"Dare-devil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... my blood to ice within me, and make the breath of my heart wax pale,' as the lecturer said last night," said Polly. "But now that you dare-devil people have cleared the field for action, we may as well go in and scrub. We'd only just finished sweeping. Dot, you may take the death-bed boards. And, O, there comes Bert, back from the funeral. As President of the Winsted Boat Club and Library Association, ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... from the lips of the failing widow because of Almira's tacit acceptance of the devotions of young Mr. Powlett, son of the resident physician of the sanitarium that was now bringing so many patients to Urbana. A handsome, dare-devil sort of boy was Powlett, who speedily cut out all the local beaux at the parties and picnics which filled the summer of '75. A beautiful dancer was he, and taught Almira to waltz and "glide" in a style never before seen in Urbana, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... scheme. He wished to be considered a dare-devil sort of fellow, and he felt that it would give him a great reputation if he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... magnificently and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done: only there was a dare-devil in his eye—I should say a dare-Becket. He thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion. Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... into the aisle, Mr. Murray threw his head back slightly, and his eyes swept up to the gallery and met hers. It was a long, eager, heart-searching gaze. She saw a countenance more fascinating than of old; for the sardonic glare had gone, the bitterness, "the dare-man, dare-brute, dare-devil" expression had given place to a stern mournfulness, and the softening shadow of deep contrition and manly sorrow hovered over features where scoffing ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... registry on the great highway to the East, where he would take up a berth nearly opposite the big stone pile of the harbor office till it was time to start again on the old round of 1600 miles and thirty days. Not a very enterprising life, this, for Captain Whalley, Henry Whalley, otherwise Dare-devil Harry—Whalley of the Condor, a famous clipper in her day. No. Not a very enterprising life for a man who had served famous firms, who had sailed famous ships (more than one or two of them his own); who had made famous passages, had been the pioneer of new routes and new trades; ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... to share his porch ..." and the other Varney, not the one who sat so stiff and mute, desperate eyes glued on the far horizon, but the easy, negligent Varney, gay dare-devil that he was, actually achieved a pleasant laugh. "I must show you his note. It's been a long time since I have had anything to please ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I—was discharged, my colonel, as—unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped into his hands ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... likely than that you will ever capture me, I will have you chopped up into small pieces and fed to the fires of the Dauntless." A few months later, this little Irishman, whom Weyler denounced as a "bloodthirsty, dare-devil," and who may have been a dare-devil but was not bloodthirsty, actually carried out a part of this seemingly reckless threat. He landed a cargo within a mile and ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... beyond the fat gas-works, the narrow factories draw near, we are in the sordid streets of the great town, once more we sidle to a standstill at our terminus, abashed by the great crimson and cream-coloured city cars, but still perky, jaunty, somewhat dare-devil, green as a jaunty sprig of parsley out of a ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... little sense of any kind in it. The boy was not given a chance to be honest with himself by thinking a thing through; he came naturally to accept as his mental horizon the headlines in his penny paper and the literature of the Dare-Devil-Dan-the-Death-Dealing-Monster-of-Dakota order, which comprise the ordinary aesthetic equipment of the slum. The mystery of his further development into the tough need not ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... discretion. Meanwhile he proceeded to tighten the cordon of investment, so as to render it impossible that a single soul inside the city should escape. In spite of this, however, Delphion, with one comrade, a branded dare-devil, who had shown great dexterity in relieving the besieging parties of their arms, escaped by night. Presently the deputation returned with the answer from Lacedaemon that the state simply left it ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach (if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the Mishaumok Journal, Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and who now saunters off, varying his monotonous ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... their faults, but as a general propositions they are to be preferred to the "laters." Every good thing that has blest mankind since Adam had his celebrated adventure with green goods in the Garden of Eden, has been discovered, invented, dug out or dug up, by a "sooner." He has always been a dare-devil whose courage was so prominent as to attract the envy and malice of every "later" that whittled dry-goods boxes into splinters and used his time to cuss "the government." God bless the whole "sooner" tribe, say I, from Adam down ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses and custom officers—which is me—to see his Majesty paid right and proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss—your rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly—and pockets the profit! D'ye see?—and so he cheats his Majesty, which is a very grievous ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Nick, with grim austerity. "We shall find her at home, as usual. She'll not imagine that I can have got on her track as quickly as this, so no doubt I can easily land her. Before midnight I want bracelets on the white wrists of that Spanish dare-devil." ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... small towns of some decades ago—if we will review them as they are pictured in poem and novel and play—we may receive, as it were out of the tail of the eye, an impression of some aspects of these western plantings of the seventeenth century. The dare-devil, the bully, the tenderfoot, the gambler, the gentleman-desperado had their counterparts in Virginia. So had the cool, indomitable sheriff and his dependable posse, the friends generally of law and order. Dale may be viewed as the picturesque ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... struggle, he seized swiftly the chance of a solution the message suggested, and trusting to Diana's resourcefulness let himself go with the tide. It was as though after sixteen years some spirit of the past suddenly re-entered him; some of that old reckless, dare-devil spirit that had distinguished him ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... far beyond me in popularity among the little community we lived with; the first to lead a daring exploit, the last to abandon it; now at the bottom of the class, now at the top—just that sort of gay, boisterous, fine-looking, dare-devil boy, whom old people would instinctively turn round and smile after, as they passed him by in ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... oddly—it was so different from the quiet, undemonstrative manner to which she had been accustomed. With at least a dozen men in shaggy overcoats and slouched hats she shook hands with a tolerably good grace, but when there appeared a tall, lank, bearded young giant of a fellow, with a dare-devil expression in his black eyes and a stain of tobacco about his mouth, she drew back, and to his hearty "How are ye, Miss Markham? Considerable tuckered out, I reckon?" she merely responded with a cool bow and a haughty ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. I will have no man in my boat, said starbuck, who is not afraid of a whale. by this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... out of a cloud bank just in time to upset the well laid plans of the German ace, and that worthy, never expecting such a dare-devil, self-sacrificing move as made by Larkin, had for once been taken by surprise. He had been damaged enough to force immediate retirement. The celerity with which his group abandoned the project and followed in his wake gave glowing tribute to the true value and leadership ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... was more that most young men like to read about in the Southern war," said Warner; "plenty of dare-devil movements, but ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... had come up by this time and we sat in a circle listening again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil of a highwayman. However, I disagreed with Otto's ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... great height, and he had, too, a shock of his father's coarse black hair, which flared stiffly above the brilliant Lightfoot eyes. As he galloped along the turnpike on Prince Rupert, the travelling countrymen turned to look after him, and muttered that "dare-devil Jack Montjoy had risen from his grave—if he had ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... admit, excited. Count Bindo, the dare-devil Italian adventurer, who cared not a jot for any man living, and who himself lived so well upon the proceeds of his amazing audacity and clever wits, was not in the habit of speaking like this. I pressed him to tell me more, but ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... style. We shall have you a swaggering dare-devil yet, old boy. And now it's boot and saddle again. Good-bye, and come ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... every danger. More than once Tom almost shuddered at the chances which his young companion took upon some perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to call a warning, but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in that young dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown moving in and out of the darkened green above him. Once he was on the point of shouting advice to Hervey about what to do in the unlikely event of his reaching the nest before the eagle, or in the more serious contingency of an encounter ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... mean. He could not have been thirty, although he had been on the plains for five years. The West was people by young men. It's need for daring spirits found less response in men of maturer life. But the West had most need for humane men. The bully, the dare-devil, the brutal, and the selfish were refuse before the force that swept the frontier onward; but they were never elements in real state building. Before such men ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... cursed ill-luck, but how could we know that that dare-devil was a friend of Dewey's? If we'd let well enough alone, we shouldn't have lost our horses and been compelled to tramp on foot ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... down a shilling. The sight of it satisfied her. She combed my hair, brought me a bowl of water and a towel, and then gave us a bowl of milk and bread, and dismissed us, telling me I had a fair face and dare-devil written on it: as for the girl, she said of her that she knew gipsies at a glance, and what God Almighty made them for there was no guessing. This set me thinking all through the day, 'What can they have been made for?' I bought a red scarf for the girl, and other things she fixed her eyes on, but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Jasper was reeling. Two or three Stetsons slipped from the crowd, and there was a galloping of hoofs the other way. Another horseman appeared from the Lewallen end, riding hastily. The new-comer's errand was to call Jasper back. But the young dare-devil was close to the crowd, and was swinging a bottle over ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... did not answer her, and Patricia, now thoroughly alarmed, sought vainly for a means of bringing this impetuous and dare-devil young ranchman to his senses. She thought once, as they ascended a short hill, of leaping from the car to the ground, but the speed was too great for her to take such a risk. It even occurred to her to seize the steering-wheel, and to give it a ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... little I ever risked for myself or my partners. When I did big things, some large corporation like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was behind me and the responsible party. My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a dare-devil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... redoubtable soldiers they are. Take those away, and you break their touch with a continuous tradition which transforms every man in the regiment, be he Scottish, English or Irish, into a Gordon, with all the dash and vim and dare-devil courage that centre around the name. The Gordon blood in him helped Byron to understand and express the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the honest truth," said the Hon. JOHN COLLIER, giving evidence in the Romney case, "we artists do not think much of the art critics." It is this dare-devil attitude which distinguishes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... sea. Long before the circuit of Fernando Noronha was completed he would be itching to rush at top speed along the straight line to Pernambuco. It was a bold thing, too, to land on the island and stock their vessel for a voyage, the end of which no man could foresee. The dare-devil notion fascinated them. In that instant, the Andromeda's crew returned to their allegiance, which was as well, since it was fated to be stiffly tested many times ere they were reported inside 1 ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Hubert Delafield had been an obstinate, dare-devil, heroic sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh salmon river trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A man much hated—and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory actions. He had married his wife for money, would often boast of it, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been of the high-spirited, dare-devil sort. This lad was made for a scholar—-for the priesthood, in fact, and the army will be more uncongenial than these marble works! Foolish fellow, he will soon have had enough of it, with his refinement, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this affair of the blinds, for Rushton and Misery robbed everybody. They made a practice of annexing every thing they could lay their hands upon, provided it could be done without danger to themselves. They never did anything of a heroic or dare-devil character: they had not the courage to break into banks or jewellers' shops in the middle of the night, or to go out picking pockets: all their robberies were of ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... hand across her eyes and brushed away the tears that blurred her vision, while a lump rose in her throat too big to swallow. "Gentle Annie" of The Colonial veranda, erstwhile authority on Battenburg and sweaters, had accomplished the most reckless of the dare-devil feats of the cow-country—he had "bull-dogged" a ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends, do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... little festa delightful, though all that the ladies had to do was to make an audience for Aristodemo and Manisty. The handsome dare-devil lad began to talk, drawn out by the Englishman, and lo! instead of a mere peasant they had got hold of an artist and a connoisseur! Did he know anything of the excavations and the ruins? Why, he knew everything! He chattered to them, with astonishing knowledge and shrewdness, ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... of sentries, calling out of guards, and signalling to the fort that hostile boats were in the harbor. But all too late. Cushing's coolness, courage, dash, and invincible luck had carried him scot-free through another dare-devil adventure. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... however, would have involved too great a loss of time. Luckily I found three dare-devil fellows, but recently come into the valley for a living, who were willing to go with me. These, together with the man already mentioned and one Cora Indian, enabled me to make a start. Thus I parted from pretty San Francisco, and the nice Indians ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... here a strap, there a buckle on the harness of his chestnut—a well-known trotter, with which he often made a match—and affectionately clapped the neck of Mahony's bay. He could not keep his hands off a horse. By choice he was his own stableman, and in earlier life had been a dare-devil rider. Now, increasing weight led him to prefer buggy to saddle; but his recklessness had not diminished. With the reins in his left hand, he would run his light, two-wheeled trap up any wooded, boulder-strewn hill and down the other ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... little of—only sufficient to make it possible to lead them. No two men were dressed alike, and some were not even armed alike, although stolen Turkish government rifles far predominated. But they wore unanimously that dare-devil air, not swaggering because there is no need, that has been the key to most of the sublime surprises of all war. The commander, whose men sit that way in the saddle and toss those jokes shoulder over shoulder down the line, dare tackle forlorn hopes that would seem sheer leap-year ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to his room, the guard outside the door heard him marching back and forth through all the weary night. The one thing he least expected, because he least understood it, had come to pass. He had been a good and true friend to the villain who had fled, for Arnold's reckless bravery and dare-devil fighting had appealed to the strongest passion of his nature, and he had stood by him always. He had grieved over the refusal of Congress to promote him in due order and had interceded with ultimate success in his behalf. He had sympathized with him in his ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... that I had the good fortune to be afraid to entertain came, as it were, from within. There was a dare-devil fellow whom, as I know him to be dead, I feel justified in naming Jack Harris. He was engaged in all manner of speculative ventures on his own account, but the special agent had so frequently employed him in "enterprises of great pith and moment" that he was in a certain sense ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... Thirty-nine Articles. He was struck with the architecture of the colleges, and much surprised at the meanness of the houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as it had been to FitzGerald ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... she might be; but not of English rig. What was the meaning of it? A Spanish cruiser about to make reprisals for Drake's raid along the Cadiz shore! Not that, surely. The Don had no fancy for such unscientific and dare-devil warfare. If he came, he would come with admiral, rear-admiral, and vice-admiral, transports, and avisos, according to the best-approved methods, articles, and science of war. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... twenty-seven, Peter Boots was more than sturdy. He was tall and big and strong, and the love of adventure, the dare-devil spirit of exploration still shone in his chicory blue eyes, and his indomitable will power was evident in his straight fine ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... far as Kinney's canon last night. I met him an' had a long talk with him. He's keen for it—says he admires any guy which can plan a thing that big. Grinned like a hyena when I told him the big guys back of it wouldn't let any law interfere. He's got seventy men, he says—dare-devil gun-fighters from down south a piece which will do anything he tells 'em an' ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... little fitted for the Church (for which he was designed) as could be. At the time of this story, though not above sixteen years old, Master Harry Mostyn was as big and well-grown as many a man of twenty, and of such a reckless and dare-devil spirit that no adventure was too dangerous or too mischievous for him ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... hunt him up—and we can settle about the pictures at the same time. You seem to be crippled. How did that happen? Some dare-devil ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... Hollywood and synthetic clown with the Sells Floto Circus. Having lived an active, daring life, and possessing a gift for good story telling, he is well qualified to write these adventures of a red-blooded dare-devil young American who became one of the country's ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... indignant at his desertion, she hardly heeded them; how was she to know that Camillo Borghese was, under his cold exterior, very honestly in love with his wife and just now cruelly tortured with jealousy of her brother-in-law, the dare-devil Murat? For the latter was as unscrupulous as he was handsome, as Napoleon was to find to his cost, though in recognition of his services as a dashing leader of cavalry he had rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... still very young; so much is done which arises from speculation and theories; too much dependence is placed on the aviator; the desire in the present condition of the art is to exploit the man and not the machine; dare-devil exhibitions seem to be more important than perfecting the mechanism; and such useless attempts as flying upside down, looping the loop, and characteristic displays of that kind, are of no value to the art. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... exclaimed Bradley, as they drove away, "you certainly lit on your feet when you struck that house. It looks like it 'ud pay you to git stabbed every day in the week; it's paid the community, the Lord knows, fer it is shet of the biggest dare-devil that wus ever in it. The ol' lady seems to have about as bad a case on you as the gal. I've been thar a time or two to ax about you, an' I never seed the like o' stirrin' round fixin' things they 'lowed would suit ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... a good many years ago, when I was in the employ of the government," said Mr. Parker, "that what I am going to tell you about happened. I was a young fellow then, and a good bit of a dare-devil, so I was sent at the head of a body of men to ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... at the newcomer. He was a stout fellow; not over tall, nor over big; swarthy, with prominent features. The plume of his bonnet was broken, but he wore it in a rakish fashion; and altogether he swaggered with so dare-devil an air, clinking his spurs and swinging out his long sword recklessly, that it was no wonder three or four of the nearest fellows gave ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. ——— was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her came to regard it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the president immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself in a most flattering manner, something like this: "Great by his position under the Republic,—greater still, I am bold to say, in the Republic ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at each other—man and woman! They both knew with what they had to deal. A dare-devil expression rose to Gaston's face. He tossed ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... a man after mine own heart," he said smoothly. "Because I love thee and thy bold eyes and thy dare-devil recklessness, and would make a friend of thee. Why else? Now, then, to-morrow thou shalt bring the girl to me. I am minded for an hour's sport with the tiger-cat. My fingers itch for that lean throat of hers. After, I will give her to thee if it please ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... to be trifled with. The grand hickory-stick he twirls in his hand would be enough, with his dare-devil look, to frighten most persons; but when we state that in the depth of the pocket of the remarkable check-coat that he wears he conceals one of the most beautiful 'persuaders' ever manufactured ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... from Alabama a roistering blade by the name of McConnell. He was something of a wit. During his brief sojourn in the national capital he made a noisy record for himself as an all-round, all-night man about town, a dare-devil and a spendthrift. His first encounter with Col. John W. Dade, of Virginia, used to be one of the standard local jokes. Colonel Dade was seated in the barroom of Brown's Hotel early one morning, waiting for someone to come in ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... it will be to kill, Count Marlanx. The paper, sir." Baldos towered over the Iron Count and there was danger in his dare-devil voice. "Surely, sir, I am but obeying your own instructions. 'Protect the princess and all that is hers, with your life,' you have said ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... My dear boy, you were never so much my own as at this moment. You are tired of death-hunting? Very good; live on, drink deep of the fountain of life, drain it to the dregs, and much good may it do you! You have wealth and therefore power, and you will become just such a dare-devil villain as the man who has caused all this pother. You will betray innocent, confiding maidens, deceive loving friends, ruin families, and beget unfortunate, ill-starred beings. You will become a heartless libertine, a selfish sensualist. You will mock at God, mock at the Devil; ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... was a ruined man. The brand of society was upon me. The world would not let me live honestly, and the love of life was too strong in me to let me face death. I tried to live dishonestly, and I led a wild, rackety, dare-devil kind of a life, amongst men who found they had a skilful tool, and knew how to use me. They did use me to their heart's content, and left me in the lurch when danger came. I was arrested for forgery, tried, found guilty, and transported for life. Don't flinch, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... attracts the rain Tom calls "mil-gar," and the suspended bottle (a saucer-shaped piece of bark is generally used) serves to catch PAL-BI (hailstones), which, being, uncommon, are considered weird and are eaten in a dare-devil sort of spirit. In this case PAL-BI had but the remotest chance of getting into the bottle, and for that reason (according: to Tom) none tried. "Subpose I bin put bark all asame ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the great offensive of September, 1915; graphic, thrilling, and filled with the Foreign Legion's own dare-devil spirit. With frontispiece. $1.00 net. With the French A HILLTOP ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... was far out of reach, and had rejoined his men, and the whole dare-devil band, with the captured horses, scuttled off along the defiles, their red flag flaunting overhead, and the rocks echoing to their whoops ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... just "a man."' And she fell asleep, wondering how she ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing still, how she ought to—end it! That little backward brain sought the solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal, a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret—the greatest and finest secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was a sentence of ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... relation in which it is to be considered. Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects it does, it must work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... those swarthy, dare-devil riders were as gentle as women; they urged the tiny youngsters onward with harmless switches or with painless blows from loose-coiled riatas; they picked them up in their arms and ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... ship Tiger. The type of a daring, reckless, dare-devil English sailor. His adventures with Harry Clifton, in Delhi, form the main incidents of Barrymore's melodrama, El Hyder, Chief of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the Dutch packets fell victims, and insurance of boats plying between Dover and Calais went to ten per cent. Englishmen began to feel that England was blockaded! We are not so familiar as we ought to be with the interesting record of all these audacious and brilliant enterprises, conducted with dare-devil recklessness by men who would not improbably have been hanged both as pirates and as traitors, had fortune led to their capture at this moment of British rage ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... American home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that came from the wild Irish ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development. It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... these semi-pirate adventurers developed the buccaneers, a ruffianly, dare-devil lot, who feared ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... zeal of a lover and all the tact of a fortune-hunter. Several times, through the connivance of my kinsman, he contrived to surprise me into an interview, and upon each occasion he urged his suit; but of course, in vain. Captain Dugald was what is called a 'dare-devil,' and I think he rather gloried in that name. He acted upon the maxim that 'all stratagems are fair in love as in war.' And he resorted to a stratagem to get me into his power, and reduce me to the alternative of marrying him or losing ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and he hated them all, women and men. The Yankees hate the Irish as easy as they breathe. I tell you he had forgotten nothing that he used to do as a boy. And the fools that looked on said, oh, it's easy to see he was sick, for now that he is well we can all recognize our old dare-devil, Arthur." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... wonderful eyes could be tender as well as steely. Perhaps he had sisters at the old home, and perhaps, too, I was the first woman he had seen in months to remind him of them. I shall always believe that he is from good people some place East, that his "dare-devil" nature got him into some kind of trouble there, and that he came to this wild country to hide from Justice. The very morning after we got here, not long after our breakfast, he appeared at our tent with a fine young deer slung across the back of his horse, which he presented to us. He had ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... them all has shown so much "dare-devil independence" as Jane G. Swisshelm? One of the first women to wield the pen-editorial thirty years ago, she was so independent and fearless as to excite the wonder of her readers. The first woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the look of Mr. Trevannion when I said this—he was stupified. That I, Captain Levee, who had commanded his vessels so long—I, the very beau ideal of a privateer's-man, a reckless, extravagant dare-devil, should also presume to have scruples, was too much for him. 'Et tu, Brute,' he might have exclaimed, but he did not; but he stared at me without speaking for some time; at last he said, 'Is the golden age arrived, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... with fright; they were utterly stupefied. One bold spirit did begin to sing, but he sat down at once on the ground and hid himself behind the others.... And what is so surprising is this: we have had landowners like that, dare-devil gentlemen, regular rakes, of course: they dressed pretty much like coachmen, and danced themselves and played on the guitar, and sang and drank with their house-serfs and feasted with the peasants; but this Vassily Nikolaitch is like a girl; he is always reading books or writing, or else ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... Simon Kenton was a dare-devil pure and simple: a youth of roguish but extremely obstinate spirit. He had started upon the adventure trail at sixteen, and here at twenty-three he already had many hair-breadth escapes in his memory and many ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... Cousin Mary! Even you would admire him. It gives you quite a shock when he comes into a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful, fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk for him. He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides. If you could see the way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if the sun had come out suddenly! But alas! the sun has gone under now, for he went ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with his shirt opened on his chest and no hat on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong; in every movement he made one could see the reckless dare-devil and athlete, knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo, talked and laughed louder than any of the rest, and looked as though he were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing so. His mischievous ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was for the taking up of able-bodied adults, the main idea in the formation of the gang was strength and efficiency. It was accordingly composed of the stoutest men procurable, dare-devil fellows capable of giving a good account of themselves in fight, or of carrying off their unwilling prey against long odds. Brute strength combined with animal courage being thus the first requisite of the ganger, it ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Mistress Charity following meekly—somewhat subdued, for Master Busy was her affianced husband, and she had no mind to mar her future, through any of young Courage's dare-devil escapades. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the darkness swallowed them. Lauman beckoned to ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... triumphs. On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame, slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable Bateson," in the uniform of his Yeomanry. Creed's former master's face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say: "D—-n it, Creed! lend me a pound. I've got no money!" On the other hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the Dowager ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as an expressman, remembers Field as a somewhat reckless fellow and "dare-devil," and is authority for the story of Field's discomfiture in the boxing ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... master, the best fellow in the ward-room mess, and a great favorite with the youngsters, was officer of the deck from six to eight o'clock; and my messmate, Perry Buckner, of Scott county, Kentucky, the most dare-devil midshipman of us all, was master's mate of the forecastle; Hammond, Marshall, Smith and I were the gentlemen of the Watch; Rodney Barlow was quartermaster at the 'con;' the lookouts had just been stationed; the men were singing, dancing, spinning yarns and otherwise amusing themselves about the ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... made bad by circumstances. In tracing the vigilant resolution with which she plays upon human weakness, the spasms of compunction which shoot across her wily designs, the selfish afterthoughts which paralyse her generous impulses, her fits of dare-devil courage and uncontrollable panic, and the steady current of good-humoured satisfaction with herself which makes her chuckle equally over mishaps and successes, Defoe has gone much more deeply into the springs of action, and sketched a much richer page in the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... unofficial incident was provided by a man in the 4th Dragoon Guards producing a fine bay horse which he wagered 30 to 1 against any officer riding. It was a real American buck-jumper. This challenge was enough for the dare-devil subalterns of the —— Hussars, and one of them, Beach-Hay, a splendid horseman, promptly closed with the offer. For twenty minutes or so he tried to mount, without succeeding; finally he muffled the horse's head in a cloak and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it. Yes, he ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... for over a week," Mrs. Cunningham replied. "There are all sorts of stories as to how he got back to the lines. A perfect young dare-devil, I should think. I must talk to Mr. Daniell for a few minutes or he ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Big Stampede and the trail of Ninety-eight, When the eyes of the world were turned to the North, and the hearts of men elate; Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the wondrous strike, And to every man who could hold a pan came the message, "Up and hike". Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew I would not fail. You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait till you've heard ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... rouse the wildcatter. Canadians have too often wakened up only at the wildcat stage, and British capital has come in to reorganize inflated and collapsed properties on a purely investment basis. The American pioneer does nothing on an investment basis. He goes in on a wild and rampant dare-devil gamble. If he loses—as lose he often does—he takes his medicine and never whines. If he wins, the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless a quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his writing he displays ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Tantivy. Reckless, dare-devil. Said by Dr. Johnson to be derived from the sound of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... it to heart that it was Motley the American who was of all men dearest to her giant creator. The same type of American would serve her better to-day than any other, did she only know it! In 1849 he was elected to the Prussian Chamber. In 1852 a whiff of the old dare-devil got loose, and he fought a duel with ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... boy is a dare-devil, bold and fearless lad; nothing can daunt him. He is, in fact, what his hated father was when first I knew him, years ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... him," returned the merchant. "If he is visiting the hermit of Rakata, as you tell me, he'll be safe enough. Although something of a dare-devil, the hermit knows how to take care of himself. I'm afraid, however, that you'll not find it so easy to 'look up' your son as you seem to think. Just glance round at these almost impenetrable forests. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... health, and nerve I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed that everybody had them; I never felt grateful for them as a blessing, but I began to learn what suffering was from this date." Henceforth we see her not as the woman who was ready to share any dare-devil adventure or hair- breadth escape, and who revelled in a free and roving life of travel, but rather as the wife, whose thought now turned more than ever to the delights of home, and how to add to ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... his head we shall see. Already there were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done by the former. The coup de theatre which completed it revealed the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by these aristocrats; and when Bocchus ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... vigilance over his master to the last. Finally he saw him disappear in the coal-black depths, and then he called on all the saints he knew by name to protect the flower and cream of knight-errantry, the dare-devil of the earth, the heart of steel and the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... plunge head-long into an abyss of vain glory, hoping at life's sunset to reap a harvest contrary to the seed that were sown, let me suggest that you pause first to read the story of "The Woman With a Stone Heart," Marie Sampalit, dare-devil of ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... by that hopeless, blithering landlubber, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who with other sons of Spain was sent forth to fight against Britain for "Christ and our Lady," there had been trained here a race of dare-devil seamen who knew no fear, and who broke and vanquished what was reckoned, till then, the finest body of sailors in the whole world. That our sailors have maintained the reputation achieved in the destruction of the great Spanish Armada is sometimes disputed. I am ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... in him (if it maybe said) that rebelled against his more deliberate sinnings. Nay, he affected with his boon companions an enjoyment of wanton excesses that he only half felt. A certain adventurous, dare-devil reach in him craved exercise. The character of Reuben at this stage would surely have offered a good subject for the study and the handling of Dr. Mowry, if that worthy gentleman could have won his way to the lad's confidence; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... fighting, singing, dare-devil riders, Stuart slipped from Lee's lines and started ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... interfered with his efficiency as a soldier, nor his record for a dare-devil courage. There were many tales current of his exploits on the Somme, in which again and again he had singed the beard of Death, with an absolute recklessness of his own personal life, combined with the most anxious care for that of his men. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and dirty floor, bunks filled with horrible straw and worse blankets jumbled here and there, old and dirty clothes drying fetidly. He saw an unkempt row of hard-faced men along the deacon-seat, reckless in bearing, with the light of the dare-devil in ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those big, soft, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was not bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest dare-devil in the village when he was young. Everybody in the regiment knew of his old-time prowess. The death of more than one Russian, as well as Chechen, lay on his conscience. He used to go plundering in the mountains, and robbed the Russians too; and he had twice been in prison. The greater ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... a dare-devil crew, however, and Hawkins feared nothing. The Moonbeam would have her work cut out; but then all the more glory to the bold fellows on board of her; for these were the days when adventure was beloved for its own ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... in quest of my aged chum, the ex-pig dealer, who, when found, revealed by a twinkle in his eye another dare-devil scheme, which he was quite capable of concocting when alone in his warehouse den. He exclaimed, with much feeling and a forced tear, that he was right down glad to see me safely back and gave me little rest until ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the base ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... a great deal of my pilot. He was about twenty-seven years old, and was cool and certain. He was a dare-devil, and had only been over in England a short time after spending months on the ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... sparkled and he caught his breath. A tremor passed all through him, and I felt it in the hand I was holding. Life was sweet to him, then, after all—sweet to this wild dare-devil who had just faced death with such calmness! Dr. Rowell, though showing no sign of jealousy, could not conceal a ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... general the Commune had was a Pole named Dombrowski, an adventurer who came into France with Garibaldi. He was not only a good strategist, but a dare-devil for intrepidity. Some said he had fought for Polish liberty, others, that he had fought against it; at any rate, he was an advanced Anarchist, though in military matters he was a strict disciplinarian, and kept his men of all nations in better order ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... his contract in the matter of the land, and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel—who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his career, a singular patience and mildness—was obliged to look round for other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the wilderness. A party of royal surveyors were at this period surveying ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... attendants, who ceremoniously took off his hat to David and made a polite speech, in which the word enchante recurred. He was a dark man, with a short black beard, and full restless eye; some ten years older apparently than the other, who was a dare-devil boy ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... say that, but it all depends on what the guv'nor means to do. He's a dare-devil at the wheel, I can tell you, an' never says a word to me when I let things rip. But he's up to some game to-day. He's fair crazy about that girl you have in tow—what's ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... he now reached that state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty-six with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more than an immense dare-devil? ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... straw about Turkey," writes Mr. LOVAT Fraser in The Daily Mail. It is this dare-devil spirit which has made us the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... about the telephone; she had forgotten the picture of dare-devil nerve he made when he rose from the wreck of his plane. If his work were to make war, her work was against war—the mission of her life as she saw it in the intense, passionate moments when some new absurdity of its processes appeared ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... about, and rather bothered what to do next. So he was delighted at the idea of joining some of our excursions. But I will keep all that for the Wood House, for we had no end of adventures—the dare-devil Englishmen as they called us. But never mind ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... more, for the Tisch was watching us. What new trouble was brewing? Could it be Romano, dare-devil, who had come ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... absolute command over the whole inn. It was all in vain to attempt to withstand his authority. He was not exactly quarrelsome, but boisterous and peremptory, like one accustomed to tyrannize on a quarter-deck; and there was a dare-devil[1] air about everything he said and did that inspired wariness in all bystanders. Even the half-pay officer, so long the hero of the club, was soon silenced by him, and the quiet burghers stared with wonder at seeing their ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... collar, a pair of cossack pantaloons tapering down to the foot with a notch cut in the front for the instep, and a hat about twice as large at the crown as at the rim, much resembling in shape an inverted sugar-loaf, with the smaller end cut away. He had a reckless, dare-devil, good humored look, and very much the air of what is called "a young man about town;" that is, one who rides out to Cato's every afternoon, eats oyster suppers at Windust's every night after the play, and spends the rest of his time and his money at billiards. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... priest and a bit of sailor, Bit of a doctor and bit of a tailor, Bit of a lawyer, and bit of detective, Bit of a judge, for his work is corrective; Cheering the living and soothing the dying, Risking all things, even dare-devil flying; True to his paper and true to his clan— Just look him over, the ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... which came rattling toward the ferry, brought a fine specimen of the juvenile vagrant and dare-devil, seated on the step. Bog looked out of the boiler yard, and hailed him with a shrill whistle, formed by thrusting two fingers in the mouth, and blowing fiercely. The boy recognized the signal of his ragged tribe, slid off the seat, and came running to where Bog was standing. As he drew ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... difficulty there," said Chandos. "Pardieu! a roistering, swaggering dare-devil archer is worth his price on the French border. There are two hundred such who march behind my own person, and I would ask nothing better than to ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the fat little man on horseback shone with triumph. He was enjoying himself hugely. It was worth something to have tamed so debonair a dare-devil as Dingwell had the reputation of being. He had the fellow so meek that he would ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... call this an act of despair. We would say with Luther: Despair makes monks. But the despair which we mean, and which Luther meant, is genuine spiritual despair. What Catholics call Luther's despair is really desperation, a reckless, dare-devil plunging of a criminal into a splendid Catholic sanctuary. That Luther's act decidedly was not. By Rome's own teaching Luther belonged in the cloister. That mode of life was originally designed to meet the needs of just such minds as his. His entering ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. His favorite victim is some half-witted fellow—tho' a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... He drops down the river with the tide in that shell of a boat of his, and so goes out to sea on this dark night! - a dare-devil he is - before the wind. There's no such lonely road anywhere else. That's one thing. The tide flows, he says, an hour before midnight - about this time. I'm glad it's over.' Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead, which looked ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... entered. He was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... could well afford. The young man himself lost all the stakes he made; but he didn't gamble much, knowing himself not lucky. Instead, he watched the fluctuating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was putting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all. It was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more than threepence. When he lost, he swore softly to himself: ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... any proceeding so spectacular, but he was as he was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit quite in abeyance. He twitched his hat farther back on his head, stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked deliberately out into the open, his neck as stiff as a newly elected politician on parade. He did not stop, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and gathering together the enchanted warriors from all parts of Spain, reconquer the Peninsula. Nothing in this volume is more amusing and at the same time more poetic and romantic than the story of "Governor Manco and the Soldier," in which this legend is used to cover the exploit of a dare-devil contrabandista. But it is too long to quote. I take, therefore, another story, which has something of the same elements, that of a merry, mendicant student of Salamanca, Don Vicente by name, who ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... girl—and they sometimes got as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a hidebound character, and was often very bold ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... him, to distinguish him from "Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the sloop Reindeer, partners with one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules. When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the coroner said he was the greatest-shouldered man he had ever seen ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... services in the field. A second baronetcy in the family had been specially created for Sir Gerald. It would not have been easy to say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while Sir Gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant feats, Sir Denis was rather the old type of soldier—cool as well as daring, always reliable and steady. Worshipped by his men, his name was one to be held in constant regard by the British public, which calls its heroes by their Christian names abbreviated, if they do not happen, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... that he had to the full the high-flown sentiments of honor of the time, and the fact seems all the more remarkable. The truth is that Jones was as cautious as he was brave. He acted sometimes impulsively, but reflection quickly came, and he never manifested a dare-devil desire to put his life unnecessarily in danger. When there was anything to be gained by exposing his person, he did it with the utmost coolness, but he consistently refused to put himself at a disadvantage. When, on ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... remain. Here were buried quite a lot of French and British soldiers who had lost their lives in the battle of Looz and there were also some of our own buried here. Amongst them, Sergt. Jim Harris. He was the greatest all round dare-devil that we had in the battalion. In fact there was nothing too daring for him to do if he could get a joke off. It was he that took the chickens, skinned them and threw the skins beneath the officers' cookhouse ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... words between us, externals spoke with greater force. He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with a dare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physical mastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my silly freaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! That was the beginning. It lasted through a week of starlight ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... dare-devil lot in the old days, wan't we, Ase?" he said. "Spunk was kind of born in us, as you might ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life's traditions. He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive, hair-brained act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous inspiration he nodded slightly to the stranger as he ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... a boat steerer on an American whaleship, from which he had deserted, and had been living on Pleasant Island for some years. He had four wives, whom he described as "the three Graces, with another chucked in," and though a rough, dare-devil fellow, he was, with the exception of old Harry Terry, the only one of the lot that was not a hopeless drunkard and ruffian. By one of his wives, a native of Sikaiana or Stewart's Island, he had two children, both girls. They were then about eight and ten years of age respectively, and were, ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... sighed Stadinger. "And what his highness does not devise for himself, Herr Rojanow hatches for him. He is the worst of the two. It's hard lines that such a dare-devil should be quartered ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Portuguese and the English have always been the best of friends, because we can't get no port wine anywhere else, and they can't get nobody else to buy it of them; so the Portuguese gave up their arsenal at Lisbon, for the use of the English, and there we kept all our stores, under the charge of that old dare-devil, Sir Isaac Coffin. Now it so happened, that one of the clerks in old Sir Isaac's office, a Portuguese chap, had been some time before that in the office of the Spanish ambassador; he was a very smart sort of a chap, and sarved as interpreter, and the old commissioner put great ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... thing! To fight this cruel, invulnerable, resistless giant that went roaring down the world with a huge uprooted oak tree in its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth slavering from its jaws! This dare-devil boy-god that sauntered along with a town in its pocket, and a steepled church under its arm for a moment's toy! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... one o' these fool amateur guys doin' the dare-devil detective act like you read about in th' magazines, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... therefore very doubtful, the peace and order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the most savage passions, rushing on revolutionary madness or civil massacre, then this French dare-devil would have been just as unscrupulous as any English philosopher whom a metropolitan borough might elect as its representative. The system of the empire was in the way of Victor de Mauleon,—in the way of his private ambition, in the way of his political dogmas; and therefore ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blessed notices, the dare-devil. What a detective he'd a made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold as brass, sat down, and talked with the superintendent over ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... it is worth while, if you are curious in contrasts and comparisons. Five years ago that bowed, blasted cripple was the most reckless dare-devil, the most splendid Paladin, in all the army of Algiers; the man for whom, after an unusually brilliant exploit, St. Arnaud, loving him as his own right hand, could find no higher praise than to write in his dispatches, "Les 3me Chasseurs ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... heavily-draped windows, the foot towards the inside wall of the room. At the bedside a man knelt on one knee, and his appearance aroused, in a degree, Katherine's dormant powers of observation. He had a short, crisp, black beard and crisp, black hair. He was alert and energetic of face and figure, a man of dare-devil, humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit with brass buttons to it. He was in his stocking-feet. The wristbands and turn-down collar of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the support of the habitual taken ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... rail by a man who had been through scores of adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty feet on the other side. He plunged into a river ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... right to call myself an American. I still feel that way, don't you know. But to-night I 've seen brave and devoted men risking their lives and perfecting themselves in their calling not only through professional interest but through love of their country and their flag, and dare-devil enthusiasm in serving under a flag that means so much to them. The father of the junior officer on the D'Estang is a farmer and the captain of the Barclay is the son of an insurance clerk. But ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... "That dare-devil of a Dan Dolan, that's the worst of all!" burst forth Brother Bart. "It's for me sins he was left here, I know; with the Laddie following everywhere he ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... reappeared, carrying a pack. And when this was deposited on the ground all the rustlers sat down around it. They had brought food and drink. Jean had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife Gang. Jean was glad of a reprieve. The longer the rustlers put off an attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would have to get here. Rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the ethical demand here meet and take each other's hands, and will not be separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley—young men of great talent, failed—utterly failed—they thought they could make a hero out of a shady and dare-devil yet really cowardly villain ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp |
