"Ruffe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in 's ruff, as I have seen a serving-man carry glasses in a cypress hatband, monstrous steady, for fear of breaking; he looks like the claw of a blackbird, first salted, and then broiled in ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... this Pevensey? His ascent and his declension will have been completed, and his foolish battles and treaties will have given place to other foolish battles and treaties and oblivion will have swallowed this glistening bluebottle, plumes and fine lace and stately ruff and all. Why, he is but an adviser to the queen of half an island, whereas my Tamburlaine was lord of all the golden ancient East: and what does my Tamburlaine matter now, save that he gave Kit Marlowe the subject of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... An exactly analogous case to that of the British sloop Reindeer.] The carpenter reported that he alone of his crew was fit for duty; the others were dead or disabled. Lieutenant Wilmer was knocked overboard by a splinter, and drowned; his little negro boy, "Ruff," came up on deck, and, hearing of the disaster, deliberately leaped into the sea and shared his master's fate. Lieutenant Odenheimer was also knocked overboard, but afterward regained the ship. A shot, glancing upward, killed four of the men who were standing by a gun, striking ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and made complaints; but Mr. Magsman don't know what they would have had. It was a lovely thing. First of all, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Giant, in Spanish trunks and a ruff, who was himself half the heighth of the house, and was run up with a line and pulley to a pole on the roof, so that his Ed was coeval with the parapet. Then, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... pinched and plaited cap, which carefully obscured the profusion of long dark-brown hair—the small ruff, and the long sleeves, would have appeared to great disadvantage on a shape less graceful than Alice Bridgenorth's; but an exquisite form, though not, as yet, sufficiently rounded in the outlines to produce the perfection of female beauty, was able to sustain and give grace even to this ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... portrait of one of the earlier CECILS stepped out of the frame in the Long Gallery. The stately figure is attired in white doublet, trunks, and hose, embroidered with pearls. On the purple surcoat, lined with red, gold buttons gleam. The white ruff is fastened at wrist and throat with gold buttons: the black cap is solely adorned with a knot of pearls; a golden cord hangs from the neck; the right hand rests upon the head of a large dog, that has, perhaps, a rather stuffed look; whilst the left negligently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... lying down, but hoped," etc., was almost suspended on her lips, as she gazed with unfeigned curiosity at the new governess. Seated pensively behind the urn was a fair girl, dressed in black, with an Elizabethan ruff round a long white throat. Shining chestnut hair contrasted with a complexion of the purest pink and white, while a pair of dewy violet eyes looked shyly up at her. "Good heavens!" thought Kate, "she is the loveliest creature in Brighton at ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... to come off that night. The two young ladies attired themselves with much care, each with a view to effect. Margaret looked particularly to the assumption of a certain dignity, and her costume for the evening had been chosen with that end in view. A ruff, and her grand-mother's rich silk brocade, did give to her tall person all the dignity she ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... of his reflections was displayed in his manner when he returned from the fields. Never in his life had he held such a handful of trumps. His hand needed little playing, and the chances of a cross ruff looked ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... brill'iant re bell'ion un'ion fil'ial dis un'ion sen'ior mill'ion o pin'ion jun'ior pill'ion do min'ion gal'liard pin'ion com mun'ion span'iel trill'ion mut'u al val'iant coll'ier punc til'io bill'iards pon'iard punc til'ious bill'ion ruff'ian ver mil'ion ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... he took a dish, and gave me one spoonful of samp, and bid me take as much of the broth as I would. Then I put some of the hot water to the samp, and drank it up, and my spirit came again. He gave me also a piece of the ruff or ridding of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals; and now may I say with Jonathan, "See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey" (1 Samuel 14.29). Now is my spirit revived again; ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
... Amaryllis cried delightedly. "He is up at the end of the gallery in puffed white satin and a ruff. Of course, you must come and see him; he has ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... the foe, but, with the true instinct of sporting blood, he would take no unfair advantage by stealthy advance on the preoccupied scratcher. He straddled, shook out his glossy ruff, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... rejoined Miss Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff—the real Maccaboy—twice as large, with twice as fierce an action. "I don't know what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband; I s'pose I don't; but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff to stick my head under. I wish I had all the money I ever spent travelling,—and that's twelve ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth, Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine, Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine,— What would we with such skittle-plays at death % Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe, Or to their reeking wit our ears incline, Because all Castaly ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... be affronted by a starch'd Ruff and Beard, a Coward in querpo, a walking Bunch of Garlick, a pickl'd Pilchard! abuse the noble Captain, and bear it off in State, like a Christmas Sweet-heart; these things must not be whilst Nicholas ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... entrance from some point near the front of the church, but this we did not find. The papal guards, in the strangest antique and antic costume that was ever seen,—a party-colored dress, striped with blue, red, and yellow, white and black, with a doublet and ruff, and trunk-breeches, and armed with halberds,—were on duty at the gateways, but suffered us to pass without question. Finally, we reached a large court, where some cardinals' red equipages and other carriages were drawn up, but were still at a loss as to the whereabouts ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in ruff and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had once haunted those legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance of the Baron of Verulam himself, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and the avenue of elms that ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... anything like help in the world that I receive most gratefully, it is the prompt recognition of a need, and unobtrusive aid for it. A short time before the day appointed for us to go to the city, our Clara came down stairs dressed in a beautiful dark shade of blue Foulard silk, with a lace ruff about her throat, fastened with a ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... days, bought his buckler, of gilt leather and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front." Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty, was in them by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios and boots were in good order, stepped forth with some satisfaction. Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard; a decidedly truculent-looking figure. Jostle him in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... opening in the wood, twenty or thirty partridge hens were dancing in a semicircle, in the centre of which, perched upon a rotten log, a beautiful cock partridge drummed. He was standing with his small head thrust forward upon a finely arched neck which was circled by a handsome outstanding black ruff, fully as wide as his body. His extended wings grazed his perch, while his superb ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... back to the Big House which lately he had left in anger; and as he entered the great dining-room he saw once more his coveted picture, the image of the morning, the tall young girl with the brown ruff of hair rolling back from the smooth brow, above the clear-seeing dark eyes. Here again, by miracle, had come his friend, to meet him in the smother of the grimy way of life! Yet he thought the girl looked at him but coldly as he stood wearily apart. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... of?" "Why, Spencer!" said he; "I've read the Monody he wrote on the occasion, and a very pretty thing it is." This led to an explanation (it could be delayed no longer) that the sound Spenser, which, when poetry is talked of, generally excites an image of an old bard in a ruff, and sometimes with it dim notions of Sir P. Sidney and perhaps Lord Burleigh, had raised in my gentleman a quite contrary image of the Honorable William Spencer, who has translated some things from the German very prettily, which are published with Lady Di Beauclerk's designs. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... will be good for her digester, and if I only had one dropped in water," she said, and quick as thought Maude brought her one, while Hannah growled again, "Ole marster 'll raise de ruff, case he put 'em away ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... shorter than the brow, With little ruff starch'd, you know how, With cloak like Paul, no cape I trow, With surplice none; but lately now With hands to thump, no knees to bow: ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow Lake. It is only about 100 yards in circumference. Next the water there is a girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular order a shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and there a bush of the Mountain Ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together form ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... LADY. When I prize A lover's sigh more dear than mine own pleasure. See, the Signora Julia passed again. She is far too pale for so much white, I find. Donna Aurora—ah, how beautiful! That spreading ruff, sprinkled with seeds of gold, Becomes her well. Would you believe it, sir, Folk say her face is twin to ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... made his acquaintance. He was still on rigid duty at his post. He had regained his good looks. His bright, keen face set off by his white ruff and pricked ears made a dog to catch the eye anywhere. But he gave me no second glance, once he found my legs were not those he sought, and in spite of my friendly overtures during the ten months following that he continued his watch. I ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... close at hand. Mr. Kilburn had trained his dog to scour the woods, and the faithful animal ever had his eyes and ears open, and was sniffing the wind if a wolf or bear was about. On this afternoon in August the dog came running in with his hair in a ruff, and growling. ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hair of an exact tow-color, braided up from her forehead in front and from her neck behind. These tails, meeting on the top of her head, were fastened with a small tin comb. Her dress was of checkered homespun, a "very tight fit," and, as she wore no ruff or handkerchief around her neck, she looked as if just prepared for execution. She was evidently awestruck at the sight of visitors, and seemed inclined to take her departure at once; but the boy, not so easily intimidated, would not understand her signs and pinches until ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... stays, corsage, corset, corselet, bodice, girdle &c. (circle) 247; stomacher; petticoat, panties; under waistcoat; jock[for men], athletic supporter, jockstrap. sweater, jersey; cardigan; turtleneck, pullover; sweater vest. neckerchief, neckcloth[obs3]; tie, ruff, collar, cravat, stock, handkerchief, scarf; bib, tucker; boa; cummerbund, rumal[obs3], rabat[obs3]. shoe, pump, boot, slipper, sandal, galoche[obs3], galoshes, patten, clog; sneakers, running shoes, hiking boots; high-low; Blucher boot, wellington boot, Hessian boot, jack boot, top boot; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Peter Ruff and the Double Four Deals with the exploits of a shrewd detective and a mysterious ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the house at Sandsgaard, Martin met Pastor Martens, who was on his way from the town, dressed in cassock and ruff. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... disembowelled corpse is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is a picture you return to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... comes originally from Angora, in Syria. It is much larger than the common cat; its hair is very long, especially about the neck, where it forms a fine ruff, of a silvery whiteness and silky texture, that on the tail is three or four inches long; these cats frequently spread their tails on their backs, as squirrels do. The colour is generally white, but sometimes light brown; they do not catch mice. This beautiful species does not degenerate ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss
... was Sir Henry, seeming equally stern in his court suit and hat, and Dame Markham, in stomacher and farthingale and ruff, with quite a look of alarm on their countenances, which was reflected from that of another of the old Markhams—all appearing either angry or startled at such a freak being played in ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... toward the social summits he perhaps never knew so much, but he had not studied their humbler sisters in vain, and beneath all the width of ruff and opulence of silk, he knew well enough what primal feelings lurked, what affections, what jealousies, what caprices of the eternal feminine. As for the mere externals of their behaviour, he had abundant opportunities ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... was no less magnificent. She wore a dress, with a train, of silver brocade covered with gold bees; her shoulders were bare, but on her arms were tight sleeves embroidered with gold, the upper part adorned, with diamonds, and fastened to them was a lace ruff worked with gold which rose behind half up her head. The tight-fitting dress had no waist, after the fashion of the time, but she wore a gold ribbon as a girdle, set with thirty-nine pink gems. Her bracelets, ear-rings, and necklace were formed of precious ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... bauble sceptre-like in his hand, muffling his head with a hood of marten skins, each side whereof had the resemblance of an ape's face sprucified up with ears of pasted paper, and having about his neck a bucked ruff, raised, furrowed, and ridged with pointing sticks of the shape and fashion of small organ pipes, he first with all the force of his lungs coughed two or three times, and then with an audible voice pronounced this following sentence: The court declareth that the porter who ate his bread ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... woman," he continued, pointing to Madge, "this young woman, daughter of the Roman harlot, no doubt, she also is arrayed in silks, taffetas, and fine cloth. Look ye, friends, upon this abominable collar of Satan; this ruff of fine linen, all smeared in the devil's own liquor, starch. Her vanity is an offence in the nostrils of ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... flowers in Tonto's wreath, and tied red tissue-paper streamers to the goat's horns. They put a green ruff around the cat's neck, and a red one on the dog; but the dog ran at once to the river and waded in and got it all wet, and the color ran out and dyed his coat, and the ruff fell off, before they were even ...
— The Mexican Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Swiss guards on one side and the French guards on the other, form a line as far as it can reach.[2112] The Cent Suisses march ahead of the horsemen in the costume of the sixteenth century, wearing the halberd, ruff, plumed hat, and the ample parti-colored striped doublet; alongside of these are the provost-guard with scarlet facings and gold frogs, and companies of yeomanry bristling with gold and silver. The officers of the various ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Shoe and Knee Buckles Fluke and Tongs, ruff and smooth Files, Bone Buckle Brushes, Freezing Punches, Binding Wire, Steel Top Thimbles, Cypher and Brilliant Button Stones, Cypher and Brilliant Ring Stones, Ring Sparks, Motto Ring Stones, Amethysts, Garnetts, Brilliant and Cypher ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... at the bottom of the paper for kisses. And then she dried her tears, laughed, and dressed him up as a favorite of Henri III by putting her toque on his head and her white cape with its collar turned up like a ruff ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... under his hand, whereupon Colonel Carr and Strachan coming to Ross, after the defeat of Balvenny, summoned the garrison to come forth, but all in vain; for they obstinately defended the house against the besiegers until, on a certain day, a cousin of Carr's advancing in the ruff of his pride, with his cocked carbine in his hand, to the very gates of the castle, bantering and threatening those within to give up the castle under all highest pain and danger, he was shot from ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the chariot had already got out of it, and was slowly coming towards them, supporting herself on a black crutch-handled staff. As she drew nearer they could see that she was a woman of great age. She wore a large ruff, a laced stomacher, wide quilted petticoats, and a pointed hat with a broad brim. Her expression was severe, but not unkindly, while she evidently considered herself ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... he found Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday. His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of his ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and gave himself up to the captain of one of our ships of the line, a seventy-four called the Bellerophon. I remember that owing to that event she was very commonly known amongst us as the "Billy Ruff'un," and we used to aggravate the people not a little on our march into the city, by singing, "God save Buonaparte, who has fled and given himself up to the Billy Ruff'uns," in opposition to their cry of "God save the king;" thousands ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... four-sided pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ankles ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... their beauty all at once. What contour there was in the turn of arm and shoulder under the close-fitting purple cloth! He was artistically thankful that there was no other trimming of the straight bodice than the line of buttons that descended from the full white ruff of swansdown at her throat, to her delicate, trim waist. Her unconscious stateliness of girlish form, and the conscious shyness of her manner, were the loveliest inconsistency in ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... full leaf. The proportions of this room are excellent, and everything but the ceiling, which is too plain. The busts of Bacon and Newton excellent; but that of Bacon looks more like a courtier than a philosopher: his ruff is elegantly plaited in white marble. By Cipriani's painted window, with its glorious anachronisms, we were much amused; and I regret that it is not recorded in Irish Bulls. It represents the presentation of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... two persons used to wear a sort of ruff round the neck, composed of the longest white hair of the deerskin, hanging down over the bosom in a manner very becoming to young people. It seemed to afford so little additional warmth to persons already well clothed, that ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... we took a liking for his very picter that hangs in what used to be, anciently, afore our ten poor gentlemen commuted for an annual stipend in money, our great Dinner Hall.—A sedate gentleman in a peaked beard, with a ruff round his neck, and a scroll below him, in old English letters, 'Lord! keep my memory green!' You know all about him, ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... skilful physiognomist would at a single glance have detected the sensible woman in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm, judicious step. Even her very garments seemed to partake of the prevailing character of their mistress. Her ruff always looked more sensible than any other body's; her shawl sat most sensibly on her shoulders; her walking-shoes were acknowledged to be very sensible, and she drew on her gloves with an air of sense, as ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... last fifty miles going and coming through a most monstrous thicke wood, for so is most part of the island; and lodging myself in Indian townes.' Poor Sir Robert—'larding the lean earth as he stalked along'—in ruff and trunk hose, possibly too in burning steel breastplate, most probably along the old Indian path from San Fernando past Savannah Grande, and down the Ortoire to Mayaro on the east coast. How hot he must have been. How often, we will hope, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... front of which (in bas-relief) are the four children of the deceased in a kneeling posture; and, lastly, on the top of the tomb, the kneeling figures of Trehearne and his wife in the picturesque costume and ruff collars of the age. The principal figures are holding a tablet between them inscribed with a eulogistic epitaph in English, the moral of which is that if Trehearne's royal master could have retained his services, his heavenward progress would ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... are on their benches; the chapel is lighted, and Founder's Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here, and how the doctor—not ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... also another cadis, called by some a Straw-worm, and by some a Ruff-coat, whose house, or case, is made of little pieces of bents, and rushes, and straws, and water-weeds, and I know not what; which are so knit together with condensed slime, that they stick about her husk or case, not unlike the bristles of a ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... favourite, one admitted to his privacy (no uncommon word in Jeremy Taylor and Fuller), has quite disappeared; so too has 'quirpo' (cuerpo), the name given to a jacket fitting close to the body; 'quellio' (cuello), a ruff or neck-collar; and 'matachin', the title of a sword-dance; these are all frequent in our early dramatists; and 'flota' was the constant name of the treasure-fleet from the Indies. 'Intermess' is employed by Evelyn, and is the Spanish 'entremes', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the sea-fern tribe of branching polypidoms, and last, but not least, at the glass sponges; first at the Euplectella, or Venus's flower-basket, which lives embedded in the mud of the seas of the Philippines, supported by a glass frill "standing up round it like an Elizabethan ruff." Twenty years ago there was but one specimen in Europe: now you may buy one for a pound in any curiosity shop. I advise you to do so, and to keep - as I have seen done - under a glass case, as a delight to ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... And, ruff a-bristle and teeth bared, the dog flew at the beach comber. The latter had followed his throw by leaping to his feet. But, as he rose, the collie was at him. For an instant, the furry whirlwind was snarling murderously at his throat, and the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to lose, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should hear it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... girls with linked arms dancing in lax and cheerful oblivion, one of them quite drunk. Near them stood a cart with a man, a woman, and a monkey in it. The superior animals were clothed in red, white, and blue, and the monkey was wearing a Union Jack for a ruff. The ape was humping himself on the tail-board, and from his expression he might have been wondering how long all this would last. His gay companions were rosily chanting that if they caught some one bending it would be of no advantage to him. The ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... Valladolid, A man of mark, to know next time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, 10 Scenting the world, looking it full in face, An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads nowhither; now, they breathed ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... to set down some particulars of the career of Mr. Payne. John Payne was born in 1842 of a Devonshire family, descended from that breezy old sea-dog, Sir John Hawkins. Mr. Payne, indeed, resembles Hawkins in appearance. He is an Elizabethan transferred bodily into the 19th and 20th centuries, his ruff lost in transit. Yet he not infrequently has a ruff even—a live one, for it is no uncommon event to see his favourite Angora leap on to his shoulders and coil himself half round his master's neck, looking not unlike a lady's boa—and its name, Parthenopaeus, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... some necessary shopping. When I got back my mother was gone. She had received a bogus note, written I presume by Crabtree, asking her to come to me at once, as I had been taken sick in one of the stores. I immediately hired a detective, Mr. Ruff here, and we tracked ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... think of them, Dekko old fellow?" She took him on her wrist, at which he spread his tail, rattled his wings, and puffed his ruff, whereupon the children fled, yelling. "Come now, say something nice to the poor little things. You've frightened them. Ask them if ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... to talk of Ruff, the former black cat, which had been a great favourite of hers, and which she had been nursing when he was dying. "Oh, poor thing, when he was ill, he would creep into dark corners, so I put him in his basket into the cupboard, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... toilet be eminently simple, for you will find the time coming when to button a cuff or arrange a ruff will be a matter of absolute despair. You lie disconsolate in your berth, only desiring to be let alone to die; and then, if you are told, as you always are, that "you mustn't give way," that "you must rouse yourself" and come on deck, you will appreciate the value of simple ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... presented kneeling, with up-lifted hands, and half a dozen jolter-headed crop-eared boys behind him, ranged gradatim, or step-fashion according to age and size, all in the same posture—facing his pious dame, with a ruff about her neck, and as many whey-faced girls all kneeling behind her: an altar between them, and an open book upon it: over their heads semiluminary rays darting from gilded clouds, surrounding an achievement- motto, IN COELO SALUS—or QUIES—perhaps, if they have ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... reached as far as the hips, and was always much ornamented; they carried a smooth or ribbed cap on one side of the head, and a small upright collar adorned the coat. This collar was replaced, after the first half of the sixteenth century, by the high, starched ruff, which was kept out by wires; ladies wore it still larger, when it had somewhat the appearance of an open fan at ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... rather earlier date than would be allowed by this theory. The figures of Margaret and her two lords are very fine and are interesting examples of fifteenth century costume. As such they may be contrasted with the effigy of Lady Thornhurst, who exhibits all the beauty of an Elizabethan ruff. Sir Thomas Thornhurst, whose monument is hard by, was killed in the ill-fated expedition to the Isle of Rhe. In the corner of the chapel is the bust of Sir George Rooke, Vice-Admiral, who led the assault on Gibraltar by which it was first captured. And the title of "Warrior's" Chapel ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... this astonishing rise, development, and spread of the chrysanthemum? As a fashion it is not so extraordinary as the hoop-skirt, or as the neck ruff, which is again rising as a background to the lovely head. But the remarkable thing about it is that heretofore in all nations and times, and in all changes of fashion in dress, the rose has held its own as the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... in a gown of sapphire velvet, handsomely laced in gold across the stomacher, and surmounted at the neck, where it was cut low and square, by the starched band of fine linen which in France was already replacing the more elaborate ruff. On her head, over a linen coif, she wore a tall-crowned grey beaver, swathed with a scarf ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... or rooms in Square form about 30 feet each room opening into a passage which is quit through the house those passages are about 4 feet in width and formed of Wide boads Set on end in the ground and reaching to the Ruff which Serves also as divisions to the rooms. The ground plot is in this form 1 1 1 1 is the passages. 2 2 &c. is the apartments about 30 feet square. this house is built of bark of the White Cedar Supported on long Stiff poles ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... robust, and in the full vigor of life. His age might be anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five, for while his eye possessed the fire of youth, there were streaks of gray in his long hair and beard. His ruffled shirt of well-worn linen was met at the neck by a modest ruff faded and torn like the shirt, and both sadly in need of washing. On his head he wore a round black cap which, if it ever had a peak, had lost it. The trousers of dark stuff came just below the knee, Puritan fashion, and were ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... congregation, including their pastor, wore the costume of the middle ages; it was a most curious and interesting sight. I am never a good hand at describing the details of dress, but I know my impression was that the pastor—wearing a ruff, I think, or something like it—might just have walked out of a picture, such as one knows so well of the old Puritans in Cromwell's time. The dress of the peasants, though unlike the English fashion of any period, had an old-world look. The married women wore ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... the Cinque-cento Renaissance; and again in Adams' "Eighteenth Century Decorations," it became an accepted pattern, called "the shell," losing its original motive, and descending to fill up the panels of tea-caddies and surround keyholes. When thus reduced to the appearance of a little ruff, it needs some thought to recognize it, and give it credit for its ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... of the time when my beautiful hair was the envy of the whole range; for I was a Silk-Coat, you know—a rare thing in Bulls, to be sure. But I'm not that now; when I look in the lake waters and see only this miserable ruff about my neck, and scant tuft on my tail, I feel sad—feel ashamed. The tongue of the lake tells me all that, Brother, so say no more ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... according to his usual custom, in very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved, loosely shaped hat of dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown,—such as had been worn by the Beggars in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck, from which also depended one of the Beggars' medals, with the motto, 'Fideles au roy jusqu'a la besace,' while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide slashed underclothes completed ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... cheeks were brilliantly rosy, and whose black eyes were so vividly lustrous, that one might have fancied the delicate cap-border near them, in danger from their fire. Over her full-formed bust, she wore a clear, and stiffly-starched muslin habit-shirt of purest white, a beautiful lace-edged ruff around her throat, over her ample shoulders was thrown a fawn-coloured shawl, and she wore also, a silver gray gown of the material called Norwich crape, with an apron rivalling in whiteness cap, habit-shirt, and ruff. We are particular ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... but she held out, the same vain, obstinate and capricious woman, for another year. Then she danced before her Court on a state occasion—and cut, I should think, a mighty ridiculous figure, doing so in an immense ruff, stomacher and wig, at seventy years old. For another year still, she held out, but, without any more dancing, and as a moody, sorrowful, broken creature. At last, on the tenth of March, one thousand six hundred and three, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Dissimulation art sent, And bring'st a gown of glosing, lin'd with lust, A vardingale[258] of vain boast and fan of flattery, A ruff of riot and a cap of pride; And Double-dealing is thy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... drummed again on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would but come to his drumming ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Burgomaster, or something with a ruff," and he kicked an army blanket into a corner as he spoke. "There's the ruff hanging on that pair of foils, Waller sent it over." Then his merry eyes fell on Jack's sprawled-out figure, his feet almost ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thought'st me safe i' th' Land o' Nod, but one hath ears to hear there as elsewhere." Then she reaches out one hand and plays with Marian's ruff. "Go to, nurse," says she. "Dost thou not see I am even i' th' same case with thyself? I too would gossip a little. Come, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... upon those names "Sir J. R-yn-lds, in a domino; Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr. G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses," I had, so to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, YOU here, my dear Sir Joshua? Ah, what an honor and privilege it is to see you! This is Mr. Goldsmith? And very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you! O Doctor! what a pleasure I had and have in reading the Animated Nature. How DID you learn the secret of writing the decasyllable line, and whence that sweet wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song? ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is the first. An antique Hall (Like Chanticlere) with panelled wall. A boy, or rather lad. A girl, Laughing with all her rows of pearl Before a portrait in a ruff. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the table, and out went the light. For an instant the room was black. Then a white ray flickered on the wall, as if thrown through the window by a searchlight. Out of its glimmer stepped a man, with a long, laughing face and a pointed beard. Round his neck was a high ruff. He wore a doublet of velvet, and shining silk hose. In his hand was a silver goblet, frothing over the top with champagne. "He drinks best who drinks last!" cried he in French, and flung the goblet at the face of him who named the bottle. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and "banging," as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called. Let us see the Madonna brow once more. The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers: the opera is filled with Copley's portraits. The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers. Every new fashion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... There is a large ambulatory before it supported by columns, and a stone staircase leads to the hall and court-rooms. The ambulatory contains the recumbent figure of Richard Fishborne, Mercer, dressed in a fur gown and ruff. He was a great benefactor to the Company, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... had halted. Her glance was troubled, her manner ill at ease. To herself she kept repeating: "Did I tell Hudson to be here at a quarter to eleven, or a quarter past? Will she get the telephone message to bring the ruff? Without the ruff it would be absurd to be photographed. Without her ruff Mary Queen of Scots would ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... of woman's (and man's) neck is lost in a ruff, her sweeping locks, instead of parted on her brow, entwined with pearls or other gems to frame her face and make long lines down the length of her robe, are huddled under grotesque head-dresses, monstrous creations, rising and spreading until ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... other great portraits—in, for instance, the pictures of Rembrandt, Vandyck, and Frans Hals, especially where a face is relieved by the addition of a hand and the white of a ruff. Somewhere in that warm expanse of the face there can be found a pinhead of color, brighter and more dominating than any other brush touch on the canvas. It may be the high egg-light in the forehead, or the click on the tip of the nose, or a fold ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... thought were his protection—were they not, also, a part of the Snare? His culture and his artistry, his visions and his exaltations—what had they been but a lure for the female? The iris of the burnished dove, the ruff about the grouse's neck, the gold and purple of the butterfly's wing! Even his genius, his miraculous, ineffable genius—that had been the plume of the partridge, the crowning glory before which his ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... mapped out to start. Call 'em 'The Trouble-hunter Twins, Ruff and Reddy.' If they catch on, the artist and me can keep 'em goin' ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... camp was made at a place called the Island of the Standing Stone, on the shore of a shallow bay. The weather was fine. The mountains of the mainland were unclouded, excepting one, which had a horizontal ruff of dull slate color, but its icy summit covered with fresh snow towered above the cloud, flushed like its neighbors in the alpenglow. All the large islands in sight were densely forested, while many small rock islets ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... seated. His appearance was that of an elderly hidalgo, dressed in mourning, with mustaches of iron-gray carefully waxed and twisted around a pair of lantern-jaws. The monstrous hat and prodigious feather, the enormous ruff and exaggerated trunk-hose, contrasted with a frame shrivelled and wizened, all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the lookout for the marvellous, gave him a certain advantage over the ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... usual with him, was elegant, if not rich.[77] Oldys describes it, but mentions, that "he had a wrought nightcap under his hat;" this we have otherwise disposed of; he wore a ruff-band, a black wrought velvet night-gown over a hare-coloured satin doublet, and a black wrought waistcoat; black cut taffety ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Luebeck, some company appearing on the road, Whitelocke's lacqueys alighted out of their waggons, and Whitelocke was met upon the way by an ancient person of a good portly carriage, with a great white beard, and a greater ruff. He was attended with four coaches; the first had six good horses in it, and was handsome, but not rich. The gentleman, being alighted, and then Whitelocke also, he came and saluted Whitelocke, and spake to him in the ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... midst the depth of woods Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears A sable ruff around his mottled neck; Partridge they call him by our northern streams, And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat 'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes At first, then fast and faster, till at length They passed into a murmur ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... no risk. I'll warrant none here will recognise you. You make a brave Yeoman, sir! So— this ruff is too high; so— and the sword should hang thus. Here is your halbert, sir; carry it thus. The Yeomen come. Now, remember, you are my ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... and owl, curlew and crested hern, Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff, Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough, Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay, Built, those far ages gone, in this year's way. And the first man who walked the cliffs of Rame, As I this year, looked down and saw the same Blotches ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... square of black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white smudge under the spot. There are members of this family—Aunt Eleanour, for instance—who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in armour in the oak room, which I don't believe is a portrait at all; but Aunt Henrietta swears it is, and of the ghost, too—as he was before he died, of course. And very interesting details both my aunts are ready ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely. "Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... was a tall, pale lady, 'about forty, but looking thirty-five,' with hair drawn back from the brows, standing beside a high chair, dressed in a wide farthingale of stiff grey brocade, without a ruff. The costume corresponds well (as we found) with that of 1546, and I said, 'I suppose it is Mariotte Ogilvy'—to whom Miss Angus's historical knowledge (and perhaps that of the general public) did not extend. Mariotte was the Cardinal's lady-love, and was in the ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... understand, once and for all," he said, "that I will not be made love to, and that I can treat you only as a working; companion. My name will be Peter Ruff, and yours Miss Brown. You will have to dress like a secretary, and behave like one. Sometimes there will be plenty of work for you, and sometimes there will be none at all. Sometimes you will be bored to death, and sometimes there will be excitement. I do not wish to make you vain, but I may add, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... champion trotted up on to the bridge, and paused again, the long hair about his neck rising like a ruff, and a strange glint in his eyes; and the holder of the bridge never moved. Red and Gray stood thus, face to face: the one gay yet resolute, the other motionless, his great head slowly sinking between his ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... foreign beard, and the aquiline features lent an added touch of distinction. One was reminded of those dangerously mild and rather sad faces of Spanish soldiers which look at one from Velasquez's canvases. This man might wear a ruff and a velvet doublet, or, better yet, a coat of mail, she reflected, instead of the well-cut but rather worn ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device: One had the form of a parrot's head, with a ruff round the neck; and was ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the bench and sat down at once at my desk. Not until then, when I had partly recovered from my fright, did I notice that our teacher had on his handsome blue coat, his plaited ruff, and the black embroidered breeches, which he wore on days of inspection or of distribution of prizes. Moreover, there was something extraordinary, something solemn about the whole class. But what surprised me most was to see at the back of the room, on the benches which were usually empty, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... in a town, Before them everything went down; Some tore a ruff, and some a gown, 'Gainst one another justling; They flew about like chaff i' th' wind; For haste some left their masks behind; Some could not stay their gloves to find; ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the creature with a tail as big as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little housemaid; I remember and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... good deal of human wickedness. In the department of dress, she had a name in her own sex and age as illustrious as that of Brummel among dandies in the beginning of this century. As he was the inventor of the starched cravat, she was his precursor in the invention of the starched ruff, or, as it is generally said, of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... in the manner of a corselet with wide, up-and-down stripes, a stiff ruff and buttons of topaz. There is a narrow frilled stripe on the edge of the collar, and also on the close-fitting sleeves. The trunks are short, wide-slashed, and of a dead-green color with pale purple in the slashes. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... to posterity, I will give a description of my dress; and I shall also feel greatly obliged, if at the same time they will select the best-looking portrait of me for the likeness: a scarlet tunic, embroidered with gold-thread; a purple satin sash, with a deep gold fringe; a ruff a la Elizabeth; white satin pantaloons; shoes with crimson rosettes; black velvet hat and feathers. My hair, not naturally curling, had been put in graceful papillote the preceding evening. As I write in the reign of Queen VICTORIA, the reader will readily ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various |
