"Dare-devil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of him," returned the merchant. "If he is visiting the hermit of Rakata, as you tell me, he'll be safe enough. Although something of a dare-devil, the hermit knows how to take care of himself. I'm afraid, however, that you'll not find it so easy to 'look up' your son as you seem to think. Just glance round at these almost impenetrable forests. You don't know what part of the island ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of nursery-maids and grisettes—a butt for the dare-devil ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... as little fitted for the Church (for which he was designed) as could be. At the time of this story, though not above sixteen years old, Master Harry Mostyn was as big and well-grown as many a man of twenty, and of such a reckless and dare-devil spirit that no adventure was too dangerous or too mischievous for him ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... those swarthy, dare-devil riders were as gentle as women; they urged the tiny youngsters onward with harmless switches or with painless blows from loose-coiled riatas; they picked them up in their arms and ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... man himself lost all the stakes he made; but he didn't gamble much, knowing himself not lucky. Instead, he watched the fluctuating fortunes of a vivacious and beautiful youth near him, who flung on his stakes with a lavish gesture of dare-devil extravagance, that implied that he was putting his fortune to the touch to win or lose it all. It was a relief to notice that his stakes were seldom more than threepence. When he lost, he swore softly to himself: "Dio mio, mio ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of Ireland among North-of-Ireland people. His story is dominated by one remarkable character, whose progress towards the subjugation of his own temperament we cannot help but watch with interest. He is swept from one thing to another, first by his dare-devil, roistering spirit, then by his mood of deep repentance, through love and marriage, through quarrels and separation from his wife, to a reconciliation at the point of death, to a return to health, and through the ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... heard how the trick had been played and won by sheer bravado, that he cried out in rage, "How could I count on such a coup? Not another military governor in a hundred would have risked throwing his whole force sixty kilometres from its base. How should I guess what a dare-devil fool Gallieni would turn out? But if Trochu, in '70, had been the same kind of a fool, we should never have ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... art a man after mine own heart," he said smoothly. "Because I love thee and thy bold eyes and thy dare-devil recklessness, and would make a friend of thee. Why else? Now, then, to-morrow thou shalt bring the girl to me. I am minded for an hour's sport with the tiger-cat. My fingers itch for that lean throat of hers. After, I will give her to thee if it please thee—and then we'll see what the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the look of Mr. Trevannion when I said this—he was stupified. That I, Captain Levee, who had commanded his vessels so long—I, the very beau ideal of a privateer's-man, a reckless, extravagant dare-devil, should also presume to have scruples, was too much for him. 'Et tu, Brute,' he might have exclaimed, but he did not; but he stared at me without speaking for some time; at last he said, 'Is the golden age arrived, or ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Orleans, about the middle of the last century, were Major Joe Howell, a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis, and Major Henry, a dare-devil soldier of fortune who had filibustered in Nicaragua and fought in the Mexican War. One day while drinking together they quarreled, and as a result a duel was arranged to take place the same afternoon. Henry kept on drinking, but Howell went to sleep and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. ——— was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her came to regard it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the president immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself in a most flattering manner, something like this: "Great by his position under the Republic,—greater still, I am bold to say, in the Republic of letters!" I made no reply ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... friend. No one laughed at my broken English, but on the contrary, all seemed charmed by my foreign accent. People thought proper to surround me with a sort of romantic mystery, for, perhaps, there was a flavor of the dashing dare-devil in my demeanor, which imparted influence over homelier companions. Besides this, I soon got the reputation of a scholar. I was considered a marvel in languages, inasmuch as I spoke French, Italian, Spanish, English, and professed a familiarity with ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... riding down the wall of the cut had not been performed to impress anyone; the look of reckless abandon in the otherwise serene eyes that held Murphy's steadily, convinced the engineer that the man had merely responded to a dare-devil impulse. There was something in Trevison's appearance that suggested an entire disregard of fear. The engineer had watched the face of a brother of his craft one night when the latter had been driving a roaring monster down a grade at record-breaking ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I—was discharged, my colonel, as—unfit." His head ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with white face and set teeth, no one seeing him would have thought that the fierce eye and stern expression could have belonged to the dashing dare-devil, the prince of cavaliers and ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... a dangerous man to be trifled with. The grand hickory-stick he twirls in his hand would be enough, with his dare-devil look, to frighten most persons; but when we state that in the depth of the pocket of the remarkable check-coat that he wears he conceals one of the most beautiful 'persuaders' ever manufactured by Colt, we are satisfied he will be a terror to all ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... that same day Can Grande was sitting in the palace with two chosen companions, as dare-devil as himself, waiting the hour of an assignation. It was about ten o'clock: at half-past the hour they were to go out cloaked into the streets, bent upon the lifting of a decent burgess's wife from her bed. Hence they were not in the castle, which is near San Zeno, but in the Della Scala Palace, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... admire him. It gives you quite a shock when he comes into a room, yet he is so unconscious and modest, and has the most graceful, fascinatingly quiet manners and wonderful brown eyes that seem to talk for him. He does everything well, and everything hard, is a dare-devil on horseback, a reckless sailor, and a lot besides. If you could see the way those eyes look at me, and the smile that breaks over his face as if the sun had come out suddenly! But alas! the sun has gone under now, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... superficial merely. I spoke of Whistler's vanity in life, and I spoke of his timidity and reverence in art. That contradiction is itself merely superficial. Bob Acres was timid, but he was also vain. His swagger was not an empty assumption to cloak his fears; he really did regard himself as a masterful and dare-devil fellow, except when he was actually fighting. Similarly, except when he was at his work, Whistler, doubtless, really did think of himself as a brilliant effortless butterfly. The pose was, doubtless a quite sincere one, a necessary reaction of feeling. Well, in his writing he displays to us his ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... unofficial incident was provided by a man in the 4th Dragoon Guards producing a fine bay horse which he wagered 30 to 1 against any officer riding. It was a real American buck-jumper. This challenge was enough for the dare-devil subalterns of the —— Hussars, and one of them, Beach-Hay, a splendid horseman, promptly closed with the offer. For twenty minutes or so he tried to mount, without succeeding; finally he muffled the horse's head in a cloak and got on his back. Then he dug his ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... had a long talk with him. He's keen for it—says he admires any guy which can plan a thing that big. Grinned like a hyena when I told him the big guys back of it wouldn't let any law interfere. He's got seventy men, he says—dare-devil gun-fighters from down south a piece which will do anything he tells 'em ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "He was a furious dare-devil immediately, and quick, and savage, and peremptory. His spirit entered into his men. They went over the side with pikes and axes, and, scrambling for any foothold, set to work on the ice like maniacs. In the lust of cupidity they did not even think how they wrought against their own safety ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... of the failing widow because of Almira's tacit acceptance of the devotions of young Mr. Powlett, son of the resident physician of the sanitarium that was now bringing so many patients to Urbana. A handsome, dare-devil sort of boy was Powlett, who speedily cut out all the local beaux at the parties and picnics which filled the summer of '75. A beautiful dancer was he, and taught Almira to waltz and "glide" in a style never before seen in Urbana, and that other couples first derided, then envied, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... you'd say that, but it all depends on what the guv'nor means to do. He's a dare-devil at the wheel, I can tell you, an' never says a word to me when I let things rip. But he's up to some game to-day. He's fair crazy about that girl you have in tow—what's her ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Harmar; "we always called him Mad Anthony—he was such a dare-devil. I don't believe, if that man, when alone, had been surrounded by foes, they could really have ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... left Lieutenant Roger Tempest, of the Scots Guards, for a squad of the Scots Guards who had been learning scouting under Driscoll were to accompany Driscoll's Scouts. That little group was characteristic of the future of the British Empire. Two aristocrats riding shoulder to shoulder with a wild dare-devil, whose rifle had cracked over half the earth. England, Ireland, and Scotland rode alone in front of the adventurous band that day. It was a reckless ride; the captain, on his grey stallion, half a length in front. They darted through gullies, drew rein and unslung ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... "dare-devil" from the sociability of country life, without substituting an artificial stiffness, is the problem for every thoughtful and refined man and woman in rural circles. How to "be kindly affectioned one to another, in brotherly love, in honor preferring one another"—perhaps that would furnish ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... his eyes swept up to the gallery and met hers. It was a long, eager, heart-searching gaze. She saw a countenance more fascinating than of old; for the sardonic glare had gone, the bitterness, "the dare-man, dare-brute, dare-devil" expression had given place to a stern mournfulness, and the softening shadow of deep contrition and manly sorrow hovered over features where scoffing cynicism had so ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his gentle facility may have caused keener pangs than others give by cruelty and tyranny. The other, bright-eyed, healthy, strong, and keen-tempered—the best fighter and runner and leaper in the school—the dare-devil who was the leader in every row—took to Greek much about the time when his companion took to drinking, got a presentation, wrote some wonderful things about the functions of the chorus, and is now on the fair road ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... that this man knew more of the night's work than he had told. He conveyed this belief to Dangloss, and a close watch was set upon the fellow. More than once during the long afternoon John Tullis found himself wishing that he had that dare-devil, thoroughbred young countryman of his, Truxton King, beside him; something told him that the young man would prove a treasure ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... answer, however, would have involved too great a loss of time. Luckily I found three dare-devil fellows, but recently come into the valley for a living, who were willing to go with me. These, together with the man already mentioned and one Cora Indian, enabled me to make a start. Thus I parted from pretty San Francisco, and the nice Indians ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the door heard him marching back and forth through all the weary night. The one thing he least expected, because he least understood it, had come to pass. He had been a good and true friend to the villain who had fled, for Arnold's reckless bravery and dare-devil fighting had appealed to the strongest passion of his nature, and he had stood by him always. He had grieved over the refusal of Congress to promote him in due order and had interceded with ultimate success in his ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... fellow; if this makes us feel that they were people whom we might have liked or disliked. I do not myself think that John was a nice gentleman; but for all that the popular picture of him is all wrong. Whether he had any generous qualities or not, he had what commonly makes them possible, dare-devil courage, for instance, and hotheaded decision. But, above all, he had a morality which he ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... his low voice, of his fits of musing, that the aggregate impression is that of affectation and self-consciousness, rather than of a simple, passionate, and heroic nature. Mr. Gray does not seem to us at all like the rash, fiery, and dare-devil Scotchman of history. His conduct and conversation, as recounted in the fifth chapter of the novel, are unnatural and improbable; and we cannot wonder that the first lieutenant did not know what to make of so melodramatic and sententious a gentleman, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... mushrooming and ratting in their latest quarters" are satisfactory. And even the wounded, in comparing the hazards of London with those at the front, only indulge in mild irony at the expense of the "staunch dare-devil souls who stay ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... tired of death-hunting? Very good; live on, drink deep of the fountain of life, drain it to the dregs, and much good may it do you! You have wealth and therefore power, and you will become just such a dare-devil villain as the man who has caused all this pother. You will betray innocent, confiding maidens, deceive loving friends, ruin families, and beget unfortunate, ill-starred beings. You will become a heartless libertine, a selfish sensualist. You will mock at God, mock at the Devil; and when ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... ill-luck, but how could we know that that dare-devil was a friend of Dewey's? If we'd let well enough alone, we shouldn't have lost our horses and been compelled to tramp on foot ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... that blurred her vision, while a lump rose in her throat too big to swallow. "Gentle Annie" of The Colonial veranda, erstwhile authority on Battenburg and sweaters, had accomplished the most reckless of the dare-devil feats of the cow-country—he had "bull-dogged" a steer ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends, do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... with outward impassiveness and inward contempt. A realist, a cynic, and an absolute genius with a Colt .45, he was well known along the border for his dare-devil exploits and reckless courage. The brainiest men in the Secret Service, Lewis, Thomas, Sayre, and even old Jim Lane, the local chief, whose fingers at El Paso felt every vibration along the Rio Grande, were not as ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... port wine anywhere else, and they can't get nobody else to buy it of them; so the Portuguese gave up their arsenal at Lisbon, for the use of the English, and there we kept all our stores, under the charge of that old dare-devil, Sir Isaac Coffin. Now it so happened, that one of the clerks in old Sir Isaac's office, a Portuguese chap, had been some time before that in the office of the Spanish ambassador; he was a very smart sort of a chap, and sarved as interpreter, and the old commissioner ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... a late London paper that Thora's lover has gone and got himself decorated, or crossed, for doing some dare-devil sort of thing about wounded men. I wonder how Thora will like to walk on Pall Mall with a man who wears a star or a medal on his breast. Such things make women feel small. For, of course, we could win stars and medals if we had the chance. Max considers Ian "highly praise-worthy." ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "is money and advertisement. If they knew I was a reporter, they'd eat out of my hand. The tall man calls himself Lighthouse Harry. He once kept a light-house on the Florida coast, and that's as near to the sea as he ever got. The other one is a dare-devil calling himself Colonel Beamish. He says he's an English officer, and a soldier of fortune, and that he's been in eighteen battles. Jimmy says he's never been near enough to a battle to see the red-cross flags on the base hospital. But they've fooled these Cubans. The ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... per cent. Englishmen began to feel that England was blockaded! We are not so familiar as we ought to be with the interesting record of all these audacious and brilliant enterprises, conducted with dare-devil recklessness by men who would not improbably have been hanged both as pirates and as traitors, had fortune led to their capture at this moment of British rage ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... achievements turned his head we shall see. Already there were drops of bitterness in the sweet cup of success. It was Metellus who was called Numidicus, not he, and it was Sulla whose dare-devil knavery had entrapped the king. The substantial work had been done by the former. The coup de theatre which completed it revealed the latter as a rival. Marius fumed at the credit gained by these aristocrats; and when Bocchus dedicated on the Capitol a representation of Sulla receiving Jugurtha's ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... so rapidly indeed had the miscreant acted, that his victim had hardly realised the assault before he found himself securely gagged and bound to a chair in his own ante-room, whilst that dare-devil stood before him, perfectly at his ease, his hands buried in the capacious pockets of his huge caped coat, and murmuring a few ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... betrayed excitement. Nay, it was soon evident he had been taking a superfluous quantity of wine. His voice was thick, and he spoke excessively loud in order to be intelligible. There was something like a defying desperation in his tones, in the dare-devil swagger of his movement, and the almost iron pressure of his grasp upon my fingers. I subdued my own passions—nay, they were subdued—singularly so, by the resolution I had made before his entrance, and was able, therefore, to appear ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... late in the winter, a powerful expedition had been sent to the north of Fort Fetterman in search of the hostile bands led by that dare-devil Sioux chieftain Crazy Horse. On "Patrick's Day in the morning," with the thermometer indicating 30 deg. below, and in the face of a biting wind from the north and a blazing glare from the sheen of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the sailing master, the best fellow in the ward-room mess, and a great favorite with the youngsters, was officer of the deck from six to eight o'clock; and my messmate, Perry Buckner, of Scott county, Kentucky, the most dare-devil midshipman of us all, was master's mate of the forecastle; Hammond, Marshall, Smith and I were the gentlemen of the Watch; Rodney Barlow was quartermaster at the 'con;' the lookouts had just been stationed; the men ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... his peaceful world. He was not only big and strong of limb and broad of chest, but he was very swarthy, and had closely curled black hair. He feared nothing, not even the teacher, and was always doing some dare-devil thing to frighten the children. And because he was dark, morose, and made no friends, and wished none, but went solitary his own dark way, Phil fancied that he must have Spanish blood in his veins, and would no doubt grow up to be a pirate. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that Marbot's details are occasionally a little hard to believe. Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits. Surely he stretched it a little sometimes. You may remember his adventure at Eylau—I think it was Eylau—how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his helmet, paralyzed him by the concussion of his spine; and how, on a Russian officer running forward ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which it is to be considered. Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... of window, with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks clenched in their National grasp. Also the Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in solitary ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... of any proceeding so spectacular, but he was as he was made, and he could not keep his dare-devil spirit quite in abeyance. He twitched his hat farther back on his head, stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked deliberately out into the open, his neck as stiff as a newly elected politician on parade. He did not stop, as Jack had done, but he facetiously whistled "Tramp, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... discussing The Open Arms in all its probable significance. He hadn't been able to get away sooner because of the nap. He had gone through with the nap from start to finish so as not to rouse suspicion. He arrived very hot, but with a feeling of dare-devil running of risks that gave him great satisfaction. He knew that he would cool down again presently and that then the consequences of his behaviour would be unpleasant to reflect upon, but meanwhile his blood ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... possible than between this dare-devil son of Anak and the cultured, almost feminine Poniatowski; but Catherine loved, above all things, variety, and here it was in startling abundance. Nor was her new lover any the less desirable because he was some years younger than herself, or that his grandfather had been a ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... served. The only servant was a black giant, who waited with a dexterity very singular in such a place; and the guests of the captain were the young doctor, the Scotsman known as Dick the Ranter, and myself. The Scotsman alone displayed signs of that rollicking spirit of dare-devil which had characterised the meeting in Paris; but the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... was so simple and effective. Even with Margaret there was no trace of consciousness. The past was wiped clean of all save courtesy and kindness. There were the Hunts—Nellie, and the Lieutenant of the Lexington Rifles, Richard Hunt, a dauntless-looking dare-devil, with the ready tongue of a coffee-house wit and the grace of a cavalier. There was Elizabeth Morgan, to whom Harry's grave eyes were always wandering, and Miss Jennie Overstreet, who was romantic and openly now wrote poems for the Observer, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... little vixen! is that you: Do you dare! Are you frantic, then? Oh, you outrageous little dare-devil! Won't I send you to a mad-house, and have you put in a strait-jacket, till you know how to behave yourself! You infernal ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a bit of sailor, Bit of a doctor and bit of a tailor, Bit of a lawyer, and bit of detective, Bit of a judge, for his work is corrective; Cheering the living and soothing the dying, Risking all things, even dare-devil flying; True to his paper and true to his clan— Just look ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... called him, to distinguish him from "Old Scratch," his father, sailed in the sloop Reindeer, partners with one "Clam." Clam was a dare-devil, but Nelson was a reckless maniac. He was twenty years old, with the body of a Hercules. When he was shot in Benicia, a couple of years later, the coroner said he was the greatest-shouldered man he had ever ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... for myself or my partners. When I did big things, some large corporation like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was behind me and the responsible party. My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a dare-devil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... Indian was far out of reach, and had rejoined his men, and the whole dare-devil band, with the captured horses, scuttled off along the defiles, their red flag flaunting overhead, and the rocks echoing to their whoops and yells, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... deafness, and, as to carrying on heavily, though he was a fearless man, I don't think that he ever meant to take undue risks. I can never forget his naive sort of astonishment when remonstrated with for what appeared a most dare-devil performance. The only person, of course, that could remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... your head, for instance, to send your son to school. All fathers are hypocrites and are never willing to confess that their own flesh and blood is very troublesome when it walks about on two legs, lays its dare-devil hands on everything, and is everywhere at once like a frisky pollywog. Your son barks, mews, and sings; he breaks, smashes and soils the furniture, and furniture is dear; he makes toys of everything, he scatters your papers, and ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... if you ask my pockets,—pockets, which are the symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. [Surveying me from head to foot.] The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton! Are you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones? but, to be ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been of the high-spirited, dare-devil sort. This lad was made for a scholar—-for the priesthood, in fact, and the army will be more uncongenial than these marble works! Foolish fellow, he will soon have had enough of it, with his ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once those hard, dare-devil riders rode who carried across the land the mail-bag of the Pony Express, overtook Doc Tripp and changed to a fresh horse at the end of the first fifteen miles. He swung out of his saddle, stretched ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... dashing, dare-devil sort of a girl, with a snaky look in her eyes. She wears a pink hat ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... especially invited me to share his porch ..." and the other Varney, not the one who sat so stiff and mute, desperate eyes glued on the far horizon, but the easy, negligent Varney, gay dare-devil that he was, actually achieved a pleasant laugh. "I must show you his note. It's been a long time since I have had anything ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fellow told me. The following is one of his stories. I give it for what it is worth; premising, however, that from what I know of Bembo, and the foolhardy, dare-devil feats sometimes performed in the sperm-whale fishery, I ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... demand as an expressman, remembers Field as a somewhat reckless fellow and "dare-devil," and is authority for the story of Field's discomfiture in the boxing ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... excited. Count Bindo, the dare-devil Italian adventurer, who cared not a jot for any man living, and who himself lived so well upon the proceeds of his amazing audacity and clever wits, was not in the habit of speaking like this. I pressed him to tell me more, but ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... one o' these fool amateur guys doin' the dare-devil detective act like you read about in th' magazines, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... her as quite a little girl—and they sometimes got as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a hidebound character, and was often very ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... afternoon, as a result of this extraordinary fraternising, a very singular thing occurred along the French front, where the bitter fighting has rebounded into a hot friendship. A French volunteer, who is as dare-devil as many of his friends, suddenly climbed over the Chinese barricades and shouted back that he was going away on a visit. They tried to make him return, but in spite of a little hesitation, he went on climbing and getting farther and farther away. Then he suddenly disappeared for good. Nobody ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... his courage, his very dare-devil rashness, together with presents of wampum belts from his Indian parents, {97} saved his life for a second time, and a year of wild wanderings with Mohawk warriors finally brought him to Albany on the Hudson, where the Dutch would have ransomed ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... a General Election comes," says Mr. JOHN DILLON, M.P. It is this dare-devil spirit which has made so many Irishmen what they are. The recruiting officer has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... Pennsylvania. A portion of them were steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that came from the wild Irish women whom the first ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... coat with a standing collar, a pair of cossack pantaloons tapering down to the foot with a notch cut in the front for the instep, and a hat about twice as large at the crown as at the rim, much resembling in shape an inverted sugar-loaf, with the smaller end cut away. He had a reckless, dare-devil, good humored look, and very much the air of what is called "a young man about town;" that is, one who rides out to Cato's every afternoon, eats oyster suppers at Windust's every night after the play, and spends the rest of his time and his money ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home with it. Yes, he had seized her, had crushed her madly in the embrace of his plowman ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... an order to one of his servants, and glanced at me with that sort of mocking, dare-devil look in his eyes which I loathed, which everybody loathed who ever met the man. Of course I had no idea what all this portended, but I was very ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... perfect. There was nothing for her to do, and she was doing it with a quiet self-control which won my admiration. Her manner seemed to me exactly suited to the exigencies of the situation. With a super-competent dare-devil like myself in charge of affairs, all she had to do was to wait and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... words between us, externals spoke with greater force. He had the Greek line of head and throat, and he sat his horse with a dare-devil repose. The eloquence of his mute attitudes, his physical mastery of the conditions, his strength repressed, tied to my silly freaks and subject to my commands, while his thoughts roamed free! That was the beginning. It lasted through a week of starlight and a week of moonlight—lyric ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... and dull, and as if he were utterly at a loss how to deal with a female of so obviously and totally different a kind from any he had met before; but, with it all, he was very conscious of being glad to be there. Underneath everything, too, he felt a bit of a dare-devil, which was a delightful experience for a London curate; and still deeper, much more mysteriously and almost a little terrifyingly, something stranger still, that he had known this girl for ages, although he had not seen ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... habitant, was carried away by his love for forest life, and no enactments, however severe—not even the penalty of {174} death—had the effect of restraining his restlessness. That the majority of the coureurs de bois were a reckless, dare-devil set of fellows, it is needless to say. On their return from their forest haunts, after months of savage liberty, they too often threw off all restraint, and indulged in the most furious orgies. Montreal was their favourite place of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... a regular dare-devil and that by making sport of his customer he may win a reputation as the village cut-up. His favorite victim is some half-witted fellow—tho' a customer who is partly deaf may do and he is always ready for a yokel or ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... wonderful eyes could be tender as well as steely. Perhaps he had sisters at the old home, and perhaps, too, I was the first woman he had seen in months to remind him of them. I shall always believe that he is from good people some place East, that his "dare-devil" nature got him into some kind of trouble there, and that he came to this wild country to hide from Justice. The very morning after we got here, not long after our breakfast, he appeared at our tent with a fine young deer ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in any other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a circus. In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken idea of the ethics of their calling, were appealing to sensation lovers by the practice of dare-devil feats, the Wrights with admirable common sense and dignity stood sturdily against any such degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they were joined by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to be shown in the ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... old-world tranquillity or mid-Victorian futility according to their position in the home. Outside the home, in that wild state from which civilization has dragged them, they may have stood for dare-devil courage or constancy or devotion; I cannot tell. I may only speak of them now as I find them, which is in the garden or in the drawing-room. In their lily-leaved pool, sunk deep in the old flagged terrace, upon whose borders the blackbird whistles ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Rim defines the word, Tom was quite as bad as they called him. A handsome young dare-devil he was, slanting his glance downward when he looked into the eyes of a six-foot man,—and every inch of him good healthy bone and muscle. Women eyed him pleasantly, wistful for his smile. Men spoke to him friendlywise ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... H.M. ship Tiger. The type of a daring, reckless, dare-devil English sailor. His adventures with Harry Clifton, in Delhi, form the main incidents of Barrymore's melodrama, El Hyder, Chief of the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... style. We shall have you a swaggering dare-devil yet, old boy. And now it's boot and saddle again. Good-bye, and ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... from the crowd, and there was a galloping of hoofs the other way. Another horseman appeared from the Lewallen end, riding hastily. The new-comer's errand was to call Jasper back. But the young dare-devil was close to the crowd, and was swinging a ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... dramatic demand and the ethical demand here meet and take each other's hands, and will not be separated. This is why Mr Stevenson and Mr Henley—young men of great talent, failed—utterly failed—they thought they could make a hero out of a shady and dare-devil yet really cowardly villain ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... closer about the alien, the centre of attraction. When he moved farther along the platform to avoid them, they followed. Heretofore passive, the innate racial hostility became active. One youth with a dare-devil air jostled him—and disappeared precipitately. There was no response, no retaliation, and another followed his example. The confusion redoubled, drowned the roar of the approaching train. Spectators in the rear began mounting trucks and empty barrels the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... head-long into an abyss of vain glory, hoping at life's sunset to reap a harvest contrary to the seed that were sown, let me suggest that you pause first to read the story of "The Woman With a Stone Heart," Marie Sampalit, dare-devil of ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... the year of the Big Stampede and the trail of Ninety-eight, When the eyes of the world were turned to the North, and the hearts of men elate; Hearts of the old dare-devil breed thrilled at the wondrous strike, And to every man who could hold a pan came the message, "Up and hike". Well, I was there with the best of them, and I knew I would not fail. You wouldn't believe it to see me now; but wait ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... length his excesses forfeited the protection of his uncle, the embassador, and obliged him again to flee. He had made his way back to Seville, trusting that his past misdeeds were forgotten, or rather trusting to his dare-devil spirit and the power of his family to ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... a dare-devil crew, however, and Hawkins feared nothing. The Moonbeam would have her work cut out; but then all the more glory to the bold fellows on board of her; for these were the days when adventure was beloved ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Noronha was completed he would be itching to rush at top speed along the straight line to Pernambuco. It was a bold thing, too, to land on the island and stock their vessel for a voyage, the end of which no man could foresee. The dare-devil notion fascinated them. In that instant, the Andromeda's crew returned to their allegiance, which was as well, since it was fated to be stiffly tested many times ere they were reported ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Bertha by a fiend who donned the shape of man to prosecute his amour, arrives in Sicily to compete for the hand of the Princess Isabella, which is to be awarded as the prize at a magnificent tournament. Robert's dare-devil gallantry and extravagance soon earn him the sobriquet of 'Le Diable,' and he puts the coping-stone to his folly by gambling away all his possessions at a single sitting, even to his horse and the armour ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... thought. That same veil must make him well-nigh invisible; more than that, the dust lay so thickly on all things that colour in any uniform was a debatable quality. He didn't believe anybody was noticing. The extreme height to which his courage ever attained, was at once his. He felt almost dare-devil. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... sweet, heavenly term of holiness, but the vigorous, courageous, self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect love —we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it was said, "Each one resembled the children ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... had no dogs to defend us, orthodox Jews being prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a custom amounting to a religious injunction, our boys never ventured into the place except, perhaps, in a spirit of dare-devil bravado ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... some pains to make sure of Elsie. Does n't Elsie look savage? Dick involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he felt a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A dare-devil fellow, but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his imagination, and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her, he would carry a loaded revolver with him to ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Canadians have too often wakened up only at the wildcat stage, and British capital has come in to reorganize inflated and collapsed properties on a purely investment basis. The American pioneer does nothing on an investment basis. He goes in on a wild and rampant dare-devil gamble. If he loses—as lose he often does—he takes his medicine and never whines. If he ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... inseparable from the sentiment that makes these men the redoubtable soldiers they are. Take those away, and you break their touch with a continuous tradition which transforms every man in the regiment, be he Scottish, English or Irish, into a Gordon, with all the dash and vim and dare-devil courage that centre around the name. The Gordon blood in him helped Byron to understand and express the potency ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... not care a straw about Turkey," writes Mr. LOVAT Fraser in The Daily Mail. It is this dare-devil spirit which has made ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... now reduced to six, and two of the number, Mr. Spareneck and Caingey Thornton, become marked in their attention to our hero. Thornton is riding Mr. Waffles' crack steeple-chaser 'Dare-Devil,' and Mr. Spareneck is on a first-rate hunter belonging to the same gentleman, but they have not been able to get our friend Sponge into grief. On the contrary, his horse, though lathered goes as strong as ever, and Mr. Sponge, seeing their design, is as careful ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... worth while, if you are curious in contrasts and comparisons. Five years ago that bowed, blasted cripple was the most reckless dare-devil, the most splendid Paladin, in all the army of Algiers; the man for whom, after an unusually brilliant exploit, St. Arnaud, loving him as his own right hand, could find no higher praise than to write in his dispatches, "Les 3me Chasseurs se sont conduits en heros; ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... were full of it." He turned to Androvsky. "Miss Enfilden thought I could not sit a horse, Monsieur, unlike you. Forgive me for saying that you are almost more dare-devil than the Arabs themselves. I saw you the other day set your stallion at the bank of the river bed. I did not think any horse could have done it, but ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... superintendent, frontiersman, and dare-devil fighting man, was one of the far-famed gunmen of the Plains. These were a race of men bred by the perils and hard conditions of Western life. They became man-killers first from stern necessity. In that day the man who was not quick on the ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... different from the quiet, undemonstrative manner to which she had been accustomed. With at least a dozen men in shaggy overcoats and slouched hats she shook hands with a tolerably good grace, but when there appeared a tall, lank, bearded young giant of a fellow, with a dare-devil expression in his black eyes and a stain of tobacco about his mouth, she drew back, and to his hearty "How are ye, Miss Markham? Considerable tuckered out, I reckon?" she merely responded with a cool bow and a haughty stare, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... inside looked at each other—man and woman! They both knew with what they had to deal. A dare-devil expression rose to Gaston's face. He ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... physical device and disregarding every danger. More than once Tom almost shuddered at the chances which his young companion took upon some perilously slender limb. Once, the impulse seized him to call a warning, but he refrained from a kind of inspired confidence in that young dare-devil who by now seemed a mere speck of brown moving in and out of the darkened green above him. Once he was on the point of shouting advice to Hervey about what to do in the unlikely event of his reaching the nest before the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... marsh grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste. Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one graceless dare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... head, with his shirt opened on his chest and no hat on, Dymov looked handsome and exceptionally strong; in every movement he made one could see the reckless dare-devil and athlete, knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo, talked and laughed louder than any of the rest, and looked as though he were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and astonish the ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... day, Margaret, I was a ruined man. The brand of society was upon me. The world would not let me live honestly, and the love of life was too strong in me to let me face death. I tried to live dishonestly, and I led a wild, rackety, dare-devil kind of a life, amongst men who found they had a skilful tool, and knew how to use me. They did use me to their heart's content, and left me in the lurch when danger came. I was arrested for forgery, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... rid of at Gettysburg. What Hugh really needed was a war, and he had too much money. He has a curious literary streak, I'm told, and wrote a rather remarkable article—I've forgotten just where it appeared. He raced a yacht for a while in a dare-devil, fiendish way, as one might expect; and used to go off on cruises and not be heard of for months. At last he got engaged to Sally ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the last almost reluctantly, and Jim shuddered. The knife-thrower! What wouldn't the little dare-devil be willing to ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... more troops. Brigade after brigade had gone from Washington's own army to swell Schuyler's ranks. "I care not where the victory is won, so we do but gain it," Washington said. Schuyler again pleaded his want of general officers. Washington sent him Arnold, the dare-devil of the army, and Lincoln, a man of sound head, steady hand, and even temper, as a counterpoise to Arnold's over-confident and impetuous nature. Thanks to these efforts, we had created a new army on the ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... Vandalia," he began after lighting a fresh cigar, "a dare-devil driver named Hubbard—'Yank' Hubbard they called him. He was a first-class mechanic, sober and industrious, but notoriously reckless, though he had never had a wreck. The Superintendent of Motive Power had selected him for the post of master-mechanic at Effingham, but I ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... one of the familiar frequenters of the Manor House of New Connaught,—a bold fellow, with a hand and a heart both ready for any perilous service. He may have been a comrade of the Cornet's in his troop. His name was Hugh Riley,—a name that has been traditionally connected with dare-devil exploits ever since the days of Dermot McMorrogh. There have been, I believe, but few hard fights in the world, to which Irishmen have had anything to say, without a Hugh Riley somewhere in the thickest part ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... an Irishman of the name of Sellenger—which was the usual way of pronouncing the name of St. Leger, or, as they spelled it, Sent Leger—restored by later generations to the still older form. He was a reckless, dare-devil sort of fellow, then a Captain in the Lancers, a man not without the quality of bravery—he won the Victoria Cross at the Battle of Amoaful in the Ashantee Campaign. But I fear he lacked the seriousness and steadfast strenuous purpose which my father always says marks the character of our ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... wondering how she ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing still, how she ought to—end it! That little backward brain sought the solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal, a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret—the greatest and finest secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was a sentence of life, and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... her, and Patricia, now thoroughly alarmed, sought vainly for a means of bringing this impetuous and dare-devil young ranchman to his senses. She thought once, as they ascended a short hill, of leaping from the car to the ground, but the speed was too great for her to take such a risk. It even occurred to her to seize the steering-wheel, and to ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... hundred picked horsemen, fighting, singing, dare-devil riders, Stuart slipped from Lee's lines ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... (2) Dare-devil, etc. "Tommy the Nut" was the alias of the prisoner who, according to the story, was first described as "a-larrikin," by Sergeant Dalton. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... his tickets bought, his wallet lined with bank notes for his journey, and secretly stowed beyond the reach (if there be such a thing) of pickpockets, and the Mishaumok Journal, Evening Edition, damp from the press, unfolded in his fingers, to the care-for-naught, dare-devil little newsboy who had sold it to him, and who now saunters off, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... still as he worked at the toy on his knee He would spin his old yarns of the ships and the sea, Thermopylae, Lightning, Lothair and Red Jacket, With many another such famous old packet, And many a bucko and dare-devil skipper In Liverpool blood-boat or Colonies' clipper; The sail that they carried aboard the Black Ball, Their skysails and stunsails and ringtail and all, And storms that they weathered and races they won And records they broke in the days that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... much more did his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Sancho crossed himself and kept up his vigilance over his master to the last. Finally he saw him disappear in the coal-black depths, and then he called on all the saints he knew by name to protect the flower and cream of knight-errantry, the dare-devil of the earth, the heart of steel and the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those big, soft, dark ones ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... about this affair of the blinds, for Rushton and Misery robbed everybody. They made a practice of annexing every thing they could lay their hands upon, provided it could be done without danger to themselves. They never did anything of a heroic or dare-devil character: they had not the courage to break into banks or jewellers' shops in the middle of the night, or to go out picking pockets: all their robberies ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... set of the sea, and the buoy supported him bravely. His thoughts ran on things past; he had spoken unkindly of Sally, behind her back; he had been tipsy—Ah! how often! Then he thought, "Shall I pray and repent?" All the dare-devil in the deluded lad's soul arose at this question, and he snarled "No. Blowed if I snivel just yet, only because I'm in a bad way." Oh, Jack, Jack! And the deep grave weltering below you, and only a ring of cork and oilskin to keep ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... valiant adventurer—"but no, more valiant than wise, and worth his weight in gold," according to the appreciative Leicester—was shot through the arm. For the dare-devil Welshman, much to the Earl's regret, persisted in running up and down the trenches "with a great plume of feathers in his gilt morion," and in otherwise making a very conspicuous mark of himself "within ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one possessed of ten shrill-tongued demons, burst on the gallop away from the others, and spurring his horse cruelly, forced the animal to race, bucking and plunging, half way around the arena and back to the group. This, then, was a type of the dare-devil horse breaker of the Wild West? The cheers travelled in waves around and around the house and rocked back and forth like water pitched from side to side in ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... boy is a dare-devil, bold and fearless lad; nothing can daunt him. He is, in fact, what his hated father was when first I knew him, years ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... unpardonable in the children of the poorest and humblest of the Irishry. There was Bitter Bread before me, if I chose to follow, as thousands of poor, cozened, betrayed creatures before me had done, a Naughty Life; but this, with unutterable Loathing and Scorn, I cast away from me; and having, from my Dare-devil Temper, a kind of Pride and High Stomach made me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had spelt ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... is specially true of the Spiritual Life of which we are speaking. Take this in its application to a Corps. If you want an active, generous, fighting, dare-devil Corps, able and willing to drive Hell before it, that Corps must be possessed, and that fully, by this spirit of life. Nothing else can effectively take its place. No education, learning, Bible knowledge, theology, social amusements, or anything of the kind will be a satisfactory ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... about, and rather bothered what to do next. So he was delighted at the idea of joining some of our excursions. But I will keep all that for the Wood House, for we had no end of adventures—the dare-devil Englishmen as they called us. But never mind that, I must ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... field. A second baronetcy in the family had been specially created for Sir Gerald. It would not have been easy to say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while Sir Gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant feats, Sir Denis was rather the old type of soldier—cool as well as daring, always reliable and steady. Worshipped by his men, his name was one to be held in constant regard by the British public, which calls its heroes by their ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... forward slowly, in a state of mind so complicated that, for all her skill in self-analysis, she could not unravel her own sensations. She only knew that she felt jarred through and through, and in a mood to give way to her most dare-devil impulses. But happily for her, no egregious piece of folly was ready to hand ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... rail by a man who had been through scores of adventures, Captain Wilson. The son of the captain of a Newcastle collier, Wilson had grown up a dare-devil sailor boy. He enlisted as a soldier in the American war, became captain of a vessel trading with India, and was then captured and imprisoned by the French in India. He escaped from prison by climbing a great wall, and dropping down forty feet on the other side. He ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... aquiline face like the boy's, and wore a great sweeping mustache which hid his mouth. The boy followed, looking wonderfully like him, as he sprang into his own saddle with the same dare-devil vault. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... says, here he'd been up in one himself and knew what flying meant, but he probably wouldn't of took the least notice if this dare-devil had been killed right there ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... something about the queer fellow that young Merriwell liked. And yet, while he sympathized with Blunt to a certain extent, he was forced to condemn his rashness and dare-devil behavior. ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... her, but, pained and indignant at his desertion, she hardly heeded them; how was she to know that Camillo Borghese was, under his cold exterior, very honestly in love with his wife and just now cruelly tortured with jealousy of her brother-in-law, the dare-devil Murat? For the latter was as unscrupulous as he was handsome, as Napoleon was to find to his cost, though in recognition of his services as a dashing leader of cavalry he had rewarded him with the hand of his sister Caroline and the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... down to a harsh croaking. It ended in a loud, sharp snick, as when one cracks one's joint, but many times louder. I knew only too well what that dreadful sound portended. We rushed together into the room, but the hardened Savary and the dare-devil hussar both recoiled in horror from the sight which met ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... position, if you please, wearing patent leather boots of a good make, and smoking trabucos cigars with an amber mouth-piece. These well-dressed villains ordinarily lack nerve. They cheat, they forge; but they don't assassinate. Supposing, though, that the count did get hold of some dare-devil fellow. He would simply have replaced one accomplice by another still more dangerous. That would be idiotic, and the count is a sensible man. He, therefore, had nothing whatever to do with the matter. To be quite sure though, I will make some inquiries about him. Another thing, Widow ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... became shockingly bloodthirsty. These were his bad points; his good ones were that, like most people of the Zulu blood, he became exceedingly attached if he took to you at all; he was a hard-working and intelligent man, and about as dare-devil and plucky a fellow at a pinch as I have ever had to do with. He was about five-and-thirty years of age or so, but not a 'keshla' or ringed man. I believe that he had got into trouble in some way in Swaziland, and the authorities of his tribe would not ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... had never interfered with his efficiency as a soldier, nor his record for a dare-devil courage. There were many tales current of his exploits on the Somme, in which again and again he had singed the beard of Death, with an absolute recklessness of his own personal life, combined with the most anxious care for that of his men. Since the ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said the Hon. JOHN COLLIER, giving evidence in the Romney case, "we artists do not think much of the art critics." It is this dare-devil attitude which distinguishes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... herself, "Strength, health, and nerve I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed that everybody had them; I never felt grateful for them as a blessing, but I began to learn what suffering was from this date." Henceforth we see her not as the woman who was ready to share any dare-devil adventure or hair- breadth escape, and who revelled in a free and roving life of travel, but rather as the wife, whose thought now turned more than ever to the delights of home, and how to add ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... main, took his side; and doubtless the national instinct was sound; for the allies had crossed the Rhine, and France once more was in danger. As in 1793, when the nation welcomed the triumph of the dare-devil Jacobins over the respectable parliamentary Girondins, as promising a vigorous rule and the expulsion of the monarchical invaders, so now the soldiers and peasants, if not the middle classes, rejoiced at the discomfiture of the talkers by the one necessary ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the age when the forces of character still lie dormant, and an accident may determine the direction of their future development. It is the age when it is possible for fortune to make a dare-devil of a philosopher, a sceptic of a worshipper, a cynic of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... to Congress from Alabama a roistering blade by the name of McConnell. He was something of a wit. During his brief sojourn in the national capital he made a noisy record for himself as an all-round, all-night man about town, a dare-devil and a spendthrift. His first encounter with Col. John W. Dade, of Virginia, used to be one of the standard local jokes. Colonel Dade was seated in the barroom of Brown's Hotel early one morning, waiting for someone to come in and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Trembling, all their dare-devil courage sapped from them by the menace of Thurston's words, they stumbled down the steep stairs, and the darkness swallowed them. ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... of them all has shown so much "dare-devil independence" as Jane G. Swisshelm? One of the first women to wield the pen-editorial thirty years ago, she was so independent and fearless as to excite the wonder of her readers. The first woman admitted to the reporters' gallery in the Capitol ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, and her reply ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... more likely than that you will ever capture me, I will have you chopped up into small pieces and fed to the fires of the Dauntless." A few months later, this little Irishman, whom Weyler denounced as a "bloodthirsty, dare-devil," and who may have been a dare-devil but was not bloodthirsty, actually carried out a part of this seemingly reckless threat. He landed a cargo within a mile and a ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... of dare-devil at riding or driving anything, and I reckon maybe she was enjoying that sloshing through the water, though I expected every minute to see the boat go upside down. I could hear the engine of the boat going fast—sput-sput-sput-t-t! ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... his eloquence on the acquisition of untold wealth and the capture of some of Philip's distant colonies had appealed to her boundless avarice and made her conscience easy. His expedition to the West Indies might never have been undertaken had he not been a dare-devil fellow, to whom Burleigh's wink was as good as a nod to be off. He slipped out of port unknown to her, and his first prize was a large Spanish ship loaded with salt fish. He pounced upon her after ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman |
