"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fellow, give no account of—has put him temporarily at the world's mercy. They made him a nine days' wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton, is just where we come in. We know the man himself; and it is to be our privilege to act as a buffer-state, to be intermediaries between him and the rest of this deadly, craving, sheepish world—for the time being; oh yes, just for the time being. Other and keener and more knowledgeable minds than mine or yours will some day bring him back to us again. We don't attempt to explain; we ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the far corner of the cell. A man of peace, this place of blood and confusion was beyond his conception. He was in a daze, his mind having thrown up a buffer against horror. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness. One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way, without ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bloods set off on Christmas day to race the frozen strait for the hand of buffer Beauvais's daughter Claire, but when her lover's horse, a wiry Indian nag, came pacing in it fled before their happiness. It was twice seen on the roof of the stable where that sour-faced, evil-eyed old mumbler, Jean Beaugrand, kept his horse, Sans Souci—a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... influenced British policy, seem to have originated (aside from the important matter of self-interest) in a double motive: to prevent any one nation from gaining overwhelming superiority by force of arms, and to save the smaller "buffer" states from being absorbed by their powerful neighbors. Thus the War of the Spanish Succession (1711) prevented the union of the French and Spanish monarchies, and preserved the smaller states of Holland and Germany. As Addison then wrote, at least ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... first-rate traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend—early childhood—Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,—he got it all out of the heads tiled by his father,—he is in literature; he does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... for the Colonel; me and the old man don't get on well. The old buffer is always down on me whenever I takes a drop, but I'm going to make him a present of a 'oss this night, that I am." He went off in the darkness, towing the present ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... hated his friend Paul Limousin still more, who had continued to be the familiar and intimate friend of the house, after having been the inseparable companion of his bachelor days, which is very rare. It was Limousin who acted as a buffer between his wife and himself, and who defended him ardently, and even severely, against her undeserved reproaches, against crying scenes, and against all the daily ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called great middle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is a perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historic mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has just about been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passes into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... "Well, old buffer, so you are popular," said he to him. "Your phiz is sold on the heads of pipes and on liqueur bottles and every drunkard in Alca spits out your name as he rolls in the gutter. . . . Chatillon, the hero of the Penguins! Chatillon, defender ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... come on all right," answered the batteryman, with easy assurance. "Maybe he has gone round by the road. Even if he hasn't, I've seen him make that in one jump many a time. He's an active old buffer for his years." ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... guides. The axle guards of the trailing wheels are formed of two 1/2 inch plates, with cast iron blocks between them to serve as guides. The ends of the rectangular frame are formed of plates 3/4 thick, and at the front end there is a buffer beam of oak 4-1/2 inches thick and 15 inches deep. The draw bolt is 2 inches diameter. There are two strong stays on each side, joining the barrel of the boiler to the inside framing, and one angle iron on each side ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... sensible and fair to let Persia give a similar advantage to Russia in Northern Persia. Nothing but a friendly understanding between England and Russia, which should clearly define the respective spheres of influence, will save the integrity of Persia. That country should remain an independent buffer state between Russia and India. But to bring about this result it is more than necessary that we should support Persia on our side, as much as Russia does on hers, or the balance is bound to go ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... general strategic advantages. He did this and made all sorts of arrangements tending to co-ordinate the work of the various sub-committees along the lines of the plan we drew up. It will be a great thing to have somebody who will act as buffer for all the detail and relieve me of ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them," replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. "But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by young ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... called it Miss Horatia Cunningham's party. That's what made us come. I wanted to see you, and see how you get on with these people. But I'm jolly glad I came. The old buffer does ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... depressing than the conversations of 'small-talk' which an exacting society occasionally demands. Who has not suffered from their enervating effects? We are not all possessed of that mental abstraction which La Fontaine succeeded in carrying with him throughout life, forming a buffer from which all idle talk rebounded. He was once asked to dinner by a 'fermier-general' to amuse the guests. Thoroughly bored, La Fontaine ate much and said little, and rising very early from the table said that he had to go to the Academy. 'Oh,' ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... as "O Brother." It never entered his head that any living human being could disobey his orders; and he was the buffer between the servants and his Mamma's wrath. The working of that household turned on Tods, who was adored by every one from the dhoby to the dog-boy. Even Futteh Khan, the villainous loafer khit from Mussoorie, shirked risking Tods' displeasure for fear his co-mates ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... deadly insistence upon the masonry of the wall. Meanwhile the enemy from the ramparts are doing their best to set the shed on fire, to break off the ram's head with heavy stones, to pull it upwards by a noose, or to deaden the effect of the shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with grappling irons may be dropped upon the parapet. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... against the back of the Bench? TIM's gentle nature shivered with apprehension; thing to do was to get a good plump gentleman set between the two, so that in case hostilities broke out his body might be used as buffer. Thought of ELTON first. Besides a professional desire to find occupation for Members of the Bar, ELTON's figure seemed made on purpose for the peaceful errand TIM had in mind. Broached subject. ELTON said, always happy to oblige; but was, in fact, just now ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... with emphasis. "I wish there were any hope of my becoming such a fine old buffer in my decadence,—it would be worth living for if only to look at myself in the glass now and then. He rather startled me when he threw down that knife, though. I suppose it is some old ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... reckon. Monty and I clubbed together and bought presents for his Majesty, the boss here, and Monty wrote out this little document—sort of concession to us to sink mines and work them, you see. The old buffer signed it like winking, directly he spotted the rum, but we ain't quite happy about it; you see, it ain't to be supposed that he's got a conscience, and there's only us saw him put his mark there. We'll have to raise money to work the thing upon this, and maybe there'll ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bodies function through their respective industrial secretaries in cities of the North and West. These agencies aim to serve the Negro laborers by investigating and cultivating new avenues of employment, to stand as a buffer between them and the white unions and furnish the leadership usually exercised by trades unionism by taking up the Negro's grievances directly with the management. That these objects may be accomplished these organizations have adopted certain methods of procedure. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... "I love you better because you're young and unformed. I can help you, dear, and you can help me, of course; I'm a dreadful old buffer in many ways. I'm forty, you know, and you're such a child. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... all this crept into his book for, after a fortnight at home, he set his own jaw and lips rather grimly, went to his small office room in the tower of a high building, and paid the elevator boy a goodly sum for acting as buffer during five ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... the power required for hoisting is reduced. To adapt this hoist to handling form lumber the bucket is replaced by the lumber carriage shown by Fig. 216; this carriage discharges over the head of the mixer and the spring buffer shown by Fig. 214 is to take the shock of the rising carriage. This buffer is omitted when concrete only is to be hoisted. In one case this device has hoisted 520 batches of 12 cu. ft. each to the fourth floor in 8 hours, or nearly 19 cu. yds. per ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... Serbo-Croatia (the South Slavs) are the natural adversaries of Germany, of her Drang nach Osten; to liberate and strengthen these smaller nations is the only real check upon Prussia. Free Poland, Bohemia and Serbo-Croatia would be so-called buffer states, their organisation would facilitate and promote the formation of a Magyar state, of Greater Rumania, of Bulgaria, Greece and the rest of the smaller nations. If this horrible war, with its countless ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... cabin sky-light, and an oar, in single combat with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner's greatest security. Nevertheless, I must confess that more than ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... in Belgium had been sacked by the Germans, pillaged with fire and sword, until hardly one stone was left upon another. And now the fighting was again in Belgium, that little buffer state which, ever since she became a nation, has always been ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... and benches of magistrates, quite independent of the Home Office, are held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities in local justice. The consequence is that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... American policy of isolation, in the sense of avoiding secret alliances, was to become a fundamental principle of the new international order. If the United States was to go into a league of nations, every member of the league must stand on its own footing. We were not to be made a buffer between alliances ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... Johnnie," sitting meanwhile on the edge of the unmade bed, and chewing a piece of gum that had been pressed, a neat bead, upon the back of a chair. After a while she got up, powdered her nose, and rubbed her finger-nails with a buffer—a buffer lifeless and hard, and deeply stained with dirt and red grease. Emeline had left a note, "Gone up to Min's—come up there for supper," but Julia felt that there was no hurry; meals at Mrs. Tarbury's ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... Hien Feng, at their head. It was subsequently raised to ten, another prince of the blood, Prince Ching, becoming president. The members were spoken of collectively as the prince and ministers. For a long time the board had no real power, and was looked on rather as a buffer between the foreign envoys and the real government. The importance of foreign affairs, however, especially since the Japanese War, identified the Yamen more with the grand council, several of the most prominent men being ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... 16-horse power, working aluminium propellers of four blades at the rate of 1,000 revolutions a minute. Finally, firmly attached to the inner framework by rods of aluminium, were two cars of the same metal, furnished with buffer springs to break the force of a fall. The trial trip was not made till the summer following—June, 1900—and, in the meanwhile, experiments had gone forward with another mode of flight, terminating, unhappily, in the death of one of the most expert and ingenious ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... "A lady-buffer! What's that?" I cried, looking at the slovenly, dirt-streaked wrapper and the shabby golf-cape that had slipped from her shoulders to the cot. She regarded me with pity for my ignorance, and then delivered herself of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... reception of his particular section. It was also intended by Government that a piece of unoccupied territory still farther to the eastward should be settled by a party of five hundred Highlanders, who, it was conjectured, would prove the most effective buffer available to meet the first shock of invasion, should the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... looks, and yet was not very ready to make concessions to friendship. No doubt he needed some management, and Lady Mildmay, like many wives, found one of her chief functions to consist in acting as a buffer between her husband and a world which did not always approach him with enough gentleness and consideration. Hence her joy at the prosperous passage of a critical time, at the enthusiasm of their supporters, and at the gratification and urbanity of Sir Winterton. Satisfaction ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... got to get this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... consisted in employing the waste steam in the upper part of the cylinder for the purpose of acting as a buffer to resist any undue length of the upward stroke of the piston. But for this the cylinder covers might have been knocked off. The elastic buffer of waste steam also acted as a help to the downward blow of the hammer-block. The simplicity and ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... northward, for a time commanded by Capt. Adna R. Chaffee, Sixth Cavalry. Trouble was known with Pima Indians, who lived across the river, where they had been placed a few years before by Tempe settlers, as a possible buffer against Apache raids. This reservation's extension cost ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... "Hullo, you old buffer!" was equally free from any gloss of eloquence, but he hooked his hand in the doctor's arm as he made ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... over-crowded and we often had to stand, crowded together on the platforms of the driver and conductor. I have seen officers, of rank which gave dignity, clinging to the back of the conductor's platform with their feet planted insecurely on a buffer. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... fabulously wealthy American heiress had filled her with vague misgivings even while the gentlemen were safely absent; but when Miss Maddison was summoned away, and her father and brother took her place, her uneasiness vastly increased. Now here was the last buffer removed between the chieftain and her audacious rival (so she already counted her). What drama could these mysterious movements have been ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... of large ideas. In the rapid growth of California he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that government, as a "buffer" state between the two republics, to form a French colony in the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... say you have guessed—by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... sitting up on the snow-bank upon which he had fallen, a prisoner to the spot, from the fact that there was no possible way of retreat from it either upward or downward; but in other respects very little the worse for his terrible fall, the snow, happily, proving so deep that it served as a cushion or buffer, allowing the baronet to escape with only a few somewhat severe bruises. The adventure being thus happily terminated, the ship was quickly navigated to the berth she had occupied on the preceding night; and the party then sat down to dinner, over which meal they came to the conclusion that ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... think twice before they lay hand on their revolver butts. No puffing engine hauls the train: the motor-power is at the rear. First and foremost is a platform car,—open, uncovered, but over its buffer glisten the barrels of the dreaded Gatling gun, and around the gun—can these be soldiers? Covered with dust and cinders, hardly a vestige of uniform among them, in the shabbiest of old felt hats, in hunting-shirts ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... case, too, below in the waist, where the starboard timbers had been carried away nearly to the fore-chains, which probably had acted as a buffer and stayed further destruction in that direction; and it was only owing to this that the galley and pump-box had been saved, as otherwise both would have been swept overboard along with the dunnage I had noticed collected under the ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... never drank with any one, nor asked any one to drink; and, strange to say, no one resented this. As Vic said: "He was different." Dicky Merritt, the solicitor, who was hail-fellow with squatter, homestead lessee, cockatoo-farmer, and shearer, called him "a lively old buffer." It was he, indeed, who gave him the name of Old Roses. Dicky sometimes went over to Long Neck Billabong, where Old Roses lived, for a reel, as he put it, and he always carried away a deep impression ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... agitation, insist on returning exclusively non-party delegates. The local Soviets in these districts are also non-party, and they elect usually a local Bolshevik to some responsible post to act as it were as a buffer between themselves and the central authority. They manage local affairs in their own way, and, through the use of tact on both sides, avoid falling foul of the ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... especially the position and shape of the springs that give elasticity to the buffers, which, he observed, were just the same in shape as ordinary carriage springs, placed so that the ends of the buffer-rods pressed against them. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a month to rest them," insisted the buffer, becoming a trifle panic-stricken; and he tapped the sole of Ersten's shoe ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... became clear that the current was too strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I am so constituted that factious thought and effort dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life I have acted as a "buffer'' between conflicting cliques and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was otherwise. But, as Kipling ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,' the Bible says. It tells us that we have all broken God's holy law, that we all deserve his wrath and curse forever, and cannot be saved by anything that we can do or Buffer; but that 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' He offers this salvation to us as his free gift, and so we are to take it, ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... I had, poor old buffer!" her husband answered complacently, his temper restored. "By the way, I've brought in the last number of Dickens. Shall I ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 'em swarm," said Joe Cross, as if talking to himself. "I don't mind. This 'ere's a savage country, and 'tis their nature to. He seems a rum sort of a buffer, Mr Rodd, sir. What does he mean by ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... towards Southun men; We hed to go sheers in preservin' the bellance: An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' their tellents 'Thout some un to kick, 't warn't more 'n proper, you know, Each should funnish his part; an' sence they found the toe, An' we wuzn't cherubs—wal, we found the buffer, For fear thet the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... carrying forward its large quasi-tidal wave presents a mass of water to the Blue Nile, which acts as a buffer to its rapid flood. The White Nile being at a considerable height when the Blue rushes down its steep slopes, presents its brother Nile with a soft cushion into which it plunges, and is restrained by the vis inertiae of the more slowly moving ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... in her second youth, and already bereft of some of her attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of the Baron's mistress. I had thought, at first, that she was but a hired accomplice, a mere blind or buffer for the more important sinner. A few hours' acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever dispelled the illusion. She is one rather to make than to prevent a scandal, and she values none of those bribes—money, honours, or ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his—he thought it wasn't in the bargain. He meant to fight this big bully in his own fashion without calling on me, but I've taken a hand in the game and put Crothers wise as to principles. I may have to get a few knocks before I am done, but Sandy won't be the buffer. I guess the boy will pick up from now on. He's nervy and stronger than ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... fair hope that the Government would be in a position to solve the Adriatic problem. The Italian delegates in Paris had suggested that, in the independent buffer State, Rieka should have a separate municipal status, and that a narrow strip of land should join the buffer State to Italy. On December 9, a memorandum was signed by the representatives of Great Britain and America, which was the best ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... guns lies in the buffer and in the ability of the muzzle of the gun to cool off; after discharging 24 rounds they are just as ready to discharge another 24 as when they started, while in the case of our pieces we have to let them cool, and 15 or 18 ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... safe! See how the particles of ice are swept from the face of the peak by the tempest. They leap toward us, and are then whirled round the mountain. The compacted air forms a buffer. We may yet touch the precipice, but the wind, having free vent on both sides, will carry us one way or the ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... word with Grace. The girl, looking very white and worn, leaned on the arm of Captain Nat, whose big body acted as a buffer between her and over-sympathetic Come-Outers. Mrs. Coffin silently held out both hands ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... never yours to give," said Leonard, laughing jovially at his wit. "Old Steinwein—you remember his death. It was in all the papers; the eccentric old buffer, who was touched in the upper story, and used to give so much time and money to Jewish affairs, setting up lazy old rabbis in Jerusalem to shake themselves over their Talmuds. You remember his gifts to the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... America, where poor debtors who had regained their freedom might find a refuge and make a new start in life. He decided to found this colony to the south of South Carolina, so that it might not only be a refuge for the oppressed, but also form a buffer state between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. So from George II Oglethorpe got a charter for the land lying between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, and in honour of the King the colony ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... proceedings in debate on Irish Land Purchase Bill varied by accidental but unhappy circumstances. Prince ARTHUR in course of speech happened to say, that "under Bill of 1886 Irish Government was supposed to be a buffer between the English Government and the Irish tenant." Mr. G., sitting attentive, suddenly sprang up when this insult fell on his ear. Bill of 1886 not a tempting topic; led to downfall of his Ministry; but to hear it publicly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... as we can be sure that the true position is not only understood, but felt. But our old, rich, and beautiful country, with all the accumulations on its soil of the labour, the art, the thought of uncounted generations, has been in this war the buffer between German savagery and the rest of Europe. Just as our armies bore the first brunt and held the pass, till civilisation could rally to its own defence, so our old towns and villages have died, that ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would take a volume in itself. Briefly, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were represented. Montenegro, with characteristic laisser faire, never appointed a commissary at all, and the work all fell on me. Fortunately, in fact, for I was the buffer state between Serbia and Bulgaria, who were at daggers-drawn. At the necessary meetings the Serb Commissioner talked German and Serb into one of my ears, while the Bulgar shouted French and Bulgar into the other, and the English manager at intervals begged me to ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... shaking hand. "Not that either, boys," he pleaded. "Think of the other buffer, and let him down easy. If I'm like this, just fancy what Topelius is! If he heard us singing out, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... said Murphy; "and I heard just now from Tim the waiter that there is a horse-dealer lately arrived at the stables here, who has a famous one with him, and I know Reilly the butcher has two or three capital dogs, and there's a wicked mastiff below stairs, and I'll send for my 'buffer,' and ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... The plantar cushion is a wedge-shaped mass of tough, elastic, fibro-fatty tissue filling all the space between the lateral cartilages, forming the fleshy heels and the fleshy frog, and serving as a buffer to disperse shock when the foot is set to the ground. It extends forward underneath the navicular bone and perforans tendon, and protects these structures from injurious pressure from below. Instantaneous ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... they rather despised, showed great forebearance. But tiring of these endless dissensions they lost patience, invaded Greece, burned down Corinth (to "encourage the other Greeks") and sent a Roman governor to Athens to rule this turbulent province. In this way, Macedonia and Greece became buffer states ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... him and repeated, "But if a man had loved you as you have loved me—remember now, on your honor—would you permit him to love with no better reward than the consciousness of being a solace, a help, a sort of buffer between you and the ills ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... think the gain of having you for a wind buffer would make up for losing you as a crutch," he said, as he hobbled slowly along in his stockinged feet. He had kicked off his shoes when he went to the aid of Mary, and the rising ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... but as the person to whom every one went in trouble and perplexity. That was a moment which developed strong characters and effaced weak ones. The revolutionary ocean was fatally rolling towards the Alps. It found what had been so long the "buffer state" asleep. There was a king who, unlike the princes of his race, was more amiable than vigorous. Arthur Young, the traveller, reports that Victor Emmanuel I. went about with his pocket full of bank notes, and ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... when they first come. Presently you will grow accustomed to its invigorating tone, and quiet down. It is caused by the dry air. We are a long way from the Atlantic, and these mighty mountains to the west act as a buffer to the moisture-laden air ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... matter; enough that he likes my society well enough to make a special journey down into Devon. I represent to him, of course, the days gone by, and for their sake he will always feel an interest in me. Being ten years my junior, he must naturally regard me as an old buffer; I notice, indeed, that he is just a little too deferential at moments. He feels a certain respect for some of my work, but thinks, I am sure, that I ceased writing none too soon—which is very true. If I had not been ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... employer and employed. In these days of largely corporate proprietorship, the owners of mines are guided in their relations with labor by engineers occupying executive positions. On them falls the responsibility in such matters, and the engineer becomes thus a buffer between labor and capital. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what new ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... The Perfect Removable Buffer with 3 Extra Chamois The Metal Band being removable, the Chamois may be easily replaced, making the polisher practically everlasting. In 4 sizes; 4-1/2, 5, 6 and 7 inches. 3 colors: Ebony, Cocobola and Olive wood. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Eastern life, and in the ninth century it secured their adhesion to the Eastern Church, which influences their policy to the present time. The principality of Dioclea, or Zeta, as it soon became called, was one of the confederate Serb states formed by Heraclius in 622 A.D., to act as a buffer state against the inroads of the Avars. Each state was ruled by a Zupan or Prince who owed allegiance to the Grand Zupan, the head of the heptarchy. But the confederation was very loose, the rival chieftains fighting amongst one another for the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... be time enough, surely, to see the admiral when we are upon the ground. I'll warrant the old buffer is a true brick as ever was: there's ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a great deal, who are thus the natural, disinterested lovers of free trade. It is very easy to see why England turns red in the Crimea with the effort to lift up that bag of rags called Turkey, to set it on the overland route to India; one decayed nation makes a very good buffer to break the shock of natural competition in the using up of another. It was the constant policy of Rome to tolerate and patronize the various people in its provinces, to respect, if not to understand, their religions, and to protect them from the peculator. She was not so drunk with dominion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... the first time, the soldier detailed to accompany me was provided with a rusty old musket with a very long barrel. I examined this weapon with much curiosity. China is our neighbour in Eastern Asia, and is, it is often stated, an ideal power to be intrusted with the government of the buffer state called for by French aggression in Siam. In China, it is alleged, we have a prospective ally in Asia, and it is preferable that England should suffer all reasonable indignities and humilities at her ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the play of those kindly feelings for kith ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... "Why not? It's a roomy suit, and I hate a great topper on my head; I've had enough of that here on Sundays. But it's slow up at your office. The chaps there aren't half up to any larks. I made a first-rate booby-trap, though, one day for an old yellow buffer who came in to see you. He was in a bait when he found the waste-paper basket ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the democratic spirit of him that led him to mix on apparently equal terms with his working men, and had backed him in his opposition to the trust because his plucky and unscrupulous fight had been, in a measure, its fight. But now it idolized him. He was the buffer between it and the trust, fighting the battles of labor against the great octopus of Broadway, and beating it to a standstill. He was the Moses destined to lead the working man out of the Egypt of his discontent. Had he not maintained ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... you will find in the open villages. Now, in Islip you have an omnipotent squire, and that is an abomination in theory, a mediaeval monster, a blot on modern civilization; but practically the poor monster is a softener of poverty, an incarnate buffer between the poor and tyranny, the poor ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... to be more supremely great as nationalists. This is the significance of the League of Nations. It is a plan of hope. It is the only plan which the mind of man has evolved which any number of nations has ever been willing to accept as a buffer against devil-made war. ... It is a monumental experiment which this century and other centuries will talk of and think of and write of because it involves the lives of men and women under it, and there is ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... there you have a buffer!" cried Colonel Sharpe, as the much-discomfited doctor bowed with a very ill grace; while I, in no small bewilderment, walked off with Dorothy. And a parting shot of the delighted colonel brought the crimson to my ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... precise opposite of the pagan one. The pagan heart shrank from naming the ugly thing because it was so ugly. So dark and deep a dread coiled round the man, as he contemplated it, that he sought to drape the dreadfulness in some kind of thin, transparent veil, and to put the buffer of a word between him and its hideousness. But the Christian's motive for the use of the word is the precise opposite. He uses the gentler expression because the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages. To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the Assyrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... dispatches, and other public documents the formal language of legations, so cold, dry, and elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down, those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; it is unnecessary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... within reach of the ball, braced up his energies for a kick; but seeing O'Riley coming down towards him like a runaway locomotive, he pulled up, saying quietly to himself, "Ye may take it all yer own way, lad; I'm too old a bird to go for to make my carcass a buffer for a madcap like you to ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... unwise. Venizelos also was working for the good of Greece, but he was convinced it could come to her only through the union. He was willing to give Kavalla to Bulgaria in exchange for Asia Minor, from the Dardanelles to Smyrna. But the King would not consent. As a buffer against Turkey, he considered Kavalla of the greatest strategic value, and he had the natural pride of a soldier in holding on to land he himself had added to his country. But in his opposition to Venizelos in this particular, credit was not given him for acting in the ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... interpose Persia as a buffer between Russia and the Afghans.... I do not believe either in the strength or in the good faith of Persia," said Lord Ripon. "...I am afraid that the India Office have by no means got rid of the notions which were afloat in Salisbury's time." On the other hand, Lord Ripon was in favour of a treaty ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... consented to remain in Boston he might have held his charge against the ravages of time, secreted a curate, taken on a becoming buffer of adipose, and glided off by imperceptible degrees on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the race. She determined also to be the life and soul of the staff-room—the general peace-maker, confidante, and consoler, beloved by one and all. She determined to seize tactfully upon every occasion of serving the Head, and acting as a buffer between her and disagreeables of every kind. She arranged a touching scene wherein Miss Farnborough, retiring from work and being asked by the Committee to name a worthy successor, pronounced unhesitatingly, "Claire ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... King, who preferred to place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name, stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this juncture. When a proposition for an armistice was made by Bennigsen on June twenty-first, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... think that, as an old hand at playing the buffer in family jars, you had a much greater experience. Yesterday she was like an electric eel! And she gave her shock, too! The boy has not been home since. I am almost glad of that; it shows he has some sense of shame. I ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... familiar latterly with the term "buffer states;" the pleasant function discharged by Siam between Great Britain and France. Though not strictly analogous, the term conveys an idea of the relations that have hitherto obtained between Eastern and Western civilizations. They have ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... disputes: 1974 hostilities divided the island into two de facto autonomous areas, a Greek area controlled by the Cypriot Government (59% of the island's land area) and a Turkish-Cypriot area (37% of the island), that are separated by a UN buffer zone (4% of the island); there are two UK sovereign base areas within the Greek ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... then there has been a renewal of Turkey's vigor and prestige; then again its situation has been rendered yet more precarious. It has been a buffer between the clashing interests of the great powers. Speaking of Turkey's difficult position in this respect, the London Fortnightly Review, May, 1915, expressed ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... funning, He made him drink like a buffer; To his great surprise Sew'd up all his eyes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... between the Federals and the rich Texan grain-fields, from whence he fondly hoped an inexhaustible supply of flour[787] for the Confederates was to come. In short, the great and wonderful expanse that had been given to the Indian for a perpetual home was a mere buffer. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... cockpit of Europe. She is too. In wars that were neither of her making nor her choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer state thrust in between great and truculent neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil for their ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... more than the re- establishment of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, with recognition of the autonomy of the territory immediately under the control of the Lhassa Government; she is agreeable to the British idea of forming an effective buffer territory in so far as it is consistent with equity and justice; she is anxious that her trade interest should be looked after by her trade agents as do the British, a point which is agreeable even to the Tibetans though apparently not to the British; in other ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous, forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche—his adipose serving as a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his insight into the heart ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... through life under the belief that she was a peacemaker, which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, of one rheumatic ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... or on a railway; but if he prefers another word (he does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not esteem him one whit the less.[S] Even when he tells me that "bumper" is the English term for the American "buffer" (on a railway carriage) I do not feel my blood boil. A very slight elevation of the eyebrows expresses all the emotion of which I am conscious. So long as he does not insist on my saying a "bumper state" when I mean a "buffer ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... with no resistance. He is said to have carried away 100,000 captives, whom he settled in Alexandria and Cyrene. The founding of a Syro-Grecian kingdom in Northern Syria brought Judaea again into the unfortunate situation of a buffer state. Jerusalem seemed doomed to be among the prizes of an interminable warfare between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucidae of Syria and in turns vassal ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... or other convenient revolving shaft is available, a buffer made of many thicknesses of cotton cloth is very valuable for polishing tools. The addition of a little tripoli greatly ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... they charged highest for the lowest seats. Wonder whether a lion ever nipped up and helped himself to some fat old buffer in the Stalls when the martyrs turned out a leaner ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... left alone. He had sufficient strength to wait upon himself. During the previous night he had been restless; and in the lonely dragging hours his thoughts had raced in an endless circle—action without progress. He was reaching wearily for some kind of buffer to his harrying conscience. He thought rationally; that is to say, he thought clearly, as a child thinks clearly. The primitive superstition of his Puritan forbears was his; and before this the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Cherokees were thus by their position the barrier tribes of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted as a buffer between us and the French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the lower Mississippi. Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... required from fifteen carriages which are always ready for an imperial journey. If the journey is short, a saloon carriage and refreshment car are deemed sufficient; in case of a long journey the train consists of a buffer carriage in addition, with two saloon cars for the suite and two wagons for the luggage. The train is always accompanied by a high official of the railway, who, with mechanics and spare guard, is ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the coco-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted amid numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... four o'clock in the morning—problems not easily solved by a company of gesticulating freebooters who are for ever making raids, first into stage-land, then into real life, and lifting incidents across the border into that buffer-state where they lead a joyous life between ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... he went on, "do you think you're the only one that's got to work? Suppose you were shut up all day in a factory? Have you ever been to a factory? Do you know the life of a metal-buffer girl at Sheffield, standing in front of her wheel, from morning till night, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... practices in England, where a doctor, although scarcely known outside his own district, is in a position which Harley Street, with all its turmoil of fashionable fads and fancies, envies as the elysium of what life should be. The village doctor of Little Perkington may be an ignorant old buffer; but his life, with its three days' hunting a week, its constant invitations to shoot over the best preserves, and its free fishing whenever in the humour, is a thousand times preferable to the silk-hatted, frock-coated ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... not like quitting the subject so abruptly, and enlarges on it a little more. She sketches out a letter to be written to the lady who is at present a buffer-state between the dried man and the parched women. "Dear madam," she recites, "you may perhaps recall—or will perhaps recall—which is ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... hill ranges southwards to Nushki. The eastern boundary of this northern section of Baluchistan is the "red line" at the foot of the frontier hills, which defines the border of British India. This part of Baluchistan thus presents a buffer system of independent tribes between the British frontier and Afghanistan. But the independence of the Pathan people south of the Gomal is not as the independence of the Pathans (Waziris, Afridis, &c.) who live north of it. It is true that the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... out and she was left alone. A flagman, hat in hand, passed through the car. The shock of the engine coupler striking the buffer hardly disturbed her reverie; for her the night meant ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... interference in the internal affairs of the country, while according a friendly recognition to the successive occupants of its throne, without undertaking indefinite liabilities in their interest. The aim, in a word, was to utilise Afghanistan as a 'buffer' state between the northwestern frontier of British India and Russian advances from the direction of Central Asia. Shere Ali was never a very comfortable ally; he was of a saturnine and suspicious nature, and he seems also to have had an overweening ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... mountain," he said. "You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one army ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his father ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... leg, of a' that an a' that—and it is my wish to be quiet. Allow me respectfully to observe," said he, striking off suddenly into an air of vast politeness, "that man requires change. I've done a jolly good day's work with the spade for this old buffer, and now the intellect claims its turn. The mind retires above the noisy world to its Acropolis, and there discusses the great problem of the day; the Insular Enigma. To be or not to be, that is the question, I believe. No it is not. That is fully discussed elsewhere. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Mountaineers by geography and tradition, and proud of it. Originally they were induced by wily Virginians to come into these mountains and form a buffer back-country against Indians, French and British. Here they grew sturdy, self-reliant and independent. They fought the first and last battles of the American Revolution, as well as the first land engagement of the war to preserve the Union. They were shooting for liberty while Patrick Henry ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... palpitation of the heart when it is alarmed by the approach of danger or agitated by passion, since at such times it is overheated, they (the gods) implanted in us the lungs, which are so fashioned that being soft and bloodless, and having cavities within, they act like a buffer, and when the heart boils with inward passion by yielding to its throbbing save it from injury." He compares the seat of the desires to the women's quarters, the seat of the passions to the men's quarters, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... engaged in the meditative occupation of manicuring her nails. As she rubbed them back and forth on a chamois buffer her thoughts were busy ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... have in fact killed Pozzuoli as a winter resort, more's the pity, for it is not only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy tramontana that sweeps along the Chiaja in winter and early spring. Invalids used at one time to inhabit Pozzuoli on account of its mild atmosphere, and even to visit the Solfatara daily on mule-back, in order to inhale its sulphureous ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... first year Cecilia had struggled to get away to earn her own living. But a very few weeks served to show Mrs. Rainham that chance had sent her, in the person of the girl whose coming she had sullenly resented, a very useful buffer against any period of domestic stress. Aunt Margaret had trained Cecilia thoroughly in all housewifely virtues, and her half-French education had given her much that was lacking in the stodgy damsels of Mrs. Rainham's acquaintance. She was quick ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... channels and, to save time, he gave me a letter directing that I take it up in person. In two days, it had been approved by Generals Copeland, Casey and Heintzelman,—and there was a delay of one day at that,—due to a staff officer, who acted as a buffer at Heintzelman's headquarters. Proceeding then at once to the adjutant general's office, I was referred to Major Williams,[4] assistant adjutant general, one of the most polished and courteous gentlemen it was ever my fortune to meet. ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Austria, that it had always been England's desire that an independent Poland, possessing a dynasty of its own, should be established, which, separating Austria, Russia, and Prussia, should act as a buffer State between them; that, failing its creation, the Poles should be reconciled to being dominated by foreigners, by just and liberal treatment which alone would make them satisfied. His note, which ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various |
