"Sniff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... limbs that felt like lead I headed a sort of procession towards that distant fragment of "sea-front." Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe-stricken little girls with spades, and later a lean little boy, with a penetrating sniff, appeared. He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle, and he accompanied us at a distance of about a hundred yards on our right flank, and then I suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted his bicycle and rode off over the level sands in the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... friend, your nose is ready; you sniff, Asking for that expected walk, (Your nostrils full of the happy ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... ceased from speech. With welcome relief on his face, he removed the lei hala from his neck, and, with a sniff and a sigh, tossed it into concealment in the thick lantana by the side of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... with dulling one of the child's senses, these thugs of the body-politic proceed to throttle two others—smell and taste. Obviously the only way of smelling anything is to sniff its odor into your nose. And if this be more or less, or completely, blocked up, and its delicate mucous membranes coated with a thick, ropy discharge, you will not be able to distinguish anything but the crudest and rankest of odors. But what has ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most valuable prescription—what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical? 'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper. Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... sniff. He thought it was over. But it wasn't over. "If you ask me, I call it a funny letter. You say your Christian name, but it isn't your Christian name—Marko! And then saying, 'How ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... anxious to let Billy live a little more on shore than he had hitherto done. "D'ye see, Abel," he observed to his chum, "it's time, to my mind, that he should begin to get his ribs lined with true honest English beef, and sniff up some of the old country's fresh sharp air, and learn to slide and play snowballs, which he can't do out in these hot outlandish parts; for if he don't, he'll not be growing into the stout chap we wants him to be. You mind when we was little, how we used to tumble ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... One sniff at the neck of the bottle was enough to satisfy Christy, who was a practical temperance man of the very strictest kind, and he had never drank a glass of anything intoxicating in all his life. The bottle contained "apple-jack," or apple-brandy, the vilest fluid that ever passed a tippler's gullet. ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... dogs turned to the left and toward the bear. Suddenly a sniff of the animal came down the wind. Immediately the dogs sprang forward in their traces, and with short, sharp yelps were in wild, unrestrained pursuit. The komatik swayed from side to side, now on one runner, now on the other with every ice ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... walking, and I might have stayed at Billy Jones's if I had not been crazy to get rid of my dirt-infected clothes. The worst reek had gone from them, but even out in the open air they smelt. I saw Billy Jones wrinkle up his nose to sniff innocently while he talked to me, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... up again and again; they would draw back so as to avoid those stinging strokes, sniff, growl and push upward, more eager than ever to clutch the poor fellow, who was compressing himself between the limb and the trunk, and raining his blows with ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... morning, listening to her clatter about getting married quick, and walls of Troy, and ham and eggs. She nearly prated the top of my head off, and did not kiss me good-night till I'd told her for the seventeenth time that there was no need to worry about you. Seventeen times"—a vigorous sniff and a merry twinkle—"I ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... she reached out her chubby hand and plucked a cluster of the wild fruit. They were about the size of buckshot, and when her sound teeth shut down on them, the juice was so sour that she shut both eyes and felt a twinge at the crown of her head as though she had taken a sniff of the spirits ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... double strawberry roll off the top of my heap, and a cat darted at it to give it a sniff; but old Brownsmith picked it up and laid it on the top of a post ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... still, though not so pleased. In the wardrobe, when she went to put away her 'bonnet', she found a tiara and several brooches, and the rest of the jewellery turned up in various parts of the room during the next half-hour. The children looked more and more uncomfortable, and now Jane began to sniff. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... came down the room and set the dishes on the table. He gave a sort of supercilious sniff when Micky asked for a saucer of milk for the cat. He looked at Charlie with scorn—Charlie, curled up on the girl's lap now and ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the mournful butler had handed him with a look as sceptical as his own, and had rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff. He looked baffled and hungry, and Archer reflected that he would probably finish his meal on ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... mountains, above the range of running water, and consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had been always accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden or shower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see them sniff suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses and try to take a bite out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Finding it liquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling, snorting and showing other evidences of fright. When they became convinced ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Mrs. Roberts, with a sniff of disgust; and she stood surveying her niece in silence for a minute or two. Then smothering her feelings a little, she asked her in a quieter voice, "And so, Helen, you are really going to fling aside the life opportunity that ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... "life will do that hard enough. Turn your back on it all, look at the beautiful things, leave a thief to catch a thief, and the dead to bury the dead. Don't sniff at the evil thing; go and get a breath ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to sniff disagreeable, and Meyers grunts disapprovin'; but Alvin had 'em goin' for all that. You could tell by the satisfied way the grocer lights up a cigar, and the soothed actions of Fosdick. As the others drops in one ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... I've been a soldier and a journalist in a country where they only wash with water. In the summer we have whisky iced, in the winter we have it hot; an antidote for both heat and cold. Ah, Colonel, if you only might sniff ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Mrs. MacCall," Aunt Sarah rejoined from her end of the table, and with a scornful sniff. "But I want to know whose dirt I'm eating. That Sammy Pinkney is nothing but a ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... straight path which led to the pretty arbor were Scotch roses, red and white. The smell of these roses in the summer was quite enough to ravish you. Iris in particular used to sniff at them and sniff at them until she felt nearly ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... "There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em. I get out on th' moor many a day when it's rainin' an' I lie under a bush an' listen to th' soft swish o' drops on th' heather an' I just sniff an' sniff. My nose end fair quivers like ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Minster and young Griscom should be hanged side by side on twin gallows. In fact, this woman of peace, who had seen only peace, argued constantly for a creed of illimitable ferocity. She was invulnerable on these questions, because eventually she overrode all opponents with a sniff. This sniff was an active force. It was to her antagonists like a bang over the head, and none was known to recover from this expression of exalted contempt. It left them windless and conquered. They never again came forward ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... returning to Baghdad met Pestilence Hasan and his followers, to whom said he, "Hath the Caliph asked after me?"; and he replied, "No, nor hast thou come to his thought." So he resumed his service about the Caliph's person and set himself to sniff about for news of Ala al-Din's case, till one day he heard the Caliph say to the Watir, "See, O Ja'afar, how Ala al-Din dealt with me!" Replied the Minister, "O Commander of the Faithful, thou hast requited him with hanging and hath he not met with his reward?" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... a sniff of the bone of contention, was not so easy in his mind. First quarter of the moon it might be, but the bone was not in its first quarter. "I could walk home with the boy," he suggested, "and get something at a chemist's ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the House of Lords to a mere cypher, and be as certainly followed by all the horrors of a revolution, and all the evils of a corrupt democracy. How easy is it to find politicians ever ready to sniff the incense of popularity at the plausible shrine of a descending franchise!—how difficult to find those who, while granting what is just and prudent, have the wisdom to plan, and the courage to dare, measures to arrest a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... marryin'," went on Mrs. Scattergood, referring to 'Rill and Hopewell, "was for all the worl' like Famine weddin' with Poverty. And a very purty weddin' that allus is," she added with a sniff. "Neither of 'em ain't got nothin', nor never will have—'ceptin' that Hopewell's got an encumbrance in the shape ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Mas'r Harry," cried Tom cheerily; and he gave a long sniff as if to get some of the familiar old smell into ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Germans worse than anything else, it was those horrid German boots. The boys said they were a hoodoo and that if I continued to wear them Fritz would get me sure. However that may be, I did not cease to have close calls. The very next day I got a small sniff of chlorination gas. It happened while I was fixing communication lines. I did not get enough to hurt me, but it made me deathly sick. I was unable to do much for a couple of days, and was taken to headquarters, where ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... twisted mouth contracted further as she gave a dry little sniff. "She'd probably fall in love with Ben, and he wouldn't give a snap for her, so she'd ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... being without food," declared the horse, with a sniff at the rebuke of his young master; "and just at present no one can tell whether there are any oats in this queer country or not. If there are, they are liable to be ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... don't," returned Miss Tame, with a plaintive cadence, taking a sniff from the camphor-bottle on the way. "However, I don't begrutch him to her,—I don't know as I do. It will make her a good hum, though, if she concludes to ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... a contemptuous, incredulous sniff. Carew looked up—his lips white, a fierce red spot in each cheek. He was talking to himself. "By the whistle of the Lord High Admiral!" he said—but there he stopped and held his breath. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... brain smell, and any other animal, happening to pass by the spot, within a certain time (in favourable weather), will at once be attracted by the smell, and be able to interpret it. That is the reason one so often sees an animal suddenly stop at a spot and sniff it—it is reading some message left there by some other animal. All this, and more, Kelson explained to his audience, who were exceedingly interested, many of them getting up to ask him questions. He also reported to ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... one of these children of the bush stalking a kangaroo. The man made not the slightest noise in walking, and he would stealthily follow the kangaroo's track for miles (the tracks were absolutely invisible to the uninitiated). Should at length the kangaroo sniff a tainted wind, or be startled by an incautious movement, his pursuer would suddenly become as rigid as a bronze figure, and he could remain in this position for hours. Finally, when within thirty or forty yards of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... said the visitor with an impatient sniff, as he took off his cap and slouched to a chair on the opposite side of the fire. "Your poy ish badder dan any oder poy; mine Otto is lazy, and if he doesn't pring pack dot horse I vill pounds him till he ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the audience, at the sound of the name, there was an audible sniff which was immediately drowned by loud hand-clapping on the part of the Riverbeds. But Colonel Butler was not yet quite through. Avoiding any ominous look which might have been aimed at him by his ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... and sticks come out of the street of houses and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him. They advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever and again the whole cordon would halt and sniff ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the 'warriors'!" she heard her cry in a perfectly friendly voice. "You sniff hard and you'll smell ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... outside to sniff the air, and stood upright. A curious impression that something was astir in the Camp came over me, and when I glanced across at Sangree's tent, some twenty feet away, I saw that it was moving. He too, then, was awake and restless, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... woman is as good as another, madame; and if I don't sniff the pestilence out of a scent-bottle, nor daub ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... into the sand. For a while he lay motionless, then began muttering to himself, folded his little arms, laid his head down upon them, and might have been asleep, but for the muttering sound that from time to time proceeded from him. A curious old ewe came to sniff at him; but it was long before he raised his head. When he did, he looked at the far-off hills with ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... belt of solid silver, and in front she wore a great bunch of cabbage-roses. The cabbage-rose has a scent which, when once it assails the nostrils, can never afterward be forgotten. Miss Sherrard, in spite of herself, gave a little sniff. ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... to be thought of, and then what does the dame but sniff the air and protest that I had better take heed, for there may not be so many who would choose a spoilt, misruled maid like mine. There's the work of yonder Sarum woman. I tell thee, Tib, never was bull in the ring ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... door and asking the woman who lived behind it what she had given the family for dinner. This, I was instructed on my first round by the Frau Inspector, is the proper thing to ask; and if you can follow it up by an examination of the contents of the saucepan, and a gentle sniff indicative of your appreciation of their savouriness, so much the better. I was diffident at first about this, but the gratification on their faces at the interest displayed is so unmistakable that I ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... ticket, Stalky? You pawned it? You unmitigated beast! Why, last month you and Beetle sold mine! 'Never got a sniff of any ticket." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... With their fore paws they scraped up the soil—which was soft and easily worked—into sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins and carry up the slope to be dumped upon the grass at the side. Every minute one or the other would stop, lift his brown head over the edge, peer about, and sniff, and listen, then fall to work again furiously, as if the whole future and fortune of the pond were hanging upon his toil. After a half-hour's labour the canal was lengthened very perceptibly—fully six or eight inches—and as if by common consent the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that your account was overdrawn, and would I be such a dear as to set it right? No? You don't? I could have sworn you did n't. Well, I do—to my consternation. And it is my duty to caution you that the estate won't stand it—to call that an estate," he divagated, with a kind of despairing sniff, "which is already, by the extravagances of your ancestors, shrunken to scarcely more than three acres and a cow. You 're wanting money? What do you do with your money? What secret profligacy must a man ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... they's Rebs—still holdin' out. They hit an' run, raidin' ranches an' mines; they held up a coach a while back. An' so far they've ridden rings round th' cap'n. Now he thinks as how any Reb blowin' in town could be one of 'em, comin' to sniff out some good pickin's. So anyone as can't explain hisself proper to th' cap'n gits locked up out at camp ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... yellow, in their saddles. They draw lots to see which shall have the inside, then go down the track a little distance. The horses understand what they are to do just as well as we who stake our money. They sniff the air, step lightly, then break into a run, and everybody is on tiptoe. In a moment they are down to the first turn, and come in full view. There are four, perhaps, neck and neck. You have staked, say, on yellow. He loses half a length, and your heart goes down: ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... with something he had to sniff for purposes of identity, unearthed a number of brushes and defiantly polished a palette with a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... lighted through the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable as I went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below into the old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that I walked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I took downward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of coming upon some grewsome thing. However, the air was sweet enough—the slide of the hatch being closed, but the doors open and the cabin well ventilated—and when I got to the foot of the stair I saw nothing ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... work to rights. I'm all of a tremble about it, I tell yew, for it means so much to me. There; my work's jest about done, and I'm going to run for the shore out of the way. I don't want the Portygee to get so much as a sniff of me." ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... The imprudent child could not forbear to glance at me; but I, seeing the dragon's watchful eye upon me, remained absolutely irresponsive. Nay, to throw Miss Dibbs off the scent, I fixed my eyes on my neighbor with assumed preoccupation. Flushing painfully, Mary hurried out, and I heard Miss Dibbs sniff again. I chuckled over her obvious disapproval of my neighbor and myself. The excellent woman evidently thought us no better than we ought to be! But I felt that I should go mad if I could not speak ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... new coins being pesos, medio-pesos, pesetas, media-pesetas, nickels, and copper cents. There was also a copped half-cent, but neither Congress nor Mr. Conant read the Filipino aright. In two years we had taught him to sniff at any value less than a cent. The new system is held at a ratio of two to one by the Government's redeeming it in the Philippine treasury at a ratio of two pesos Conant to one dollar U.S. The importation of "Mex" is no longer permitted, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed, poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds, into and out of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at length within sniff of the sea. And now, behold the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine valley until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... spruce tree, it seemed he had in mind a definite goal; yet he had not gone far when his movements took on the aimlessness characteristic of most of a porcupine's wanderings. Here and there he paused to browse upon a young willow shoot or to sniff inquiringly at the base of some great tree. Once he turned sharply aside to poke an inquisitive nose into a prostrate, hollow log, where a meal of fat white grubs rewarded ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... Lovers of change ye are, fastidious sprites. Look, as in some boor's yard a sweet-breath'd cow, Whose manger is stuff'd full of good fresh hay, Snuffs at it daintily, and stoops her head To chew the straw, her litter, at her feet— So ye grow squeamish, Gods, and sniff at Heaven!" She spake; but Hermod answer'd her and said:— "Thok, not for gibes we come, we come for tears. Balder is dead, and Hela holds her prey, But will restore, if all things give him tears. Begrudge not thine! to all was Balder dear." Then, with a louder laugh, the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... close to the kitten. Formerly it had been a never-failing excitement, but now, to Philippa's surprise and vexation, Blanche sat perfectly unmoved before it, and did not lift a paw. Perhaps during her short visit to the stable she had become acquainted with real mice, for after giving one slight sniff at the imitation one, she rose and walked away with a high ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... resultant deep slumbers) would bow in her turn in as stately a manner as her bulk permitted, and with a frigidity so pronounced that in any one less skilled in shades of deportment it would have resembled with a singular completeness a sniff of scorn. Her frigidity was perfectly justified. Was she not a hochgeboren, a member of an ancient house, of luminous pedigree as far back as one could possibly see? And was he not the son of an obscure Westphalian farmer, a person ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... half-a-dozen of them fixed in their places, a sound reaches their ears which causes them suddenly to desist; for all three recognise it as coming from the throat of a jaguar! Not a loud roar, or scream, such as they heard when that lying dead first made its presence known, but a sort of sniff or snort, as when it was struggling, half-choked by the ponchos. Soon, however, as they stand listening, the snorting changes into a long low growl, ending in a gruff bark; as of a watch-dog awakened by some slight noise, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... indoors an' stay thar, ye kin do hit—an' no dawg ner no man hain't a-goin' ter ask ye no questions. But, ef ye sees fit ter face hit out, I'd love ter prove ter these hyar men thet us Souths don't break our word. We done agreed ter this truce. I'd like ter invite 'em in, an' let them damn dawgs sniff round the feet of every man in my house—an' then, when they're plumb teetotally damn satisfied, I'd like ter tell 'em all ter go ter hell. Thet's the way I feels, but I'm a-goin' ter ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... its tiny legs moved carefully over the wrinkles of the soldier's skin, feeling its way most delicately, and turning its head this way and that to sniff the unaccustomed odour. Sometimes it looked back to admire its own painted back, and to let its distant tail know that all was going well. The coloured hairs upon the graceful body were all a-quiver. It fairly shone. There was obviously no fear in it; it had ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... purpose, the dog had preceded them from the cabin, but as Ford and Bob stepped forth, he stopped, began to sniff the air and then emitted a long, ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... on lofty rocks All stand and sniff the buoyant breeze And often—marvellous to tell— Without conjunction with a sire, Bear young engendered by ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... she didn't," said Mr. Macey, significantly. "Before I said "sniff", I took care to know as she'd say "snaff", and pretty quick too. I wasn't a-going to open my mouth, like a dog at a fly, and snap it to ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... It does not occur to him that an account of Bruno by a Jesuit member of the Church which murdered him, is hardly likely to be impartial; nor does he scent anything suspicious in the fact that the documents reporting Bruno's trial were all written by the Inquisition. He would probably sniff at a report of the trial of Jesus Christ by the Scribes and Pharisees, yet that is precisely the kind of document on which he relies to ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Shaven-crown, On your fine flock, the ladies of the town." "Peace, with a vengeance," quoth our Host, "and let The tale be told. Say on, thou marmoset, Thou lady's friar, and let the Sumner sniff."] ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... growled. This was his private hunting ground—the preserve he kept free of invaders. Dane put the cat down. The Salarik had found what he was seeking. He stood on tiptoe to sniff at a plant, his yellow eyes half closed, his whole stance spelling ecstasy. Dane looked to the steward ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Sir, Peter didn't laugh, for just that very minute something happened. Sniff! Sniff! That was right behind him at the very edge of the old brushpile, and every hair on Peter stood on end ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess
... too high a plane. Most of us are admitted into truantry by the accidents, merely, of our senses. By way of instance, the sniff of a rotten apple will set a man off as on seven-league boots to the valleys of his childhood. The dry rustling of November leaves re-lights the fires of youth. It was only this afternoon that so slight a circumstance as a ray of light flashing in my eye provided me an agreeable and unexpected truantry. ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... an alert, intelligent little woman with a trace of West Indian blood in her, denied entering his stateroom. Shown the handkerchief and invited to sniff it, she professed utter ignorance concerning it, assured him that no lady in her section used that perfume, and offered to show it to the stewardesses of other sections on the chance of their identifying ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... first I met the bitter scent is lost. I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds, Sniff them and think and sniff again and try Once more to think what it is I am remembering, Always in vain. I cannot like the scent, Yet I would rather give up others more sweet, With no meaning, ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... the Guilders and their guests, and find the members of the Worshipful Company informing their friends that they are now in the Cedar Room; then they sniff, and the guests sniff and say "Charming!" Then they remark, "What a lot of pencils it would make!" and laugh, and the artists present agree that City folks ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Mrs. Samstag in quick olfactory analysis. "Eight ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought the cunning perfection of a sniff. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... company; but they had to stop, for the old man planted himself right in the middle of the narrow track, where it passed between two blocks of stone, and as soon as the cob reached him, it began to sniff at his breast and creel, and stood still. "The wolf and the lamb together," said the old man drily, and in the most serious manner; "but which is wolf, and which is lamb?" Then, without waiting for a reply, he caught sight of something in the dimming light beneath the trees, and said; "What's ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... a faint, attenuated sniff. Again it came, this time accompanied by the ghost of something like ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... on here, ladies," he observed sagely, "something funny—and I'm dogged if I savvy what it is." He stooped and scooped up Tommy in one giant paw. "Well, Tom, Old Socks," he said, holding him up where he could sniff delicately at the rafters, "you've got a pretty good nose, how about it, now—can you smell a rat?" But even Tommy could not explain why a man should ride forty miles in order to buy ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... pig," Maggie remarked with a sniff. She was being trained for the bungalow fete, and she ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... said it was not a man he wanted to poison but a wild beast. 'What sort of a beast do you want to kill?' she asked him. 'That is no business of yours,' said he. 'But it is my business,' she replied, 'for the poison that a wolf or a savage dog will eat, a bear will not even sniff at, and what makes one beast ill, on that will another beast thrive.' 'Then you must know that it is a bear.'—'Swear that you do not want the venom for a human being.' Fatia Negra swore with all sorts of subterranean oaths that it was really for a bear that he wanted ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Past; E. C. Stedman, J. G. H.; P. L. Dunbar, James Whitcombe Riley; J. W. Riley, Rhymes of Ironquill.] for their promiscuous friendliness, but on the whole there is a tendency on the part of the public to sniff at these poets, as well as at those who commend them, because they make themselves so common. One may deride the public's inconsistency, yet, after all, we have not to read many pages of the "homely" ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to see through an artless design like this. But for all that he undertook the task of choosing. He rose from his bed, shook himself, rubbed a few early flies off his face, and then, taking up the bundle in his teeth, with a rather contemptuous sniff, walked sedately off, in the direction of the North Pole. Jeffreys dutifully followed; and thus it was that one of the most momentous turns in his life was taken in the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the moment ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... savings of snuff. This, when the fast racked them most sorely, he would pass round among the old men with a grand manner. They would take a pinch and say, "May thy strength increase," and blow their delighted noses with great colored handkerchiefs, and Solomon would feel about fifty and sniff a few grains himself with the air ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of eating," he replied. "They don't require any other kind of food than a sniff of perfume; and as there are perfumes extracted from every flower in butterfly-land, and there are far more flowers than you could count between now and Christmas, you must allow there is plenty ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... excitement; there was a herd of strange living creatures grazing there, great deer with branching horns; they moved slowly forwards, cropping the grass, and the child was lost in wonder at the sight. Presently one of them stopped feeding, began to sniff the air, and then looking round, espied the child, and began slowly to approach him. The child had no terror of the great dappled stag, and held out his hand to him, when the great beast suddenly bent his head down, and was upon him with one bound, striking him with his horns, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... abandoned by the unfortunate vessels who had fled, but etiquette forbade us saying anything about it. Even had it been, another day would have seen it valueless to any one, for it was by no means otto of roses to sniff at now, while they had certainly salved it at the peril ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... was not until after dinner, when they were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an ivory domino, he forgot. "Twenty," he announced, reaching for the scoring pad. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... place or another, ever since the groaning vessel had escaped from the rollers of the Bay of Biscay, and the miserable hundred and eighty creatures among whom he was classed had been freed from their irons, and allowed to sniff fresh air twice ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and lifting his hind leg—O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for your breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the stain which washes it from the register—but ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to the right and went round to the north. They had gone only a short distance in this direction, when they found fresh reindeer tracks in the snow. The dogs began to sniff ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... while I was going around camp minus my lower garments that I saw Pete suddenly throw up his head and suspiciously sniff the air, at the same time sharply scanning the windward side of our camp. Living so long with this strange man made me familiar with his actions and quick to detect anything unusual and I now knew that something of interest had happened. To the windward and close ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Princess Edna merely responded by a short sniff, expressive rather of incredulity than any ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... each in its own realm still sovereign. Turn from such letters as these to those of St. Preux and Julie, and you are stifled with the heavy perfume of a demirep's boudoir,—to those of Herder to his Caroline, and you sniff no doubtful odor of professional unction from the sermon-case. Manly old Dr. Johnson, who could be tender and true to a plain woman, knew very well what he meant when he wrote that single poetic sentence of his,—"The shepherd in Virgil grew ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... something. Sniff! went her pink little nose. Spot knew it was smoke she smelled. The smoke came out of the chimney of a house. "Where there is smoke there is fire," thought Spot, "and where there is fire, it is warm to lie." So she jumped down from the fence and ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... their stockings, when they got down-stairs on Christmas morning, you are very much mistaken. Indeed, there was much more than that—a great deal more than that. I will not tell you what it was; for you might sniff, and say, "Huh! That's little enough!" But there was more than medicine. No man—rich man, poor man, beggarman nor thief, doctor, lawyer nor merchant chief—ever yet left a Hudson's Bay Company's post, stared in the face by the chance ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... competitor of the ravens; for he is in the same business. But he belongs to a higher order; for while the ravens are scavengers, the coyote is a hunter as well. He would even prey upon the birds themselves. As he approaches, with tail drooping and ears erect, and stops to sniff the air and glance about slyly, the ravens hop off sidewise away from the dangerous neighbour. Still they are loath to go, for the wolf may discover something the leavings of which they may perhaps enjoy. But the coyote lies down, with his head between his forepaws, and in this attitude ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... not answer. He turned his back to the jailer and walked to the cot, again sitting on its edge. He heard the jailer sniff contemptuously, but he paid no attention ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it; read a little, look at their sallow countenances in hand-glasses, and speculate upon the good effects of travel upon the constitution. Then they suddenly become daring, gay, and social; rise, adorn themselves, pervade the cabins, sniff the odours of engine and kitchen without qualms, play games, go to table; and, just as the voyage is over, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... a somewhat scornful sniff at first; but when grandma praised his father, the young man thought better of the matter, and regarded the flowers with more respect, as he asked, "Which is ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Bear had been careful not to breathe when he fell into the sea, so he did not sniff any water up his nose. And after the first shock he did not feel bad. The water was warm, and by keeping his mouth closed the Plush Bear did not taste any of the salt. There he was, floating on his back, his big, yellow eyes staring up at the sun and the blue sky. And ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... point of the dagger through the bars of the cage, and one of the rats came to sniff at it—probably anticipating a ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... cattle and horses were trying to pick up a little grass there, while the howitzer and automatic "pom-pom" shelled them from Surprise Hill. "Pom-poms" are elegant little shells, about five inches long, and some with pointed heads were designed for the British Navy, but rejected. The cattle sniff at them inquisitively, and Kaffirs rush for a perfect specimen, which fetches from 10s. to 30s. For they are suitable presents for ladies, but unhappily all that fell near me to-day exploded ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... door stood a tub full of something brown. One sniff told Cuffy that it was maple-sugar and he began to gulp great mouthfuls of it. Yes! his father was right. It certainly was a hundred times sweeter than ...
— The Tale of Cuffy Bear • Arthur Scott Bailey
... croquet. Their laughter, and the hollow sound of ball and mallet, made a cheery stir in the neighbourhood; and the look of these slim figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in our hearts. We were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here were females of our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy had been a place in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after having passed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his teeth before he went about his work. After a minute of listening to the boys "joshing" old Patsy about some gooseberry pies he had baked without sugar, he turned his face outward, threw up his head like a startled bull, and began to sniff. ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... cried. "My God, what brutes! Don't raise your voice, for they have long ears—sharp eyes, too, but no power of scent, so far as I could judge, so I don't think they can sniff us out. Where have you been, young fellah? You were well ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sliding down between banks of bright green grass, and fuss over the mossy rocks that lie in their beds. Deer lift heads often to listen and look and sniff the breeze between mouthfuls of the tender twigs they love. Shambling, slack-jointed bears move shuffling through the thickets, like the deer, lifting suspicious noses to test frequently the wind, lest some enemy ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a sniff of the venison and is following us up," Charley declared. "We can never get away from it, and there is small chance of our being able to kill it in the dark. We may as well stop right here where there is a little wood and build a fire, that is ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... cheek There passed a momentary gleam of joy, Which spoke, as plainly as a smile could speak, "Your master's speech is in that paper, boy." He waved his hand—the footboy left the room— Roebuck pour'd out a cup of Hyson bloom; And, having sipp'd the tea and sniff'd the vapour, Spread out the "Thunderer" before his eyes— When, to his great surprise, He saw imprinted there, in black and white, That he, THE ROE-buck—HE, whom all men knew, Had been expressly born to set worlds right— That HE was nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... maid, who had been holding the bush upright and steady, answered this challenge with a short sniff. "He don't seem over curious, for his part, about you." She, too, glanced upward and toward the house, the upper storey alone of which, from where they stood, was visible above the spikes of a green palisade. A roadway divided the house from ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... constraint was painful. Meryl had grown as white as the tablecloth, and Mr. Pym looked thoroughly worried. Diana, however, had quickly recovered herself, and was now the most composed of any. She gave a little sniff and glanced defiantly at van Hert. His eyes roved round the table and finally fixed themselves upon hers. She did not waver, but looked steadily back at him. He gave a self-conscious, constrained laugh. "I presume you had ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... they was stock. The prettiest one got the biggest bid. They said that they was a market in North Ca'lina but I never see'd it. The ones I saw was jest sold like I told you. Then they went home with they marsters. If they tried to run away they sont the hounds after them. Them dogs would sniff around an' first news you knowed they caught them niggers. Marster's niggers run away some but they always come back. They'd hear that they could have a better time up north so they think they try it. But they found out that they wasn't no easy way to live away from Marster. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... thank you. Lie along yer horse 'n' yell, While the bullets pip yer britches 'n' you sniff the flue of Hell. Here it is that Artie takes it good 'n' solid in the crust, He dives from out the saddle, 'n' is swallered in ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... two young bulls who had not been old enough to remember him sidled up on all fours to sniff at him, and one bared his fangs and growled threateningly—he wished to put Tarzan immediately into his proper place. Had Tarzan backed off, growling, the young bull would quite probably have been satisfied, but always after Tarzan's station among his fellow apes would have been ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he said, "latitude 30 degrees 50 minutes N. longitude 30 degrees 50 minutes W. It's a good day off us, anyhow, and they're all going south-west by south at full pelt as hard as they can go. We shan't see a bit of it, worse luck! Not a sniff we ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... with a sniff. "The world's full of 'em! How many murders go undetected—how many burglaries are never traced—how many forgeries are done and never found out? Piles of 'em—as the police could tell you. And talking about forgeries, what about old Barrett, who was the great man ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... white-frilled, logical, respectable, must either lean itself heartily on Sansculottism, the black, bottomless; or else vanish, in the frightfullest way, to Limbo! Thus some, with upturned nose, will altogether sniff and disdain Sansculottism; others will lean heartily on it; nay others again will lean what we call heartlessly on it: three sorts; each sort with a destiny corresponding. (Discours de Bailly, Reponse de Petion (Moniteur du ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... uncovered a wrinkled gray object from which the green leaves were growing, a root or tuber of some kind. It appeared as edible as a piece of stone to Jason, but obviously not to the slave who drooled heavily and actually had the temerity to sniff the root. Ch'aka howled with anger at this and when the slave had dropped the root into the basket with the others he received a kick so strong that he had to limp back painfully to his ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... and his ears and his nose as only he can use them. All seemed safe. It was as still in that little swamp as if no living creature had ever visited it. Stopping every few steps to look, listen, and sniff, Reddy ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... eyes of the savages suspiciously following him. In a moment he came back, bearing in his arms a mirror, a bottle of hair-oil, a couple of bottles of perfume, a comb and brush, some variegated bath towels, and an American flag. First he let the chief sniff at the bottles, and then, pointing to the group on the shore, motioned to be taken over. In a few moments he and MacGregor were being conveyed towards the shore in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... signified Mr. Seymour. "Who knows but we may find this bundle worth fifty thousand francs to you, Walter, or rather to Mr. Frieshardt? Lay it down here. Now then, Hector, take a good sniff." ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... us who are left in town in the dull days will seem, in reading these pages, to sniff the fresh sea-breezes, to hear the cries of the sea-bird and the songs of the wood-bird, to be conscious of the murmuring stream and waving forests, and all the wild life that is therein."—St. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... passionate bellow of a war-whoop. His manner reminded me strongly of a bull, that by some mischance has lost the common herd; and as he gallops along the meadows, when he finds himself alone, will stop suddenly at times, and, placing his broad nostrils to the earth, sniff the grass with the absorption of a huge pump; then lifting his head loftily in the air, will lash his tail, and madly tossing his legs, roar till the country round is filled with the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... declared that she smelt sweet from head to foot. She lived in the midst of roses, lilacs, wall-flowers, and lilies of the valley; and Marjolin would playfully smell at her skirts, feign a momentary hesitation, and then exclaim, "Ah, that's lily of the valley!" Next he would sniff at her waist and bodice: "Ah, that's wall-flowers!" And at her sleeves and wrists: "Ah, that's lilac!" And at her neck, and her cheeks and lips: "Ah, but that's roses!" he would cry. Cadine used to laugh at him, and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... pretty good care, before I said 'sniff,' to be sure she would say 'snaff,' and pretty quick, too. I warn't a-goin' to open my mouth like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again wi' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... the silence when a blast fiercer than the rest shook the old house. "'Tain't right," he said dolefully, "I know it ain't, Jock! There's Tom and Foley gone off an' 'listed, and them only four years older nor me. What's four years?" This with a sniff of contempt. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... I do not think that anything was discovered or suspected before we weighed anchor; but I cannot be sure. It is difficult to believe that a man could be chloroformed in his sleep and feel no tell-tale effects, sniff no suspicious odor, in the morning. Nevertheless, von Heumann reappeared as though nothing had happened to him, his German cap over his eyes and his mustaches brushing the peak. And by ten o'clock we ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... dear! You needn't sniff at her because she is poor. She's ever so much brighter than you are, or she wouldn't always be at the head of your class, old Joe," cried the girls, standing by their friend with a unanimity which proved what ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... for the journey. Almost every day Ryabovsky visited her to see what progress she was making in her painting; when she showed him her painting, he used to thrust his hands deep into his pockets, compress his lips, sniff, and say: ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... night at my snug tea, Margarina! Over my toast I muse on thee, Margarina! I sniff that smell, I see that dab, That greasy, grimy, marble slab. And thou art still the same I know, The slum's strange love, the slum's strange love. The poor man's "Butter," there ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... Virginia lady, as she advanced a theory that Jeannette had negro blood in her veins. 'Those quadroon girls often have a certain kind of plebeian beauty like this pet of yours, Mrs. Corlyne,' she said, with a slight sniff of her high-bred, pointed nose. In vain I exclaimed, in vain I argued; the garrison ladies were all against me, and, in their presence, not a man dared come to my aid; and the surgeon even added, 'I wish I could ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... side by side at the table, Lily turning over the pages. Constance, for all her vast bulk, continually made little nervous movements. Occasionally she would sniff and occasionally a mysterious noise would occur in her chest; she always pretended that this noise was a cough, and would support the pretence by emitting a real ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the time had come to steal in front of the Indian route. The forest thinned, and we traversed a marshy piece, of country with many single great trees. Often Shalah would halt for a second, strain his ears, and sniff the light wind like a dog. He seemed to find guidance, but I got none, only the hoot of an owl or the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... taking another sniff of the air, "they're taking her back to some other spacecraft." Buregarde looked up at Peter. "Do you ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith |
