"Dare-devil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simple and effective. Even with Margaret there was no trace of consciousness. The past was wiped clean of all save courtesy and kindness. There were the Hunts—Nellie, and the Lieutenant of the Lexington Rifles, Richard Hunt, a dauntless-looking dare-devil, with the ready tongue of a coffee-house wit and the grace of a cavalier. There was Elizabeth Morgan, to whom Harry's grave eyes were always wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet, who was romantic and openly now wrote poems ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... you had seen the look of Mr. Trevannion when I said this—he was stupified. That I, Captain Levee, who had commanded his vessels so long—I, the very beau ideal of a privateer's-man, a reckless, extravagant dare-devil, should also presume to have scruples, was too much for him. 'Et tu, Brute,' he might have exclaimed, but he did not; but he stared at me without speaking for some time; at last he said, 'Is the golden age arrived, or is this ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... robbery of the apple-tree. I proved our innocence to the farmer's wife by putting down a shilling. The sight of it satisfied her. She combed my hair, brought me a bowl of water and a towel, and then gave us a bowl of milk and bread, and dismissed us, telling me I had a fair face and dare-devil written on it: as for the girl, she said of her that she knew gipsies at a glance, and what God Almighty made them for there was no guessing. This set me thinking all through the day, 'What can they have been made for?' I bought a red scarf ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tender as well as steely. Perhaps he had sisters at the old home, and perhaps, too, I was the first woman he had seen in months to remind him of them. I shall always believe that he is from good people some place East, that his "dare-devil" nature got him into some kind of trouble there, and that he came to this wild country to hide from Justice. The very morning after we got here, not long after our breakfast, he appeared at our tent ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Thiel is not of your opinion. He was as disagreeable as a scrubbing-brush to-day. He gave me a serious moral lecture with firstly, secondly, thirdly, and closed with an admonition that I must play the dare-devil no longer, or to be more explicit, must renounce love. That seemed to me ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the new wife and the children. Reproaches fell from the lips of the failing widow because of Almira's tacit acceptance of the devotions of young Mr. Powlett, son of the resident physician of the sanitarium that was now bringing so many patients to Urbana. A handsome, dare-devil sort of boy was Powlett, who speedily cut out all the local beaux at the parties and picnics which filled the summer of '75. A beautiful dancer was he, and taught Almira to waltz and "glide" in a style never before seen in Urbana, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... unofficial incident was provided by a man in the 4th Dragoon Guards producing a fine bay horse which he wagered 30 to 1 against any officer riding. It was a real American buck-jumper. This challenge was enough for the dare-devil subalterns of the —— Hussars, and one of them, Beach-Hay, a splendid horseman, promptly closed with the offer. For twenty minutes or so he tried to mount, without succeeding; finally he muffled the horse's head in a cloak and got on his back. Then he dug ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... carrying out their orders to ride "swift as the messengers of Azrael." He had known them both on his previous visits, though he had not recognised them in the dark hours of the dawn when they joined the troop, and remembered them as two of the most dare-devil and intrepid of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's followers. A moment since they had grinned at him in cheery greeting, exhibiting almost childlike pleasure when he had called them by name, and had set off with an obeisance as deep to him as ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... dirty, unkempt, unshaven, hard-looking lot, with bloodshot eyes, a flicker of the dare-devil in expression, beyond the first youth, hardened into an enduring toughness of fibre—bad men from the Saginaw, in truth, and, unless Orde was mistaken, men just off a drunk, and therefore especially dangerous; men eager to fight at the drop of ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. I will have no man in my boat, said starbuck, who is not afraid of a whale. by this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... was these words of mine which (under God's Providence, as I think now) established my reputation with Mr. Rumbald as a dare-devil kind of fellow that would do anything for money. He began, too, at that (which pleased me better at the time), to speak of precisely those matters of which I wished to hear. It was not treasonable talk, for the ale had not ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... however, would have involved too great a loss of time. Luckily I found three dare-devil fellows, but recently come into the valley for a living, who were willing to go with me. These, together with the man already mentioned and one Cora Indian, enabled me to make a start. Thus I parted from pretty San Francisco, and the nice Indians there, who had believed in me in spite ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... with his shirt opened on his chest and no hat on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong; in every movement he made one could see the reckless dare-devil and athlete, knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo, talked and laughed louder than any of the rest, and looked as though he were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing so. ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... waved your hand—in that quick little jerky fashion peculiar to you—to those little naked Urchins. With a mighty Shout, they ran back to the Pool, and gave a rapid-firing Exhibition of the Single Dive; the Double Dive; and one—a dare-devil—the Triple Dive! What a Memory, what a Priceless Memory, you must have given those Boys of Martinsville, that Ideal Summer Afternoon, in the Long While Ago! Martinsville! To you of Blessed Memory! For the sake of an early, enduring, Friendship, did you not encrust one Jap Miller ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley
... dare-devil. He looked up at the house and then, opening the gate, strode boldly into the front garden. Before this intrusion Miss Nugent retreated in alarm, and gaining the door-step gazed at him in dismay. Then her face cleared suddenly, and Master ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Now there were many aristocratic young men, hot-blooded and feather-headed hidalgos whom the surrender of Granada had left without an occupation. Most distinguished among these was Alonso de Ojeda, a dare-devil of unrivalled muscular strength, full of energy and fanfaronade, and not without generous qualities, but with very little soundness of judgment or character. Other notable personages in this expedition were Columbus's youngest brother Giacomo (henceforth called ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... style. We shall have you a swaggering dare-devil yet, old boy. And now it's boot and saddle again. Good-bye, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... that dare-devil. He don't care who he gives cold. I told her she'd get her death, but she won't ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... bitterest irony to propose that he should seize that moment to outwit the English and Dutch sea-kings who were perpetually cruising in the channel, and to undertake a "beard-singeing" expedition such as even the dare-devil ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and a bit of sailor, Bit of a doctor and bit of a tailor, Bit of a lawyer, and bit of detective, Bit of a judge, for his work is corrective; Cheering the living and soothing the dying, Risking all things, even dare-devil flying; True to his paper and true to his clan— Just look ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... dashing, dare-devil sort of a girl, with a snaky look in her eyes. She wears a pink hat with ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... absence of words between us, externals spoke with greater force. He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with a dare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physical mastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my silly freaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! That was the beginning. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... known, your worship; when you're at the head of a body of polis or military, every one knows what you are; isn't dare-devil Driscol, your worship, the best name ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... towns of some decades ago—if we will review them as they are pictured in poem and novel and play—we may receive, as it were out of the tail of the eye, an impression of some aspects of these western plantings of the seventeenth century. The dare-devil, the bully, the tenderfoot, the gambler, the gentleman-desperado had their counterparts in Virginia. So had the cool, indomitable sheriff and his dependable posse, the friends generally of law and order. Dale may ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Rim defines the word, Tom was quite as bad as they called him. A handsome young dare-devil he was, slanting his glance downward when he looked into the eyes of a six-foot man,—and every inch of him good healthy bone and muscle. Women eyed him pleasantly, wistful for his smile. Men spoke to him friendlywise and consciously side-stepped his wrath. On the Black Rim range his ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... pained and indignant at his desertion, she hardly heeded them; how was she to know that Camillo Borghese was, under his cold exterior, very honestly in love with his wife and just now cruelly tortured with jealousy of her brother-in-law, the dare-devil Murat? For the latter was as unscrupulous as he was handsome, as Napoleon was to find to his cost, though in recognition of his services as a dashing leader of cavalry he had rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline and the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... little of—only sufficient to make it possible to lead them. No two men were dressed alike, and some were not even armed alike, although stolen Turkish government rifles far predominated. But they wore unanimously that dare-devil air, not swaggering because there is no need, that has been the key to most of the sublime surprises of all war. The commander, whose men sit that way in the saddle and toss those jokes shoulder over shoulder down the line, dare tackle forlorn ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... dare-devil, bold and fearless lad; nothing can daunt him. He is, in fact, what his hated father was when first I knew him, years ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development. It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... be; but not of English rig. What was the meaning of it? A Spanish cruiser about to make reprisals for Drake's raid along the Cadiz shore! Not that, surely. The Don had no fancy for such unscientific and dare-devil warfare. If he came, he would come with admiral, rear-admiral, and vice-admiral, transports, and avisos, according to the best-approved methods, articles, and science of war. What ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... master, the best fellow in the ward-room mess, and a great favorite with the youngsters, was officer of the deck from six to eight o'clock; and my messmate, Perry Buckner, of Scott county, Kentucky, the most dare-devil midshipman of us all, was master's mate of the forecastle; Hammond, Marshall, Smith and I were the gentlemen of the Watch; Rodney Barlow was quartermaster at the 'con;' the lookouts had just been stationed; the men were singing, dancing, spinning yarns and otherwise amusing themselves ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... topping off the half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought "cowboy" shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity never failed. The solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of them. They were starved for company and excitement; obsessed by strange ideas which they had evolved ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... party broke up I had given the stranger all my heart. I had never loved before, much as I had enjoyed men's company. Yet, although I gave my heart away, I had some undefinable dread of this dark, daring stranger, with the remorseless though beautiful eye, and that dare-devil step and bearing. Many times, again, we met; frequently in the meadows when the gloaming came; and often ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... rapidly indeed had the miscreant acted, that his victim had hardly realised the assault before he found himself securely gagged and bound to a chair in his own ante-room, whilst that dare-devil stood before him, perfectly at his ease, his hands buried in the capacious pockets of his huge caped coat, and murmuring a few casual words ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... which attracts the rain Tom calls "mil-gar," and the suspended bottle (a saucer-shaped piece of bark is generally used) serves to catch PAL-BI (hailstones), which, being, uncommon, are considered weird and are eaten in a dare-devil sort of spirit. In this case PAL-BI had but the remotest chance of getting into the bottle, and for that reason (according: to Tom) none tried. "Subpose I bin put bark all ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... more: it is worth while, if you are curious in contrasts and comparisons. Five years ago that bowed, blasted cripple was the most reckless dare-devil, the most splendid Paladin, in all the army of Algiers; the man for whom, after an unusually brilliant exploit, St. Arnaud, loving him as his own right hand, could find no higher praise than to write in his dispatches, "Les 3me Chasseurs se sont conduits en heros; leur chef-d'escadron ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... satisfaction before they got over his route. Scott was known to be the best reinsman and the most expert driver on the whole line of the road. He was a very gentlemanly fellow in his general appearance and conduct, but at times he would become a reckless dare-devil, and would take more desperate chances than any other driver. He delighted in driving wild teams on the darkest nights, over a mountain road, and had thus become the hero ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of nursery-maids and grisettes—a butt for the dare-devil ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but 'twould be punishment enough for her to know her lover was hooted out o' the parish. Mind you, I've no grudge agen the man. I liked his dare-devil look, the only time I saw en. I'm only sayin' what ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Indian was far out of reach, and had rejoined his men, and the whole dare-devil band, with the captured horses, scuttled off along the defiles, their red flag flaunting overhead, and the rocks echoing to their whoops and yells, and ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... capture you, which is much more likely than that you will ever capture me, I will have you chopped up into small pieces and fed to the fires of the Dauntless." A few months later, this little Irishman, whom Weyler denounced as a "bloodthirsty, dare-devil," and who may have been a dare-devil but was not bloodthirsty, actually carried out a part of this seemingly reckless threat. He landed a cargo within a mile and ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... far corner, looked pale but composed. Her behaviour was perfect. There was nothing for her to do, and she was doing it with a quiet self-control which won my admiration. Her manner seemed to me exactly suited to the exigencies of the situation. With a super-competent dare-devil like myself in charge of affairs, all she had to do was to wait and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... they drove away, "you certainly lit on your feet when you struck that house. It looks like it 'ud pay you to git stabbed every day in the week; it's paid the community, the Lord knows, fer it is shet of the biggest dare-devil that wus ever in it. The ol' lady seems to have about as bad a case on you as the gal. I've been thar a time or two to ax about you, an' I never seed the like o' stirrin' round fixin' things they 'lowed ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... kindness to fancy that the conversation which took place over the bowls of punch which Mrs. Catherine prepared, was such as might be expected to take place where the host was a dissolute, dare-devil, libertine captain of dragoons, the guests for the most part of the same class, and the hostess a young woman originally from a country alehouse, and for the present mistress to the entertainer of the society. They talked, and they ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing still, how she ought to—end it! That little backward brain sought the solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal, a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret—the greatest and finest secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was a sentence of life, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... young, leaving only my father, Roger and Patience. Patience, who was born in 1858, married an Irishman of the name of Sellenger—which was the usual way of pronouncing the name of St. Leger, or, as they spelled it, Sent Leger—restored by later generations to the still older form. He was a reckless, dare-devil sort of fellow, then a Captain in the Lancers, a man not without the quality of bravery—he won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Amoaful in the Ashantee Campaign. But I fear he lacked the seriousness and steadfast strenuous purpose which my father always says marks the character ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... not answer her, and Patricia, now thoroughly alarmed, sought vainly for a means of bringing this impetuous and dare-devil young ranchman to his senses. She thought once, as they ascended a short hill, of leaping from the car to the ground, but the speed was too great for her to take such a risk. It even occurred to her to seize the steering-wheel, and to give it a sharp ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... demand as an expressman, remembers Field as a somewhat reckless fellow and "dare-devil," and is authority for the story of Field's discomfiture in the boxing bout with the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... should be left to his discretion. Meanwhile he proceeded to tighten the cordon of investment, so as to render it impossible that a single soul inside the city should escape. In spite of this, however, Delphion, with one comrade, a branded dare-devil, who had shown great dexterity in relieving the besieging parties of their arms, escaped by night. Presently the deputation returned with the answer from Lacedaemon that the state simply left it entirely to the discretion of Agesilaus to decide the fate of Phlius as seemed to him best. Then ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... position as the founder of a school. Instead of pretending to read Ovid he does actually read Schopenhaur and Nietzsche, studies Westermarck, and is concerned for the future of the race instead of for the freedom of his own instincts. Thus his profligacy and his dare-devil airs have gone the way of his sword and mandoline into the rag shop of anachronisms and superstitions. In fact, he is now more Hamlet than Don Juan; for though the lines put into the actor's mouth to indicate to the pit that ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Louisiana to use a rifle, though. The dare-devil! I can hear him now, ridin' off ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... his friend's ship, they were to be made drunk there, and that being accomplished, the vessel was to be unmoored and taken to sea with them aboard, and they were to be landed or cast adrift in an open boat. The recital of these dare-devil propositions caused Yaunie's face to wear a careworn look, and when asked what he thought of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... reached that state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty-six with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more than an immense dare-devil? ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... stakes he made; but he didn't gamble much, knowing himself not lucky. Instead, he watched the fluctuating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was putting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all. It was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more than threepence. When he lost, he swore softly to himself: "Dio mio, mio Dio, Dio mio," ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... me to share his porch ..." and the other Varney, not the one who sat so stiff and mute, desperate eyes glued on the far horizon, but the easy, negligent Varney, gay dare-devil that he was, actually achieved a pleasant laugh. "I must show you his note. It's been a long time since I have had anything to ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... retired to his room, the guard outside the door heard him marching back and forth through all the weary night. The one thing he least expected, because he least understood it, had come to pass. He had been a good and true friend to the villain who had fled, for Arnold's reckless bravery and dare-devil fighting had appealed to the strongest passion of his nature, and he had stood by him always. He had grieved over the refusal of Congress to promote him in due order and had interceded with ultimate success in his behalf. He had sympathized ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... long hours, till at last the city looms beyond the fat gas-works, the narrow factories draw near, we are in the sordid streets of the great town, once more we sidle to a standstill at our terminus, abashed by the great crimson and cream-coloured city cars, but still perky, jaunty, somewhat dare-devil, green as a jaunty sprig of parsley out of a ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... of the coolest dare-devil gamblers in the West, had recognized a kindred spirit, but to all advances and efforts to make his acquaintance the stranger had turned a cool shoulder, and his identity was still ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... at each other—man and woman! They both knew with what they had to deal. A dare-devil expression rose to Gaston's face. He tossed precaution ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... glass of port wine. He led his clerks a dire life in the City: his family at home were not much happier. I doubt if Rebecca, whom we have seen piously praying for Consols, would have exchanged her poverty and the dare-devil excitement and chances of her life for Osborne's money and the humdrum gloom which enveloped him. He had proposed for Miss Swartz, but had been rejected scornfully by the partisans of that lady, who married her to a young sprig of Scotch nobility. He was a man to have married a woman ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... left there, and took my seat again. Billings climbed in too, only—and it kind of shows the change sence the previous evenin'—he was in the passenger-cockpit astern and I was for'ard in the pilot house. For a reckless dare-devil ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... his blessed notices, the dare-devil. What a detective he'd a made, wouldn't he, if he'd only a-turned his attention that way, and been on the side of the law instead of against it? He walked in bold as brass, sat down, and talked ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... mining town and grew up with the country, as the saying is. I formed new acquaintances and made new friends. Among others, I met William Owen O'Neill. I cannot now remember the exact time or year. Attracted by the light-hearted, cheerful, and dare-devil spirit of this ambitious and cultured young man, I joined a military organization, of which he was then a lieutenant and later the captain, this was Company F of Prescott Grays, National Guard of Arizona. Poor, noble-hearted, generous Buckie—he knew it ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... brothers "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in any other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a circus. In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken idea of the ethics of their calling, were appealing to sensation lovers by the practice of dare-devil feats, the Wrights with admirable common sense and dignity stood sturdily against any such degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they were joined by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to be shown in the reduced number of lives sacrificed ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... utterly stupefied. One bold spirit did begin to sing, but he sat down at once on the ground and hid himself behind the others.... And what is so surprising is this: we have had landowners like that, dare-devil gentlemen, regular rakes, of course: they dressed pretty much like coachmen, and danced themselves and played on the guitar, and sang and drank with their house-serfs and feasted with the peasants; but this Vassily Nikolaitch is like a girl; he is always reading books or writing, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... the fat little man on horseback shone with triumph. He was enjoying himself hugely. It was worth something to have tamed so debonair a dare-devil as Dingwell had the reputation of being. He had the fellow so meek that he would eat ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... superintendent, frontiersman, and dare-devil fighting man, was one of the far-famed gunmen of the Plains. These were a race of men bred by the perils and hard conditions of Western life. They became man-killers first from stern necessity. In that day the man who was not quick on the trigger ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... packets fell victims, and insurance of boats plying between Dover and Calais went to ten per cent. Englishmen began to feel that England was blockaded! We are not so familiar as we ought to be with the interesting record of all these audacious and brilliant enterprises, conducted with dare-devil recklessness by men who would not improbably have been hanged both as pirates and as traitors, had fortune led to their capture at this moment ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... unusual about this affair of the blinds, for Rushton and Misery robbed everybody. They made a practice of annexing every thing they could lay their hands upon, provided it could be done without danger to themselves. They never did anything of a heroic or dare-devil character: they had not the courage to break into banks or jewellers' shops in the middle of the night, or to go out picking pockets: all their robberies were ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... interfered with his efficiency as a soldier, nor his record for a dare-devil courage. There were many tales current of his exploits on the Somme, in which again and again he had singed the beard of Death, with an absolute recklessness of his own personal life, combined with the most anxious care for that of his men. Since the battle of Messines ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... once—even though Cupid treated her as quite a little girl—and they sometimes got as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a hidebound character, and was ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... round his head; but he struggled resolutely to keep his face front the set of the sea, and the buoy supported him bravely. His thoughts ran on things past; he had spoken unkindly of Sally, behind her back; he had been tipsy—Ah! how often! Then he thought, "Shall I pray and repent?" All the dare-devil in the deluded lad's soul arose at this question, and he snarled "No. Blowed if I snivel just yet, only because I'm in a bad way." Oh, Jack, Jack! And the deep grave weltering below you, and only a ring of cork and oilskin to keep you out of that cold home. Was there never a shudder as ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... in these thoughts his attention was attracted by a conversation at the adjoining table between that dare-devil cross-country rider, Tom Gunning of Calvert County, old General McTavish of the Mexican War, and Billy Talbot the exquisite. Gunning was in his corduroys and hunting-boots. He always wore them when ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was for the taking up of able-bodied adults, the main idea in the formation of the gang was strength and efficiency. It was accordingly composed of the stoutest men procurable, dare-devil fellows capable of giving a good account of themselves in fight, or of carrying off their unwilling prey against long odds. Brute strength combined with animal courage being thus the first requisite of the ganger, it followed—not perhaps ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... and he caught his breath. A tremor passed all through him, and I felt it in the hand I was holding. Life was sweet to him, then, after all—sweet to this wild dare-devil who had just faced death with such calmness! Dr. Rowell, though showing no sign of jealousy, could not ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... sure, however, that this man knew more of the night's work than he had told. He conveyed this belief to Dangloss, and a close watch was set upon the fellow. More than once during the long afternoon John Tullis found himself wishing that he had that dare-devil, thoroughbred young countryman of his, Truxton King, beside him; something told him that the young man would prove a treasure ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dearly. For a moment the Indians in the black darkness shrank back from the fierce attack. But already Horst was killed and several of the crew were down with mortal wounds. The vessel seemed lost when Jacobs—a dare-devil seaman—now in command, ordered his men to blow up the vessel. A Wyandot brave with some knowledge of English caught the words and shouted a warning to his comrades. In an instant every warrior was over the side of the vessel, paddling or swimming to get ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... boy, we had quite enough of those dare-devil Chechenes. At the present time, thank goodness, things are quieter; but in the old days you had only to put a hundred paces between you and the rampart and wherever you went you would be sure to find a shaggy devil lurking in wait for you. You had just to ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... over the sea. Long before the circuit of Fernando Noronha was completed he would be itching to rush at top speed along the straight line to Pernambuco. It was a bold thing, too, to land on the island and stock their vessel for a voyage, the end of which no man could foresee. The dare-devil notion fascinated them. In that instant, the Andromeda's crew returned to their allegiance, which was as well, since it was fated to be stiffly tested many times ere they were reported inside ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... from much climbing of crags; whose freckled face bore frequent red tokens of an indiscriminate sampling of berries. It is too much to say that Abner Sage would have been glad to have his warnings made terrible by some bodily disaster to the juvenile dare-devil of the school, but Leander Yerby's disobedient incredulity as to the terrors that menaced him, and his triumphant immunity, fostered a certain grudge against him. Covert though it was, unrecognized even by Sage himself, it ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... by sheer bravado, that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such a coup? Not another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been the same kind of a fool, we should never ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of cossack pantaloons tapering down to the foot with a notch cut in the front for the instep, and a hat about twice as large at the crown as at the rim, much resembling in shape an inverted sugar-loaf, with the smaller end cut away. He had a reckless, dare-devil, good humored look, and very much the air of what is called "a young man about town;" that is, one who rides out to Cato's every afternoon, eats oyster suppers at Windust's every night after the play, and spends the rest of his time and his ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I—was discharged, my colonel, as—unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped into his hands suddenly, and he broke beyond control ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... beauty, Cousin Mary! Even you would admire him. It gives you quite a shock when he comes into a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful, fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk for him. He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides. If you could see the way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if the sun had come out suddenly! But alas! the sun has gone under now, for he ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... by day to stand up on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of his past triumphs. On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame, slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable Bateson," in the uniform of his Yeomanry. Creed's former master's face wore that dare-devil look with which he had been wont to say: "D—-n it, Creed! lend me a pound. I've got no money!" On the other hand, in a green frame which had once been plush, and covered by a glass with a crack in the left-hand corner, was a portrait of the Dowager ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said John Mark in his quiet way. "Why should this dare-devil be destined to hunt me? I can gain nothing by his death but your hate. And, if he succeeds in breaking through Lefty, as he has broken through Kruger, even then he shall win nothing. I ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... "it's a dare-devil scheme, try it; no one will ever know it but us, and we'll die before we tell. Besides, we must; it's late, and you couldn't find ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... untold wealth and the capture of some of Philip's distant colonies had appealed to her boundless avarice and made her conscience easy. His expedition to the West Indies might never have been undertaken had he not been a dare-devil fellow, to whom Burleigh's wink was as good as a nod to be off. He slipped out of port unknown to her, and his first prize was a large Spanish ship loaded with salt fish. He pounced upon her after passing Ushant, and the excellent cargo was ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... knelt on one knee, and his appearance aroused, in a degree, Katherine's dormant powers of observation. He had a short, crisp, black beard and crisp, black hair. He was alert and energetic of face and figure, a man of dare-devil, humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit with brass buttons to it. He was in his stocking-feet. The wristbands and turn-down collar of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the support of the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... spring, or rather late in the winter, a powerful expedition had been sent to the north of Fort Fetterman in search of the hostile bands led by that dare-devil Sioux chieftain Crazy Horse. On "Patrick's Day in the morning," with the thermometer indicating 30 deg. below, and in the face of a biting wind from the north and a blazing glare from the sheen of the untrodden snow, the cavalry came in sight of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... gave an order to one of his servants, and glanced at me with that sort of mocking, dare-devil look in his eyes which I loathed, which everybody loathed who ever met the man. Of course I had no idea what all this portended, but I was ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... roarer*; Mohock, Mohawk; drawcansir[obs3], swashbuckler, Captain Bobadil, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Thraso, Pistol, Parolles, Bombastes Furioso[obs3], Hector, Chrononhotonthologos[obs3]; jingo; desperado, dare-devil, fire eater; fury, &c. (violent person) 173; rowdy; slang-whanger*[obs3], tough [U. S.]. puppy &c. (fop) 854; prig; Sir Oracle, dogmatist, doctrinaire, jack- in-office; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... marriage easy. In the convent, because she was well born and well connected, she became a person of much influence and received many callers. Adjoining the convent was the residence of young Gianpaolo Osio, a reckless, amorous dare-devil, who was beau comme le jour, as the French fairy tales say. So much of the story having been told, it is not difficult to guess what is to come. It was a case of love at first sight, and Osio was aided ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect love —we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it was said, "Each one resembled ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste. Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one graceless dare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards of the ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... craft; he must play the part of watchman, of robber; now prodigal as a spendthrift, and again close-fisted as a miser, the bounty of his munificence must be equalled by the narrowness of his greed; impregnable in defence, a very dare-devil in attack—these and many other qualities must he possess who is to make a good general and minister of war; they must come to him by gift of nature or through science. No doubt it is a grand thing also to be a tactician, ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... public or semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. ——— was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her came to regard it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the president immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself in a most flattering manner, something like this: "Great by his position under the Republic,—greater still, I am bold to say, in the Republic of letters!" I made no reply at all ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... imperfect recollection of what had passed when he woke the next morning. There is no exception to the rule that if a man drink heavily at night the next morning will show the other side to his nature. Thus with Mr. Tebrick, for as he had been beastly, merry and a very dare-devil the night before, so on his awakening was he ashamed, melancholic and a true penitent before his Creator. The first thing he did when he came to himself was to call out to God to forgive him for his sin, then he fell into earnest prayer and continued ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... ask my pockets,—pockets, which are the symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. [Surveying me from head to foot.] The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton! Are you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones? but, to be sure, no one ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not weak; it is a dare-devil wild strain in him that seems as if it must out. He has a will of iron, and never breaks his word; only to get him to be serious, or give his word, is as yet an unaccomplished task. I sometimes think if a great love could come into his life ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... danger. More than once Tom almost shuddered at the chances which his young companion took upon some perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to call a warning, but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in that young dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown moving in and out of the darkened green above him. Once he was on the point of shouting advice to Hervey about what to do in the unlikely event of his reaching the nest before the eagle, ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... him, to distinguish him from "Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the sloop Reindeer, partners with one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules. When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the coroner said he was the greatest-shouldered man he had ever seen laid on ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the ground. Sancho crossed himself and kept up his vigilance over his master to the last. Finally he saw him disappear in the coal-black depths, and then he called on all the saints he knew by name to protect the flower and cream of knight-errantry, the dare-devil of the earth, the heart of steel and ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... were over each morning, he was out of the studio with a whoop and up the beach as hard as he could run to the Huntingdon house. By the time he reached it he was no longer the artist's only son, hedged about with many limitations which belonged to that distinction. He was "Dare-devil Dick, the Dread Destroyer," and Georgina was "Gory George, ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... prisoner, and afterwards as an adopted member of their tribe, but had finally made his escape. The four scouts succeeded in capturing an Indian man and woman, whom they bound securely. Instead of returning at once with their captives, the champions, in sheer dare-devil, ferocious love of adventure, determined, as it was already nightfall, to leave the two bound Indians where they could find them again, and go into one of the Indian camps to do some killing. The camp they selected was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... were full of it." He turned to Androvsky. "Miss Enfilden thought I could not sit a horse, Monsieur, unlike you. Forgive me for saying that you are almost more dare-devil than the Arabs themselves. I saw you the other day set your stallion at the bank of the river bed. I did not think any horse could have done ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the raft. The youngster was winded, but undaunted. Bryce watched her with real admiration. Here was a dare-devil courage he vastly respected. He was ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... man after mine own heart," he said smoothly. "Because I love thee and thy bold eyes and thy dare-devil recklessness, and would make a friend of thee. Why else? Now, then, to-morrow thou shalt bring the girl to me. I am minded for an hour's sport with the tiger-cat. My fingers itch for that lean throat of hers. After, I will give her to ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... The Brixham carried a dare-devil crew, however, and Hawkins feared nothing. The Moonbeam would have her work cut out; but then all the more glory to the bold fellows on board of her; for these were the days when adventure was beloved ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it. Yes, he had seized ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... make him well-nigh invisible; more than that, the dust lay so thickly on all things that colour in any uniform was a debatable quality. He didn't believe anybody was noticing. The extreme height to which his courage ever attained, was at once his. He felt almost dare-devil. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dictograph. It was loaned them by Hubert Kittle, aviator, former police officer, one-time contender for the heavyweight pugilistic championship of the navy, dare-devil and adventurer. Later in the day Ben Smith, official court reporter and one of the fastest and most accurate shorthand men in the country, agreed to ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... of San Francisco were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that very police-making exultant mention of how "the Argus-eyed officer So-and-so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how "the gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... myself or my partners. When I did big things, some large corporation like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was behind me and the responsible party. My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a dare-devil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... been accustomed. With at least a dozen men in shaggy overcoats and slouched hats she shook hands with a tolerably good grace, but when there appeared a tall, lank, bearded young giant of a fellow, with a dare-devil expression in his black eyes and a stain of tobacco about his mouth, she drew back, and to his hearty "How are ye, Miss Markham? Considerable tuckered out, I reckon?" she merely responded with a cool bow and a haughty stare, intended ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... more, for the Tisch was watching us. What new trouble was brewing? Could it be Romano, dare-devil, who had come back ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... to that. You really talk like a midshipman. However, I shall take care not to climb up after you, I am not such a dare-devil. Jahnke is quite right when he says, as he always does, that you have too much Billing in you, from your mother. I am ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... chances. Under cover of a fog they would steal into or out of harbor at risk of going aground, or set sail boldly on a bright moonlight night, when the blockaders would naturally relax their vigilance a little. Occasionally some dare-devil would crowd on all steam and dash openly through the sentinel fleet, trusting to speed to escape being hit or captured. When hard pressed, the blockade-runner would beach his craft, set it afire, and take to the woods. At the close of the war thirty wrecks of blockade-runners ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... It was one of the most dare-devil, scatter-brained things I've ever heard of. And I've heard of many, mademoiselle. The only pity is that instead of being rewarded, he will ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... or Simon Kenton was a dare-devil pure and simple: a youth of roguish but extremely obstinate spirit. He had started upon the adventure trail at sixteen, and here at twenty-three he already had many hair-breadth escapes in his memory and ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... evince the greatest astonishment; and then the strange, unnatural impiousness of people who never address themselves to Allah nor prostrate toward the Holy City, impresses their simple minds with something akin to the feeling entertained among certain of ourselves toward extra dare-devil characters, and they seem to take a deeper and kindlier interest in me than ever. The disappointment at not seeing what I look like at prayers is more than offset by the additional novelty imparted to my person by the, to them, strange and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... he had been elected first lieutenant, but they were still in Southern Missouri under General Sterling Price. He shouldn't like to come on his brother's body dead or wounded after the battle—the young dare-devil fool! ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... starts and bursts of feeling, of his low voice, of his fits of musing, that the aggregate impression is that of affectation and self-consciousness, rather than of a simple, passionate, and heroic nature. Mr. Gray does not seem to us at all like the rash, fiery, and dare-devil Scotchman of history. His conduct and conversation, as recounted in the fifth chapter of the novel, are unnatural and improbable; and we cannot wonder that the first lieutenant did not know what to make of so melodramatic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... antiquaries. It is invariably pointed out to the curious, as a fit subject for their contemplation, and may, in fact, be looked upon as the great local lion of the place. It appears almost inaccessible. But there is a story extant, and told in very choice Irish, how two small dare-devil urchins did succeed in reaching its lofty summit; and this is the way the legend was done into English by one Barney Riley, the narrator, to whom I am indebted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... He could not have been thirty, although he had been on the plains for five years. The West was people by young men. It's need for daring spirits found less response in men of maturer life. But the West had most need for humane men. The bully, the dare-devil, the brutal, and the selfish were refuse before the force that swept the frontier onward; but they were never elements in real state building. Before such men as Carey they ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... warfare within himself. During the early days he was an easy victim. Then came a shock that changed the whole aspect of his life, and later one stood beside him who taught him how to fight. But until those events took place, the town of Links knew him for what he was, a reckless, dare-devil youth, without viciousness or malice, but ripe for any extravagance or adventure. His pranks were always begun in fun though it was inevitable that they should lead to serious consequences. It was admitted by his severest critics ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... English have always been the best of friends, because we can't get no port wine anywhere else, and they can't get nobody else to buy it of them; so the Portuguese gave up their arsenal at Lisbon, for the use of the English, and there we kept all our stores, under the charge of that old dare-devil, Sir Isaac Coffin. Now it so happened, that one of the clerks in old Sir Isaac's office, a Portuguese chap, had been some time before that in the office of the Spanish ambassador; he was a very smart sort of a chap, and sarved as interpreter, and the old commissioner ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the goods unladen at once, Captain Tabor," she repeated. Then the captain coloured, for he was quick-witted to scent a rebuff, though he laughed again in his dare-devil fashion as he turned to the sailors and shouted out the order, and straightway the sailors so swarmed hither and thither upon the deck that they seemed five times as many as before, and then we heard the hatches flung back with claps ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... below the ordinary earth in misery. Kitty was suffering from an intense revulsion of spirits. Laurie was in trouble. He was the best brother in all the world; he was Kitty's idol. There never was anybody more reckless, more passionate, more dare-devil than Laurie Malone; and Kitty had always been with him heart and soul, always from the time that they had been little tots together. And now Laurie was in danger. The best broth of a boy might be condemned to go to a school ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... though you said—the beautiful Mrs. Podgers. But there was consolation in the sound of Wayland, with its far call to Wayland's smithy and Walter Scott. And—Cohocton! The name to me had a fine Cromwellian ring; and Blood's Depot—what a truculent sound to that!—if you haven't forgotten the plumed dare-devil cavalier who once made a dash to steal the king's regalia from the Tower. Again—Loon Lake. Can you imagine two more lonesome wailing words to make a picture with? But—Cohocton. How oddly right my absurd instinct had been about that—and, shall we ever forget the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... in one indomitable breast alone), my brother had an interview with the Chief, which he has subsequently described to me, and of which Hal could never speak without giving way to the deepest emotion. Mr. Washington had won no such triumph as that which the dare-devil courage of Arnold and the elegant imbecility of Burgoyne had procured for Gates and the northern army. Save in one or two minor encounters, which proved how daring his bravery was, and how unceasing his watchfulness, General Washington had met with defeat after defeat from ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this here country shall be paid for, so much on, to me, and that's called a tax, miss, and for that there are the custom houses and custom officers—which is me—to see his Majesty paid right and proper his lawful dues. But what does your smuggler do, miss—your rollicking, dare-devil chap of a smuggler? Why he lands his lace and his brandy and his 'baccy unbeknownst and sells 'em on the sly—and pockets the profit! D'ye see?—and so he cheats his Majesty, which is a very grievous breaking of ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... his head we shall see. Already there were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done by the former. The coup de theatre which completed it revealed the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by these aristocrats; and when Bocchus dedicated on the Capitol a representation of Sulla ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and heavy rain write to tell you that "tea is the dominating factor of war," or that "the mushrooming and ratting in their latest quarters" are satisfactory. And even the wounded, in comparing the hazards of London with those at the front, only indulge in mild irony at the expense of the "staunch dare-devil ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... universal panacea. He was reckless to the uttermost stretch of recklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and his daily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and languor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the natural dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless and gamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistent of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done: only there was a dare-devil in his eye—I should say a dare-Becket. He thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion. Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... more than a feeling of conscious virtue at being thus exonerated from a fault which he had committed; and it was with mingled glee and a certain dare-devil desperation that he resolved upon ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... relation in which it is to be considered. Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects it does, it must work good or evil. Its theme is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... love of the best of women is something both more and less than a mere contradiction of terms; and since Eleanor Brewster's manly ideal was apparently builded upon physical courage as its pedestal, Flemister, in his dare-devil character, was quite likely to be ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... one of those dare-devil spirits, ready for anything that promised adventure—a child of fortune—a stray waif tumbling about upon the waves of chance—gifted with head and heart of no common order—ignorant of books, yet educated in experience. There was a dash of the heroic in his character that had won my ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... at length his excesses forfeited the protection of his uncle, the embassador, and obliged him again to flee. He had made his way back to Seville, trusting that his past misdeeds were forgotten, or rather trusting to his dare-devil spirit and the power of his family to carry him ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... they reappeared, carrying a pack. And when this was deposited on the ground all the rustlers sat down around it. They had brought food and drink. Jean had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife Gang. Jean was glad of a reprieve. The longer the rustlers put off an attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would have to get here. Rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the base hospital. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... New Orleans, about the middle of the last century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and slept until it was time to go to the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... up by this time and we sat in a circle listening again to the story of the bold and brilliant Englishman whom two undeserved jail sentences had turned into such a picturesque dare-devil of a highwayman. However, I disagreed with Otto's version of the ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... the traveller, the dare-devil, the grave is unknown; but the story of how he met his death, in far Arizona, came years after to England and to Castle Dare. He sold his life dearly, as became one of his race and name. When his cowardly attendants found a band of twenty Apaches riding down on them, they unhitched the mules ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... tartan are inseparable from the sentiment that makes these men the redoubtable soldiers they are. Take those away, and you break their touch with a continuous tradition which transforms every man in the regiment, be he Scottish, English or Irish, into a Gordon, with all the dash and vim and dare-devil courage that centre around the name. The Gordon blood in him helped Byron to understand and express the potency ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the last century declined or prospered. The first American home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that came from the wild Irish women whom the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston |
