similar to the last, to which it is also similar in shape. In colour it differs essentially. It is black, but with a buff snout, and buff rings round the eyes, which give it that appearance whence it derives its trivial name. Its ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid

... a hand inside his coat as he spoke; and when it came out again the others saw that it held something like a buff colored ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... hair hung below her waist, came arrayed as Fair Rosamond. There were several Italian peasants, a Cavalier, a Roundhead, and a matador. Agnes Bennett, one of the elder girls, impersonated the Pied Piper of Hamelin. By pinning two dressing-gowns (one of red and one of buff) together, she had well imitated the "queer long coat from heel to head, half of yellow and half of red", worn by the mysterious stranger; and, with her pipe, hung with ribbons, at her lips, seemed ready to charm either rats into the Weser, or children into ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... recruits stationed in New York under General Washington's command who had not heard something of the great happenings in Philadelphia a few days before, every soldier felt his heart beat faster under his buff and blue coat at the thought that he, too, would hear the Declaration of Independence read before the army. They stood waiting in their ranks, the first army of the Republic: raw farmers like those who fell at Lexington, bronzed backwoodsmen whose rifles had brought ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... in donkey carts, upon horseback, in sledges, on skates, upon foot-men, women, and children, gentle and simple, Protestants, Catholics, Gomarites, Armenians, anabaptists, country squires in buff and bandaleer, city magistrates and merchants in furs and velvet, artisans, boatmen, and peasants, with their wives and daughters in well-starched ruff and tremendous head-gear—they came thronging in countless multitudes, those honest Hollanders, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Wicks, smelling a hard day's work ahead, was more alert. He went first to the well, sounded it once and then a second time, and stood awhile with a grim look, so that all could see he was dissatisfied. Then he shook himself, stripped to the buff, clambered on the rail, drew himself up and raised his arms to plunge. The dive was never taken. He stood instead transfixed, his eyes on ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... and this is more rarely met with, was in bronze greens throughout, intermixed with yellow and about three shades of the dull blues. Black sometimes is to be noticed in both these colour schemes, also bright and buff yellows and chestnut browns, and the colours were mostly confined to the blue scheme first named, but there are examples extant of an entire design carried out in shades of red, as in the Tudor and early 16th century hangings ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands

... dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon the electric lamps, French the music upon ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... report of the House of Commons Committee on the Election Petition, and this confirmed my view. There great stress is laid on the Blue and Buff colours: in both the report and the novel it is mentioned that the constables' staves were painted Blue. Boz makes Bob Sawyer say, in answer to Potts' horrified enquiry "Not Buff, sir?" "Well I'm a kind of plaid at present—mixed ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... stair leading down into it. Down this stair the three proceeded, and reached the stone hall that lay beyond it, just as there entered from the trellised porch, that covered the steps into the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn and greasy buff suit, guarded on the breast and arms with rusty steel, and a battered helmet with the vizor up, disclosing a weather- beaten bronzed face, with somewhat wild dark eyes, and a huge grizzled moustache ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... my uncle was a thorough Tory in his hatred of change. Indeed, although two years had passed, and he had had the whole of his property at his disposal since the legal term of one year, he still continued to draw his salary of L100 of Messrs. Buff and Codgers. One Christmas-eve, I say, I was helping him to make up parcels, when, from a sudden impulse, I ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... wore her dressing-gown, an unprecedented laxity. Beside her on the table-cloth lay a crumpled piece of buff paper. So it was by telegram that the news had come. Instantly I thought. The telegram is from father. He is coming home. Maybe he is on his way. In London even! The food would not go down my throat. Shudders of excitement ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... startling intervals his condition would have been pitiable in the extreme. The "Squire's" dress too was of a more florid style than is usual in these days of sad-coloured attire. A bright blue neckcloth, well starched, and of great depth and volume; a buff waistcoat, with massive gilt buttons; a grass-green riding-coat of peculiar shape and somewhat scanty material; white cord trousers, York tan gaiters, and enormous double-soled shooting-shoes, pierced and strapped, and clamped and hobnailed, completing a tout ensemble that almost upset ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... Dayton had on white cambric dresses, and green kid slippers. That was being very much dressed, indeed. Lucy Waldow wore a pink lawn, and Grace Holridge a buff French print. Susan Bemys said her little sister couldn't come because they couldn't find her best shoes. Her mother thought she had thrown ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... a considerable quantity of the astringent principle, or tannin, a narcotic principle, which is, perhaps, connected with a peculiar aroma. The tannin is shown by its striking a black colour with sulphate of iron, and is the cause of the dark stain which is always formed when tea is spilt upon buff-coloured cottons dyed with iron. A constituent called Theine has also been discovered in tea, supposed to be identical with Caffeine, one of the constituents of coffee. Liebig says, "Theine yields, in certain processes of decomposition, a series ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... found him once more in his room at the Grosvenor; and feeling tired and feverish he lay down and dozed. When he awoke between nine and ten o'clock he perceived a buff envelope on the carpet near by him. It had been thrust under the door during his sleep, and its presence greatly astonished him, for he expected neither letter nor telegram. For a moment, as he has told me, he imagined this to be some trap; wondered if he had been watched and followed to London, ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... breeches and powdered wigs who signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution—the soldiers in blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led the armies of the Revolution—were what we are wont to describe as gentlemen. They were English gentlemen. They were not all, nor even generally, scions of the British aristocracy; ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... one heap of foulness art, All outward and within is foul; Condensed filth in every part, Thy body's clothed like thy soul: Thy soul, which through thy hide of buff Scarce glimmers ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... stiff back, black beard, short hair, loud voice, and buff waistcoat, people of fashion, on the contrary, stand in continual awe; his tongue is to them a rattlesnake's tail wagging only as a signal for them to get out of his way; they quiver like an aspen at the sound of his voice, and for their own particular, would rather hear the sharpening of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... merchant named Seguin "remembered dinners at which Johnson, Percy, Bickerstaff, Kelly, 'and a variety of authors of minor note,' were guests. They talked of supper-parties with younger people, as well in the London chambers as in suburban lodgings; preceded by blind-man's buff, forfeits, or games of cards; and where Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk. They related how he would sing all kinds of Irish songs; with what special enjoyment he gave the Scotch ballad of 'Johnny ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... by the way, as we're going to begin to get our garrison together, it'll be as well to make a little show. If I was you, I'd put on a pair of buff boots, wear a sword and a sash always, and I don't say put on a lot of armour, but if you'll let me, I'll take the gorget off that suit of Italian armour, and you ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... character. The accounts of his melancholy, in fact, like those of his ill-health, have been too much exaggerated. He was often in a cheerful mood. Sometimes he would amuse himself for a whole evening playing blind-man's buff with the children. As a mere child he had formed the habit of mimicking and caricaturing pianists and other distinguished men. Liszt often suffered from this mischievous habit, but he did not complain, and even seemed to enjoy it. Of Chopin's wit, two specimens may be cited. A rich Parisian ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... almost at once that two or three butterflies ("red admirals" they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight. A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a minute on the verge of the laurels, unobserved, considering the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... and buff, axillary, star-like, succeeded by scarlet berries in the fall; stems prostrate, or scrambling; ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... cantering down the hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers. Some in new scarfs and feathers, worthy of the "show-troop,"—others with torn laces, broken helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;—some eager for their first skirmish,—others weak and silent, still bandaged from the last one;—discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,—firing anon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... between manners under the Restoration and under the Empire. Still, he conceived of himself as far superior to Monsieur de Clagny; his style was in better taste; he followed the fashion, was to be seen in a buff waistcoat, gray trousers, and neat, tightly-fitting coats; he wore a fashionable silk tie slipped through a diamond ring, while the lawyer never dressed in anything but black—coat, trousers, and waistcoat alike, and those ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... her, my dear; come and help me with this one. [She goes with the girl to a soldier in red with buff facings who lies some distance off.] Ah—'tis no ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... could witness the whole of the funeral ceremonial, and hear the service pronounced over the grave. When the coffin was lifted by the stalwart sons of the deceased from the waggon, and the procession formed to carry it into the church, I observed a large, buff Flemish dog fall into the ranks of the mourners, and follow them into the sacred edifice, keeping as near the coffin as those about it would permit him. After the service in the church was ended, the creature ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... and a size and breadth which might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful portrait. He was clad like a fisherman, in jacket and trousers of the blue cloth commonly used by seamen, and had a Dutch case-knife, like that of a Hamburgh skipper, stuck into a broad buff belt, which seemed as if it might occasionally sustain weapons of a description still less equivocally ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... dressed in his buff coat, with a corselet beneath it, accompanied the governor and councillors. Laying his hand upon his sword hilt, he would declare that the only method of dealing with the red men was to meet them with the sword drawn and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... contains the same resolution which appeared in times when we seemed to have a more favourable prospect of success, of continuing the war, and of claiming the aid of Parliament to support the rights of Great Britain. Charles has a Cockpit to-night, as well as Lord North. The blue and buff Junto meet in St. James' Street to fix upon their plan ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... perverts. When man strips him to the bare buff, he is of the complexion his mother bestowed upon him. When his life's card-castle, laboriously piled, tumbles ignominious, he is again ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... in unerring Nature, tho' in our out-side Guesses we can say little to it. Here is to be seen, why some are all Nature, some all Art; some beat Verse out of the Twenty-four rough Letters, with Ten Hammers and Anvils to every Line, and maul the Language as a Swede beats Stock-Fish; Others buff Nature, and bully her out of whole Stanza's of ready-made Lines at a time, carry all before them, and rumble like distant Thunder in a black Cloud: Thus Degrees and Capacities are fitted by Nature, according to Organick Efficacy; ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... by a sportive chance. The gods connive at them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and blindness; but the blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, leads only to being caught as in some harmless game of blind-man's-buff. There is retribution, but Falstaff is only pinched by the fairies. Comedy of intrigue and comedy of character lead to no real catastrophe. The end of it on the stage is not death but matrimony; and "home well ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—see you! the bright hides, See, the two with stars on their foreheads—see, the round bodies and broad backs, How straight and square they ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... in the straw, hiding away from one another, and squealing and grunting when they were found. They raced around the pen, playing a game much like our game of tag, and if they could have had someone to tie a hand-kerchief over their eyes, they might have played blind-man's buff. But of course they ...
— Squinty the Comical Pig - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... much the worse for wear, duck trousers, a tarpaulin hat, and a flannel shirt marked J. B. (Bogue's Christian name is Jeremiah). The fellow had no shirt when he presented himself—nothing between the bare buff and the uniform coat that he wore buttoned across his chest. And here our luck comes in. He was shy of stripping in Bogue's presence, and, on pretence of feeling chilly, sent him out of the room for a glass of hot grog. As it happened, Bogue met the waiting-maid in ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... of the animals, counting a donkey; grays, bays, chestnut-colored beauties, and one who looked buff in the gaslight. In recalling them, I cannot say that there was a white-footed one. What consequence about white feet, you ask! Perhaps you know that they make that of some account in the horse bazaars of the East. The Turks say "two white fore feet are lucky; one white fore and hind foot ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... forsaken Quakerism hung around him; his coat was buff, his hat straight in the brim, his manner prim, and when he spoke it was in the speech of his people. His complexion was very light, hair, eyebrows and lashes, and the down on his chin—almost flaxen; his face was browned by exposure to the weather, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... braid and loops of a heavy gilt aiguillette whose glistening pendants were hung temporarily on the upper button. On the seat of the chair was folded a broad soft sash of red silk net, its tassels carefully spread. Beside it lay a pair of long buff gauntlets, new and spotless. At the door, brilliantly polished, stood a pair of buttoned gaiter boots, the heels decorated with small glistening brass spurs. In the corner, close at hand, leaned a long curved sabre, its gold ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... in curious contrast to the Queen, who sat upon heaped-up cushions, her rich buff and black gown a blaze of jewels, her yellow hair, now streaked with grey, roped with pearls, her hands heavy with rings, her face past its youth, past its hopefulness, however noble and impressive, past its vivid beauty. Her eyes wore ever a determined look, were persistent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... him, he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of a man who had reached home—gave nod to Windham, held out a finger to Grey, warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then, opening his well-known blue and buff costume, threw himself back into the bench, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... teachers' convention. Every neck was craned and a profound hush fell upon the assembly. Charles Davies, LL. D., author of Davies' text books and professor of mathematics at West Point, was president. In full-dress costume with buff vest, blue coat and brass buttons, he was the Great Mogul. At length recovering from the shock of being thus addressed by a woman, he leaned forward and asked with satirical politeness, "What will the lady have?" "I wish to speak to the question under discussion," said Miss ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... appearance, height and breadth of shoulder would have attracted attention anywhere. The Captain wore a gray felt hat and a rough gray suit of tweed—his trousers tucked in his long riding boots. Jose was clad in the typical vaquero's costume—buff leggins and jacket of goat-skin, slashed and ornamented with silver threads and buttons, and a red worsted sash about his middle in which he carried a knife and pistol. From beneath the broad brim of his sombrero peeped the knot of the yellow silken kerchief which ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... call, although that worthy brought with him all the "flattering devils, sweet poison and deadly sins" of inebriation. But the count, like a poor friend, was absent when wanted, and it was a distinct relief to the land baron when Francois appeared at his apartments in the evening with a buff-colored envelope, which ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... such a house as this that Hannah Puddington lived. Old Buff, her large, yellow cat, would sometimes run to the ridgepole and from there watch for the river boats as they ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... came—a little, round, fat man with a face like a map, the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a very amiable pony, eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and forgave everything, a brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white spats and a voice that rolled and roared ... he was the tenderest, most alarming person in any kind of a world. He was so gentle that any sparrow would trust him ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... attaining of such frankness has been very sweet. I do love you, Chris. I love you... I cannot tell you how. You are everything to me, and more besides. You remember that Christmas tree of the children?—when we played blindman's buff? and you caught me by the arm so, with such a clutching of fingers that I cried out with the hurt? I never told you, but the arm was badly bruised. And such sweet I got of it you could never guess. There, black and blue, was the imprint of your fingers—your fingers, Chris, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... them flew upstairs, to tell Anty and give her her tonic. Barry had made himself quite a dandy to do honour to the occasion of paying probably a parting visit to his sister, whom he had driven out of her own house to die at the inn. He had on his new blue frock-coat, and a buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, over which his watch-chain was gracefully arranged. His pantaloons were strapped clown very tightly over his polished boots; a shining new silk hat was on one side of his head; and in his ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... came to the gate, I heard the galloping of horses behind me, looked round, and there most unexpectedly saw Hector Mowbray, pulling up his horse, with two livery servants, three grey-hounds, and a brace of pointers at his heels! He had new boots, buckskin breeches, a buff waist-coat, a scarlet coat with a green collar, and a gold button and loop, tassel, and hat-band. I was within a yard of him when he alighted. 'Bless me,' said I, 'Mr. Mowbray?'—'G—— d—— my ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... unorganized play there are no fixed rules, no formal mode of procedure, and generally, no climax to be achieved. The various steps are usually spontaneous, not predetermined, and are subject to individual caprice. In games, on the contrary, as in Blind Man's Buff, Prisoners' Base, or Football, there are prescribed acts subject to rules, generally penalties for defeat or the infringement of rules, and the action proceeds in a regular evolution until it culminates in a given climax, which usually consists in a victory of skill, speed or strength. In ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... grace in the combination of promptitude and diffidence with which Harold took over the responsibility of all proprietorship of the crisp morsel of paper that he slipped with slow firmness into the pocket of his waistcoat, rubbing it gently in its passage against the delicately buff-coloured duck of which that garment was composed. "So quite too awfully kind of you that I really don't know what to say"—there was a marked recall, in the manner of this speech, of the sweetness of his mother's droop and the tenderness of her wail. It was as if he had been moved for the moment ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... Tommy, "without the buff'loes have got 'em." So they camped for the day under a huge banyan-fig tree and awaited developments. About evening, away on the horizon, there arose an answering cloud of smoke, connecting earth and sky, like ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... full-bottomed wig, and under this a white face, rather drawn and haggard, and thin lips perpetually agrin to flaunt two rows of yellow teeth disproportionately large. After him, and the more remarkable by contrast, came a tall, black-faced fellow, very brave in buff-colored cloth, with a fortune in lace at wrist and throat, ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... the leid draps hadna played buff upon the warlock's body; sorrow a leid drap was to be fund; but there was grandfaither's siller tester in the puddock's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... buff, we deposited our clothes on the boat's deck and entered the water, which was of just the right temperature to be refreshing; and while I swam delightedly hither and thither, Master Julius, who was extremely fastidious ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... boy in a sailor suit came into the street. The wife was a pretty woman in brown with a floriferous straw hat, and the group was altogether very Sundayfied and shiny and spick and span. The shop itself had a large plate-glass window whose contents were now veiled by a buff blind on which was inscribed in scrolly letters: "Rymer, Pork Butcher and Provision Merchant," and then with voluptuous ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... freed and flowing again, of waking, darting, eager fish; the veery, the phoebe, the jay, the vireo,—all these were friends, familiar, tried and true to Fishin' Jimmy. The cluck and coo of the cuckoo, the bubbling song of bobolink in buff and black, the watery trill of the stream-loving swamp-sparrow, the whispered whistle of the stealthy, darkness-haunting whippoorwill, the gurgle and gargle of the cow-bunting,—he knew each and all, better than did Audubon, Nuttall, or Wilson. But he never dreamed that even the ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson

... know what I liked best," said grandmother. "There were so many nice things. Haymaking was delicious, so were snow-balling and sliding; blindman's buff and snapdragon at Christmas were not bad, nor were ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... brows bristling like a wire-haired terrier's—were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a handsome boy, too. By his height you might have guessed him ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... news, but I can't talk of it now," said Kitty. "Come, what shall we do? We need not stay under the trees any longer surely, need we? Let's have a right good game—blind man's buff, or shall ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... Tobin," he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Why can't ye take the trouble to shift seats, and come front here long o' me? We could put one buff'lo top o' the other,—they're both wearin' thin,—and set close, and I do' know but we sh'd be more protected ag'inst ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... out again, intending for Baghdad, and fared on till they came to the Lion's Clump and the Wady of Dogs, where lay a villain Badawi, a brigand and his tribe, who sallied forth on them. The folk fled from the highwaymen, and the Provost said, "My monies are lost!"; when, lo! up came Ali in a buff coat hung with bells, and bringing out his long lance, fitted the pieces together. Then he seized one of the Arab's horses and mounting it cried out to the Badawi Chief, saying, "Come out to fight me with spears!" Moreover he shook his bells and the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... game at blind-man's-buff commenced, in which he moved cautiously here and there, with his clenched fists extended ready to strike or ward off a blow, which was certain to be aimed at him if he tried to seize the too ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... in one place; "buff or light brown," in another place; "chocolate-colored and silky to the touch and slightly iridescent"; "gray"; "red-rust color"; "reddish raindrops and gray sand"; "dirty gray"; "quite red"; "yellow-brown, with a tinge of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... away and the dishes washed (all the grown people helped and made short work of it), the kitchen was straightened, the chairs being put over in the corner, and the children who were large enough allowed a game of blindman's buff, Uncle Leverett watching to see that no untoward accidents happened, and presently allowing himself to be caught. And, oh, what a scattering and laughing there was then! His arms were so large that it seemed as if ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... "Blind Man's Buff" is one of the best, oldest, and simplest of games. One player is blindfolded, is turned round two or three times to confuse his ideas as to his position in the room, and is then told to catch whom he can. If he catches some one, yet cannot tell who ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... respecting the work were gone into, even to the colour of the paper on which it was to be written. Morgan did not know whether blue or buff was the more restful for the eyes, and the question was left open for John Medhurst to decide. Archibald looked tremendously pleased at his son's reception of his project, and it certainly raised ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... those days, they had left off wigs—except bishops, judges, and lawyers, in their robes. Men had their hair short and curly, and wore coats shaped like evening ones—generally blue, with brass buttons—buff waistcoats, and tight trousers tucked into their boots, tight stocks round their necks, and monstrous shirt- frills. Ladies had their gowns and pelisses made very short-waisted, and as tight and narrow as they ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... long "check apron" or calico pinafore with sleeves—a local garment—which was utterly incongruous with her originality. Her skin was olive, inclining to yellow, or rather to that exquisite shade of buff to be seen in the new bark of the madrono. Her face was oval, and her mouth small and childlike, with little to suggest the aboriginal ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... why so sour? I might well look sour, since you and your little daughter lately chose to play blind-man's-buff with your lawful Prince, making a mock of him. But I pardon you, and hope you have come to your senses since. Come, sit down; drink my health in the wine cup. I trow this wine will ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... term of contempt; one who wore a buff or leather jerkin, as did the serjeants of the ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... games are either silly or reasonable; and nothing so reveals the stupid conventionality of the ordinary mind as the fact that men consider a series of handbooks on Great Bowlers to be a serious and important addition to literature, while they would hold that a little manual on Blind-man's Buff was a fit subject for derision. St. Paul said that when he became a man he put away childish things. He could hardly afford to say that now, if he hoped to be regarded as a ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Little Gamblers; Blind Man's Buff; and Honesty the best Policy," are stories which may do a great deal of good to bad children, but they should never be given to those of another description. The young gentlemen who cheat at cards, and who pocket silver fish, should have no admittance any where. It is not ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... know in what dress Burns generally appeared in Edinburgh. Soon after coming thither he is said to have laid aside his country clothes for "a suit of blue and buff, the livery of Mr. Fox, with buckskins and top-boots." How he wore his hair will be seen immediately. There are several well-known descriptions of Burns's manner and appearance during his Edinburgh sojourn, which, often as they have been quoted, cannot ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... wings clung to a stalk of grass; upon the under side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and dark dots and streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which there came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too, shut up between the wings, visible at the edges. The spots, and dots, and ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... thoughts and made me envy the handsome, vigorous young fellow who was so happy at being alive, so that I had not the courage to check him, to show him his right road, and to call out to him, 'Take care!' as children do at blind man's buff. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... hall door opened and Thomas appeared on the sill, almost filling the opening with his tall figure. As a rule he wore his very splendid footman's livery of dark blue coat with dull-gold buttons, blue trousers, and striped buff waistcoat. Now he wore street clothes, and he had a leash in ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... sports of nature attract attention. A tree that is still green will have a single branch, covered with red and orange leaves, like a gigantic bouquet of flowers. Another will have one side of a rich maroon, whilst the other side remains green. A third will present a flounce or ruffle of bright buff, or orange leaves round the middle, whilst the branches above and below continue green. Then again some trees which have turned to a rich brown, will be seen intertwined and festooned by the wild vine or red root, still beautifully green; or ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... is still deeply stamped upon my mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open fields and farms. My recollection is that we ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... heart of grace into the timid Jeffrey. Sydney Smith's jovial optimism prevailed. The financial part of the business was arranged with Constable in Edinburgh, and Longman in London: and the first number (clad in that famous livery of Blue and Buff[19] which the Whigs had copied from Charles Fox's coat and waistcoat) appeared in the autumn of 1802. The cover ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... Gerald was standing on the steps of the inn. He had altered the fashion of his hair, had fastened on large bushy eyebrows which he had obtained from a skilful perruquier in Cadiz, and a moustache of imposing size turned up at the tips; he wore high buff leather boots, and there was an air of military swagger about him, and he was altogether so changed that at the first glance the muleteer failed to recognize him. As soon as the mules were unburdened, Gerald found an ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... had put out from the southern bank. It contained three men, two of whom were rowing, while the third sat upright in a military fashion. All his body beneath his shoulders was hidden by the boat's sides, but his coat was of the Continental buff and blue, while a border cap of raccoon skin crowned his round head. Such incongruous attire detracted nothing from the man's dignity and presence. Henry saw that his face was open, his gaze direct, and that he was quite young. He was looking straight ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Academy Blaise adjourned to the courtyard where they were joined by a son and daughter of the house in a game of blindman's-buff, in which the young folks, both men and women, displayed a feverish energy sufficiently accounted for by the high spirits proper to their age without seeking an explanation in the wild and precarious times in which they lived. When it ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... puzzler," muttered the man. "Blind man's buff's nothing to it, and no pretty gals to catch. Now, whereabouts am I? I should say I'm just close to the corner by the square, and—well, now, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... Jolliffe, I suppose," said the gentleman with the bill, to another with a blue coat and buff lining. "He's at Chipstead Church—only six miles from Croydon, a sure find and good country." "What are you for, Mr. Jorrocks?" inquired another in green, with black velvet breeches, Hessian boots, and a red waistcoat, who just rode up. "My own, to be sure," said Jorrocks, taking hold ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... the gray visage. Mr. Pollock's landlady was to be the happy possessor of Artaxerxes, and the turbulent portion of the Household was disposed of to bear him thither, and to beg Miss Hacket to give Buff and Ring the run of her cage, whence they had originally come, also to deliver ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... orange cape.' But should a person of quite a different side in politics attend for the same purpose, the Commissioners might say, 'Sir, you are not to be believed; we see fraud in your blue and buff, and it is impossible that you should not be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... men and maids, very nearly all in buff, Came and swore in their lives they never met with such a light; And each of the family by turns had a puff At the little farthing rushlight. But none of the family could ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the question, he could not have told whether his other patients were habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy's garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the prettiest "puckered piece" that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr. Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half? He did not think so. Indeed, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... Beauties stood freshly clad for church; A thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch. "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them; But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them. "Vanity, oh, vanity! Young maids, beware of vanity!" Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee, Half ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... from under which looked forth his sharp grey eyes, completed the inauspicious outline of the horseman's physiognomy. He had pistols in his holsters, and another pair peeped from his belt, though he had taken some pains to conceal them by buttoning his doublet. He wore a rusted steel head piece; a buff jacket of rather an antique cast; gloves, of which that for the right hand was covered with small scales of iron, like an ancient gauntlet; and a long broadsword completed ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... been walking along hand in hand. Sara noticed that they had left the Verge behind, and were following a very pleasant sort of ridge, from which they could see down into a sort of hollow for smiles and smiles, and, beyond the hollow, the buff-colored hills and mountains that formed the walls of the amphitheatre. There were not so many Gugollaph-trees as there were in the Garden and along the road to the Dimplesmithy, owing to the different topography of the country; instead, there were ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... me to that. And did not I take you up from thence, in an old greasy buff-doublet, with points, and green velvet sleeves, out at the elbows? you ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... remarkable for their mirth than their decorum. There was no sort of frolic in which Goldsmith would not indulge for the amusement of his guests; he would sing them songs; he would throw his wig to the ceiling; he would dance a minuet. And then they had cards, forfeits, blind-man's-buff, until Mr. Blackstone, then engaged on his Commentaries in the rooms below, was driven nearly mad by the uproar. These parties would seem to have been of a most nondescript character—chance gatherings of any obscure ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... indolent, languid men.' Scott would not afford the time or the trouble to go to the root of the matter, and is content to amuse us with mere contrasts of costume, which will lose their interest when the swallow-tail is as obsolete as the buff-coat. And then he fell into the modern sin of extempore writing, and deluged the world with the first hasty overflowings of his mind, instead of straining and refining it till he could bestow the pure essence upon us. In short, his career is summed up in the phrase that it ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... got down in time," said Tom, and then he laughed to think of himself, the chairman of the Ball committee, plodding along the splintered dock in a dusty uniform and buff leggings and with the rudiments of a scraggly beard on his face. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... superb mirrors in Mad. de V——'s charming house on the Boulevards. "It is," said she, "in my opinion one of the very best houses in Paris. There you enter the principal apartments by an antechamber, such as you ought to see in a great house, with real ottomanes, covered with buff trimmed with black velvet; and then you pass through the spacious salle a manger and the delightful saloon, hung with blue silk, to the bijou of a boudoir, that looks out upon the garden, with the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... you are! Why, Caudle, I've been reckoning that, with buff slippers and all, we can't well do it under seventy pounds. No; I won't take away the slippers and say fifty. It's seventy pounds and no less. Of course, what's over will be so much saved. Caudle, what a man you are! Well, shall we go on Monday? ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... to more distant places should create no suspicion. Mr. M. then informed us that we could come to his cottage the next afternoon, instead of the rocks; we should be able to undress ourselves in the buff, and have a perfect orgie of salacious delights. We heartily approved of this plan, and after an amusing conversation, we parted to meet the next day on the sands, but in the contrary directions to the rocks, for the purpose of afterwards approaching ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... a house, since they show without, should be uniform in color, and no attempt be made to suit the individual decoration of a room to them. The material should be plain Holland, white or buff when there are outside blinds, otherwise green or blue. In recent years shutters, or outside blinds, have come somewhat into disuse. This is, on the whole, perhaps an improvement, for they are rarely manipulated ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... in my socks, when I wore any, which wasn't often," Mr. Gibney continued. "I've shrunk half an inch since them days. I weighed a hundred an' ninety-seven pounds in the buff an' my chest bulged like a goose-wing tops'l. In them days, I was an evil man to monkey with. I could have taken two like Scraggsy an' chewed 'em up, spittin' out their bones an' belt buckles. I sure was ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... his life, his thoughts, his time, to be associated or shackled in any way by the pursuits of others, he preferred the society of ladies, as less apt to force him into subsequent relations. He willingly spent whole evenings in playing blind man's buff with the young people, telling them little stories to make them break into the silvery laughs of youth, sweeter than the song of the nightingale. He was fond of a life in the country, or the life of the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... into Cluhir on a misty Saturday morning, with a basket of fowl under her brown and buff shawl, was not sorry when, from a side road on the line of march, a donkey-cart, driven by an acquaintance, drew forth at ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... "There, stroke it down, a long white feather in a shady hat trimmed with dark green, velvet; she is fresh and rosy, you know, sir, and looks well in green, and then, is it Grace's taste, Rachel? for it is the prettiest thing you have worn—a pale buff sort of silky thing, embroidered all over in the same colour," and he put a fold of the dress into his ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mental, and Sally went off to bed with a busy brain; but the sleep of youth and health quieted it; and if she dreamed of George Tucker in regimentals, I am afraid they were of flagrant militia scarlet;—the buff and blue were not distinctive yet. However, for the next week Sally heard enough revolutionary doctrine to revive her Sunday-night enthusiasm; the flame of "successful rebellion" had spread; the country began to stir and hum ominously; people assembled in groups, on corners, by church steps, around ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... Roussillon's, but it is understood between us that Adrienne is your sweet-heart. I am not, and I'm not going to be, either. So for your sake and Adrienne's, as well as out of consideration for the rest of the girls who have no fine dresses, I am not going to wear the buff brocade gown that belonged to Papa Roussillon's mother long ago. I shall dress just as ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... ho, there! what's the matter?" was heard again; and this time a very red-faced grey-haired man, with the lower part of his features framed in white bristles, and clad in a blue pea-jacket and buff waistcoat, ornamented with gilt anchor buttons, stood suddenly in the doorway on the right, smoking solemnly a long churchwarden clay pipe, rilling his mouth very full of smoke, and then aggravating the looker-on by puzzling him as to where the smoke would come from next— for sometimes ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... troop was Captain Bludder, a huge Alsatian bully, with fiercely-twisted moustachios, and fiery-red beard cut like a spade. He wore a steeple-crowned hat with a brooch in it, a buff jerkin and boots, and a sword and buckler dangled from his waist. Besides these, he had a couple of petronels stuck in his girdle. The captain drank like a fish, and swaggered and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... exposure sufficed at F 8. The plate was developed with Kalogen in tank rather softly and a contact positive made of the negative. This positive was then used to make an 11x14 negative by enlargement. P. M. C. No. 8 paper, buff stock, was selected, and in printing a piece of thin, even-grained paper was placed between the negative and the print paper to gain a certain softness of quality in the finished print. Finally when dry the print was waxed and rubbed down several times ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America

... replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. America was not getting fair play. Both Coke and Fox, and no doubt many others, wore waistcoats of blue and buff because these were the colors of ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... end, a new exhibition was commenced, in which ten or twelve women took a part, and which our gentlemen compared to blind man’s buff. A circle being formed, and a boy despatched to look out at the door of the hut, Iligliuk, still the principal actress, placed herself in the centre, and after making a variety of guttural noises for about half a ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... the thicket. At the same time Jacob perceived a small body of horse galloping through the glen in which the buck had been feeding. Jacob had never yet seen the Parliamentary troops, for they had not during the war been sent into that part of the country, but their iron skull-caps, their buff accouterments, and dark habiliments assured him that such these must be; so very different were they from the gayly-equipped Cavalier cavalry commanded by Prince Rupert. At the time that they advanced, Jacob had been lying down ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... the Governor in his great chair. He was clothed in the regulation buff and blue uniform of a Major General of the Continental Army. On his shoulders he wore the epaulets and about his waist the sword knots General Washington had presented to him the preceding May. He bore also upon his person the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... while, as we wound our way along the face of these perilons rifts in the baked clay, with the mottled, inefficient river feeling its way gingerly at the bottom of the buff—colored ravine, what was my astonishment to see Jorian and Boris turn sharply at right angles and ride single file up one of the dry lateral cracks which opened, as it were, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... the choice, carefully prepared skins lay in their cases, well dried and aromatic with the preserving paste which kept insect enemies at bay. Here would lie the great bird of Paradise, all cinnamon, metallic green and buff, with its loose plumage and long wire-shafted feathers. In another case a series of the lesser bird. Then Lane found a few of the beautiful metallic rifle bird, all glossy purply green. The standard wing with its elongated tufts of green upon its breast, and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... grindstone I have ground, Toiling to meet the toll of profiteers, And now comes AUSTEN, budgeting around, "Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" (MILTON), and leaves me naked as a poodle, Shorn—to the buff—of my laborious boodle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... man begins to believe that he is lost in the wilderness, he feels as helpless as one who is blind-folded at the game of blindman's buff, and who has been twirled round so often, that he has no idea whereabouts the door or the fire-place is situated. Those who are used to the bush steer their course with almost unerring precision by the sun, and a few known objects, but there are numbers who never acquire this power. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... longer count myself the Fool of the Court of Cesena, I was free to strip the motley and assume the more sober garments in which I had been taken, and which—as you may recall—had been placed in my chamber on the previous evening. It was the very plainest raiment. For doublet I wore a buff brigandine, quilted and dagger-proof, and caught at the waist by a girdle of hammered steel; my wine-coloured hose was stout and serviceable, as were my long boots of untanned leather. Yet prouder was I of this sober apparel than ever ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... of this singular hall, rose a motley pile of musketry, rifles, hand-grenades, basket and cross-hilted swords, steel cuirasses, which, from their rude and sullied condition, appeared to have suffered much and hard service; buff and other coloured doublets, breast-plates, shoulder-belts with gilt and plain buckles; manacles, some rusty, others of glittering brightness: the muzzle of a small brass swivel projected from beneath a number ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... thoughtfulness was continually sending pleasant little gifts and souvenirs to his Warsaw friends. This tenderness and consideration displayed itself too in his love of children. He would spend whole evenings in playing blind-man's-buff or telling them charming fairy-stories from the folk-lore in which ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... merry one. This sort of hide-and-seek amused people at first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public kingdom it is, of course, much ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... she imagined that they could not have been very serious secrets that Mr Brand had told. And then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that Mr Brand—the mild Mr Brand that she had seen a month or two before their departure to Nauheim, playing "Blind Man's Buff" with his children and kissing his wife when he caught her—Mr Brand and Mrs Brand had been on the worst possible terms. ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... daubed over with two eyes and a mouth, such as you see on some Indian nuts. Now, if they offered to waddle along with their bellies forwards, you would have thought they were then playing at blindman's buff. May I never be hanged if 'twas ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... stood in mail of ice, with drawn sword of icicle? Besides, I think the winter drives us in, and drives us together. We have never had such a time at our house with checker-boards and dominoes, and blind-man's-buff, and the piano, as this winter. Father and mother said it seemed to them like getting married over again. Besides that, on nights when the storm was so great that the door-bell went to bed and slept soundly, Charles Dickens stepped in from Gad's Hill; ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... was playin' blindman's-buff, while all was amusin' themselves, at some innocent pastime ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... years of his life. They gave birth to "Goetz von Berlichingen" and the "Sorrows of Werther," to the first inception of "Faust," and to many of his sweetest lyrics. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of Charlotte Buff, the heroine of the "Sorrows of Werther," from whom he finally tore himself away, leaving Wetzlar when he discovered that their growing interest in each other was endangering her relation with Kestner, her betrothed. In those years, also, he formed a matrimonial engagement with Elizabeth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... lips, Ethelberta took breath, and then went on to describe the scene that ensued, 'A dreadful variation on the game of Blindman's buff,' being the words ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... copse where the banks were high, I sat down on an overhanging rock to rest. When the eye became accustomed to the water and its buff bed it detected a couple of grayling that had before escaped notice, so closely were they assimilated in colour to the ground in which they foraged. Of course, I had always accepted the teaching of my betters that this fish rises perpendicularly from the bottom in ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... red bronze by exposure to the weather. He was dressed in Red River style, a blue cloth capote (hooded frock coat) with brass buttons; red and black flannel shirt, which served for waistcoat; black belt around the waist; trousers of brown and white striped home-made stuff, buff leather moccasins on his feet. I had never come across a wearer of moccasins before, and it amused me to see this grand and massive man pacing the hotel corridors with noiseless footfall, while excitable little men in shiny boots creaked and ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... the wagons was an army,—at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men clad in homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling along the road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers rode, and many of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,—some the worse for wear. My father was pushing the white mare into the ditch to ride by, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... what eighty dollars could have done for that room. We will suppose, in the first place, she invests in thirteen rolls of wall-paper of a lovely shade of buff, which will make the room look sunshiny in the day-time, and light up brilliantly in the evening. Thirteen rolls of good satin paper, at thirty-seven cents a roll, expends four dollars and eighty-one cents. A ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "Tuning-up Sale," I read. "Buff-and-crimson cards will mark the trail of all goods ready for the sale. We are tuning up. By September it is our intention to have assembled in these two great buildings the most fashionable merchandise ever shown. No one piece ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... oriental-looking service of tiny cups, of all kinds of bright and fantastic hues, no two alike. Near it reclined on her cushions a figure in perfect keeping with the scene, her jetty hair contrasting with her gold and coral net, her scarlet gold-embroidered slipper peeping out from her pale buff-coloured dress, deeply edged with rich purple, and partly concealed by a mantle of the unapproachable pink which suggests Persia, all as gorgeous in apparel as the blue and yellow macaw on his pole, and the green and scarlet lories in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... by the sea, A skittish and beautiful widow is she; She has black shiny tresses, and curly buff toes, And a heavenly tilt to the tip of ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer

... Hoffman came in Continental costume, with buff small-clothes and black velvet coat, great buckles of brilliants at his knees and lace ruffles at his wrists and shirt front, and his hair powdered, they all exclaimed. He carried his three-cornered hat under his arm as ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... in your room which we thought such a triumph? and the old tin shaving-cup? Now, my lord, look out upon your estate!" opening the window. "Your musicians have come to waken you, and your servitors stand without," as Buff tapped at the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... hue where the sun fell on them. Heaps of old-fashioned "snowballs" hid golden hearts under a pure white frosting, and cakes, baked in fantastic shapes, like Turks' heads and fluted melons, were rich, warm, brown, or white and gleaming as Christmas snow. The pastry showed all shades from palest buff to tender delicate brown, and for depth of tone there were their rich interiors of dark mincemeat and golden custards. Of the pleasures of this beautiful world not the least is the sight ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... above species are of similar appearance, the ground colour being greenish, or buff, or the hue of stone or cream, with reddish or brownish blotches. Three is the full complement of eggs. The bare white glittering sands on which these eggs are deposited are often at noon so hot as to be painful to touch; accordingly during ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar

... she; "but, better, I should like a paper with a tone of buff,—something that produces warm yellowish reflections, and will almost make you think the sun is shining in cold gray weather; and then there is nothing that lights up so cheerfully in the evening. In short, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... large, bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen the heavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... crisp with clustering brown spires, as well as sheets of lichen silvery and pale green; and on the lap-board across her knees lies her work,—a graceful cross in perspective, put on card-board in birch shaded from faint buff to bistre, dashed with the detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together. Around the foot of the cross rises a mound of lovely moss-work in relief, with feathery filaments creeping up and wreathing about the shaft and thwart-beam. Miss Craydocke ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... in those days, and orderlies came up from the Casino hospital and A.D.M.S. with buff slips when ambulances were wanted. At that time the cars, Argylls, Napiers, Siddeley-Deaseys, and a Crossley, inscribed "Frank Crossley, the Pet of Poperinghe," were just parked haphazard in the open square, some ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... rimmed with a desolation of mud and bleached refuse and dead trees, free from crocodiles or water birds or sight or sound of any living thing, and saw far off, even as Nasmyth had described, the ruins of the deserted station, and hard by two little heaps of buff-hued rubbish under a great rib of rock, the quap! The forest receded. The land to the right of us fell away and became barren, and far on across notch in its backbone was surf ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... guineas in my pocket (which was all the loose gold he had), I walked forth from Master Carter's door. To make up the deficiency, their highnesses had insisted on furnishing me with a suit made up from the simplest in their joint wardrobes—riding-boots, breeches, buff-coat, sash, pistols, cloak, and feather'd hat, all of which fitted me excellently well. By the doors of Christ Church, before we came to the south gate, Prince Rupert, who had been staggering in his walk, suddenly pull'd up, and ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... "I promise to let you into all I know or suspect before a great while passes. Just now I'll own up this scheme of slipping over to a certain sheet of fresh water for a change of base has a meaning that connects with our big game of Blind Man's Buff." ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... colored peoples never know nothin more den dogs in dem times. Never couldn' go from one plantation to de other widout dat dey had a ticket wid em. I see Sam Watson catch many of dem dat had run way en buff en gag em. Never have no jails nowhe' in dat day en time. Dey sho sell de colored peoples way plenty times cause I see dat done right here to Marion. Stand em up on a block en sell em to a speculator dere. I hear em bid off a 'oman ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... could be said without any figure of speech that the water ran down into his boots from the collar of his coat, for they were entirely filled with it. His hat of very fine beaver was so ruined that it fell down over his shoulders, his buff belt was perfectly soaked with water; in fact a man just drawn out of the river would not be wetter than the Emperor. The King of Saxony, who awaited him, met him in this condition, and embraced him as a cherished son who had ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... practicable in the time; and when they marched off to join General Wade's army at Boroughbridge, the Captain said to them on setting out, "My lads! you are going to form part of a ring-fence to the finest estate in the world!" Blind Jack played a march at the head of the company, dressed in blue and buff, and in a gold-laced hat. The Captain said he would willingly give a hundred guineas for only one eye to put in Jack's head: he was such ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... pleasure will now come. He has not, as yet, accepted the adverse verdict which his own nature has given against him in this matter of hunting, and he gets into his early tub with acme glow of satisfaction. And afterwards it is nice to find himself bright with mahogany tops, buff-tinted breeches, and a pink coat. The ordinary habiliments of an English gentleman are so sombre that his own eye is gratified, and he feels that he has placed himself in the vanguard of society by thus shining ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... looking round with startled gaze in search of explanation, discover at corner-seat below Gangway a dapper figure uplifted on supernaturally high-heeled boots, with trousers tightly drawn to display proportions of limbs that would have made Sim Tappertit green with envy; a black frock coat, buff waistcoat, coloured tie, a high collar, a wizened countenance, just now wrinkled with spasmodic contortion, kindly meant for an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various

... ladies and gentlemen, brought—in an open sedan, guarded by a number of young gentlemen under arms, with drums beating, colors flying—to Tower-Hill, where a Gallows had been erected for him at six the same morning. He was richly dressed, in a blue and gold coat, buff waistcoat, trimmed, &c. in full uniform. When brought under the Gallows, he stayed a small space, till his clergyman (a chimney-sweeper) had given him some admonitions: that done, he was drawn, by pulleys, to the top of the Gallows, which was twenty feet high; every person ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle



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