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noun
Bluff  n.  
1.
A high, steep bank, as by a river or the sea, or beside a ravine or plain; a cliff with a broad face. "Beach, bluff, and wave, adieu."
2.
An act of bluffing; an expression of self-confidence for the purpose of intimidation; braggadocio; as, that is only bluff, or a bluff.
3.
A game at cards; poker. (U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... impartial fairness among the people of his county, a part over the poker-table, a part over the bar, and the balance in other popular ways. He had a face that no one could read, and bluffed as well with a pair of treys as with four aces. But he used to say that such a bluff was to be used rarely, and only ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... foot of a bluff about half a mile from the ruins of what looked like an old fort, but which was now embedded in banks of clay and overgrown with moss and rank weeds, he found that the whole structure ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood

... to-morrow, but I promised to pitch the bags into his granary," he said. "If I hump them up the trail here it will save us driving round through the bluff." ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... factory it is they are after. They will say yours, or your mother's, of course. Then he'll speak up and say in that case they've come to the wrong place, since this is the property of Mr. David Gidge, while their warrant only mentions that of Mrs. Whiteway Baldwin. It'll be a big bluff, of course, and won't work for very long, but it may puzzle 'em a bit and give the delay of proceedings ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... the blue, heaving water, passes slowly round an open-hearted, good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet in diameter, aft past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong, through a gentle guide on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body, and says, "Come you must," as plain as drum can speak; the chattering pauls say, "I've got him, I've got him; he can't come back," whilst black cable, much slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a slim ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... the mill. For a little way above the dam the waters lay still and deep, with patches of long mosses, vines and rushes, waving in its quiet clearness—forming shadowy dens for lusty trout, while the open places—shining fields and lanes—reflected, as a mirror, the steep green-clad bluff, and the trees that bent far over until their drooping ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... him as Clancy had any more than I could have hove a barrel of salt mackerel over my head, which was what the strong fishermen of the port were doing about that time to prove their strength; but the bluff went, and I couldn't help throwing out my chest as I went out the door and thinking that I was getting to be a ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... picket one's horses and pitch one's tent upon. Eastward the plain stretched to the horizon, as level as the sea; indeed, in a landscape so monotonous that one was fain to decorate it with fancies, it stood for the sea, and touched the rocky base of our island as the sea washes many a mile of bluff coast. Winter was setting in, and all day long wreaths of mist and banks of rain came blowing from the eastward (the seaward, as we called it), and shrouded the brown rock. The signallers on the height used to wrap themselves in their oilskins as darkness fell and lamps ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... Stupendous change, let us tell you, worthy friend, who never yet set sail where sharks and other strange sea-cattle bob their noses above the brine,—who never lived forty days in the bowels of a ship, unable to hold your head up to the captain's bluff "good morning" or the steward's cheery "good night." Sir Philip Sidney discourses of a riding-master he encountered in Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have known ancient mariners expatiate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... blessed Cherubim and Seraphim," he exclaimed. "I call upon them to suspend their singing for an instant, and to witness this. He sees that I patter of Miss Sandus. What perspicuity. And he just a mortal man, like anybody—nay, by all accounts, just a bluff country squire. Ah, what a noble understanding. Well, then, my dear Hawkshaw, since there's no concealing anything from you,—fine mouche, allez!—I own up. I ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... and strongest insurance companies in the world. Indeed the public announcement that the company would pay in full was regarded as ridiculous and unbelievable and was generally considered in the light of an extremely sagacious bluff. ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... into a boat. The two principal persons among our enemies appeared to be a man of a tall, thin figure, with a high-crowned hat and long neck band, and short-cropped head of hair, accompanied by a bluff, open-looking elderly man in a naval uniform. 'Yarely! yarely! pull away, my hearts,' said the latter, and the boat bearing the unlucky young man soon carried him on board the frigate. Perhaps you will blame me for mentioning ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... called his farm—a bit o' land abaat ten yards wide, an twenty long—whear he grew his cabbages an puttates an sich like; an all araand for miles wor moorland covered wi heather, an stockt wi game, except at th' back ov his cot, whear a bluff-lukkin hill sprang ommost straight up, makkin' a stranger feel afeeard lest it should tak a fancy to topple over an' bury booath th' cot an all in it. But if th' aghtside wor curious, th' inside wor a deal moor soa; an it wornt to be wondered at if a gooid ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... Robert bluff, genial, all good nature, and the youth stood on one side, while Willet and Tayoga were presented in their turn. Bigot looked very keenly at the Onondaga, and the answering gaze was fierce and challenging. Robert ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... fall somewhat into the background, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration, with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequently become even more of a make-believe than today—something after the fashion of a game of bluff played with irredeemable "chips." Commercial, that is to say business, enterprise will consequently come in for a more undivided attention and be carried on under conditions of greater security and of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... a bluff game, intended to deceive me," said Vernon, showing symptoms of anger. "I can assure you that it will do you ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger

... on some bluff, Regards the world with soul as tough,— The sun, the moon, the starry sphere, The harvests of the circling year, The mighty ocean, meadows trim, And deems they all are made for him. "How infinite," he says, "am I! How wondrous in capacity! Over creation to hold reign, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... active manager took to her like a cat to a fish. They was together more'n half the time, gitting up sailing parties, or playing croquet, or setting up on the "Lover's Nest," which was a kind of slab summer-house Brown had rigged up on the bluff where Aunt Sophrony's pig-pens used to be ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... little more time," remarked Ned. "But I think we can at least bluff them into playing into our hands. I have a report to hear from a private ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton

... to live on the lake shore, the development of bluff and land, the building of study and stable and finally the stone house (a pool of water in the centre, a roof open to the sunlight, the outer walls broken with chimneys for the inner fires), these are but exterior cultivations, the establishment of a visible order that is but a symbol ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all thought I was entirely cured! Besides—" Rachael looked down at her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the sand. "Besides, it's partly—bluff, Alice," she confessed. "I'm fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we—Greg and I—can't go back, can't be to each ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... battallion, under Capt. Greene with a similar result, but was exposed to a heavy fire from behind a stone fence. Immediately after this a third charge was made under Capt. Rankin, which was the final rout of the enemy, driving them over a bluff on the Licking river, to where they had left their horses. Mounting their horses they moved down the railroad through Cynthiana, hotly pursued by our troops, driving them through the streets and into the river, killing, wounding ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin

... 1769, the figure of a stalwart, broad shouldered man could have been seen standing on the wild and rugged promontory which rears its rocky bluff high above the Ohio river, at a point near the mouth of Wheeling Creek. He was alone save for the companionship of a deerhound that crouched at his feet. As he leaned on a long rifle, contemplating the glorious scene that stretched before him, a smile flashed across his bronzed cheek, and his heart ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... came in a loud, bluff, rather rich voice; and the next minute Archie was face to face with the fine-looking, white-haired, florid Major in command of the infantry detachment stationed at Campong Dang in support of Her Majesty's Resident, Sir Charles Dallas, whose duty it was to instruct ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... beginning to resent Charlton's manner—bluff, unceremonious, candid, at times rude. He treated women exactly as he treated men, and he treated all men as intimates, free and easy fellow travelers afoot upon a dusty, vulgar highway. She had found charm in ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... high bluff, very romantic in appearance; jagged and rugged, as if volcanoes had been at work in a time long past, for tall trees ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... become, a great gravity, which in old days had not been there; for Robert de Baudricourt, as I remembered him, had ever been a man of merry mood, with a great laugh, a ready jest, and that sort of rough, bluff courage that makes ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished the world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... the surface, till broken by the sculls, was where the swallows dipped as they glided, leaving a circle of tiny wavelets that barely rolled a yard. Past the low but steep bluff of sand rising sheer out of the water, drilled with martins' holes and topped by a sapling oak in the midst of a great furze bush: yellow bloom of the furze, tall brake fern nestling under the young branches, woodbine climbing up and ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... very happy at going home, yet he looked back wistfully at Ruth and Charlotte standing on the porch waving their hands, as the automobile drove away from the Land of Make-Believe, where Jan had been so kindly treated. But when he saw the ocean again and the road up the bluff and knew that he was near the bungalow, he was ready to leap from the machine and dash madly to the place where the captain, Hippity-Hop, and Cheepsie lived. He knew then that he loved them more than anybody in ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker

... which he had just passed. He had experienced the strange feeling which men feel, when, in battle, they are stirred by danger and the sight of blood to deeds of blood. It was under this feeling that he was led to precipitate the Indian from the bluff, and to view his remains with so much composure. But now a faintness came stealing over him. His young heart recoiled at the thought of what he had done. This relenting, however, was repelled by the recollection of Long Hair's heroism, and his father and mother's ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... Mr. Parker," he said, "in the accomplishment that, I believe, in your country goes by the name of bluff; but there are limits, you know. I shall have to ask you and your daughter and Mr. Walmsley here to accompany me at once to Bow Street. And," he added, suddenly leaning across the table, "move your right hand, please! Don't make a disturbance—for ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... San Triphilio, patron-saint of the city of Nikosia; the great church on the bluff beside the castle was filled with the sickly flames of paltry candles brought by the peasants from far and near. From the quaint tower on the castle-wall one might see them coming in little processions, winding through the forest that clothed the plains below—pausing on ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... greet them. Not once had they been menaced by any one nor approached by any man even faintly resembling poor Latrobe; and Witchie Garrison was beginning to take heart and look upon that threatening letter as a mad piece of "bluff" when one day the ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... side of the Magic Door. You can't pull one out without a dozen being entangled with it. But it was Scott's soldiers that I was talking of, and I was saying that there is nothing theatrical, no posing, no heroics (the thing of all others which the hero abominates), but just the short bluff word and the simple manly ways, with every expression and metaphor drawn from within his natural range of thought. What a pity it is that he, with his keen appreciation of the soldier, gave us so little of those ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Lover's Leap, a white bluff at the southern end of their island, the Leucadians used annually to hurl a criminal into the sea as a scapegoat. But to lighten his fall they fastened live birds and feathers to him, and a flotilla of small boats waited below to catch him and convey him beyond the boundary. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... 1802. On coming within five miles of the shore at eleven o'clock, we found it to be low and mostly sandy; and that the bluff head, which had been taken for the north end of an island, was part of a ridge of hills rising at Cape Schanck. We then bore away westward, in order to trace the land round the head ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... him. For instance, in the prep school, after getting the cow into the chapel, he discovered her there and notified the principal and was the only boy who did not fall under suspicion. To assume a childlike innocence and to bluff magnificently,—these had been the twin rules that had saved him so often and would save him now, unless he should be confronted by the princess or the two guards, in ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... as they walked back toward the plane. "Two hundred thousand," he mused; "what you call 'bluff,' ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings

... masses of golden hair encircled her oval face and clustered over her blue eyes. Who was she? Whence came she? None could answer. By degrees some of the boldest of the youths approached, but their bluff manners seemed to displease her; though unaccustomed to rebuffs they retired. One, however, among them fared differently. Jean Letocq, a member of the family to which the hero belonged who near this very spot discovered the sleeping troops of the Grand Sarrazin, was admired and beloved ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous

... critic of the Gaulois, taking a very optimistic view of the situation, thinks the movement may be to assure a retreat by some route other than by a return through Belgium. General Cherfils says: "This rush of the German right wing upon Paris is the last bluff of terrorism of the last German Emperor! The Kaiser thought that he could frighten us and induce France to make peace. After which he would be free to return ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... his party's nomination; and it was here he took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... westward to the sea, which is eating them fast away, the steamer runs in through a deep crack, a pistol-shot in width. On the east side a strange section of gray lava and ash is gnawn into caves. On the right, a bluff rock of black lava dips sheer into water several fathoms deep; and you anchor at once inside an irregular group of craters, having passed through a gap in one of their sides, which has probably been torn out by a lava flow. Whether the land, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... a bold rocky bluff on the coast of Lanai there is a cave whose only entrance is through the vortex of a whirlpool. Its floor gradually rises from the water, and is the home of crabs, polypi, sting-rays, and other noisome creatures of the deep, who find here temporary safety from their larger foes. It was ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... efforts. He turned back into the interior, into the country of the Chickasaws, marched diagonally over the present State of Mississippi to its northwest corner, and crossed the Mississippi River near the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. From this point the general direction of the Spanish progress was southwest, through what is now Arkansas, past the site of Little Rock, till at last a river which seems to have been the Washita was reached. Down this stream de Soto and his decimated force floated—two ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... At last the Bluff loomed to south-east. Soon a game of pitch-and-toss precluded our access to harbor. At last we transshipped, all three of us, boy and dog and I, to a steam-launch, and were soon ashore. No, I won't say four of us. The presence did not make itself ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps

... him. Of course, he's a bloody fool to write in that strain—our rations aren't so bad, considering. Thompson was up for the same sort of thing. He wrote he'd seen a thing or two out here and when he got back home he'd open people's eyes a bit about the war and the army. All bluff, of course, for the truth about the war and the army could never be published. He got five days for his trouble. I nearly got into hot water myself. Luckily for me I was the first one to be on the peg for writing things in my letters, else I'd have got a stiff sentence. I ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the river, their short legs making a full ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... movement. We were delighted with him, and had perfect confidence in his integrity, sagacity and strong will. We worked from five to six hours per day, including the holiday season, and not excepting the Sabbath, going pretty thoroughly into the Bull Run disaster, the battle of Ball's Bluff, and the ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... unfailing instinct told him that business was meant when he received Mr. Chamberlain's ultimatum to open the drifts. The President 'climbed down' and opened them! He has several advantages which other leaders of men have not, and among them is that of having little or no pride. He will bluster and bluff and bully when occasion seems to warrant it; but when his judgment warns him that he has gone as far as he prudently can, he will alter his tactics as promptly and dispassionately as one changes one's ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... Wars, there was, about forty miles southward, or higher up the River than Philipsburg, a military line or chain of posts; going from Stollhofen, a boggy hamlet on the Rhine, with cunning indentations, and learned concatenation of bog and bluff, up into the inaccessibilities,—LINES OF STOLLHOFEN, the name of it,—which well-devised barrier did good service for certain years. It was not till, I think, the fourth year of their existence, year 1707, that Villars, the same Villars ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... wink. "Buncome, Bluff," he murmured. "That little play-acting turned me two hundred dollars in gold. Our lying becalmed here wasn't such a bad thing after all—and here comes the breeze. Jest like finding money in an old coat, Mr. ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... scene stretches to the faint far-off horizon the desert Campagna; a dim, misty, homeless land, where the moan of the wind sounds ever like the voice of the past, and the pathos of a vanished people breathes over all the scene; with here and there a gray nameless ruin, a desolate bluff, or a grassy mound, marking the site of some mysterious Etruscan or Sabine city that had perished ages before Romulus had laid the foundations of Rome. From the contemplation of these wide cheerless wastes beyond the confines of history, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... new to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy, when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with her faded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... it pleasant, as he lay extended in the bow of the canoe with his head leaning over the edge gazing abstractedly at his own reflected visage, while his hands trailed through the cool water, and his young dog—a shaggy indescribable beast with a bluff nose and a bushy tail—watched him intently, as a mother might watch an only child in a dangerous situation. And the old sun-dried, and storm-battered, and time-shrivelled mulatto trader, in those ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... sandy brown on the upper parts, paler on the sides, dusky grey, with a tinge of yellowish-rufous on the under-parts; muzzle, feet, and tail flesh-coloured; ears of the same, but rather darker; head short and bluff; muzzle broad and deep; eye moderately large; ears moderate, rounded, clad with minute hairs; fur soft and moderately long, of three kinds, viz. short under-fur, ordinary hairs, and mixed with them, especially on the back and rump, numerous ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... received enough to pay for cooking, and we were at a loss what to do until somebody suggested that we play poker for them. This met general acceptance, and after that, as long as beans were drawn, a large portion of the day was spent in absorbing games of "bluff" and "draw," at a ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... got to learn," etc. etc. etc. It seemed to me that the lesson which they had yet to learn was then in the process of being taught to them. They were anxious to be told all about the mischance at Ball's Bluff, but nobody would tell them anything about it. They wanted to know something of that blockade on the Potomac; but such knowledge was not good for them. "Pack them up in boxes, and send them home," one military gentleman said to me. And I began to think that something of the kind would ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... and yet he held head against them because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and because he could keep his own counsel. Slender Ren de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed and catalogued with a kind of pride. It was a fearsome ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of Charleston is the town of Savannah, situated upon an open, sandy plain, which forms a bluff or cliff, about fifty feet above the level of the river of the same name. It is laid out, in the form of a parallelogram, about a mile and a quarter long, and half a mile wide. The streets are broad, and open into spacious squares, each of which has in the middle a pump, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... fancy reading the present to the past, will be pleased to meet in those two last writers a quaint account of the theological feud agitating the Rock in 1629. Religious controversies were then, as now, the order of the day. But bluff Commander Kirke had a happy way of getting rid of bad theology. His Excellency, whose ancestors hailed from France, was a Huguenot, a staunch believer in John Calvin. Of his trusty garrison of 90 men ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... a very dangerous game, seldom worth the risk, and it involves, even for its occasional success, a very just estimate of your opponents. Remember that you cannot bluff even a tyro out ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel

... exhilarating scramble in pursuit of his tail; now and then a hard-worked mother would bring her baby and sit as guest of honor in Simon's solitary "cane-bottom," where she would inadvertently learn items of interest with regard to "yon Cassius," or "bluff Harry," or a certain young lady who was described as being "little" but "fierce,"—a good deal like Molly Tinker whose "man" kept the "Golden Glory Saloon." On one occasion a rattlesnake lifted its head drowzily from behind a rock ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... two hundred employees of the factory with many of their wives and children were gathered in the factory yard. At first they seemed cynically amused by what they called Moore's bluff. By mid-afternoon, however, after repeated assurances from Roger that his father was going to be a farmer, the crowd became surly. A strange man got up and made a speech. He said that capitalists like Moore should be destroyed, that men such as he were a menace to America. Roger, standing ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... Pine Bluff I worked for the white folks. Used to cook and wash and iron. Done a lot of ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... emboldened and ran along our lines asking sundry questions. But we returned no answers. Having selected the spot for camping-ground, we lay out our camp in the form of a triangle. On the one side is a bluff from six to ten feet high, on the opposite side is a lake called Beaver Lake, about five hundred yards wide. Here, upon the rich grass which borders the lake, we tether our animals, each one having the range of a rope about thirty ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... from the fields at supper time, greeted Renwick with bluff heartiness, and together they sat at a substantial meal of Jungfern-Braten, over which Selim's wife Zaidee presided. In the light of events, Renwick willingly reconstructed his estimate of Selim. Last night Renwick would have been suspicious of the ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; To southward lay "Katawa", with the sand peaks all ablaze, And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm, You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough. Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch; 'Twas ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... favour prevented him from giving up the pursuit, every succeeding mishap in no wise hindering him from following the allurements of the next fair object that fluttered across his path. He had heard of the wit and beauty of Kate Anderton, only daughter to Justice Anderton of Lostock Hall, a bluff and honest squire who spent his mornings in the chase and his evenings in the revel incident thereto; a man well looked upon by his less distinguished neighbours, being of a benevolent disposition, and much given to hospitality. Kate's disposition was fiery and impetuous, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... to Richmond, boys!" shouted Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the Bloody B's, as we used to call them,) hadn't taught us ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... juncture that the door opened and a footman stood in the August afternoon sunshine, touching his cap and staring fixedly down the platform. On a station lamp was 'Whinnerley Bluff'. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... but Ise know'd de hull time it wuz only a big bluff dat youse wuz tryin' to play on me, an' it didn't go wid me, nah!" went on the ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford

... the stray cat at "Chez Nous" is never likely to get into the newspapers. On the other hand, lots of incidents which do get in never deserve to. It's all a question of head-lining, which is the bluff by which the public is induced to read matter it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... any opening, the fog lifted and we saw a schooner's sail over one of the small islets that lay about us. Taking our cue from that we poked into the next narrow channel we came to, and getting some sailing directions from a passing boat, and from the signal man stationed on a bluff to give assistance to strangers, we glided into an almost circular basin, hardly large enough for the vessel to swing in, set among steep rising sides, into which many ring bolts were seen to be fastened, and perfectly sheltered from every wind. The use for the ring bolts we found later. The ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... the tension that space-travel—then, at its beginning—produced. It was meaningless savagery due to terror. But, of course, Pop was helpless to resent it. There were no weapons on the Moon and the mention of Sattell's name showed the uselessness of bluff. He'd pictured the complete set-up by the edge of the Big Crack. Pop ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... River bluff, looking over on a free State, and as far north as my eyes could see, I have eagerly gazed upon the blue sky of the free North, which at times constrained me to cry out from the depths of my soul, Oh! Canada, sweet land ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... him in charge of the store, caught up a Mexican sombrero, and led the way up the trail to a grove of live-oaks perched on a bluff above. Below them stretched the plain, fold on fold to the blue horizon edge. Close at hand clumps of cactus, thickets of mesquit, together with the huddled adobe buildings of the ranch, made up the details of a scene possible only in ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... does not, as the case may be). Failing an unromantic convincing answer, he does just as he pleases unless he can find for himself a real reason for refraining. In short, though you can intimidate him, you cannot bluff him. But you can always bluff the romantic person: indeed his grasp of real considerations is so feeble that you find it necessary to bluff him even when you have solid considerations to offer him instead. The campaigns ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... subject of his father being wronged.' 'He never had any promise from my lord, in case he should fix the guilt of that murder on some other than his father.' Our friend, Captain Cluffe, was called, and delivered his evidence in a somewhat bluff and peremptory, but ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... of a cathedral. We coasted slowly along, rounding several tall forelands, some of them piled up by the hand of nature in the most fantastic shapes, until about the fall of night. Cape Finisterre was not far ahead, a bluff brown granite mountain, whose frowning head may be seen far away by those who travel the ocean. The stream which poured round its breast was terrific, and though our engines plied with all their force, we made little or ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... his real intention rather than to land effectively. Well he knew that his best and quickest chance to end the fight lay in his ability to kick the other man insensible, and so he tried to fool and disarm Max by a bluff attack. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... sceptic out in the open in the sunshine. But I was afraid of the dark. And in that twilight room, the bones of the dead all about me in the big jars, why, the old lady had me scared stiff. As we say to-day, she had my goat. Only I was brave and didn't let on. And I put my bluff across, for my mother flung the parings into my face and burst into tears. Tears in an elderly woman weighing three hundred and twenty pounds are scarcely impressive, and I hardened the brassiness ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... over the bridge leading out of Turner's Road, the main street of Bidwell ran along a river bank. In that direction the hills out of the country to the south came down to the river's edge and there was a high bluff. On the bluff and back of it on a sloping hillside many of the more pretentious new houses of the prosperous Bidwell citizens had been built. Facing the river were the largest houses, with grounds ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... thought he saw a fine, high bluff, and he hurried toward it with delicious expectation. When he had reached the brink he looked down and saw that the bluff ended in a little body of water hardly big enough to be called a lake. After measuring the drop with his eye, and deciding that while it was higher ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... and ride back the way you came into the valley. When you get out of it keep along the edge of it westwards. You'll come to our camp five miles out. It's in a bluff. It's a shack on an abandoned farm. I can't direct you better, except it's just under the shoulder in the valley, and is approached by a cattle track. You'll have to ride around till you locate it. McBain will be coming back soon. Maybe he'll pick you up. Avoid questions, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... the other one," he explained, breathlessly, "are New York crooks! They have been looting in the wake of the Reds, disguised as soldiers. I knew they weren't even amateur soldiers by the mistakes in their make-up, and I made that bluff of riding away so as to give them time to show what the game was. Then, that provost guard in the motor car stopped me, and when they said who they were after, I ordered them back here. But they had a flat tire, and my bicycle ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... just one week since I wrote you. I rend my garments, Sarah Farraday, and sit in the dust. That fatuous note I sent you was a thin crust of bluff over an abyss of fright. Who am I to write a one-act play? I have sat here for eight solid horrible days with a fine fat box of extra quality paper untouched and the keyboard leering at me, and not a line, not a word, have I written! ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... was patent that Mr. Kruger was either pursuing his policy of bluff, or had made long and elaborate preparations for war with the British. On the same date an announcement was published in ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... place is the commercial center of the "Garden Colony," Durban itself, the city, being the continuation of a garden. The signalman from the bluff station reported the Spray fifteen miles off. The wind was freshening, and when she was within eight miles he said: "The Spray is shortening sail; the mainsail was reefed and set in ten minutes. One man is ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... descending floods, toward the rushing torrents—drenched to the skin, on she passed toward the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find the waters rushing along high above and beyond the place where it had been. Then she thought of the great bluff rising to the west of her home and extending southward toward the railroad track, and she determined to ascend it and reach the bridge over this barrier to the waters. Need I recount how she struggled on and up through ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... another fire, were grouped the three bachelor brothers Skyd, with their friend Dobson. At another, within earshot of these, were Edwin Brook and his wife, his daughter Gertrude, Scholtz and his wife, Junkie, George Dally, and Stephen Orpin, with bluff Hans Marais, who had somehow got acquainted with the Brook family, and seemed to prefer their society to that of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... Goths to trade Britain for Sicily, as being 'much larger and this long time subservient to Roman rule,'[2] we must suppose either (as Freeman appears to suppose) that Belisarius did not know what he was offering, or that he was attempting a gigantic 'bluff,' or lastly that he really was offering an exchange not flatly derisory; of which three possible suppositions I prefer the last as the likeliest. Nor am I the less inclined to choose it, because these very English historians go ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... the way, and sought to escape from me; and when I tried to pursue him, my horse bolted and nearly broke my neck. I caught the guide at last. After a very rough journey we reached the village of Finisterra, and wound our way up the flinty sides of the huge bluff head which is called the Cape. Certainly in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore. There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around, which strangely captivates the imagination. After gazing from the summit of the Cape for nearly an hour ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... days, as was done, in difficulty, actual or feigned, about getting coal; but why the large expense was incurred of passing through the canal, merely to double the amount by returning, is beyond understanding. It may have been simply to carry bluff to the extreme point; but it is difficult not to suspect some motive not yet revealed, and perhaps never to ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... to play, Ben, my boy," said the bluff old fellow. "Sometimes not too much to eat either, except fish and biscuit, and not much room to sleep in when you turn in to your hard wooden bunk and pull a rough blanket over you to keep out ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... new to him, and after practice was over, instead of joining in the little stream that eddied back to the academy grounds, he struck off to where a long straggling row of cedars and firs marked the course of the river. Once there he found himself standing on a bluff with the broad, placid stream stretching away to the north and south at his feet. The bank was some twenty feet high and covered sparsely with grass and weeds; and a few feet below him a granite bowlder stuck its lichened head ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... a distant place, Had wandering pass'd, a thoughtless ranger; And, cheer'd by a smile from beauty's face, Had laugh'd at the frowning face of danger. Fearless Ned, Careless Ned, Never with foreign dames was a stranger; And huff, Bluff, He laugh'd at the frowning ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... The train hooted its defiance as it swept down toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the shore, where the shadow of the high bluff ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... Was not the big, bluff Captain himself, with his unfathomable sea-craft and his autocratic power, a regular old Viking such as you might read of in your history books, but would hardly expect to meet with in the flesh? And was there not a real Italian Count, elderly but impressive, who ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... to bluff a motor car out of the town commandant—a most obliging fellow. This took me to Aachen where I got ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... his pocketbook, and his knowledge of the mercenary nature of foreign women) set off on his visit to Beatrice di Negra. Randal thus left, musing lone in the crowded streets, resolved with astute complacency the probable results of Mr. Hazeldean's bluff negotiation; and convincing himself that one of his vistas towards Fortune was becoming more clear and clear, he turned, with the restless activity of some founder of destined cities in a new settlement, to lop the boughs that cumbered and obscured the others. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the fellow plenty, but I went on talking to him. 'The only difference between you and him,' says I to him, 'is that he was whole white and was running a straight bluff, and you are part white, and are running a half-way sort of bluff. You pray to God A'mighty so much about this that you have just about got yourself half-persuaded that you're honest. Do you reckon that you have got God A'mighty persuaded that way, too?' said I to him. That made ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... live through it. They usually do, and don't lose many meals at that. I think he's running a bluff, myself." ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... his sister along the footpath of a bluff, which as children they had often climbed; while the carriage made a long detour in order to reach the main entrance to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... He enters: a bluff stern warrior, in his undress, that is, without his panoply of armour and arms, in the long flowing robe affected by his Norman kindred at the festal board. She, with the comely robe which had superseded ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... harbors: Bluefields, Corinto, El Bluff, Puerto Cabezas, Puerto Sandino, Rama, San Juan ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... merit or there will be a ridiculous crash. It is all very well for the "spellbinder" to claim all the precincts—the official count is just ahead. The reaction against over-confidence and over-suggestion ought to warn those whose chief asset is mere bluff. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... it, he might never come at all to the unnatural thought of renouncing life. In fact, he does not often remember death: yet his whole gay world is secretly afraid of being found out, of being foiled in the systematic bluff by which it lives as if its life were immortal; and far more than the brave young man fears death in his own person, the whole life of the world fears to be exorcised by self-knowledge, and lost in air. And with good reason: because, whether we stop to notice this ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... use them? And where would we be after that? We're here to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetary incidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That's why we've got to pick up Rakhal before this ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... childhood Beryl had listened so intently to her mother's glowing descriptions of the beauty and elegance of her old home "Elm Bluff," that she soon began to identify the land-marks along the road, alter passing the cemetery, where so many generations of Darringtons slept in one corner, enclosed by a lofty iron railing; exclusive in death as in life; jealously guarded and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... says no. She knows best. 'Sides, it ain't fur to Martin's Bluff. You kin make it in ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... depend upon Mr. Rodman's decision. He hoped for the best, but he trembled for the result. When he reached his destination, he found another boat at the Head, and soon discovered Laud Cavendish on the bluff. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic

... was not upon the sea-beach to-day. I walked a mile or so along the sand, but did not find her. She had gone around the little bluff to our shark-line. This was a long rope, like a clothes-line, with a short chain at the end and a great hook, which was baited with a large piece of fish. It was thrown out every day, the land end tied to a stout stake driven into the sand, and the ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... hellish!" Somers protested presently, as Seth remained silent, gazing hard at a rather large bluff on the river bank, some three hundred yards ahead. Then he added bitterly, "But it ain't no use. We're too late. The fire's finished everything. Maybe we'll find their bodies. I guess their scalps ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... g-gotta pay for g-grovelin'. Don't you see yore only chance is to go out an' make good before the folks who know how you've acted? Sneak off an' keep still about what you did, amongst s-strangers, an' where do you get off? You know all yore life you're only a worm. The best you can be is a bluff. You'd be d-duckin' outa makin' the fight you've gotta make. That don't get you anywhere a-tall. No, sir. Go out an' reverse the verdict of the court. Make good, right amongst the people who're keepin' tabs on yore record. You can do it, if you c-clamp yore j-jaw an' remember ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... deliberation which in this case was part of the game, and presently the shadow of an impending American attack hung heavy over the coasts of Spain. The Spanish Government at first perhaps considered the order a bluff which the United States would not dare to carry out while Cervera's fleet was so near its own shores; but with the destruction of Cervera's ships the plan became plainly possible, and on the 8th of July the Spanish Government ordered Camara back to parade his vessels ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... marched him through the wonderful amber twilight to the summit of the bluff behind the engine-house—whence Gard could just make out his box and carpet-bag still lying on the quay below. And all the way the old man was volubly explaining the many changes necessary, in his opinion, to bring ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... her in which Cossey would figure as co-respondent, and so the consideration fails. I am sorry, for I should have liked him to lose his thirty thousand pounds as well as his wife, but it can't be helped. It was a game of bluff, and now that the bladder has been pricked I haven't a ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... brought him to the shore. There was no beach at the spot. The bank—a limestone bluff—rose steeply from the water's edge to a height of eight feet, and the lake under it was several fathoms in depth. The buck did not hesitate, but sprang outward and downwards. A heavy plash followed, and for some seconds both wapiti and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... crabs in shallow water, he found one that had just cast its shell, but the crab put up just as brave a fight as ever, though of course it was powerless to inflict any pain; as soon as the creature found that its bluff game did not work, it offered no further resistance. Now I should as soon say a wasp reasoned because a stingless drone, or male, when you capture him, will make all the motions with its body, curving and thrusting, that its sting-equipped fellows do. This ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... knee to its occult omnipotence was to be run out of public life without cause assigned. All this while there was rumour and counter-rumour about Mr O'Brien's return. The Dillonites up to the last moment believed we were playing a game of bluff and went on right merrily with their preparations for making a clean sweep of every man who was "suspect" of possessing an independent mind. Then on one winter's night, shortly before the election writs were issued, the doubters and ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... him nearer to the time when he could claim his prize without concealment or fear. He went about as happy and as light-hearted a man as any in all London. His mother was delighted at his high spirits, but his bluff old father was not so well satisfied. "Confound the lad!" he said to himself. "He is settling down to a life of idleness. It suits him too well. We must get him to choose ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sight, as so many people seem to lose sight, of the contingent factor; namely, that Judge Lindsey's leniency is based upon authority, and that if Judge Lindsey or anybody else attempted to be lenient when he had no power to be otherwise than lenient, his "bluff" would be called in short order. If you will give to teachers and principals the same power that you give to the police judge, you may well expect them to be lenient. The great trouble in the school is simply this: that just in the proportion ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... in a fine heat of resentment, thinking that a few years at Shrewsbury school might have improved both his language and his manners. But when I came to know him better, and to understand the motive of his rough address to me, I forgave the bluff seaman heartily. He was a keen partisan in the feud that then divided the navy, the one faction being for Benbow, the other against him; and being ignorant of my antecedents, he supposed from my not having been a midshipman that I was one of the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... This upright mass, apparently 40 feet high, and seeming, like the "Lumba" of Kinsembo to rest upon a basement, is very conspicuous from the east, where it catches the eye as a watch- tower would. At the bluff-base, a huge slab, an irregular parallelogram, slopes towards the water and, viewed far up stream, it passably represents a Kaffir's pavoise. This Fingal's Shield, a name due to the piety of Mr. George Maxwell, is called by the French La Pierre Fetiche: ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... the most of a tranquil afternoon, where there was an armistice of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro. A ruined fort caps that limestone bulwark; and there we lay together, drinking the influences of sea, sun, and wind. Immeasurably deep beneath us plunged the precipices, deep, deep ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... proved to be a typical Spanish soldier of the period, bluff and hearty, but exceedingly courteous in manner, with, according to his own account, a profound respect and admiration for the English, so far as his knowledge of them extended, yet George quickly came to the conclusion ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... "Bluff, with nothing behind it. You don't take me that way," he said. "Now I'll put my cards right down in front of you. Alton is not a fool, and you couldn't tell him anything he doesn't know already. The trouble is, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... a higher spot of bluff than the rest, Wharton, who was an active rather than an athletic man, challenged me to follow him. He made the leap having little space to spare. I had not done such a thing for some years. But my boyhood had been one of daring. The school in which I had grown ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... quartermaster of the First Brigade. Several shots from this piece followed in quick succession, but it was silenced by Lieutenant Lawrence with his Parrotts. The 2d Kentucky and 9th Tennessee were speedily ferried over without their horses, and forming under the bluff they advanced upon the militia, which had retired to a wooded ridge some six hundred yards from the river-bank, abandoning the gun. The two regiments were moving across some open ground, toward the ridge, sustaining no loss ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... preparing the designs and superintending the construction of the new parish church of St. Mary Magdalen at Bridgenorth. It stands at the end of Castle Street, near to the old ruined fortress perched upon the bold red sandstone bluff on which the upper part of the town is built. The situation of the church is very fine, and an extensive view of the beautiful vale of the Severn is obtained from it. Telford's design is by no means striking; "being," as he said, "a regular Tuscan elevation; the inside is as regularly ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... know, my friend," said the Duke to him at last, "I begin to change my mind respecting you. I supposed you must have served as a Yeoman of the Guard since bluff King Henry's time, and expected to hear something from you about the Field of the Cloth of Gold,—and I thought of asking you the colour of Anne Bullen's breastknot, which cost the Pope three kingdoms; ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... Like Southampton water It enters broadly in the woody lands, As if to break a continent asunder, And sudden ceasing, lo! the city stands: St. Mary's—stretching forth its yellow hands Of beach, beneath the bluff where it commands In vision only; for the fields are green Above the pilgrims. Pleasant is the place; No ruin mars its immemorial face. As young as in virginity renewed, Its widow's sorrows gone without a trace, And tempting ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... with much heartiness. He was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. Then he met one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with much less heartiness. "I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun to ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... came sooner than he expected, for about two weeks after he had assumed command, his regiment was ordered to northern Missouri, and a railroad official called at his camp to inquire how many cars he would need for the transportation of his men. "I don't want any," was the bluff response; and, to the astonishment of the local authorities who, at that period of the war, never dreamed of moving troops except by rail or river, the energetic Colonel assembled his regiment in marching order and started it at a brisk pace ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill

... not thickly sprinkled with the author's knowledge of French, had one candidate by the neck, and had made a large bet that he could carry him into the "White House" with a rush, while the junior partner was deeply immersed in the study of Greek. Puff, of the firm of Puff & Bluff, a house that had recently moved into the city to teach the art of blowing books into the market, was foaming over with his two Presidential candidates, and thought the public could not be got to read a book without at least one candidate in it. It was ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... saw much of Humphreys, who, in his bluff hearty way, did a good deal to cheer me. He talked freely of Raoul, and I liked to listen to his praises of my dead friend. However, the fortune of war was soon to cut me adrift from him. Things were going very badly for us just at that time, and Turenne could barely hold ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... sports were setting, and said he was going in to town to see some friends; and as he starts off he laughs an' says, 'This don't look as if I was afraid of seeing people, does it?' but Dad says it was just bluff that made him do it, and Dad thinks that if he hadn't said what he did, this Mr. Carleton wouldn't have left ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... on Sheridan Road to the upper end of the lower campus. There is a crossroad there, you remember, cutting through to the lake, and I turned in. I left the car near a house that is there, and walked on to the edge of the bluff. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... three thousand. Afterwards it turned out that he'd been practicing that very climb in heavy gloves, down in South Brooklyn. So I wrote the story. He came back with a threat of a libel suit. Fool bluff, for it wasn't libelous. But I looked up his record a little and found he was an ex-medical student, from Chicago, where he'd been on The Chronicle for a while. He quit that to become a press-agent for a group of oil-gamblers, and must have done some good selling himself, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... And you put it across old Rumbold?" Laughter and sheer admiration of her audacity were mingled in his voice. With a baby it was a good bluff; without one, the girl's ingenuity seemed to him ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... members devoted to the cause of free soil. Seward, Sumner, Chase, and John P. Hale had preceded him. Less favored than these senators in the advantages of early life, less powerful in debate, he yet brought to the common cause some qualities which they did not possess. His bluff address, his aggressive temper, his readiness to meet the champions of slavery in physical combat as well as in intellectual discussion, drew to him a large measure of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... dark fringe of sighing she-oaks bordering the creek. As day by day the quietude deepened, the parrots and pheasants and squatter pigeons flew in and about the Leichhardt trees at the foot of the bluff, and wild duck at dusk came splashing into the battery dam, for there was now no one who cared to shoot them; the merry-faced, rollicking, horse-racing young bank manager and his baying pack of gaunt kangaroo dogs had vanished with the rest; and then came the day when but eight men remained—seven ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke



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