"Buffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... loose upon the people of Glasgow an infernal machine intended to soar considerably in a quiet kind of way and to be propelled by steam. It looked like the bird known to ornithology as the flyupithecrick, and had an air brake, patent coupler, buffer and platform. It was intended to hold two men on ice and a rosewood casket with silver handles. It was mounted on wheels, and, as it did not seem to skim through the air very much, the people of Glasgow hitched a clothes line to it and used it for ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... softly, "I love you better because you're young and unformed. I can help you, dear, and you can help me, of course; I'm a dreadful old buffer in many ways. I'm forty, you know, and you're such a child. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... render it. Was she to continue to live with him on their present terms? She had no intention to make another effort to alter them; but to remain as they were would be intolerable, and Mrs. Tanberry could not stay forever, to act as a buffer between her and her father. Peering out into the dismal night, she found her own future as black, and it seemed no wonder that the Sisters loved the convent life; that the pale nuns forsook the world wherein there was so ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... miles northward, for a time commanded by Capt. Adna R. Chaffee, Sixth Cavalry. Trouble was known with Pima Indians, who lived across the river, where they had been placed a few years before by Tempe settlers, as a possible buffer against Apache raids. This reservation's extension cost Lehi several sections ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... up a shaking hand. "Not that either, boys," he pleaded. "Think of the other buffer, and let him down easy. If I'm like this, just fancy what Topelius is! If he heard us singing ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... quite plain, but she hated his friend Paul Limousin still more, who had continued to be the familiar and intimate friend of the house, after having been the inseparable companion of his bachelor days, which is very rare. It was Limousin who acted as a buffer between his wife and himself, and who defended him ardently, and even severely, against her undeserved reproaches, against crying scenes, and against all the daily miseries ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... rights, according to his enemies—as British Resident and protector of the infant prince occupying the uneasy throne. The task of regenerating Granthi society from the top, much against its will, and welding its discordant elements into a peaceful, prosperous, and contented buffer state (the thing was known, though not as yet the name) against encroaching Ethiopia on the north, promised to be no easy one, but Colonel Antony was undertaking it confidently, with the support of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... Israeli-occupied with the almost 1,000-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) patrolling a buffer zone since 1964; lacking a treaty or other documentation describing the boundary, portions of the Lebanon-Syria boundary are unclear with several sections in dispute; since 2000, Lebanon has claimed ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... save himself by reaching for Berry's shoulder with his forepaws, but at the critical moment his buffer flinched, the paws fell short of their objective, and with a startled grunt the terrier fell heavily into the bath, his desperate claws leaving two long abrasions upon ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... another, so deeply in such a friendly, brother-and-sisterly sort of way.... I think, in some ways, I ought to be angry with Jack for not coming himself.... But it's as though you were my big brother, Tom.... You know how Jack feels toward me; and so you are anxious to act as sort of a buffer, in case everything isn't—eh—as it should be.... It was fine of you, Tom; and you know how I ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... aluminium propellers of four blades at the rate of 1,000 revolutions a minute. Finally, firmly attached to the inner framework by rods of aluminium, were two cars of the same metal, furnished with buffer springs to break the force of a fall. The trial trip was not made till the summer following—June, 1900—and, in the meanwhile, experiments had gone forward with another mode of flight, terminating, unhappily, in the death of one of the most expert and ingenious ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... say you have guessed—by my filling up one of those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in the atelier and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money. I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered curtly that Ingeborg had ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... take a volume in itself. Briefly, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro were represented. Montenegro, with characteristic laisser faire, never appointed a commissary at all, and the work all fell on me. Fortunately, in fact, for I was the buffer state between Serbia and Bulgaria, who were at daggers-drawn. At the necessary meetings the Serb Commissioner talked German and Serb into one of my ears, while the Bulgar shouted French and Bulgar into the other, and ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... weight of one bucket counterbalances the weight of the other, the power required for hoisting is reduced. To adapt this hoist to handling form lumber the bucket is replaced by the lumber carriage shown by Fig. 216; this carriage discharges over the head of the mixer and the spring buffer shown by Fig. 214 is to take the shock of the rising carriage. This buffer is omitted when concrete only is to be hoisted. In one case this device has hoisted 520 batches of 12 cu. ft. each to the ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... can be sure that the true position is not only understood, but felt. But our old, rich, and beautiful country, with all the accumulations on its soil of the labour, the art, the thought of uncounted generations, has been in this war the buffer between German savagery and the rest of Europe. Just as our armies bore the first brunt and held the pass, till civilisation could rally to its own defence, so our old towns and villages have died, that our neighbours might live secure. We have suffered most in war—we claim the first thought ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too, from the panicky way he's actin', he don't shove me ahead of him for a buffer as we goes in. But he has just enough courage left to ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... contrary, seemed rather to welcome the companionship of the tribe, as if looking to it for some protection against the strange pursuing peril. His sleepless sagacity perceiving the value of this great escort as a buffer against the contact of less kindly hordes, Grom gave strict orders that none of these beasts should be molested. And the Cave Folk, not without apprehension, found themselves traveling in the vanguard of an army of tall, high-antlered beasts which stared ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... about one Fin M'Cool who was a great buffer in his day, and how his wife put the trick upon a big bosthoon of a giant that came down from Munster to bother Fin? Did you ever hear ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Red programme Ontario, and especially industrial Toronto, was regarded as the buffer state. But if the Soviet had succeeded in Winnipeg and further West, then the whole weight of that success marching upon Ontario, with Quebec bringing up the eastern end, would form a sort of nutcracker device from which Ontario would have had a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a buffer!" cried Colonel Sharpe, as the much-discomfited doctor bowed with a very ill grace; while I, in no small bewilderment, walked off with Dorothy. And a parting shot of the delighted colonel brought the crimson to my face. Like the wind or April ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... To guess at the direction of the new line is not to express a British opinion, but to speculate upon the opinion of France. After the experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland will remain German—for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... another old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word "buffalo," had evidently conveyed to her mind an old "buffer" whose name was "Lo," probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound. Then, not knowing of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young narrator completed ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... only a spot of singular interest in itself but its climate is certainly superior to that of Naples, for the great headland which shuts off the city from the Phlegrean Fields serves also to act as a buffer against the icy tramontana that sweeps along the Chiaja in winter and early spring. Invalids used at one time to inhabit Pozzuoli on account of its mild atmosphere, and even to visit the Solfatara daily on mule-back, in order to inhale its sulphureous fumes, which were ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... "Buffer? No, but a guardian angel if such a creature can shield me from rebuffs," said Daniel, even more brusquely than he had spoken the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... shoulder and breathe in my face. I made a movement with my hand and felt somebody's elbow. . . . I opened my eyes and only imagine—a woman. Black eyes, lips red as a prime salmon, nostrils breathing passionately—a bosom like a buffer. . ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the approach of danger or agitated by passion, since at such times it is overheated, they (the gods) implanted in us the lungs, which are so fashioned that being soft and bloodless, and having cavities within, they act like a buffer, and when the heart boils with inward passion by yielding to its throbbing save it from injury." He compares the seat of the desires to the women's quarters, the seat of the passions to the men's quarters, in a house. The spleen, again, is the napkin of ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... of raspberries, putting bread-dough in his ears; breaking my nail-buffer, which, however, I haven't used for a month and more; paring the bark, with the bread-knife, off the lonely little scrub poplar near the kitchen door, our one and only shade; breaking a drinking-glass, which was accident; cutting holes with the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... disputes: 1974 hostilities divided the island into two de facto autonomous areas, a Greek area controlled by the Cypriot Government (59% of the island's land area) and a Turkish-Cypriot area (37% of the island), that are separated by a UN buffer zone (4% of the island); there are two UK sovereign base areas within the Greek ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner's greatest security. Nevertheless, I must confess that more than once, while leaning forward in expectation of the scrunch ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... good; a package of emery boards, an orange-wood stick, a flexible nail file, a small bottle of peroxide of hydrogen for bleaching, a bit of pumice stone, a cake of polishing powder, a chamois covered "buffer" and a box of rosaline or ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the current was too strong and that the bitterness of faction was to prevail. I am so constituted that factious thought and effort dishearten and disgust me. At many periods of my life I have acted as a "buffer'' between conflicting cliques and factions, generally to some purpose; now it was otherwise. But, as Kipling ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... depressing than the conversations of 'small-talk' which an exacting society occasionally demands. Who has not suffered from their enervating effects? We are not all possessed of that mental abstraction which La Fontaine succeeded in carrying with him throughout life, forming a buffer from which all idle talk rebounded. He was once asked to dinner by a 'fermier-general' to amuse the guests. Thoroughly bored, La Fontaine ate much and said little, and rising very early from the table said that he had to go to the Academy. 'Oh,' said his host, 'but you are ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... family and enter into the spirit and body of that great civilization on their borders, whose language was that of their own literature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality was the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, nor German, nor ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... come on all right," answered the batteryman, with easy assurance. "Maybe he has gone round by the road. Even if he hasn't, I've seen him make that in one jump many a time. He's an active old buffer for ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... appeared pressing to the eastern part of the colony. They were in no danger from Indian raids, and they had small pity for their brethren on the western frontier. Between them and the encroaching Indians lay a population, mostly German, that acted like a buffer state to them; and notwithstanding that every post brought in urgent appeals for help, they passed the time in wrangling with the Governor, in drawing up bills professing to be framed to meet the emergency, but each one of them containing the clause through which the Governor ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... have struck the ground with a "dull thud," but for an unexpected buffer in the shape of one of his brother warriors, who happened to be standing directly under. As a consequence, the sprawling figure came down on the head and shoulders of the astounded Comanche, who collapsed with ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... last year together in India it was evident that downright antagonism had existed between Hugo Tancred and his little son. Tony had weighed his father and found him wanting; and it was clear that he had tried to insert his small personality as a buffer between his ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... "Well, old buffer, so you are popular," said he to him. "Your phiz is sold on the heads of pipes and on liqueur bottles and every drunkard in Alca spits out your name as he rolls in the gutter. . . . Chatillon, the hero of the Penguins! Chatillon, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... step in the right direction. No well-regulated eye could do otherwise than suffer from the glaring white patterns of crochet-work, mounted aggressively on the back of every chair in the room, as a buffer between it and the human head and shoulders. The suggestion was disagreeable, and the present chair-back still recalls it. To reconcile us to its use, it must be sparingly used, and artistically disposed. The "antimacassar" ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... corporate proprietorship, the owners of mines are guided in their relations with labor by engineers occupying executive positions. On them falls the responsibility in such matters, and the engineer becomes thus a buffer between labor and capital. As corporations have grown, so likewise have the labor unions. In general, they are normal and proper antidotes for unlimited ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... swung in a strong steel collar and carrying at its end three or more air-compressing pumps set radially, with the piston-rods thrust outwards by a strong spring on each, but with the ends perfectly free from any attachment, yet fitted with a buffer or wheel. As the pendulum moves it throws one or more of these piston-rod ends into contact with the inner surface of the ring, driving it into the compressing pump. At the top of the pendulum there is a double or universal pipe-joint through which the air under ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... your house. The wisest thing you have done was to surround yourself with this mercenary body, whom you call the royal cuirassiers, only, instead of three hundred, you should have two thousand. Self-interest will make them true to you. You might find some means to pay them, for they would be a good buffer between you and your enemies. The president of the Diet and the members are passing bills which will eventually undermine you. How long it will take I can not say. But this last folly, the loan, which you could have got on without, caps the climax. The duke was in the city last week unknown ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... weakness of Spain, which, though clinging to its Northern possessions, did not possess the means to defend them against the ambition of European Powers, more especially France. It was due also to the policy of the United Provinces, who considered Belgium as a mere buffer State which they could use for their own protection and whose ruin, through the closing of Antwerp, was one of the conditions of their own prosperity. Up to the War of the Spanish Succession, England played a less prominent part in the various conflicts affecting ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... is canvassing from door to door that does the trick, and there you have the bulge on Stridge. He's not a bad old buffer himself, but they hate his wife like poison. She drives up to their doors in a silver-plated brougham with a double-breasted coachman, and tells 'em to vote for Stridge, not because he used to live in a one-roomed house himself—which ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... his very life depended upon whether he had hit it a hundred or a thousand times in an afternoon; as if he would be shot at sunrise if he fell below the mark. But in college days, his strength ran to his feet. He was known as a powerful kicker, and woe betide the man who would try and act as a buffer between ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... bitterly against a policy that gives so much land to so few individuals. There are constant appeals to Congressmen. New treaties, which disregard old covenants as scraps of paper, are constantly being introduced. Leasing laws are being made and remade and fought over. The Indian agent is the local buffer between contending forces. But, used as he was to unfounded complaint and criticism, Walter Lowell was hardly prepared for the bitterness that descended upon him at White Lodge after the crime on the Dollar Sign. ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... bone of contention between China, Russia and Japan. Consequently this little peninsula has always walked on uneasy paths, which is ever the fate of a buffer state. ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... four house-masters—and the three briars and the one cigar reeking in amity proved the Rev. John Gillett's good generalship. Since the discovery of the cat, King had been too ready to see affront where none was meant, and the Reverend John, buffer-state and general confidant, had worked for a week to bring about a good understanding. He was fat, clean-shaven, except for a big mustache, of an imperturbable good temper, and, those who loved him least said, a guileful Jesuit. He smiled benignantly upon ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... two provisions on which the French are most insistent: First, an international military staff to be prepared to use force against Germany if there were signs of military activity; second, the creation of an independent Rhenish Republic to act as a 'buffer' state. Of course the triple alliance would ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... semi-sarcastic remark for the careless and unmethodical; a keen eye for hops wasted and trodden into the ground, or for poles of undersized hops, unwelcome to the pickers and hidden beneath those from which the hops had been picked. He acted as buffer between capital and labour, smoothing troubles over, telling me of the pickers' difficulties, and explaining my side to the pickers when the quality was poor and prices discouraging, so that the work went with a swing and with happy ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... between James Cochran Esq., and William Cooper Esq., on or about the sixteenth of October last, when the said James Cochran confessed to the said William Cooper these words: "I acknowledge you are too much of a buffer for me," at which time it was understood, as this deponent conceives, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... rascal, I know it, and I 'm thundering sorry, but that don't help a fellow, I 've got to tell the dear old buffer, and there 's ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... by selecting those required from fifteen carriages which are always ready for an imperial journey. If the journey is short, a saloon carriage and refreshment car are deemed sufficient; in case of a long journey the train consists of a buffer carriage in addition, with two saloon cars for the suite and two wagons for the luggage. The train is always accompanied by a high official of the railway, who, with mechanics and spare guard, is in direct telephonic communication with the engine-driver and guard. The ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... towards Southun men; 80 We hed to go sheers in preservin' the bellance; An' ez they seemed to feel they wuz wastin' their tellents 'thout some un to kick, 'twarn't more 'n proper, you know, Each should furnish his part; an' sence they found the toe, An' we wuzn't cherubs—wal, we found the buffer, For fear thet the Compromise ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... him—the one man—already awaiting her. He stood back to back with a mossy nymph languishing on her pedestal, and Flora hoped by running softly to steal up behind him, and make of the helpless marble lady a buffer between their greetings. But either she underestimated the nymph's bulk, or forgot how invariably direct was the man's attack; for turning and seeing her, without any circumvention, with one sweep of his long arm, he included the ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... the Judge's anger at so trifling an error very ridiculous and insulting, and shall shoot him the first time he comes to town. An Independent Press is not to be muzzled by any absurd old buffer with a crooked nose, and a sister who is considerably more mother than wife. Not as long as we have our usual success in thinning out the judiciary ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... I suppose they charged highest for the lowest seats. Wonder whether a lion ever nipped up and helped himself to some fat old buffer in the Stalls when the martyrs turned out a leaner ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... almost relinquished the idea of his seeking a fourth wife. This was a matter of some regret, for there was a general feeling that it would be a good thing for the Baxter girls to have some one to help with the housework and act as a buffer between them and their grim and irascible parent. As for the women of the village, they were mortified that the Deacon had been able to secure three wives, and refused to believe that the universe held anywhere a creature benighted enough to become ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Republicans had failed to carry a majority of the congressional districts. Thus the blunders of Douglas and Chase in 1854 had started the dogs of sectional warfare, and now a solid North confronted a solid South, with only two or three undecided buffer States, like Maryland ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... same when they first come. Presently you will grow accustomed to its invigorating tone, and quiet down. It is caused by the dry air. We are a long way from the Atlantic, and these mighty mountains to the west act as a buffer to the moisture-laden ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... centuries when China occupied the undisputed position of first in might and first in civilization on the Asiatic continent, her habit was to use as buffer states the small countries lying immediately beyond her borders. But she always took care to avoid any responsibilities that might grow out of this arrangement. In a word, the tide of foreign aggression was to be checked by an understanding that these little countries shared the inviolability ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... be time enough, surely, to see the admiral when we are upon the ground. I'll warrant the old buffer is a true brick as ever was: there's no flinching ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... paving-stones drop them into the gutters and think twice before they lay hand on their revolver butts. No puffing engine hauls the train: the motor-power is at the rear. First and foremost is a platform car,—open, uncovered, but over its buffer glisten the barrels of the dreaded Gatling gun, and around the gun—can these be soldiers? Covered with dust and cinders, hardly a vestige of uniform among them, in the shabbiest of old felt hats, in hunting-shirts ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called great middle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is a perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historic mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has just about been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passes into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and Jeffersonian-Democratic. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the advance of two centuries by the building of the trans-Siberian railroad, and was looking eagerly for a port in the sun, to supplement winter-bound Vladivostok. Great Britain still regarded Russia as the great enemy and, pursuing her policy of placing buffer states between her territories and her enemies, was keenly interested in preventing any encroachment southward which might bring the Russian bear nearer India. France, Russia's ally, possessed IndoChina, which was growing at the expense of Siam and which might grow northwards into China. ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... Dawson wants me to take my meals at the house. I'm inclined to believe that she is a bit shy of Gridley, and maybe she thinks I could do the buffer act. But as a get-between I'd be chiefly conspicuous by ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... greatly increased the chances of a peaceful and stable regime. As it was, the intermediate country, widely open in the East and in the West, too weak to resist foreign aggression, became, at best, a weak buffer State, and, at worst, a bone of contention ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... inoffensive; then she became aware that his eyes spoke when his lips were dumb; and finally, when words did come, they were the words of a friend who understood moods and tenses. In some ways it was a comfort to have this buffer between her and Dick. It helped to prolong the period of ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... dominion in this quarter by the absorption of the last state upon her south-western border that had maintained the shadow of independence: and the two great powers of these parts, hitherto prevented from coming into contact by the intervention of a sort of political "buffer," became conterminous, and were thus brought into a position in which it was not possible that a collision should for any ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... not help her now. Hugo's fortifying love was no buffer against this extraordinary moment. All alone Cally stood with the contemned religious fellow who had unhorsed and disarmed her once again, and now there would be no more weapons. And there was a worse thing here ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... swaddler, clapperdudgeon; Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon; No whip-jack, palliard, patrico; No jarkman, be he high or low; No dummerar, or romany; No member of "the Family;" No ballad-basket, bouncing buffer, Nor any other, will I suffer; But stall-off now and for ever, All outliers whatsoever: And as I keep to the foregone, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... said Joe Cross, as if talking to himself. "I don't mind. This 'ere's a savage country, and 'tis their nature to. He seems a rum sort of a buffer, Mr Rodd, sir. What does he mean by that? Was it ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... of legations, so cold, dry, and elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down, those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Belgium had been sacked by the Germans, pillaged with fire and sword, until hardly one stone was left upon another. And now the fighting was again in Belgium, that little buffer state which, ever since she became a nation, has always been the ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... we will, Jack!" announced Bobolink, triumphantly; "for I can see the big timber he said was acting as a buffer above him. Hey! we've got to be extra careful now, because one end of that beam is balanced ever so delicately, and if it gets shoved off ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... these days of pugilists who resemble matinee idols he had the appearance of an anachronism. He was a stocky man with a round, solid head, small eyes, an undershot jaw, and a nose which ill-treatment had reduced to a mere scenario. A narrow strip of forehead acted as a kind of buffer-state, separating his front hair from his eyebrows, and he bore beyond hope of concealment the badge of his late employment, the cauliflower ear. Yet was he a man of worth and a good citizen, and Ann ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... politely. Tootles hated the idea of signing under such a man, but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make constant ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... one to act as a sort of buffer," said Frau Agatha sarcastically. Daniel looked at ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche—his adipose serving as a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his insight into the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... not so many pleasures that I can afford to forget one of them," replied Steinmetz, in his somewhat old-fashioned courtesy. "But an old—buffer, shall I say?—hardly expects to be taken much notice of by ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... into his book for, after a fortnight at home, he set his own jaw and lips rather grimly, went to his small office room in the tower of a high building, and paid the elevator boy a goodly sum for acting as buffer during five holy hours ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... in her second youth, and already bereft of some of her attractions, who unequivocally occupies the station of the Baron's mistress. I had thought, at first, that she was but a hired accomplice, a mere blind or buffer for the more important sinner. A few hours' acquaintance with Madame von Rosen for ever dispelled the illusion. She is one rather to make than to prevent a scandal, and she values none of those bribes—money, honours, or employment—with which the situation might be gilded. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feet in favourable circumstances—this shell stands a very good chance of getting broken in tumbling to the earth, so that it has been necessary to surround it with a mass of soft and yielding fibrous material, which breaks its fall, and acts as a buffer to it when it comes in contact with the soil beneath. So many protections has the coco-nut gradually devised for itself by the continuous survival of the best adapted amid numberless and endless spontaneous variations of all its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sudden paroxysm, he were to reach forth and taking Brer RABBIT by the beard bang his head against the back of the Bench? TIM's gentle nature shivered with apprehension; thing to do was to get a good plump gentleman set between the two, so that in case hostilities broke out his body might be used as buffer. Thought of ELTON first. Besides a professional desire to find occupation for Members of the Bar, ELTON's figure seemed made on purpose for the peaceful errand TIM had in mind. Broached subject. ELTON said, always happy to oblige; but was, in fact, just now retiring from Parliamentary life; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... tendencies in general and inability to appreciate the advantages of a bit. I remember the animal well. He was a fiery chestnut, with white about the legs, and very good across a country so long as he was wanted to go; but no common power could stop him when once he began to do that. On this animal—"The Buffer," he was called—Button was persuaded to mount, "just to try him a little," his owner said; and by way of doing that with perfect freedom from restraint, they rode out to where the hounds were to throw off, a couple of miles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... taxi. "I must have it, Julie," he said. "I want to drive up, and have the old buffer in gold braid open the door for me. ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... peace. Dundas, the English secretary for the colonies, expressed the policy, when he declared, in 1792, that the object was to interpose an Indian barrier between Canada and the United States; and in pursuance of this policy of preserving the Northwest as an Indian buffer State, the Canadian authorities supported the Indians in their resistance to American settlement beyond the Ohio. The conception of the Northwest as an Indian reserve strikingly exhibits England's inability to foresee ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... to be the life and soul of the staff-room—the general peace-maker, confidante, and consoler, beloved by one and all. She determined to seize tactfully upon every occasion of serving the Head, and acting as a buffer between her and disagreeables of every kind. She arranged a touching scene wherein Miss Farnborough, retiring from work and being asked by the Committee to name a worthy successor, pronounced unhesitatingly, "Claire Gifford; she is but young, but her wisdom and diplomacy are beyond all praise." ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Manchu regime in China in 1911, and the establishment of the present republic, there were no particularly significant events in Mongolian history. But at that time the Russians, wishing to create a buffer state between themselves and China as well as to obtain special commercial privileges in Mongolia, aided the Mongols in rebellion, furnished them with arms and ammunition and with ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the far corner of the cell. A man of peace, this place of blood and confusion was beyond his conception. He was in a daze, his mind having thrown up a buffer ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... of having you for a wind buffer would make up for losing you as a crutch," he said, as he hobbled slowly along in his stockinged feet. He had kicked off his shoes when he went to the aid of Mary, and the rising tide ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... now of buffer States, because the German conscience cannot respect them. Buffer States are just anvil States. At any rate, very considerable annexations of German territory by Belgium and France are now inevitable, and Holland must expect a much larger and stronger Belgium to the south of ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... mouth, of course. There is machinery as well as hay. I think he's the grandest old buffer out, and I'm awfully glad that I've dined with him. I couldn't make out whether he really put anything to eat into his ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... she righted and shot ahead, and, turning, presented her port side to the enemy. Instant examination of the armour on her other side showed that the two banks of springs were uninjured, and that not an air-buffer had exploded or failed to spring back ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... declined to do so. China wants nothing more than the re- establishment of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, with recognition of the autonomy of the territory immediately under the control of the Lhassa Government; she is agreeable to the British idea of forming an effective buffer territory in so far as it is consistent with equity and justice; she is anxious that her trade interest should be looked after by her trade agents as do the British, a point which is agreeable ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... yards—below the surface of the ground. It is worked by an electric locomotive, hauling ten wagons at a speed of 12 kilometers, or 71/2 miles per hour. The total weight drawn is eight tons. The gauge is a narrow one, so that the locomotive can be made of small dimensions. Its total length between the buffer heads is 2.43 meters; its height 1.04 meters; breadth 0.8 meter; diameter of wheels, 0.34 meter. From the rail head to the center of the buffers is a height of 0.675 meter; and the total weight is only 1550 kilogrammes, or say 3,400 lb. We give a longitudinal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... her turn admired Dorothy's executive ability, and depended on her to soften the hearts of obdurate printers, stir the consciences of careless assistant editors, and in short to stand as a sort of buffer between her beloved "Argus" and a careless world. Dorothy hoped that Frances would be in the sanctum; it would be fun to tell her about the letter. But if not, all responsibility could be fulfilled by dropping it and a note of explanation ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... wife. I found that out from the porter, though the blessed old buffer can't speak anything but his French gibberish. 'Madame?' I said, bawling into his stupid old ear. 'Mossoo and Madame Hostin? comprenny?' and he says, 'Ya-ase,' and then bursts out laughing, and looks as proud as a hen that's just laid a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... who dyes a chemical yellow Or stains her grey hair puce, Or pinches her figure, Is painted with vigour With permanent walnut juice. The idiot who, in railway carriages, Scribbles on window-panes, We only suffer To ride on a buffer In Parliamentary trains. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... to us, it has come to be understood that, politically speaking, the Hebrews were a relatively insignificant people, whose chief importance from the standpoint of material history was derived from the geographical accident that made them a sort of buffer between the greater nations about them. Only once, and for a brief period, in the reigns of David and Solomon did the Hebrews rise to anything like an equal plane of political importance with their immediate neighbours. What gave them a seeming importance in the eyes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... hooray!" shouted Gillie, with glittering eyes and flushed countenance, "look out, Cappen, keep close 'longside o' me, under the lee o' the lamp-post. It's not a bad buffer, though never quite a sure one, bein' carried clean away sometimes by the wheels w'en ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... he had been a self-constituted buffer between Mr. Clarke and the men in the furnace-room, and he wondered anxiously what ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... of happiness, a buffer that softens all the jolts of life. After David Sawney's failure to capture Perritaut's half-breed Atlantis and her golden apples at one dash, one would have expected him to be a little modest in approaching his old love again; but forty-eight hours after her return from Glenfield, he was paying ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... of the Frankish Empire deserves attention, because upon its fate rested the destinies of most of the nations of Western Europe. The kingdom of Burgundy, the buffer state between France and Germany, has now entirely disappeared, except as the name of a wine; but having no natural boundaries, it was disputed between France and Germany for a long period, and it may be fairly said that the ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... were not satisfied with banishing the ex-conqueror to his island exile, but wished to present any possibility of another Napoleon arising to renew the wars which had devastated and impoverished them. Consequently they agreed to make a kingdom which might act as a buffer between France and the rest of Europe; and to this end they decreed that Belgium and Holland should be one. But in doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in the course of time, undermine their ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... whole German-speaking world. This meant the undermining and eventual disruption of the smaller social and political unities,[4] the knightly manors with the privileges attached to the knightly class generally. The knighthood, or lower nobility, had acted as a sort of buffer between the princes of the empire and the Imperial power, to which they often looked for protection against their immediate overlord or their powerful neighbour—the prince. The Imperial power, in consequence, found the lower nobility a bulwark against ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... his hands. "We can't break the story proper until you're ready with your buffer story. Current plans say that he gets pneumonia tomorrow, and goes to Walter Reed tomorrow night. We're giving it as little emphasis as possible, running the Berlin Conference stories for right-hand column stuff. That'll give you all day tomorrow ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... arrive at the ground-floor, reading your file of the 'Daily Advertiser;' not an egg broken nor a drop spilled. I saw it done in a New York hotel. The air is compressed under the elevator, and acts as a sort of ethereal buffer." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... into the wide bright sea of life surrounding the island-of her captivity. She had first landed—thanks to the intervention of the ladies who had directed her education—in a Fifth Avenue school-room where, for a few months, she acted as a buffer between three autocratic infants and their bodyguard of nurses and teachers. The too-pressing attentions of their father's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot, against the express advice ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a month to rest them," insisted the buffer, becoming a trifle panic-stricken; and he tapped the sole of ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Bill! damned hard lines to have to speak to a lamp-post, a kid, and an old buffer"—by the latter vulgarity indicating myself, as ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... voice of his, "that onst they got set we should iver git either of them off alive?" It seemed to strike the little man as a novel idea; for, from that moment, he was ever the first in his feverish endeavors to oppose his small form, buffer-like, between the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... wheat-producing regions in the world. She may, and probably will, keep her oft-repeated promises to the Jews by erecting Palestine into a Hebrew kingdom under British protection, if for no other reason than its value as a buffer state to protect Egypt. She will also, I assume, continue to foster and support the policy of Pan-Arabism, as expressed In the new Kingdom of the Hedjaz, not alone for the reason that control of the Arabian peninsula gives her complete command of the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... "You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one army at ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lathe or other convenient revolving shaft is available, a buffer made of many thicknesses of cotton cloth is very valuable for polishing tools. The addition of a little tripoli greatly ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... to pluck the flower of love blooming below, only to find a worthless weed sullying her hand; Alma Pflugel, with the unquenchable light of gratefulness in her honest face; Von Gerhard, ready to act as buffer between myself and the world, tender as a woman, gravely thoughtful, with the light of devotion glowing in ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... filled by lot, because the result would be on the whole quite as satisfactory as that obtained by the present system, while disappointed candidates would curse Fortune, who has a broader back than the Prime Minister. No doubt examinations were introduced on the same sort of principle, to act as a buffer between the train of candidates and the engine of Government. That the examination often comes after instead of before the appointment is a necessary modification, without which no room would be left for the play of those kindly feelings for kith and kin which ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... the acceptance of legislation curbing and crippling, if not abolishing, the Upper House, he can either assent or refuse. Assent means the destruction of a portion of the Constitution—and a portion very close to the Throne and which acts as a real buffer against the hasty action of an impetuous and sometimes imperious Commons. Refusal means that the Ministry must resign or go to the country on an issue in which it is quite possible the people will ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... now a fair hope that the Government would be in a position to solve the Adriatic problem. The Italian delegates in Paris had suggested that, in the independent buffer State, Rieka should have a separate municipal status, and that a narrow strip of land should join the buffer State to Italy. On December 9, a memorandum was signed by the representatives of Great Britain and America, which was the best compromise which anyone ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... menace alike to Russia and Austria, and a confession of defeat by the King, who preferred to place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name, stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... that he likes my society well enough to make a special journey down into Devon. I represent to him, of course, the days gone by, and for their sake he will always feel an interest in me. Being ten years my junior, he must naturally regard me as an old buffer; I notice, indeed, that he is just a little too deferential at moments. He feels a certain respect for some of my work, but thinks, I am sure, that I ceased writing none too soon—which is very true. If I had not been such a lucky fellow—if ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... station the General preferred his request. It was that Harlan become his executive officer in the approaching campaign—his chief of staff, his companion, his buffer, protecting him from ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... natural borders, and command a peace by land, it might hope for eventual success in the conflict with England. To this end its territorial conquests must be partitioned into three classes: those within the "natural limits," and already named, for incorporation; those to be erected into buffer states to fend off from the tender republic absolutism and all its horrors; and finally such districts as might be valuable for exchange in order to the eventual consolidation of the first two classes. Of the second type, the Directory considered as most important the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of his magnificence Hamilton Burton had regarded life-insurance as a poor man's buffer between ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... this, Brydges! The stage driver's told one of my men, already! Every bar-room buffer in the country side will ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... save the Minister's family from that annoyance. Now and then, the fact could not be wholly disguised that some one had refused to meet — or to receive — the Minister; but never an open insult, or any expression of which the Minister had to take notice. Diplomacy served as a buffer in times of irritation, and no diplomat who knew his business fretted at what every diplomat — and none more commonly than the English — had to expect; therefore Henry Adams, though not a diplomat and wholly ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... traveller's trick! Ha! ha! we are the diplomatists of commerce. Famous! As for your prospectus, I'll take charge of that. I've got a friend—early childhood—Andoche Finot, son of the hat-maker in the Rue du Coq, the old buffer who launched me into travelling on hats. Andoche, who has a great deal of wit,—he got it all out of the heads tiled by his father,—he is in literature; he does the minor theatres in the 'Courrier des Spectacles.' His father, an old dog chock-full of reasons for not liking wit, won't ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... has provided herself with a buffer state and ally in Southern Europe, meaning Turkey, so she has cleverly succeeded in creating a similar condition in the extreme north of Europe. Sweden and Norway, at no time friendly to the Moscovite—you need only recall the days of Charles XII—have within the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... was unusually thick and ample. 'I suppose, waiter,' he said, shaking his shock of hair, as a Newfoundland dog might shake his before sitting down to dinner, 'that a fair lodging for a single buffer might be found ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pounds) and no dress more than 100 -denarii- (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on the walls of the rooms. Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to circumstances, water mixed with vinegar. On the other hand, he was no enemy ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... like Mr. Verdant Green; which was undoubtedly true. And he then showed his absorbing interest in literary studies by neglecting the society of Mr. Verdant Green and immersing himself in the perusal of one of those vivid accounts of "a rattling set-to between Nobby Buffer and Hammer Sykes" which make "Bell's Life" the favourite ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "I wish there were any hope of my becoming such a fine old buffer in my decadence,—it would be worth living for if only to look at myself in the glass now and then. He rather startled me when he threw down that knife, though. I suppose it is some ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... like that little buffer," declared Lane grumpily as we walked on. "He is too fussy and by-your-leave-please for me. Made me get out all my books yesterday, as if ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... knag[obs3]; check, hitch, contretemps, screw loose, grit in the oil. bar, stile, barrier; [barrier to vehicles] turnstile, turnpike; gate, portcullis. beaver dam; trocha[obs3]; barricade &c. (defense) 717; wall, dead wall, sea wall, levee breakwater, groyne[obs3]; bulkhead, block, buffer; stopper &c. 263; boom, dam, weir, burrock[obs3]. drawback, objection; stumbling-block, stumbling-stone; lion in the path, snag; snags and sawyers. encumbrance, incumbrance[obs3]; clog, skid, shoe, spoke; drag, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... invariably over-crowded and we often had to stand, crowded together on the platforms of the driver and conductor. I have seen officers, of rank which gave dignity, clinging to the back of the conductor's platform with their feet planted insecurely on a buffer. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... Eli meant to fashion some sort of buffer, that would break the fall should the couple above find themselves compelled to jump; and it was a splendid scheme to be formed on the spur of that dreadful moment, one that Cuthbert never could ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... descent, gets again upon its rollers, and runs forward upon these at once into firing position. The two elevated horns which are seen standing up at the rear part of the slide above the roller frame are designed to receive the thump of the two short buffer-blocks—seen at the rear part of each carriage cheek—in the event of the recoil not being wholly expended in raising the weight of gun and carriage, etc., along the curved racers of the slide. These buffer-blocks bear against plugs of vulcanized india-rubber secured ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... of the morning were reborn as he left the study, unattended. Had he any right to inflict this specimen on Creighton? He could only hope that the detective's sense of humor would prove a buffer between him and ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston |
