"Whiff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better players than I am at the club," he said in extenuation. "I think I'll smoke a whiff or two here and go back. They can't hold on much ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... gazed at the decorations, the wreaths, the gauze, the tinsel, and paper angels, suspended by invisible wires over the counters, and all glittering and shining and twinkling with light, a strong whiff of evergreen fragrance came to her, and the aroma of fir-balsam, and it was to her the very breath of all the mysterious joy and hitherto untasted festivity of this earth into which she had come. She felt deep in her childish soul the sense ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... homeward from an evening walk, a long ramble among the peaceful hills which inclosed their rustic home. Into these peaceful hills the young man had brought, not the rumor, (which was an old inhabitant,) but some of the reality of war,—a little whiff of gunpowder, the clanking of a sword; for, although Mr. John Ford had his campaign still before him, he wore a certain comely air of camp-life which stamped him a very Hector to the steady-going villagers, and a very pretty fellow to Miss ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... it. 'I'll have to ask you to get back where you came from,' he said. 'This ain't no place for passengers'—and up I came. What do you think it means? I'd get ugly, too, if he kept me in that heat and never let me get a whiff of air. I tell you, that's an awful place down there. Suppose you go and take a look. Your knowing the Captain might make ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... down the aisles at the sides and in and out of the stalls, eating sweetmeats and visiting their friends. And there was scarcely a grown person in the entire audience of Japanese who was not smoking, for women as well as men smoke in Japan: one pinch of tobacco in a short pipe, one puff, a little whiff of smoke inhaled and the operation is over. Before the curtain rose, the Nesan flew busily from one box to the other with cushions and sweetmeats, baskets of oranges and boxes of sweet pickled black beans. ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... and painfully was the skunk. They were fearless little beasts and in the evening would come quite boldly about the house, and if seen and attacked by a dog, they would defend themselves with the awful-smelling liquid they discharge at an adversary. When the wind brought a whiff of it into the house, when all the doors and windows stood open, it would create a panic, and people would get up from table feeling a little sea-sick, and go in search of some room where the smell was not. Another powerful-smelling but very beautiful creature was the common deer. I began ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... ground. But they could see nothing, and could hear no noise but the clink of the chain, although the road was clear and straight. Nearer and nearer came the noise, gradually getting louder, and as it passed them closely they distinctly felt a blast or whiff of air. They were paralysed with an indefinable fear, and were scarcely able to drag themselves along the remaining quarter of a mile to their house. The elder of the two was in very bad health, and the other had almost to carry her. Immediately she entered the house ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... been good; the days are hot and summer-like. Yesterday in the press of bad smells I got a whiff of a hedgerow in bloom. The birds perch on the trees over our heads and twitter away as if there was nothing to worry about. Bonfire is still well. I do hope ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... knocked off?" inquired the accountant, as he took a piece of glowing charcoal from the stove wherewith to light his pipe. "Try a whiff, Harry. It's good for such things. Bruises, sores, contusions, sprains, rheumatic affections of the back and loins, carbuncles and earache—there's nothing that smoking ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the halting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler and glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... asked the Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off my spurs and put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... upon their rude weapons and looking up at the fire, which had spread so rapidly as to involve one whole side of the castle. Already Alleyne could hear the crackling and roaring of the flames, while the air was heavy with heat and full of the pungent whiff of burning wood. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... objection to a musk-rat running about my room quietly if I do not startle him. I never allow one to be killed, and encourage their presence in the house, for I think the temporary inconvenience of a whiff of musk is amply repaid by the destruction of the numerous objectionable insects which lurk in the corners of Indian houses. The notion that they do damage by gnawing is an erroneous one, the mischief done by mice and rats being frequently laid to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... almost into the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In fifteen minutes I was in bed, with that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in unprotected places with hot-water bottles. And in an hour I had a whiff of chloroform and Doctor Williams ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... recognition of good in others. He speaks to them of being his 'joy and crown.' He tells them that in his sorrows and imprisonment, their 'fellowship in the Gospel, from the first day until now,' had brought a whiff of gladness into the close air of the prison cell. He begs them to be Christlike in order that they may 'fulfil his joy'; and he may lose himself in others' blessings, and therein find gladness. A large portion of his joy came from very ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Road, where there were still many people hastening one way and the other, they turned to the left, crossed the canal—black and silent—and were soon among narrow streets. Every corner brought a whiff of some rank odour, which stole from closed shops and warehouses, and hung heavily on the still air. The public-houses had just extinguished their lights, and in the neighbourhood of each was a cluster of lingering men and women, merry or disputatious. Mid-Easter was inviting ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... down, and her movement sent a faint whiff of perfume about her, dainty as herself. And then there was just a moment's painful silence. The awkwardness of the moment dwelt with them both; it would be hard to say which felt ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the shrinking figure in the shadow and the hat was doffed in a profound bow. Undoubtedly a good looking young man, but as undoubtedly a fop of the first water with his ruffles and bosom of Mechlin lace, red heels to his shoes, gold clocks on his silk stockings and the whiff of scent which heralded ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... drips from black faces and from white. Whips crack. Mules trot and stumble over the loose and resounding boards. Heavy wheels rumble. And the life of gambling, drinking, pleasure, crawls about the French quarter, along Canal Street, on Royal Street. The bell in the Cathedral rings. I catch the whiff of flowers. Gulls fly ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... had never thought about smoking before, in connection with himself, but now for the first time he began to wish that he knew how to smoke. It would be worth risking something to take a whiff or two of the magic tobacco in that Chinaman's head, just to see what ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... 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 ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... assumes, with regard to the most trivial questions. Absolutely unconventional, save on his own quarter-deck, he carries about with him an atmosphere of brightness and breeziness which is almost as infectious and as bracing as a whiff of sea air. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... you turn the corner to enter the passage; then you come plump upon another from the hall door; then comes another, fit to knock you down, as You turn to the upper passage ; then, just as You turn towards the queen's room, comes another; and last, a whiff from the king's stairs, enough to blow you half a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... says. He is very good to the old people, and makes them share his prosperity—a most excellent son." Bessie listened for another name of an excellent son. It came. "And Harry Musgrave is at Brook for a whiff of country air. That young man works and plays very hard: he must take heed not ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... mouse is put in a glass jar, and all the air is drawn away with a pump, so that the poor little beast languishes and rolls pitifully on its side, gasping and wheezing with its tiny lungs for the least whiff of air. That is just how I felt when Nino went away. It seemed as though I could not breathe in the house or in the streets, and the little rooms at home were so quiet that one might hear a pin fall, and the cat purring through the closed ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... down comes a shell and away goes a house. War and slavery have quite reconciled the Dutch to the abdication of Napoleon. In answer to the question, "Etes vous content de ces changements?" you meet with no doubtful shrug of the shoulders, no ambiguous "mais que, oui"; an instantaneous extra whiff of satisfaction is puffed forth, accompanied with the synonimous terms, "Napoleon et Diable." On leaving Gorum we acquired an accession of passengers—a protestant clergyman and a fat man, who looked ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... sufficient to start a veritable spray. It acts violently on the senses, too. But kelene anaesthesia lasts only a minute or so. The fraction of time is long enough. Then comes the jab with the real needle—perhaps another whiff of kelene to give the injection a chance. In two or three minutes the injection itself is working and the victim is unconscious, without a murmur—perhaps, as in your case, without any clear idea of how it all happened—even without recollection ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which of course I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going: for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... women are! Archie told us you bore the news like a hero, and now you turn pale at a whiff of bad air. I can't explain it," mused Mac as he meekly ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... filled the pipe. He drew a whiff, and when the fire glowed, he turned the pipestem toward the seam of the skins above the doorway. He looked up towards the sky, saying, "Ho, friend, here is the pipe. We must smoke with you this last time. And then we must separate. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... illustration,) not a trace of it ever lingered to annoy his wife at the breakfast-table; showing that the draft up the open chimney had wholly disposed of it, the entire atmosphere of the room being changed during the night. Now, on the other hand, every whiff lingers persistently beside the domestic altar, and betrays to the youngest child, next day, the parental weakness. For the sake of family example, Dolorosus, correct this state of things, and put in a ventilator. Our natures will not adapt themselves to this abstinence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... beneath his fore legs and he sank down. Something wriggled under his feet. He sprang back, bristling and snarling, fearful of the unseen and unknown. But a friendly little yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... rather have taken it from any one else, but the whiff of burning tobacco, as Carlsen lit up, gave him an irresistible craving for a smoke. Besides, it wouldn't do for the doctor to know he mistrusted him. If he was to be a part of the ship's life, there was small sense in acting pettishly. He took the cigarette, ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... George took a whiff of his cigarette. 'So you think the men will laugh the last? Do you think they'll burn the ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... moment I stood uncertain in the shadow of the screen that guarded the door. There was a whiff of chloroform in the air, and through the doorway leading to the room where we had sat throughout the previous night I could see the end of a white-covered table. Thank God, that part ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Paris Sunday morning. Old women in black shawls were going into the church of St. Etienne-du-Mont. Each time the leather doors opened it let a little whiff of incense out into the smoky morning air. Three pigeons walked about the cobblestones, putting their coral feet one before the other with an air of importance. The pointed facade of the church ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... envelope half angrily and a faint whiff of violets floated out to him. Over his head a meadow lark trilled a long sweet measure, and glad surprise suddenly entered ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... by an insect? Or we take a sip of liquid and say, "This milk is sour." But why should we be able by taking the liquid into the mouth and bringing it into contact with the mucous membrane to tell that it is milk, and that it possesses the quality which we call sour? Or, once more, we get a whiff of air through the open window in the springtime and say, "There is a lilac bush in bloom on the lawn." Yet why, from inhaling air containing particles of lilac, should we be able to know that there is anything outside, much less that it is a flower ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... choke-damp flowed into the chamber, and the lights began to go out one by one. We scrambled back at once for our lives, and once past the pool were safe; the water effectually blocked the passage of the poisonous gas. I got but one whiff of it; but it gave me a painful sensation at the bridge of the nose which lasted acutely for some days. In all, our expedition had not lasted an hour; but it had proved to demonstration the impossibility of ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... entrance hall there was a whiff of fragrance where she had passed through; and his heart stirred in answer. Then he opened the door, stepped through and closed it ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... arms, smelt about for a soft plank, and fell in a heap on the porch, his chin on his paws, his mean little eyes watching lazily,—speaking to nobody, noticing nobody, sulking all to himself. There he stayed until he caught a whiff of the fragrant, pungent odor of fried trout. Then he cocked one eye and lifted an ear. He must not carry things too far. Next, I heard a single thump of his six-inch tail. George was beginning to get pleased; he always did when there ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... me for that. A beautiful night this—the air as soft as June. I was about to turn in, but decided to take a whiff on deck first." ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... him. To the neighbors, who looked inquisitively as he sat by the mill-door, smoking, he complained of the quality of his tobacco, vowing that it made his eyes so tender that they watered upon the slightest whiff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... beach, a few rods away, fires were burning, around which several merry groups had gathered. The smoke went mostly to one side, but a slight whiff came now and then to where Mrs. Carteret sat ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... 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 ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Thick and squally weather again. Local atmospheric conditions seem upset. Volcano still leading strenuous life. Climbed the headland this afternoon. Wind very shifty. Got an occasional whiff of volcanic output. One in particular would have sent a skunk to the camphor bottle. No living on the headland. Will explore cave to-morrow with a view to domicile. Have come down to an allowance of ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... An unmistakable whiff of tobacco-smoke awoke her from her dream of delight. She turned swiftly, the lily in one hand, her skirt ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... very long; for he was hungry, too; and that made him think about the good whiff he had smelled when he went through the kitchen with the snowshoes under his arm, just before he strapped them over his moccasins ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... continued the cool voice. "I always find myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective antidote for threatening vertigo. I remember once—" continued the speaker, dropping into a conversational tone, and leaning across the table slightly toward Barry, "I was in the ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... other wives, and does little except to direct the others in their work, and look after the comfort of her husband. Her place in the lodge is on his right-hand side, while the others have their places or seats near the door-way. This wife is even allowed at informal gatherings to take a whiff at the pipe, as it is passed around the circle, and to participate in ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... ferment; whirl; buck fever; hurry-skurry[obs3], thrill &c. (feeling) 821; state of excitement, fever of excitement; transport. passion, excitement, flush, heat; fever, heat; fire, flame, fume, blood boiling; tumult; effervescence, ebullition; boiling over; whiff, gust, story, tempest; scene, breaking out, burst, fit, paroxysm, explosion; outbreak, outburst; agony. violence &c. 173; fierceness &c. adj.; rage, fury, furor, furore[obs3], desperation, madness, distraction, raving, delirium; phrensy[obs3], frenzy, hysterics; intoxication; tearing passion, raging ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Blaney laughed, indulgently. "You can't expect to achieve all at once. Come, we'll step out on the veranda for a whiff of outdoors, and then come ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... be delicious!' sighed Elsie. 'I feel as if I could sniff the air this minute. But there! I won't pretend that I'm dying for fresh air, with the breath of the sea coming in at my south window, and a whiff of jasmine and honeysuckle from the piazza. That would be nonsense. Are your ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to be fired everywhere, and the whole army clamoured to break up the camp. Thus Ali and his fifty followers cast terror into the hearts of nearly thirty thousand men, crowded together on the slopes of Janina. Every sound, every whiff of smoke, ascending from near the castle, became a subject of alarm for the besiegers. And as the besieged had provisions for a long time, Kursheed saw little chance of successfully ending his enterprise; when ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... said, as they walked up a sanded path to the bungalow. "But I smell a smell that I've often smelled. Something doing, or my nose is a liar. The lagoon is carpeted with shell. They're rotting the meat out not a thousand miles away. Get that whiff?" ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... but a workman? So I am. Chemistry is one of my hobbies, and I spend hours a day in my laboratory yonder. I have only just struck work, and as I had inhaled some not-over-pleasant gases, I thought that a turn down the road and a whiff of tobacco might do me good. That was how I came to meet you, and my toilet, I fear, corresponded only too well with my smoke-grimed face. But I rather fancy I know you by repute. Your name is Robert McIntyre, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... to the hall, while her hostess fumbled at the door. It opened and let in a whiff of cool air and sounds of crickets ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... on the following Sunday. I went ashore to my old quarters, and found the gang at the hide-house going on in the even tenor of their way, and spent an hour or two, after dark, at the oven, taking a whiff with my old Kanaka friends, who really seemed glad to see me again, and saluted me as the Aikane of the Kanakas. I was grieved to find that my poor dog Bravo was dead. He had sickened and died suddenly, the very day after ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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 he could see a church-steeple looming ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... haystacks just beyond the stables, and the fields where the rabbits sometimes fell asleep as they sat after enormous meals too stuffed to move. He saw the old gravel-pit that led, the gardener told him, to the centre of the earth. A whiff of perfume from the laurustinus in the drive came back, the scent of hay, and with it the sound of the mowing-machine going over the lawn. He saw the pony in loose flat leather shoes. The bees were humming in the lime trees. The rooks were ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Everything alarmed him now. He was 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 of hair behind his ear. He was afraid of his ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... passenger, shrewd, sensible, and respectful; now exchanging a little elegant badinage with the coachman; now bowing to a pretty girl; now quizzing a passer-by; he was off and on his seat in an instant, and, in the whiff of his cigar, would lock a ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... Soon a whiff of fresh air blew in his face. He knew what that meant; he loved that breath of the water; it nerved him to cover the last lap of his long journey at a quick step. Then to his delight, he found himself ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... course all the 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 seen ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... One has a whiff of fragrant woodlands and serene hay-cocks, a breath of cool air from the Jungfrau's snows, a sniff of delectable bacon and toast—and a zest for breakfast. And one sets about it with interest, with the breakfast of the next day as a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... not from the operating table. Here I am reminded, though, of a modern instance to the contrary in prose. Mr. H. G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has never written a line of verse, was inspired a few years ago to write a short story, Under the Knife. Out of a clock-dial, a brass rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured for us a sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of the Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment Day; a great voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the words: "There shall be no more pain!" I advise you to ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the seas with Jonadab Kilroot, master of the stolid barque, "Merchant of London," I say nothing, or as good as nothing. Master Kilroot was a noisy, bulky man, with a whiff of the tar-barrel ever about him and a heart as stout as a ship's biscuit. He feared God always, and drubbed his men whenever it was necessary; in his estimation the office of sea-captain was the most important under heaven, and Master John Freake ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of cigarettes at Bink, who skillfully caught them, extracted one, closed the package, and tossed it back. A moment later the little chap had lighted the cigarette, and, as he deposited himself at full length on a tiger-skin rug, he puffed out a great whiff of smoke, and murmured: ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... wave or cyclone. At the Cercle Militaire many of the bureaucrats, and especially the doctor who had treated the cow-boy, were for martial law, anyway. Napoleon knew, said the fierce medecin. "A whiff of grapeshot, and the reef would be again gleaming with lights, and the diligences would pour in ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... right hand sat an elderly gentleman with a white head, and broad-brimmed brown hat; on his left, a sharp-nosed, light-haired man in a brown surtout reaching nearly to his heels, who took a whiff at his pipe, and an admiring glance at the red-faced ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... in a state of approximate intoxication. I never drew near to him without getting a whiff of alcohol, yet I never saw him radically drunk. His absorbent capacity must have been tremendous. It is certain he spent all the sous he could collect for liquids (he never wasted money upon food; he knew where to go for crusts of bread and broken meat; the back doors of restaurants have ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... gifts, which, according as they are bestowed with an affluent or a niggardly hand, go so far to determine the station and degree which each shall occupy in the subsequent competitions of the world. It is especially mysterious how into a soul here and there, as it passes forth, she breathes an extra whiff of the breath of life, and so confers on it the power of being and doing what others attempt to be ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... property of becoming red in vapor of sulpho-cyanide. Here is a long-necked flask of the gas, made by sulphuric acid acting on potassium sulpho-cyanide. Keep back, Dr. Waterworth, for it would be very dangerous for you to get even a whiff of this in your condition. Ah! See—the scratches I made on the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... letter 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, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... 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 cruche cassee. She ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe And a scornful laugh ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... after 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 it ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... they have a little carried him away. Almost every one remembers how in this light company he first came across the little word ranch. It had in its youth distinctly the cachet of the verbal flying squadron, the "nameless something," the oenanthic whiff which flies to the head. There are signs that its best days as a word are now over, and in contemplating it at present one has a vision of a passee brunette, in the costume of Fifine at the Fair, solacing herself with thoughts of early triumphs. "Would a farm have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... coming, but I got something more than a whiff of actual summer when Under Blue Skies (HUTCHINSON) came my way. Mr. DE VERD STACPOOLE is at the top of his form, and it is a real pleasure to recommend an author who brings to his tales of adventure so nice a sense of style and so keen a feeling for character. In "The Frigate Bird" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... in what are called common things—mere earth, sky, sun, and wind. How lovely life was on such a morning, in such a clean, rain-washed, wind-scoured world. The wet smell of the garden came up to her, a whiff of marshy smell from the water, a long breath from the pines in the forest on the other side of the house. How had she ever breathed at Estcourt? How had she escaped suffocation without this life-giving smell of sea and forest? She looked down ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... fortunate, financially, than himself. The nurses and physicians in the hospital where he lay learned to like and admire him, and other patients, convalescents or newcomers who were able to move about, sought his cheerful rooms and brought into them a whiff of the outside world. Through it all, winding in and out of the neutral-colored weeks like a scarlet thread of life and hope, came the childish letters from Russia, and each week a thick letter went back, artfully designed to keep alive the love and interest of an ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... too well. There was one old lady that got one whiff of them, and pushed back her chair and left. I guess she had took the pledge, and the brandy ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... astride the Tobacco Barrel—a rare beauty, who was on the most intimate talking terms 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... hardly be said) the rest of the ladies had taken umbrage at his behaviour. One of them purposely stalked past him to intimate to him the fact, as well as to jostle the Governor's daughter, and let the flying end of a scarf flick her face; while from a lady seated behind the pair came both a whiff of violets and a very venomous and sarcastic remark. Nevertheless, either he did not hear the remark or he PRETENDED not to hear it. This was unwise of him, since it never does to disregard ladies' opinions. Later-but too late—he was destined to ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... place like Caudebec in France was delicious. I wonder why food at country hotels in England is so bad? At Retby Lady Theodosia won't touch anything unless it is absolutely perfect. She sent a dish away yesterday just because a whiff of some flavouring she does not like came to her, but at the "Red Lion" she did not grumble at all; it must be for the same reason that wetting their feet doesn't give French people cold if it is at a national sport, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... daintiest refinements of man's invention given me the half of luxury I drank in from that little breeze. So the commonest things—a dash of cool water on the wrists, a gulp of hot tea, a warm, dry blanket, a whiff of tobacco, a ray of sunshine—are more really the luxuries than all the comforts and sybaritisms we buy. Undoubtedly the latter would also rise to the higher category if we were to work for their essence instead of merely signing club cheques or ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... onless,' he says, 'ye intind bein' a dintist, in which case,' he says, 'we won't think much iv ye, but we have a good school where ye can larn that disgraceful thrade,' he says. An' th' la-ad makes his choice, an' ivry mornin' whin he's up in time he takes a whiff iv hasheesh an' goes off to hear Profissor Maryanna tell him that 'if th' dates iv human knowledge must be rejicted as subjictive, how much more must they be subjicted as rejictive if, as I think, we keep our thoughts fixed upon th' inanity iv th' finite in comparison ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... 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 Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... smote him with renewed force. Young, beautiful, dainty, brilliant and graceful in her pretty evening gown, she figured strangely against the gloomy background of the river, in those dull and mean surroundings of dank stone and rusted iron. She was like (he thought extravagantly) a whiff of flower-fragrance lost in the miasmatic vapors ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... great capital E, the cow hospital. She thought of Bill Crowdy and the sick calves as she drew near, but was passing on to the men at the milk corrals, when the breeze, blowing lightly from the west, brought to her nostrils a whiff of sulphur. ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... the largest computation; some time that night, or at latest before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island. We were heading S.S.W. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. The HISPANIOLA rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the bravest spirits because we were now so near an end of the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... take with them kind thoughts of Old England, and memories sweet of its rare rural joys. Let them "camp out" once again, by the ocean, and plunge in the billow, and rove on the sands; Know the true British brine-whiff by experience. Help, British Public, their friends' kindly hands. Good is the work, and the fruit of it excellent; giving poor wastrels a fair start in life, Taste of true pleasure, and wholesome enjoyment, aid in endeavour, and strength for the strife. What better use for spare cash ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... the truth. But I really thought you above the fear of village gossip, Gabriella. Why, it is more idle than the passing wind, lighter than the down of the gossamer. I thought you had a noble independence of character, incapable of being moved by a whiff of breath, a puff of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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 not been ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... blended with the scent of laid dust and the fragrance of the last late-clinging chestnut blossoms; it caught up a fuller, richer burden from the overflowing front of a florist's shop; it stole from open windows a savory whiff of cooking, a salt tang of wood smoke; and the soft little breeze—the breeze of coming summer—mixed all together and tossed them and bore them down the long, quiet street; and it was the breath of Paris, and it shall be in your nostrils and mine, a keen agony ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... near our destination, of the pretty houses and gardens of the village, forming a great contrast to the densely populated district of Stirchley on the other side of the line. Stepping on to the station, we are greeted by a whiff of the most delicious fragrance, which is quite enough of itself to betray the whereabouts of the great factory lying beneath us, of which from this point we have a fairly good bird's-eye view. Down the station steps, and a few yards up the lane to the ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... preparing for prison, it seems, and one little necessity is a prayer for said son. Sarah comes in with a response, Shylock leaves off praying "immediate," to tell Sarah she is no vulgar servant, which assurance is received in the tearful manner. And here it comes a little faint whiff of the real play. In leaving home, Shylock's French plagiarizes the Jew's speech to Jessica, even down to the doubt the Jew has about leaving his ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... his course, he rode, rapidly at first, then more cautiously, toward the sound. Presently he caught a whiff of smoke that came with the light breeze from somewhere ahead on the ridge along which he was riding. Instantly he rode into a thick clump of cedars, and, dismounting, tied his horse. Then he went on, carefully ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... the steps, his hand dropped into his coat pocket. It came out with a brown rice paper and a pinch of Mexican tobacco, which were deftly rolled together into a cigarette. He drew the first whiff of smoke deep into his lungs and expelled it in a long and lingering exhalation. "By God!" he said aloud, in a voice of awe and wonder. "By God!" he repeated. And yet again he murmured, "By God!" Then his hand went to his collar, which he ripped out of the shirt and stuffed into his pocket. A cold ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... said, She was heartily glad to see her; but for her part, she could never love any one better than Joseph. Gaffar Andrews testified no remarkable emotion: he blessed and kissed her, but complained bitterly that he wanted his pipe, not having had a whiff that morning. ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... 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," said Henry, "this was not like that—it was ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stared 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 mist was falling ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... 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 ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... 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 the ages have choked up, and which ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... decanter and he had got down to them! Then, as the last drop from his tilted glass trickled into the white hairs on his chin, he heard the coffee tray put down, and taking his cigar he put it to his ear, rolling it in his thick fingers. In prime condition! And drawing a first whiff, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be no smoker himself and dislike the odour of tobacco, I tell him that if he objects, I will postpone my harmless whiff until after captivity. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... to the other shore. Only a moment they paused, and then, following the trail, they broke into a run, redoubling their shouts and repeatedly discharging the rifle. They had smelled my smouldering rotten stump, but if a whiff of smoke was now rising it was too small for them to see. My trail, however, led them to the bank over which they heard my feeble answering shout. So down the bank they scrambled, to come to a sudden halt, transfixed with amazement, as they ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... where'er we may, through city or through town, Village or hamlet of this merry land, Though lean and beggar'd, every twentieth face, Conducts th' unguarded nose to such a whiff Of state debauch, forth issuing from the sties That law has licensed, as makes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin. And all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her mind that if she had been his wife or sister she would have devoted her whole life to saving him from ruin. His wife! Life was so ordered ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... dull over the ground on a winter's morning, which will be blown away with the least puff of fresh air, there lie doleful dampnesses, in their sooty folds, over many a Christian heart, shutting out the sun from the earth, and a little whiff of wholesome activity in Christ's cause would clear them all away, and the sun would shine down upon men again. If you want to be a happy Christian, work for Jesus Christ. I do not lay that down as a specific by itself. There are other things to be taken ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... motion] Wind — N. wind, draught, flatus, afflatus, efflation^, eluvium^; air; breath, breath of air; puff, whiff, zephyr; blow, breeze, drift; aura; stream, current, jet stream; undercurrent. gust, blast, squall, gale, half a gale, storm, tempest, hurricane, whirlwind, tornado, samiel, cyclone, anticyclone, typhoon; simoon^, simoom; harmattan^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... stranger on his land, a glossy Blackbear, and he felt furious against the interloper. As the Blackbear came nearer Wahb noticed the tan-red face, the white spot on his breast, and then the bit out of his ear, and last of all the wind brought a whiff. There could be no further doubt; it was the very smell: this was the black coward that had chased him down the Piney long ago. But how he had shrunken! Before, he had looked like a giant; now Wahb felt he could crush him with one paw. Revenge is sweet, Wahb felt, though he did ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... hotel, Somerset's first impulse was to get out of sight of its windows, and his glance upward had perhaps not the tender significance that Paula imagined, the last look impelled by any such whiff of emotion having been the lingering one he bestowed upon her in passing out of the room. Unluckily for the prospects of this attachment, Paula's conduct towards him now, as a result of misrepresentation, had enough in common ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... reared straight up like a maddened horse. Full-throated angry barks, interspersed with sharp, querulous yaps, filled his roaring, swaying prison. How long since he had got so much as a whiff of untainted air, or a glimpse of wild fields and woods! Out there oceans of such air filled all the space between the gliding earth and the sky. Out there miles on miles of freedom were rushing forever out of his life. He ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... dat 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 in pouring the contents of the ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... is known to have passed during the doctor's visit; and in due time he disappeared, as it were, in a whiff of tobacco-smoke, leaving an odor of brandy and tobacco behind him, and a traditionary memory of a wizard that had been there. Septimius went to work with what items of knowledge he had gathered from him; but the interview had at least made him aware of one thing, which ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has a monopoly of the puffing, himself," Pindar whispered into the captain's ear; "whiff away, my dear sir, and you'll soon throw ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... "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. ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... before it has appreciably cooled. This is easily done in the case of electrometer jars, and so long as the air remains perfectly dry through the action of sulphuric acid or phosphorus pentoxide, the jar will insulate. The slightest whiff of ordinarily damp air will, however, enormously reduce the insulating power of the glass, so that unvarnished glass surfaces must be kept for apparatus ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) And almost talk. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... ripping," said Miss Penny exuberantly, as they sat by the fire of many-coloured flames, after a slender cup of tea and as hearty a meal as Graeme would allow them in view of possible contingencies. "Do please smoke, Mr. Graeme. It just needs a whiff of tobacco to ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... him for Scandalum Magnatum. What is the World come to? Must every Body be allowed to—? He had by this time filled a new Pipe and applying it to his Lips, when we expected the last Word of his Sentence, put us off with a Whiff of Tobacco; which he redoubled with so much Rage and Trepidation, that he almost stifled the whole Company. After a short Pause, I owned that I thought the SPECTATOR had gone too far in writing so many Letters ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... feet are tired and his knees are stiff, His breath comes low in a wheezy whiff. He'll now "lay up," like a worn-out wherry. 'Tis yours to start like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... pretty tired when we returned with our second packs and dropped them on a low, bare knoll some fifty yards above the fire where Pete and Stanton were carrying on their culinary operations, but a whiff of roasting goose came to us like a tonic, and it did not take us ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... minute the 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
... Rapidly, one after another, boys and young squaws thrust their heads in at the opening, to invite us to various feasts in different parts of the village. For half an hour or more we were actively engaged in passing from lodge to lodge, tasting in each of the bowl of meat set before us, and inhaling a whiff or two from our entertainer's pipe. A thunderstorm that had been threatening for some time now began in good earnest. We crossed over to Reynal's lodge, though it hardly deserved this name, for it consisted only of a few ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... You must not hurry, you must not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather cold at the tip, and the eye can quietly take in the appearance of each red casualty, that the strain on the nerves is strongest. Scotch regiments can endure for half a day ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... have been shaken up a heap in the game," hinted Anstey. "Prescott isn't the sort of chap to tell us every time he feels a trifle dizzy or experiences a nervous twitch. He may have felt badly, may have gone out on the platform for a whiff of fresh air, and then may have felt so much worse that ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... chest near Chips to make myself easy, during which time the bos'n had gained sufficient ground to enforce silence upon his adversary, and relinquish the subject of anchors. Then came a pause during which I could distinguish the "doctor's" voice above the mutterings, and get a whiff of my own ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... 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 at that pipe ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... want?" asked Dinah, opening the oven door, to let out a little whiff of a most delicious smell, and then quickly closing it again. "Ef yo' wants a piece ob cake, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... dispense, not to 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 ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... caught a whiff of burnt syrup, she hurried to the kitchen, where she found that her berries had boiled over, and were hissing and sputtering on the hot stove, raising a cloud of smoke so dense that she did not see the person who stood on the threshold of the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... pleasantly; gardening districts all set with gables and roses, holly hedges, and emerald lawns; pleasant homes among heathery moorlands and golf links, and river districts with gaily painted boat-houses peeping from the osiers. Then presently a gathering of houses closer together, and a promenade and a whiff of band and dresses, and then, perhaps, a little island of agriculture, hops, or strawberry gardens, fields of grey-plumed artichokes, white-painted orchard, or brightly neat poultry farm. Through ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... ship leaves so much commotion in the water behind her. There do not seem to be any regular sailors, and in their stead a collection of individuals remarkably greasy in their appearance, who may be cooks or stokers, or possibly both. Then you cannot go on the poop without being saluted by a whiff of hot air from the grim furnaces below; men are always shovelling in coal, or throwing cinders overboard; and the rig does not seem to belong to any ship in particular. The masts are low and small, and the canvas, which is always spread in fair weather, looks as if it had been ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... night the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see!" The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe, And a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... there is any sensation arising from sight more 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 fields, while I learned ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... 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 bout ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... another time and the primordial elements became strong within him. In effect he was transported far back into those dim ages, when man fought with the stone axe, and his five senses were so preternaturally acute to protect his life that he had a sixth and perhaps a seventh. A whiff came on the wind. It was faint, because it had traveled far, but he knew it to be the odor of the panther. The big cowardly beast was crouched in a little valley to his right, and he was trembling, trembling ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... as a small brown hen and a big gray owl, and they had been married sixty years! They had toiled and grown old together, but that did not mean that wifey was to walk anywhere but three feet to the rear, nor to speak except when her lord and ruler stopped talking to take a whiff of his pipe. I tried to walk behind with the old lady but she threatened to stand in one spot for the rest of the night. Then I vainly coaxed her to walk with me at her husband's side. But her face was so full of genuine horror at such disrespect that I desisted. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... vanished; unforgettable, however, for he had known it already weeks ago upon the steamer. And before the gardened woods about him smothered it with their richer smells of a million flowers and weeds, he recognized in it that peculiar pungent whiff of horse that had reached him from the haunted cabin. This time it was less fleeting—a fine, clean odor that he liked even while ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something— doubtless very nice and succulent—that was being cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils; at all events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... large-type story book were stumbled through; and there was a triumphant exhibition when the cousins came home—Eustace delighted; Harold, half-stifled by London, insisting on walking home from the station to stretch his legs, and going all the way round over Kalydon Moor for a whiff of air! ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... there in this simple announcement of Sylvie having gone on a charity-school picnic with Jack Darcy that should so rouse the art-cultured pulses of Fred Lawrence? He had always liked Sylvie: her freshness and piquancy stirred him like a whiff of mountain air,—a sure sign that all healthy tone had not been cultivated out of him. It would be very foolish for Sylvie to commit a mesalliance with this young man, who was no doubt good enough in his way,—a rather rough, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... table about two hours. The principal person then rang a bell, and the tables and chairs all vanished in a whiff, leaving all the company on their feet. The birds now struck up a most lively air, and the little people danced their rounds most merrily. When they were done, the joyous sets jumped and leaped, and whirled themselves round and round, as if the world was grown dizzy. The pretty ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... the houses stood open. The path was encumbered with the wreckage of their contents, and every now and then he smelt a whiff of paraffin, as though lamps had been broken or cans overset. Vaudere had been looted, but there were no Prussians now ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... nothing," said his host, putting his long clay to the candle, and puffing out volumes of smoke. Tom felt more and more unequal to the situation, and filled his pipe in silence. The first whiff made him cough as he wasn't used to the fragrant ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... together to visit ladies, the garden round whose cottage overflowed in every direction with a particular kind of white and maroon pink, the powerful, spicy odor of which comes to me, like a warm whiff of summer sweetness, across all these intervening fifty years. Another favorite haunt of ours was a cottage (not of gentility) inhabited by an old man of the name of Foster, who, hale and hearty and cheerful in extreme old age, was always delighted to see us, used to give us ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... I have never yet slept in the streets. Be thankful I did not leave the two of you to be carried out of this square in the morning. I came here spoiling for a fight, and had my sword all ready to begin carving you when Cartier's voice struck me like a whiff of bracing, salt-sea air. But what great enterprise have you on hand? Your serious looks bespeak some weighty scheme. Whatever it is, my ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... 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
... if he'd take a whiff Of 'bacco; he acceded; He grew communicative too, (A pipe was all he needed,) Till of the tinker's life, I think, I knew as much ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... Loa, forty miles away, was burning red and fitfully. A horse and servant awaited me, and we were soon clattering over the hard sand by the shining sea, and up the ascent which leads to the windy table-lands of Waimea. The air was like new life. At a height of 500 feet we met the first whiff of the trades, the atmosphere grew cooler and cooler, the night-wind fresher, the moonlight whiter; wider the sweeping uplands, redder the light of the burning mountain, till I wrapped my plaid about me, but still was chilled to the bone, and when the four hours' ride was over, soon after midnight, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
