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More "Breeches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every pair that he supplied. The experiment was altogether successful, and when it was heard by the riding men of the City that Mr. Neefit's prices were undoubtedly higher than those of any other breeches-maker in London, and that he had refused to supply breeches for the grooms of a Marquis because the Marquis was not a hunting man, the riding men of the City flocked to him in such numbers, that it became quite a common thing for them to give their ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... represented a sunset, as anyone who looked could see. Then there were a number of little figures, no taller than your hand, but with little wooden faces and arms and legs, just beautifully made little dolls, and these were dressed in kirtles and breeches—all rags mostly—and little coats and wooden shoes. They were massed together in groups with their arms all ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... all that ever he learned of me," he complained to the old nurse, who nodded wisely and said he would soon learn all afresh. And he did, very quickly, learn a great deal, and always it was more like remembering than learning. And a second tutor, very smart in red velvet and gold, with breeches like balloons and a short cloak and a ruff, who was an extremely jolly fellow, came in the mornings to teach him to fence, to dance, and to run and to leap and to play bowls, and promised in due time to teach him wrestling, catching, archery, pall-mall, rackets, ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... the girl's hand and led her gently to the veranda and closed the door upon her. Then he came down the room and regarded his prospective father-in-law with an expression of amused exasperation. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches and nodded his head. "Well," he exclaimed, "you've made a damned pretty mess of it, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... York, I had a very little child for that scene. She was flaxen blond, and her mother had dressed her in bright sky-blue, which was in itself an odd colour for a little boy to wear. Then the small breeches were so evidently mother-made, the tiny bits of legs surmounted with such an enormous breadth of seat, the wee Dutch-looking blue jacket, and the queer blue cap on top of the flaxen curls, gave the little creature the appearance of a Dutch doll. The first sight of her, or, perhaps, I should say ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... put them on. He seemed, however, to have forgotten that he must also take from their width; hence the strange dress that he wears at the present day; the huge turban, the broad girdle, the wide breeches, the blue cloak, all these he has inherited from his father, and worn ever since. The long Damascus dagger of his father, too, he attached to his girdle, and seizing a little staff, set out ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... due respect to the dancing world, or to the world of dancing-masters, we beg leave to anathematize the light shoe or pump; it is an ugly, inconvenient, unsuitable thing, fit for a man with a white waistcoat, gold chain, knee-breeches, &c., but not for a gentleman. The true aesthetical article is either the elastic half-boot of the middle ages; fitting on to the pantaloon, or else the thin Wellington boot of the present day under the trousers. We do not care to see your ribbed and open-worked silk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... licentious jests: Can it call whore? cry bastard? O, then, kiss it! A witty child! can't swear? the father's darling! Give it two plums. Nay, rather than't shall learn No bawdy song, the mother herself will teach it!—- But this is in the infancy, the days Of the long coat; when it puts on the breeches, It will put off all this: Ay, it is like, When it is gone into the bone already! No, no; this dye goes deeper than the coat, Or shirt, or skin; it stains into the liver, And heart, in some; and, rather than it should not, Note what we ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... to eat and free to all, a boy was sure to have it, although it cost him subsequent patches, whippings and tears. Shall the squirrel hunt for nuts and the little sons of men be forbidden, just to save a new pair of breeches, or an old jacket? But the woes of country boyhood are naught in comparison to its joys, and a day in a berry field, or a morning among the chestnut trees, under the blue sky and a west wind, with merry companions, ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... and belt, full brown breeches, deerskin gaiters, cap. Second dress:—Same, but much worn ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... from the gentle toasting of the summer sun, making the fairness of his closely cropped hair even more noticeable. At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported his short breeches of tanned duocorn hide swung a two-foot blade—half wood-knife, half sword. To the eyes of his Terran forefathers he would have presented a barbaric picture. In his own mind he was amply clad and armed for the ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... do not dress up to the women. They confine themselves to a rough trouser suit, generally of dark blue, and a black felt hat. Even amongst the older men of the Hardanger one seldom sees the knee-breeches and stockings which ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... Catholics and then Jesuits. For let there be no illusions about strength of mind, and so on,—this is effected by means of a vast machinery. As, in the old story, the calves were put in at one end of the cylinder and taken out leather breeches at the other, or as glass is cut and wood carved, so does the raw human material, put into the machine of the Catholic Church, become fashioned according to the will of those who guide it. Hulia Protestante! you have a free step and a clear head; but once go into the machine, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was a tall, fair young man, with gray eyes, and a frank, open face. He wore a slight mustache, and when he smiled, showed a set of white and even teeth. He was mounted on a very handsome and spirited bay mare, was clad in a picturesque costume, of which velvet knee-breeches and a crimson scarf were the most conspicuous features, and displayed a marked skill in horsemanship. At the blast of the bugle his horse started forward, and, after the first few rods, settled into an even gallop. Tryon's lance, held truly and at the right angle, captured the first ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lace at the stock was tied full and fastened with brilliants; the coat of ivory silk, heavily embroidered with golden filigree, fell over a waistcoat of clouded ivory and gold mesh, fashionably short, and made by Thorne. My breeches were like the coat, ivory silk, buckled with gold; the stockings were white silk, a bunch of ribbon caught by the jeweled buckles at either knee; and upon my double-channeled pumps, stitched by Bass, buckles of plain dull gold. There ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to AEschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but the silly animal is never content; is ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Rudolf; "I swam round from the other side and got here. Then I threw in a bit of mortar, but I wasn't sure I'd roused you, and I didn't dare shout, so I followed it myself. Lay hold of me a minute while I get on my breeches: I didn't want to get wet, so I carried my clothes in a bundle. Hold me ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... heavy blow. The other suit was for wear in the house. It was of dark green cloth of a much finer texture than the riding suit; with cloth stockings of the same colour, coming up above the knee, and then meeting the trunks or puffed breeches. A small cap with turned up brim, furnished with a few of the tail feathers of a black cock, completed the costume; a dagger being worn in the belt instead of the sword. Four woollen shirts, a pair of shoes, and a cloak were added to the purchases; which ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... again, "I have no great riches, Yet take this tunic, take these breeches, My shirt and my vest, take everything, And give due ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... nose. Arered, an eye. Keiotot, a tooth. Mutchatet, the head. Chewat, an eare. Comagaye, a legge. Atoniagay, a foote. Callagay, a paire of breeches. Attegay, a coate. Polleuetagay, a knife. Accaskay, a shippe. Coblone, a thumbe. Teckkere, the foremost finger. Ketteckle, the middle finger. Mekellacane, the fourth finger. Yacketrone, the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... given only for one instant to Osterhaut and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... detectives, amateur and professional; it's full of hotel keepers, trout fishermen, and private camps which are provided with elevators, electric light, squash courts, modern plumbing, and footmen in knee-breeches; and all of these dinky ginks are hunting for four young and wealthy men who have, at regular intervals of one week each, suddenly and completely disappeared from the face of nature and the awful solitudes of the Adirondacks. I take it for granted that you have ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... appearance we have this picture, from the same chronicler's account of his last fight: a tall dark Welshman of near forty, "Roberts himself made a gallant Figure, being dressed in a rich crimson Damask Wastcoat, and Breeches, a red Feather in his Hat, and a Gold Chain Ten Times round his Neck, a Sword in his Hand, and two pair of Pistols hanging at the End of a Silk Sling, which was flung over his Shoulders, according to the Fashion of the Pyrates" ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... dressed in deerskin shirts, hip-leggings, moccasins, and native blankets. These were superseded by what has been the more universal costume during the present generation: close-fitting cotton or velvet shirt, without collar, cut rather low about the neck and left open under the arms; breeches fashioned from any pleasing, but usually very thin, material, and extending below the knees, being left open at the outer sides from the bottom to a little above the knees; deerskin moccasins with ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... thought, she didn't want to see either of them. She was tired of them, of him with his stiff withdrawals and Dick's young puppyhood. He ran upstairs, snatched some old riding breeches out of a closet, put them on and, without a word to Charlotte, went to the barn. But her eye was on him and she called out of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... know them well enough now to be as funny as we like without having them stare. They are nice when you know them, but you've GOT to know them first. I had a great dinner at Farrar's. All the ecclesiastical lights of England in knee-breeches were there, and the American Minister and Phillips Brooks. It was quite novel and fun. Lots of love. I have all the money ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... this select circle, grouped snugly about the trim little square in front of the inn, appeared the towns-people in general, mixed here and there with the country people, in their quaint German costume, placidly expectant of the diligence—the men in short black jackets, tight black breeches, and three-cornered beaver hats; the women with their long light hair hanging in one thickly plaited tail behind them, and the waists of their short woolen gowns inserted modestly in the region of their shoulder-blades. Round the outer ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man—a man who had been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the tunic and breeches. When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had returned again. It was a most remarkably vivid ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... a leather coat, military breeches and gaiters, with a fur hat with the sign of the Red Army in front, was looking very well, but a strange figure for those who had known him as one of the greatest anti-militarists in Europe. Lenin sat quietly listening, speaking when necessary in almost every European language with astonishing ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... way through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to reply that the existence of an ass in the United States ought not necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding ass in London. He printed that! I never knew the origin of ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... are the most picturesque of the Appenzellers. The men wear a round skull-cap of leather, sometimes brilliantly embroidered, a jacket of coarse drilling, drawn on over the head, and occasionally knee-breeches. Early in May the herdsmen leave their winter homes in the valleys and go with their cattle to the Matten, or lofty mountain pastures. The most intelligent cows, selected as leaders for the herd, march ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... lace, likewise did our eyes good; and the large feathers particularly, that waved most splendidly from the hats, which were cocked in the antique style. But what did not please me were the short modern breeches, the white silk stockings, and the fashionable shoes. We should have liked half-boots,—gilded as much as they pleased,—sandals, or something of the kind, that we might have seen ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... among the sleepers. Alec had described to her so minutely the changing scene that she was able to bring it vividly before her eyes. She saw him come out of his tent, in heavy boots, buckling on his belt. He wore knee-breeches and a pith helmet, and he was more bronzed than when she had bidden him farewell. He gave the order to the headman of the caravan to take up the loads. At the word there was a rush from all parts of the camp; each porter seized his ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... him or a cabin-boy." "Ay, ay, sir," says I, shoving the letter into my hat; so in half an hour's time I knocks at the door of the lady's house, rigged out in my best, and hands over the screed to a fat fellow with red breeches and yallow swabs on his shoulders, like a captain of marines, that looked frightened at my hail, for I thou't he'd been deaf by the long spell he took before he opened the door. In five minutes I heard a woman's voice ask at the footman if there was a sailor awaiting below. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... hung in long ragged locks over his forehead, cheeks, and neck, and round his head was bound a handkerchief, on which were several stains of a brownish black colour. Spots of the same kind were visible upon his leathern jacket, breeches, and mocassins; they were evidently blood stains. His hunting knife, which was nearly two feet long, with a rude wooden handle, was now replaced in his girdle, but in its stead he held a Kentucky rifle in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... are living yet, In strong and hearty German; And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit, And patriot fame of Sherman; Still from his book, a mystic seer, The soul of Behmen teaches, And England's priestcraft shakes to hear Of Fox's leathern breeches. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and dressed in his desert clothes. As he went through his pockets he came upon the little silver crucifix and transferred it, with some loose change, to his riding-breeches. He turned out the light, locked the room from the outside, and ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... when I felt so hungry," muttered the lad, as he thrust his hands into his breeches pockets, and stopped near the sailor, who smiled in the ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... in the tap-room of the Ducrow's Head, you may have forgotten the purport of my observations, I will repeat them here. You were reclining with your back against the table, and a pewter pot of foaming beer resting on the knee of the red stocking-breeches in which you had performed the Crimson Fiend of the Haunted Dell, when, after some preliminary matter, I expressed an opinion—unusual, I grant, but still conscientiously entertained—of the immortal Shakspeare, on which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... HER?' said the gentleman, thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets. 'She'll tell thee so, of course. Most likely he's hired, at so much a day. There. Get ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... loosely hung together, and his immense broad shoulders slightly rounded. In features he was hardly handsome, but a kindly pleasant looking face made ample atonement for want of beauty. He was dressed in knee-breeches, and a great blue coat, with brass buttons, too large even for him, was topped by a broad-brimmed beaver hat, with fur on it half-aninch long. In age, this man was about five-and-twenty, and well known he was to all the young fellows round there ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... her then, this abbess had in bed Good parson John, by kindness thither led, A neighb'ring rector, confessor, and friend; She rose in haste the sisters to attend, And, seeking for her veil, with sense confused, The parson's breeches took for what she used, Which, in the dark, resembled what was worn By nuns for veils, and called (perhaps in scorn), Among themselves, their PSALTER, to express Familiarly, a ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... . . . Half a guinea he used to give me, regular. But the last time—and hard to believe 'twas little more than a month ago—he halts on his way out, and says he, searchin' awkward-like in his breeches' pocket with his left hand, 'Ned,' says he, 'my old friend'—aye, sir, his old friend he called me—'Ned,' says he, pullin' out a fistful o' gold, 'my old friend,' says he, 'I'll compound with you for two ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Does my breeches-pocket hold: I to pay am really willing, If I only had the gold. Farmers none can I encounter, Graziers there are none to kill; Therefore, prithee, gentle taylzeour, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... following. It is, perhaps, needless to remind you that the tools with which ink is applied to paper, in order to produce writing, are made from goose quills, which quills I am goose enough not to keep a supply of; and not having so much money at present in my breeches pocket as will purchase one, I am forced to betake myself to my pencil; an instrument which, without paying myself any compliment, I am sure I can wield ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of fifty, dressed in a jacket of reddish brown merino, holding in her left hand a green cord, which was tied to the collar of an English terrier, and with her right arm linked with that of a man in knee-breeches and silk stockings, whose hat had its brim whimsically turned up, while snow-white tufts of hair like pigeon plumes rose at its sides. A slender queue, thin as a quill, tossed about on the back of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... as described in Carlyle's "French Revolution," for "breeches of a new kind in this world"; brother of Louis XVI., and afterwards CHARLES X. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship. The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... in boys the breeches, may give rise during childhood to unwholesome stimulation. Hufeland, in his Makrobiotik, long ago advised against the wearing of breeches by little boys. The Schaumburg-Lippe body-physician, Faust,[75] in a work published in the year 1791, strongly recommended that boys ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... a time when men and women paid great attention to dress. The ladies wore light flowered gowns, and the men brilliant coats and knee-breeches, with lace stocks and white powdered hair. Their manners were of the courts of Europe, polished in the extreme, and they had all been trained to make an art of conversation. Negro servants waited on the table, and ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... obtain the good opinion of his relation, Mr. Stephens, leather-breeches maker of Salisbury, and, from some quality, which it is possible his keen observation had noticed in this Mr. Stephens, he deems it the most effectual way, to flatter his vanity, and accordingly tells him, with great gravity, that he traces his descent from Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... which disfigured the countenance of the other; nor, though roguish enough, a certain evil expression which that of the other bore, and which the face of the woman possessed in a yet more remarkable degree. For the rest, he wore drab breeches, with certain strings at the knee, a rather gay waistcoat, and tolerably white shirt; under his arm he bore a mighty whip of whalebone with a brass knob, and upon his head was a hat without either top ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a footman, looking very quaint and queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, and one bottle of claret, all very good; but they take here much heavier wines than we drink now in America. After a tolerably ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stood. Things were mighty strange, and every darned nigger of them looked so pleased like. To show them manners, I said, ‘How are you?’ and I went to bow, but chaw my last tobacco if I could, my breeches was so tight—the heat way back in the cañon had shrunk them. They were too polite to notice it, and I felt for my knife to rip the dog-goned things, but recollecting the scalp-taker was stolen, I straightens up and bowed my head. A kind-looking, smallish old gentleman, with ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... acquirements of his mind, you will find them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an exact dress. To instance no more, is not religion a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, self-love a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches, which, though a cover for lewdness as well as nastiness, is easily slipped down for ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... not of days, but weeks; and they were entertained in the good old style of Virginia's ancient hospitality. Washington, always superbly mounted, in true sporting costume, of blue coat, scarlet waistcoat, buckskin breeches, top-boots, velvet cap, and whip with long thong, took the field at daybreak, with his huntsman, Will Lee, his friends and neighbors." They usually hunted three times a week, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... However, he yielded to their persuasions, and presented himself to his bishop. But the bishop would not ordain him—why is not known, but it was said that he was offended with Goldsmith for coming to be ordained dressed in scarlet breeches. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... governor's table. To match the coat there was a velvet waist-coat of very ample size, and formerly embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly golden as the maple-leaves in October, but which had now quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet breeches once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand.[176-1] The Frenchman had given these small-clothes to an Indian pow-wow, who parted with them ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... empty. "Looking at this inventory," said the curate, "I should imagine the articles to be of no great value. One fur cap, one round hat, one pair of plush breeches, one—; they are not worth a couple of pounds altogether," continued he, stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, which he relighted, and no more was said. Nicholas was the third in, or rather out. "It appears to me," observed he;—but what appeared ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... wheels and pulleys and other gear. As for Ham, the first time Yvon saw him in the mill, he cried out "Mont Blanc!" and would not call him anything else for some time. For Ham was whiter than all the rest, in his working-dress, cap and jacket and breeches, white to begin with, and powdered soft and furry, like his face and eyebrows, with the flying meal. Down-stairs there was plenty of noise; oats and corn and wheat pouring into the hoppers, and the great stones going round and round, and wheels creaking and buzzing, and ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... afterwards became a separate branch of railway business, and was entrusted to a special staff. Indeed on no subsequent line did George Stephenson take the sights through the spirit level with his own hands and eyes as he did on this railway. He started very early—dressed in a blue tailed coat, breeches, and top-boots—and surveyed until dusk. He was not at any time particular as to his living; and during the survey, he took his chance of getting a little milk and bread at some cottager's house along the line, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... would ring through the Senate Chamber like the shrill scream of an angry vixen. He generally wore a full suit of heavy, drab-colored English broadcloth, the high, rolling collar of his surtout coat almost concealing his head, while the skirts hung in voluminous folds about his knee-breeches and the white leather tops of his boots. He used to enter the Senate Chamber wearing a pair of silver spurs, carrying a heavy riding-whip, and followed by a favorite hound, which crouched beneath his desk. He wrote, and occasionally spoke, in riding-gloves, and it was his favorite gesture to point ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... rejoined the tormentor, 'but just wait a bit; I must have a voucher. I'll just cut off the bottom of your breeches by way of voucher.' So saying he pulled out his knife and suited the action to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... subsisting in the world, but which I have neither time to recollect nor look for," which would give you an idea of the parson's astonishment at Trim's impudence. The emoluments of "Pickering and Pocklington" appear under the figure of a "pair of black velvet plush breeches" which ultimately "got into the possession of one Lorry Slim (Sterne himself, of course), an unlucky wight, by whom they are still worn: in truth, as you will guess, they are very thin by ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... dressed like a sensible Englishman dismayed my father as much as that the other should have a watch, and look as if he had just broken out of Bedlam, or as King Dagobert must have looked if he had worn all his clothes as he is said to have worn his breeches. Both wore their clothes so easily—for he who wore them reversed had evidently been measured with a view to this absurd fashion—that it was ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... a pair of freeze trunk breeches, and a vizor, with a grey beard; and after that time col. Hewson called him 'father grey beard' and most of the army besides, ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... now, skimmin' milk pans, and then runnin' her finger round the rim and lickin' it. She was a Dennison. I've heard her say to her daughters, I'd rather have you lose your virtue than lose your figger'; and my dear grandfather—your great-grandfather—wore knee breeches; he said—well, I suppose you'd be shocked if I told you what he said? He said, 'If a gal loses one, she—' No; I guess I won't tell you. Old maids are so refined! He wasn't an old maid, I can tell you! I brought a chocolate drop for Bingo. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... was poor. He could only boast a bob wig, a base thing, which, for all the show it made, might have been a man's own hair. He wore no sword. His hat lacked feather and lace. His coat and breeches were but black drugget, shiny at each corner of him and rusty everywhere. His stockings were worsted, and darned even on his excellent calves. His shoes had strings where buckles should have been, and mere black heels—and low heels at that. As you know, he ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... leathery, peat faced, with a deep voice and a surliness that is meant to be aggressive, and is in effect pathetic—the voice of a man of hard life and many sorrows—comes in at the gate. He is old enough to have perhaps worn a long tailed frieze coat and knee breeches in his time; but now he is dressed respectably in a black frock coat, tall hat, and pollard colored trousers; and his face is as clean as washing can make it, though that is not saying much, as the habit is recently acquired and ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... opinion that the Philadelphians are not, in these latter days, any better than their neighbors. I am not sure whether in some respects they may not perhaps be worse. Quakers—Quakers absolutely in the very flesh of close bonnets and brown knee- breeches—are still to be seen there; but they are not numerous, and would not strike the eye if one did not specially look for a Quaker at Philadelphia. It is a large town, with a very large hotel—there are no doubt half a dozen ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge, fifteen empty Day and Martin's blacking-bottles in one corner, for I used occasionally to walk over them to keep my feet in practice, and it was in this room that Terence last had conscious possession of the hunting-breeches which were never seen after the Captain's birthday, when Terence threw the clothes-brush after me, because I would not drink the master's health in whisky, and had to take the cleanest of the shoe brushes to his own coat, which was dusty from lying ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the opening beheld a band of men moving in single file along the track they had just left. They were most of them nearly naked, with only short calico breeches which did not quite reach to their knees, but all had muskets on their shoulders and cross-belts on their dark bodies, one of which belts sustained apparently a cartridge-box, the other a bayonet. Their own ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... in his determination to uphold the dignity and unity of the Empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew," would scarcely have sided with the modern G.O.M. and his satellites, Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of society was inimical to the kind of education that the Earl of Chesterfield prescribed for his son. The earl was well aware of it, indeed, and marked with repugnance divers young bucks of his day with leathern breeches and unpowdered hair, who would exclaim; "Damn these finical outlandish airs, give me a manly resolute manner. They make a rout with their graces, and talk like a parcel of dancing masters, and dress like ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... mind as a kind of tame, necessary and beloved jinn. Being a loyal little soul, the child retained his affection for Auntie Anne, but he was swept off his little feet by his mirific parent. The time came when, if he was not dressed in his tiny woollen jersey and knee breeches and had not his nose glued against the parlour window in readiness to scramble to the front door for Aristide's morning kiss, he would have thought that chaos had come again. And Anne, humouring the child, hastened to get him washed and dressed in time; until at last, so greatly ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath out-lived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.[3] He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... cover their hips, and left open to show a sort of waistcoat striped with red, yellow, and green, which was closed over the chest by a row of silver buttons attached to one another like the links of a chain. Their costume was completed by a pair of short breeches of the same color as the jacket, tied round the waist by a band ornamented by a large stud of chiselled silver,—a red cravat, and woollen stockings reaching to the knee. In short, below the waist their dress was that of a priest, and above it, that of a harlequin. One of them had coins for ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... acceptance of this verdict on the part of the two little girls, that Van Bibber felt uncomfortable. He looked to the right and to the left, and then said desperately, "Well, come along." The young man in a blue flannel shirt, who did the paddling, smiled at Van Bibber's riding-breeches, which were so very loose at one end and so very tight at the other, and at his gloves and crop. But Van Bibber pretended not to care. The three little girls placed the awful lunch basket on the front seat and sat on the middle one, and Van Bibber cowered ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... three of the transports are returned with this history, and know not what is become of Lestock and the rest of the invasion. The young Pretender is landed in France, with thirty Scotch, but in such a wretched condition that his Highland Highness had no breeches. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... senses were abnormally clear, cold: he saw every detail of the Hatburns' garb—the soiled shirts with buttoned pockets on their left breasts; the stained baggy breeches in heavy boots—such boots as had stamped Allen into nothingness; dull yellow faces and beady eyes; the long black hair about ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... appointments were purchased at their own expense, and they were expected to hold them selves in readiness to assemble whenever their services might be required by the governor. For uniform, they wore a blue coat with white buttons, and buff waistcoat and breeches. Their parade was the Square or Market-place, where they were attended by music, and visited by all the beauty of the place, who animated them by their smiles from the balcony of the town-hall, and if the weather was favourable accompanied them to the exercising ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... them to me—one, two, three, four, five—you shan't touch one of them! no, not one, for your lives!' continued he, exultingly; laying the nest on the ground, and standing over it with his legs wide apart, his hands thrust into his breeches-pockets, his body bent forward, and his face twisted into all manner of contortions in ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the richer peasants of that day, a coarse but spotless white shirt, very open at the throat, a jacket and waistcoat of stout dark blue cloth, with large and smooth silver buttons, knee-breeches, white stockings, and heavy low shoes with steel buckles. He combined the occupations of farmer, wine-seller, and carrier. When he was on the road between Subiaco and Rome, Gigetto, already mentioned, was supposed to represent him. It was understood that Gigetto was to marry Annetta—if he ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... the accustomed argot of street badinage of the period; and in such matters Georgie was an expert. He had no vest to pull down; the incongruous fact was that a fringed sash girdled the juncture of his velvet blouse and breeches, for the Fauntleroy period had set in, and Georgie's mother had so poor an eye for appropriate things, where Georgie was concerned, that she dressed him according to the doctrine of that school in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... Bavaria. While occupied in passing my portmanteau through the prying and unutterably dirty hands of the custom-house officials I was accosted by a man dressed in the garb of a Tyrolese mountaineer—short leathern breeches reaching to the knee, gray stockings, heavy hobnailed shoes, a nondescript species of jacket of the roughest frieze, and a battered hat adorned with two or three feathers of the capercailzie and a plume of the royal eagle. Old Hansel was one of the gamekeepers on a large imperial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Medes, before they conquered the Lydians, had no money. Herodotus [416] tells us, that when Croesus was preparing to invade Cyrus, a certain Lydian called Sandanis advised him, that he was preparing an expedition against a nation who were cloathed with leathern breeches, who eat not such victuals as they would, but such as their barren country afforded; who drank no wine, but water only, who eat no figs nor other good meat, who had nothing to lose, but might get much from the Lydians: for the Persians, saith Herodotus, ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... not afterwards recollect; but it is known that on motion of Peyton Randolph the fifth resolution was that day erased from the record. Mr. Henry was not then present. He had been seen, on the afternoon before, "passing along the street, on his way to his home in Louisa, clad in a pair of leather breeches, his saddle-bags on his arm, leading a lean horse." The four resolutions thus adopted as the deliberate and formal protest of the Old Dominion were as mild and harmless as could well be. They asserted ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... hardly able to govern his own kingdom, assumed the title "king of Denmark," and laid claim to Norway, too; and when she blamed him for it he had answered her disdainfully. In a letter he had used foul and abusive language, calling her "a king without breeches," and the "abbot's concubine" (abbedfrillen), on account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sat up and told his tale. The city was a shambles; every man, woman, or child had been put to the sword. Only the citadel held out; there was no time to lose. No time was lost; for King Richard, in his tunic and breeches as he was, in his deck shoes, without a helm, unmailed in any part, snatched up shield and axe. 'Who follows Anjou?' he called out, then plunged into the sea. Des Barres immediately followed him, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... dry look, too, about his mouth, and a moist one at the corner of his eye, and who knew the attorney well. All were upon him. "Not like!—How not like? Say where is it not like?" "Why, don't you see," said the man, "he's got his hand in his breeches' pocket. It would be as like again if he had his hand in any other body's pocket." The family portrait was removed, especially as, after this, many came on purpose to see it; and so the attorney was lowered a peg, and the farmer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... her straw hat, dyed black for the occasion, she admitted, "It ain't right." Grit had left her nothing, absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself—his grimy face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. "Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the flowers of spring, summer, and autumn, as is the wear of the pastoral Muse. Again, I did not look for a "Rogue in porcelain," with gold buckles on neat black shoes, and highly ornamented stays worn outside her gown. A stalwart young woman, in a khaki smock and sou'- wester, Bedford-cord breeches, and long leather boots, would have satisfied my utmost demands in 1918. Instead, however, my shepherdess was dressed, if her clothes could be called dress, like a female tramp. Long draggle-tailed skirts, some sort of a shawl, and the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... followed, contrasting disagreeably with the deep, rolling thunder of the artillery; then the men were on their feet again, rushing on, no longer in a perfectly straight line, some in advance, others a little behind, with their faces turned towards the sun, beneath whose rays the red breeches flamed in a vivid, bloody hue, and buttons, bayonets, all polished bits of metal ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... voice from the cistern, frightened, then storming in anger. Mormon ran at a sprinter's gait from the cottonwoods, along a side of the corral, through the trees bordering the cistern. The girl was out of the hammock, facing a man in riding breeches and puttees, his face concealed for the moment by his hands. A sleeve of the girl's frock was torn away, the outworn fabric in streamers. The man's hands came down and Mormon recognized him for Jim Plimsoll, owner of the Good Luck Pool ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Chestnut Street they came to Independence Hall and here, blocking the way on their sorrel horses with two white mounted trumpeters, was the First City Troop, sixty-five men under Captain J. Franklin McFadden, in their black coats and white doeskin riding-breeches, in the black helmets with raccoon skin plumes, in their odd-shaped riding boots high over the knee, all as in Revolutionary days—here they were drawn up before the statue of George Washington and the home of the Liberty Bell, resolved to die here, ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... Bracher completed the seven-mile run, and tore into the Grand Place of Furnes, she was greeted by cheers from the populace. And, indeed, she was a striking figure in her yellow leather jerkin, her knee-breeches and puttees, and her shining yellow "doggy" boots. She carried all the air of an officer planning a desperate coup. As she cut her famous half-moon curve from the north-east corner of the Place by the Gendarmerie ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... superfine blue cotton velvet for coat, waistcoat, and breeches, with fine silk buttons to match, and necessary trimmings, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... They speak of the Nationalist members with contempt, and say they would rather be represented by gentlemen. They are very incredulous, and refuse to believe in the honesty of "honest" John Dillon. They say that Davitt is a humbug and Healy a blackguard. They speak of O'Brien's breeches without weeping, and opine that Davitt's imprisonments and Healy's horse-whipping served them both right. These misguided Irishmen affect to believe that the English laws are good, that Ireland is a splendid country, and that things would be far better ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth, and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... his lank body by a girdle of colored worsted. On his feet were deer- skin moccasins, ornamented with porcupines quills, after the manner of the Indians, and his limbs were guarded with long leggings of the same material as the moccasins, which, gartering over the knees of his tarnished buckskin breeches, had obtained for him among the settlers the nickname of Leather-Stocking. Over his left shoulder was slung a belt of deer-skin, from which depended an enormous ox-horn, so thinly scraped as to discover the powder it contained. The ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... superfluous flesh on his big bones, his appearance was not impressive. The deerskin hunting shirt, worked in a curious pattern on the breast with red and blue porcupine quills, fitted him tightly, as did his linsey-woolsey breeches; and his thin shanks were covered with gray hose darned clumsily in more than one place. He would have been selected at first sight as a wood-ranger and hunter, and carried his long rifle with more grace than he ever held ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... austere and reverent painting of the elder Cima da Conegliano. As they were leaving the academy, they took another look at the Englishmen behind them—with their long rabbit-like teeth and drooping whiskers—and laughed; they glanced at their gondolier with his abbreviated jacket and short breeches—and laughed; they caught sight of a woman selling old clothes with a knob of grey hair on the very top of her head—and laughed more than ever; they looked into one another's face—and went off into peals of laughter, and directly they had sat down in the gondola, they clasped each other's hand ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... amicable glances. Although differing in position they felt themselves brothers in money, and of the great freemasonry of those who possess, of those who can make the gold jingle when they put their hands in the breeches-pockets. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger: to play at cards or dice in the room of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... each other curiously, Pagett, in a light grey frock-coat and garments much too thin for the time of the year, and a puggried sun-hat carefully and wonderfully made. Orde in a shooting coat, riding breeches, brown cowhide boots with spurs, and a battered flax helmet. He had ridden some miles in the early morning to inspect a doubtful river dam. The men's faces differed as much as their attire. Orde's worn and wrinkled ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... for ringworm. He was to be found during play-hours often with the knees of his breeches unbuttoned, and his shoes down at the heel, [7] walking to and fro, or sitting on a step, or in a corner, deeply engaged in some book. This had attracted the notice of Middleton, at that time a deputy grecian, and going up to him one day, asked ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... semi-circle lay the fleet of fishing boats. Men and women were sitting at their doors mending nets. He looked at the fishermen, great, sturdy fellows, with rough, weather-beaten faces, huge earrings dangling from their ears. He took note of their quaint costume—black stockings and breeches, the latter more baggy than a Turk's, and the crushed strawberry of their high jackets, cut close to the body. He remembered how he had looked at them with Valentia, and the group of boys and men that she had sketched. He remembered how they walked along, peeping into the houses, where ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... bought tops and marbles of him a thousand times. To be sure you have; and seen his vinegar-visage lighted up with a smile as you flung him the coppers; and you have laughed at his little straight queue and his dimity breeches, and all the other oddities that made up the every-day apparel of my little Frenchman. Ah, I perceive you ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... we lay in the woods, an old man, a shepherd, came with a flock of white sheep which followed close behind him. The old man wore a velvet cloak, knee breeches, and buckles on his shoes, and he had a sheep dog with him—a small-sized tricolored, rough-haired collie. It was exactly like a picture! We were not in any mood to enjoy the beauty of it, for some of the sheep wandered through the wood, almost stepping on us, and when the shepherd came after them, ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... cross between an Angora cat and a Newfoundland dog," Cairy remarked, leaning down to feel of his legs. As he stooped the ivory handle of a small revolver pushed out of the hip pocket of his riding breeches. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... believe there are upward of eighteen thousand. There have been many editions of the Bible; Wiclif was the first to introduce it into England about the year 1300. The 'Paragraph Bible,' as it is called, is a well-known edition, and is so called because it is divided into paragraphs. The 'Breeches Bible' is another well-known instance, and gets its name either because it was printed by one Breeches, or because the place ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of late July, In March, beneath the bitter bise, He book-hunts while the loungers fly, - He book-hunts, though December freeze; In breeches baggy at the knees, And heedless of the public jeers, For these, for these, he hoards his ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... all that, and a merry time I had of it. True, the sack of doubloons helped me wonderfully. Within a week after my arrival, I had a magnificent saddle embossed with silver, velvet breeches instead of cloth leggings, a hat and feathers, glossy pumps, red sash, velvet round-about, and the large cape or cloak, the eternal, and sometimes the only, garment of a western Mexican grandee, in winter or in summer, by night ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... their costume. Good people, when not armed cap-a-pie, wear a speckled tunic girt about the waist, and low hats, apparently of straw. Bad people swagger in tail-coats and chimney-pots, a few with knee-breeches, but the large majority in trousers, and for all the world like guests at a garden-party. Worldly-Wiseman alone, by some inexplicable quirk, stands before Christian in laced hat, embroidered waistcoat, and trunk-hose. But above all examples of this artist's intrepidity, commend me ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... unusually white and slightly protruding. He was thinking of the meeting with the last person to whom he had spoken within twenty-four hours. He closed one eye and looked up at the sun. Yes, it was just about the same time yesterday that a dude from the English ranch, a dude in knee breeches and shiny-topped riding boots, had galloped confidently toward him. He had dismounted and pretended to be cinching his saddle. When the dude was close enough Smith had thrown down on him with ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... doubted. The men wore out their clothes fast while throwing up the works, and Washington speaks of the "difficulty and expense" of providing new ones. (Orders, July 24th, 1776.) At this date he does not insist on uniforms, but recommends the adoption of the hunting shirt and breeches as a cheap and convenient dress, and as one which might have its terrors for the enemy, who imagined that every rebel so dressed was "a complete marksman." A valuable article on "The Uniforms of the American Army" may be found in the Magazine of American History, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... the time required men to wear at a ball white kerseymere breeches and silk stockings. This pretty costume showed to great advantage the perfection of Montcornet's fine shape. He was five-and-thirty, and attracted attention by his stalwart height, insisted on for the Cuirassiers of the Imperial Guard ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... at least abbreviated, my model. I fell, that is I stood, short of my proper form by no less than half a leg; the essence of the debardeur being, it appeared, that he emerged at the knees, in white silk stockings and with neat calves, from the beribboned breeches which I artlessly suffered to flap at my ankles. The discovery, after the fact, was disconcerting—yet had been best made withal, too late; for it would have seemed, I conceive, a less monstrous act to attempt to lengthen my legs than to shorten Johnny's culotte. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... which give the other features of the face a cast of peculiar pensiveness. They wear turbans, sometimes white, of an enormous size on their heads, and never remove them but when they go to repose. Their breeches, or drawers, are united with their stockings, and they have slippers, which they never put off but when they enter a mosque, or the house of a great man. Large shirts are worn, and over them is a vest tied with a sash; the outer garment being a sort ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... the Book-Hunter, Andrew Lang describes how, in breeches baggy at the knees, the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... cross enough to us, and had gone to th' door, and stood there, whistling wi' his hands in his breeches-pockets, looking abroad. But at last he turns ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... brooch. "There lies," I said, "the sinful husk of Francis Strelley. Let the swine nozzle and rout in it for what they can find to their liking. And here," I cried, standing before him in shirt and breeches, barefooted, bareheaded, without a coat to my back, "here, good man, stands the naked soul of that same Francis, which shall go shivering forth to declare his shame, to meet his penance, to stand begging at the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... serious, which he was not, his doubts would all have been dissipated by the arrival of the Barons almost in a body. Up they came through the spacious entrance and illuminated hall, in claret-colored coats, lace bosom-frills and cuffs, velvet breeches, silken hose, silver-buckled shoes, and powdered wigs, holding their gold-knobbed canes aslant in their left hand, and waving salutations to their host with their feathered tricorns. A lordlier band never ascended ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... daybreak. The moment he saw the garret and Dr. Bull sitting writing at a table, he remembered what the memory was—the French Revolution. There should have been the black outline of a guillotine against that heavy red and white of the morning. Dr. Bull was in his white shirt and black breeches only; his cropped, dark head might well have just come out of its wig; he might have been Marat or a ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... however, he seemed little likely to obtain, seeing that an elderly uncle by marriage of Christian's, whose name was Office, was as eager and affable and frank about the sum as he was bent on keeping it; and rattled the contents of his breeches' pocket in sheer bravado of his means to go to ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... see why he fell down!" he cried. The Babe gave another cry, clapped his hand to his leg where the stocking did not quite join the short breeches, and began hopping up and down on one foot. A heavy, pervasive hum was beginning to make ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... until near morning, and then he arose and dressed himself. He put on the coat of one brother, and the breeches of another, and the shoes of a third, and so on, for his own clothes were nothing but rags. He felt in the right-hand pocket of his father's coat, and there, sure enough, he found the dried windpipe of a goose. He took that and he ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... ye're wrong, lad," Tim straightened up to reach in his breeches pockets for "the makings," but his hand came out empty and he continued: "There's plenty av fun goin' on, an' laughs, too. I mind me wan day whin the '75's was barkin' their throats out an' bein' answered by God knows w'ot mighty ingines av war. We'd been brought up clost an' was lookin' ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... whole pile of sashes, and breeches, and boots, and goodness knows what in the way of wearing apparel, all in a state of dry rot; in fact, they made such a dust that we ascended to terra firma for a few minutes to get ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... which had gone unnoticed. He predicted the coming of the era of great trusts and combines. Again the wiseacres in their learned ignorance laughed and derided. The amiable gentleman who plays the part of flunkey at the Court of St. James, in London, wearing plush knee breeches, silver-buckled shoes and powdered wig, a marionette in the tinseled show of King Edward's court, was one of the wiseacres. He was then editor of the New York Tribune, and he declared that Mr. Hyndman was a "fool traveler" for making ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... listen! Scarce had I quitted my carriage, when the horses became restive, and began to plunge and rear—only imagine!—splashed my breeches all over with mud! What was to be done? Fancy, my dear baron, just fancy yourself for a moment in my predicament! There I stood! the hour was late! a day's journey to return—yet to appear before his highness in this—good heavens! What did I bethink me of? I pretended ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... underfeature of Lombard's Kop, silenced—at least in Natal—two heavy guns which were worrying the garrison. By the rules of the game the pieces were injured beyond repair by the gun-cotton charges which the sappers had fired in the breeches and muzzles; but the heavier gun was removed to Pretoria, where it was made serviceable. It was eventually sent to Kimberley, and its arrival greatly alarmed the timid and irresolute diamond men, whose life was easy and almost ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... trousers your mother's evening work after you had gone to bed. Where grew anything good to eat and free to all, a boy was sure to have it, although it cost him subsequent patches, whippings and tears. Shall the squirrel hunt for nuts and the little sons of men be forbidden, just to save a new pair of breeches, or an old jacket? But the woes of country boyhood are naught in comparison to its joys, and a day in a berry field, or a morning among the chestnut trees, under the blue sky and a west wind, with merry companions, is a memory that outshines ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... fixedly at the speaker, as if he beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little figure, and as if the squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet breeches and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without sufficient cause, for the flourish of the squire's staff, marvellous to relate, had described precisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the message of the prophetic ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mirth to laugh like demons at my conscious, burning, painted head; eyes which spread out, astonished at the sight of me, and peered and winked and grinned from the big wrinkles above the gaiters of Zouaves, from the red breeches of the gendarmes, the knickerbockers of the cyclists, the white ducks of sergents de ville, and the knees of the boulevardiers, bagged with sitting cross-legged at the little tables. I could not escape these ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... the most approved methods of manufacture, from the making of a man-of-war to the etching of an engraving. Nothing escaped the keen eyes of this rude, half-savage northern giant. For a week he put on the wide breeches of a Dutch laborer and worked in the shipyard at Saardam near Amsterdam. In England, Holland, and Germany he engaged artisans, scientific men, architects, ship captains, and those versed in artillery and the training of troops, all of whom he took back with him to aid in the reform ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! Why she wears a large fur cap with a deal ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Pills, Father Finch's Febrifuge, Spencer's Spanish Specific. Soap, talcum, cold cream, marshmallows, tobacco, jars of rock candy, what a medley of paternostrums! And old Rhubarb himself, in his enormous baggy trousers—infinite breeches in a little room, as ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... first of June there comes a day when I find myself going over the fishing-tackle unearthed by the spring house-cleaning and sorting out of inextricable confusion the family's supply of sweaters, old riding-breeches, puttees, rough shoes, trout-flies, quirts, ponchos, spurs, reels, and old felt hats. Some of the hats still have a few dejected flies fastened to the ribbon, melancholy hackles, sadly ruffled Royal Coachmen, and here ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... all right; and as for my work, it will be precisely the same in all respects, my external life altered only to the extent of my wearing a broader brimmed and lower crowned hat. Dear Joan is investing moneys in cutaway coats, buckles without end, and no doubt knee-breeches and what she calls "gambroons" (whereof I have no cognizance), none of which will be worn more than (say) four or five times in the year. Gambroons and aprons and lawn sleeves won't go a-voyaging, depend upon it. Just ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... improbable that the other was engaged in mental contemplation of a dark one with "a flat nose, and a coal-scuttle mout', an' such eyes!" As for Hockins, he stood with his sea-legs wide apart, his hands in his breeches pockets, and his eyes frowning severely at the deck. Evidently his thoughts, whether of past, present, or future, were too deep for utterance, for, like his comrades, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... profound deference. He was also a handsomer man and younger. He was fully as tall, too, with as lordly a bearing; the most marked contrast in their appearance being in their dress. General Jackson wore broadcloth of the cut seen in all his older portraits; Joe Daviess wore buckskin breeches and a hunting shirt belted at the waist, both richly fringed on the leg and sleeve. The suit was the same that he had worn when he rode over the Alleghanies to Washington, to plead the historic case before the Supreme ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... stature, his limbs those of a giant, his fist ponderous as a sledge hammer; a tunic of skins confined around the waist by a belt of untanned leather, in which is stuck a hunting knife, adorns his upper story: short breeches of skin, and leggings, with the undressed fur of a fox outside, complete ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... he is the strongest fellow in the world, and the richest, and owns the biggest house, and pays the biggest rates, and wins whatever game he plays at, and stands so high in his clothes that while the Southern Cross rises over his hat-brim it is already broad day on the seat of his breeches. For that is what it all comes to: and the sentence upon the man who neglects the warning of these poets, while he heaps up great possessions, is still, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee." And where is the national ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... off the surface moisture. We had rather a good time chatting and laughing. After a while I looked out. It had stopped raining. Therefore I emerged and set some of the men collecting firewood. Shortly I had a fine little blaze going under the veranda roof of the station. F. and I hung out our breeches to dry, and spread the tails of our shirts over the heat. F. was actually the human chimney, for the smoke was pouring in clouds from the breast and collar of his shirt. We were fine figures for the public platform of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... nursed his chin in his hand and thought. Mostly he thought with a constricted feeling in his throat of how frail and old his father had grown, the slow-smiling, slow-speaking man who had been father and mother and chum to him since he was an urchin in knee breeches. He recalled him at their parting on a Vancouver railway platform,—tall and rugged, a lean, muscular, middle-aged man, bidding his son a restrained farewell with a longing look in his eyes. Now he was a wasted shadow. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... efficacy of particular charms. The night was very stormy, and at about nine we heard a galloping towards the door, and then a loud knocking; it was opened, and in rushed a wild-looking man mounted on a donkey; he wore a ragged jacket of sheepskin, called in Spanish zamarra, with breeches of the same as far down as his knees; his legs were bare. Around his sombrero, or shadowy hat, was tied a large quantity of the herb which in English is called rosemary, in Spanish romero, and in the rustic language of Portugal, alecrim; which last is a word of Scandinavian origin (ellegren), ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... great fireplace sent out an odour of burning wood that Darnell never forgot, and the room seemed to him full of women who talked all together in frightened tones. Mr. Darnell beckoned to a tall, grey old man, who wore corduroy knee-breeches, and the boy, sitting on a high straight-backed chair, could see the old man and his uncle passing to and fro across the window-panes, as they walked together on the garden path. The women stopped their talk for a moment, and one of them brought him a glass of milk and an ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... like other middle-aged gentlemen. She had hoped that Mr. Monk would have assumed something of the dignity of his position; but he assumed nothing. Now the bishop, though he was a very mild man, did assume something by the very facts of his apron and knee-breeches. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... that whizzed dia enkephalou (right across the diameter of my Brain) exactly like a Hummel Bee, alias Dumbeldore, the gentleman with Rappee Spenser (sic), with bands of Red, and Orange Plush Breeches, close by my ear, at once sharp and burry, right over the summit of Quantock [item of Skiddaw 10 (erased)] at earliest Dawn just between the Nightingale that I stopt to hear in the Copse at the Foot of Quantock, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles. Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the owner "with his breeches and coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters. Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled disappointment ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Stock Exchange. Of all the schemes however which we have suggested, this is probably the nearest to practical realization. If not we ourselves, our children at any rate may see International Congresses made possible by a few people quietly buttoning their breeches-pockets, and the march of "armed nations" arrested by "a run ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... two more trips of the little fleet of the Quernmore's boats would see the whole of the cargo safely ashore. Frobisher therefore ran down to his cabin and, throwing off his uniform, dressed himself in a pair of khaki-coloured riding-breeches, which he had brought out with him from England, thick-soled brown boots, and good leather leggings. An old Norfolk jacket completed the outfit, so far as his outer garb was concerned. And when he had donned an old and somewhat battered, but still serviceable, topi helmet—a ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... boyishly changed, but not disguised, in old Judge Hadley's coat and knee-breeches, stepped out of the moving line, a lady with him, and came to him. Clyde, too, was flushed with the strangeness of it all, and the joyous certainty that now for an evening, if only that, Nellie Lake was with him. The colonel looked at her and looked ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... I saw him chaffing on the sidewalk in London, in front of the Athenaeum Club, with a monstrous-sized, "copiously ebriose" cabman, and I judged from the driver's ludicrously careful way of landing the coin deep down in his breeches-pocket, that Thackeray had given him a very unusual fare. "Who is your fat friend?" I asked, crossing over to shake hands with him. "O, that indomitable youth is an old crony of mine," he replied; and then, quoting Falstaff, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... In one respect, she was a model ship. Among naval men, she had long been known as "the yacht," on account of the appearance of exquisite neatness she always presented. Her decks were as white as lime-juice and constant holystoning could keep them. The brasswork about the cabins and the breeches of the guns was dazzling in its brilliancy. White canvas lined the breechings of the carronades. Her decks everywhere showed signs of constant toil in the cause of cleanliness. The result of the battle, however, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Swaggerer, alias Smoothgulp, alias Venomsmile." "Here," cried a woman, who was standing near, pointing to the Swaggerer. "Ha, Madam Huntress!" cried he, "your humble servant; I am glad to see you well, I never saw a more beautiful woman in breeches, but woe's me to think how pitiable is the country, having lost in you such an unrivalled ruler; and yet, your pleasant company will make hell itself somewhat better." "Oh, thou scion of evil," cried she, "no ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... rough provincial accent and an uncouth way of speaking which would be set down for absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre.' Lamb is described by Carlyle as 'the leanest of mankind; tiny black breeches buttoned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle legs also in black, face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew type rather'; and Talfourd says that the best portrait of him is his own description of Braham—'a compound ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... that the doom of the old system was settled. The plutocrats, the upper-class crowd—the "silk stockings," as they had been called from the days when men wore knee-breeches—they fancied that this nation-wide movement was sporadic, would work out in a few years, and that the people would return to their allegiance. Kelly had no such delusions. Issuing from the depths of the people, he understood. ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... The spell was broken; disillusion followed the exquisite thrill of fear; and all Lady Sarah's male visitors made a rush upon the guilty nun. The loose white robe was stripped off, and little Jerry Spavinger, gentleman jock, famous on the Heath, and at Doncaster, stood revealed, in his shirt and breeches, and those light riding-boots which he rarely exchanged for ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... young 'un: there's a knife in my left-hand breeches' pocket," said Mat. "Now then, cut away at that bit of rope's-end, and hold on tight at top, while I lower away at bottom. Steady! Take it easy, and—there you are!" With which words, the guardian genius left Art-Mystic resting safely on the floor, and began to shake ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... be a great wrong in General Harrison to offer me any less office than Secretary of State. The "Barnstable Pocketbook," a clever little sheet, edited by Miss Holebrook, who snapped her political whip in the teeth of the town, and had come off conqueror in many a tilt with editors in breeches, was willing to compromise with he of the Longbow, by assuring its readers that only two years' study of law would make me an excellent judge of the Supreme Court. These well bestowed encomiums, (as I think they are called,) so elated my wife ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... he crossed the street, but in a few moments the door opened and she stood there waiting for him. Clay stared. He had never before seen a girl dressed like this. She was in riding-boots, breeches, and coat. Her eyes dilated while she ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... short cut to the house I had to pass the hotel stables, into which a squatter in the orthodox breeches, boots and spurs, was riding. He called out:—"I say, Corfield, what are you wearing a coat for?" I replied, "There's a function on; I'm going to present these sovereigns to a parson." He asked, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... unaccustomed eyes the effect was little short of grotesque. Even the absurd high-heeled shoes were tied with immense bows of ribbon, whilst knees, wrists, throat, and even elbows displayed their bows and streamers. The young dandy wore the full "petticoat breeches" of the period, with a short doublet, a jaunty cloak hung from the shoulders, and an abundance of costly lace ruffles adorned the neck and wrists of the doublet, he wore at his side a short rapier, and had a ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... drinking only milk, like infants. 'T is no wonder they are weaker than the negroes of the south with whom they are ever at war, fighting with treachery and not with strength. They dress in leather—leather breeches and jackets, but some of the richer wear a native mantle over their shoulders—such rich men as keep good swift horses and brood mares. It was about the trade and religion of the country that Fernandez was specially ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... veranda and closed the door upon her. Then he came down the room and regarded his prospective father-in-law with an expression of amused exasperation. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches and nodded his head. "Well," he exclaimed, "you've made a damned pretty mess of it, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... Spanish dancer's costume. The castanet dance was repeatedly encored, especially by those familiar with the program, who desired that we appreciate it to its full extent. The actors in this dance were dressed as Spanish buccaneers are popularly supposed to dress, in purple breeches buttoned at the knee, red sashes, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle, came boldly aboard us, one of them appareled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge, made after our sea fashion, hose and shoes on his feet: all the rest (saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... wonder," said Swan carelessly. "Bless you, whether their folks air rich or poor, they never think at that age what it costs to clothe 'em. I never found with my boys that they'd done climbing for crows' eggs till such time as they bought their own breeches. After that trees were nought but lumber, and crows ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Britannia shirks; But haply, near these sundering ditches, Some mute inglorious miler lurks Under a morning coat and breeches. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... sketched out all his designs, had finished several and was eager to pass on to Desmahis such as were in a state to be engraved. The one he deemed the most successful represented a soldier dressed in the three-cornered hat, blue coat with red facings, yellow breeches and black gaiters of the Volunteer, seated on a big drum, his feet on a pile of cannon-balls and his musket between his knees. It was the citizen of hearts replacing the ci-devant knave of hearts. For six months and more Gamelin had been drawing soldiers with never-failing gusto. He had sold ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... flaps of which are confined by a broad belt. He wears a white silk kerchief round his throat, lace ruffles at his wrists (in honour of his projected visit to his lady-love), and his nether man is encased in knee-breeches, white stockings, and shoes with large silver buckles. There is a frank, pleasant look in the keen dark eyes, and an expression of firmness about the closed lips which makes most people feel, when they look at him, that they would much rather have him for a friend than for an enemy. Altogether, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... have much the best time on the whole. We can do what we like pretty well. If we want to be men, we can. We can put on riding-breeches, even, and run a farm. But if we like, we can wear glad rags and nice undies, and be ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... we... have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; and... thou lookest, even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles,—then art ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... round from the other side and got here. Then I threw in a bit of mortar, but I wasn't sure I'd roused you, and I didn't dare shout, so I followed it myself. Lay hold of me a minute while I get on my breeches: I didn't want to get wet, so I carried my clothes in a bundle. Hold ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... dress of their country. This, as it consisted so much of the black, green, and blue tartan, gave them a dark and sombre appearance in comparison with the bright uniform of the regulars, who, at that time, had coats waistcoats, and breeches of scarlet cloth. Hence the term dhu, or black, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... on deck clad only in his shirt and breeches, and Lancelot was by his side a moment after in like habit. At first the sailors rushed hither and thither in alarm and confusion, but Cornelys Jensen brought them to order in a few moments, while Hatchett and half a dozen of the men proceeded to reassure the passengers ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Mr. William O'Brien, the member for Cork, might open a concern for the making of breeches, or that Mr. Timothy Healy, the member for Louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a keen competitor with Walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... they are in Tom Cribb's parlour, where they don't seem to be a whit less at home than in fashion's gilded halls; and now they are at Newgate, seeing the irons knocked off the malefactors' legs previous to execution. What hardened ferocity in the countenance of the desperado in yellow breeches! What compunction in the face of the gentleman in black (who, I suppose, has been forging), and who clasps his hands, and listens to the chaplain! Now we haste away to merrier scenes: to Tattersall's (ah gracious ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... fell, disguised herself as best she could, and hied her to a neighbouring village, where, having procured what was needful from an old woman, she shortened the doublet and fitted it to her figure, converted her chemise into a pair of breeches, cut her hair close, and, in short, completely disguised herself as a sailor. She then made her way to the coast, where by chance she encountered a Catalan gentleman, by name Segner Encararch, who had landed from ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to most people; to us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the second vehicle was not a humble conveyance like the first, but a spick-and-span gig or dog-cart, highly varnished and equipped. The driver was a young man of three- or four-and-twenty, with a cigar between his teeth; wearing a dandy cap, drab jacket, breeches of the same hue, white neckcloth, stick-up collar, and brown driving-gloves—in short, he was the handsome, horsey young buck who had visited Joan a week or two before to get her answer ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... delivered a fifteen minute address. He abolished the presidential levees, and concealed his birthday to prevent its being celebrated. He even detested the word minister prefixed to one's name, and eschewed breeches, wearing pantaloons. It was during his administration that Louisiana was purchased, although, according to his own theory, he had no constitutional right to do so, but the great benefit derived from this purchase soon silenced ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... his favorite St. James's, the youthful Pope wrote literary letters, being even decoyed into patching and revising the old beau's senile verses. Another of his correspondents was Henry Cromwell—Gay's "honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches," who at this time was playing the part of an elderly Phaon to the Sappho of a third-rate poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas. The epistles of the boy at Binfield to these battered men about town, when not discussing metres and the precepts ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... John. He had crawled after Muskingon on his belly—though not understanding the need of this caution—to the edge of a rock overhanging a deep pool. The Indian peered over, unloosed his waist-belt, and drew off his scarlet breeches as if for a bathe. But no, he did not intend this— at least, not just yet. He wound the breeches about his right arm and dipped it cautiously, bending over the ledge until his whole body from the waist overhung the water, and it was a wonder ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grave know things, miraculously, completely, accepting Life's impossibilities with a nodded "Of course." From the ardent mouths of her eight furnaces to the last drip from her lubricators, from her bed-plates to the breeches of her quick-firers, he knew her—read her gauges, thumbed her bearings, gave the ranges from her range-finders, and lived the life he lived who was in command of her. And he would not forget on the morrow, as he had forgotten on many morrows, for at ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... an hour, when I saw another man, and he asked me, 'What luck?' and I replied, 'No luck; but I've a little left yet.' So I tossed with him and lost all my things—my coat, my shirt, and all, except my breeches. Then I went home with nothing but my breeches on—I borrowed a ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... fine," said Hamil. His voice sounded a trifle tired. He had ridden many miles since sunrise. There was marl on his riding-breeches. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... hall, among the antlers and beast-skins, and watch the great burning logs, so much more poetic than this peat smoke which hurt one's eyes. Ah, but then there was O'Flanagan. Well, he would not be much in the way. He liked riding over his new estate in his buckskin breeches, cracking his great loaded whip. She had met him herself once or twice, and the great shy creature had blushed furiously and ridden off down the first bridle-path. "I turn his horse's head as well as his," she had thought with a smile. Yes, she must sacrifice herself. How strange ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... larger way. Our little town was simply contemptible in his eyes, and he was at no pains to conceal his opinion. New York was everything; and a New York merchant of passable standing, able to put two or three towns like S——in his breeches pocket. ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... when they came aboard at Tilbury, a very romantic figure standing on deck; he fitted in much better with her conceptions of travel in far lands than did the very respectable, commonplace fathers of families she saw scattered about the deck. He was a man in knee breeches, leather leggings, a bright blue shirt and a claret and buff blazer. He wore a wide-brimmed brown hat and a fierce expression. From his leather belt hung a huge clasp knife and two small pistols. She thought him very funny, but very much like herself when she had dressed ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... The men wear breeches of bright colours, as tight as gymnasts' pantaloons, with a large number of buttons up the sides; a kind of waistcoat buttoning up to the throat; a jacket reaching to the hips, with close sleeves, and a turban. A chief's dress has many adornments of trinkets, and is quite elegant, a necessary ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the South Sea Islands so tattooed over the whole body, as to have the appearance of being clothed;—now most of them are not tattooed at all; and those few who are, not with various drawings as formerly, but merely stained blue from the hip to the knee, as though they had on short breeches. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... about a hen's egg, which had been found in the church belfry without anyone being able to understand what creature had been there to lay it, or the story of Jean-Jean Pila's dog, who had been ten leagues to bring back his master's breeches, which a tramp had stolen while they were hanging up to dry out of doors, after he had been in the rain. She told me these simple adventures in such a manner, that in my mind they assumed the proportions of never-to-be-forgotten ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... lift was finished, and the Princess and her ladies crowded round to make the first ascent in it, there was Florizel dressed in white satin knee-breeches, and coat with mother-o'-pearl buttons. He had silver buckles to his shoes, and a tiny opal breast-pin on the lappet of his coat, where the white flower goes ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... whole book to describe. The Gorgon's {35} eyes are blue, and black, and white; the serpents twine about his hair, and his belt has all the colours of the rainbow. How many thousand lines does it cost him to describe Vologesus's breeches and his horse's bridle, and how Osroes' hair looked when he swam over the Tigris, what sort of a cave he fled into, and how it was shaded all over with ivy, and myrtle, and laurel, twined together. You ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... was arguing and boasting that he knew many and various tricks. Another among the bystanders said: "I know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever I like pull off his breeches." The first man— the boaster—said: "You won't make me pull off mine, and I bet you a pair of hose on it." He who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across the face of him who bet the pair of hose and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... and as such things go, it is not a little. The house is that of a prosperous and well-placed citizen, and speaks of the senatorial quality in his family which Heine says he was fond of recalling, rather than the sartorial quality of the ancestor who, again as Heine says, mended the Republic's breeches. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hauling-line fastened to it, and a hawser to the hauling-line. Here they all are in order. When the hawser reaches the ship it is made taut and secured to the mizzentop or mainmast, high enough to swing clear of the taffrail. It is fastened on shore by this sand-anchor. Then we send over the breeches-buoy," pointing to a complete suit of india-rubber very similar in appearance to that used by Paul Boyton. "One man can be sent safely to shore in that. But we use the life-car ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... a bay window overlooking the street, whence she could see market-women going home with empty baskets, pigs being reluctantly driven down to provision ships in the harbour, barrels of biscuit, salt meat, or beer, being rolled down for the same purpose, sailors in loose knee-breeches, and soldiers in tall peaked caps and cross- belts, and officers of each service moving in different directions. She sat there day-dreaming, feeling secure in her loneliness, and presently saw a slight figure, daintily ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... went out of fashion, but lace was liberally used on other parts of the dress. Lace frills of costly Point edged the knee-breeches, lace cravats were worn and deep falling cuffs. Charles II., in the last year of his reign, spent L20 for a new cravat ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... that of the stranger. A coat of Prussian blue, with a straight collar and large wide skirts, enveloped a thin, delicate frame. A waistcoat of white silk, cut square in front, with two immense pockets, from one of which hung a watch, with an immense chain and multitude of seals, beating against breeches of buff cassimer, the legs of which were inserted in vast boots. A rich frill of English point lace, with ruffles to match, gave an air of magnificence to this toilet; the whole being surmounted with a powdered head-dress with open wings, like those of a sea-gull in a desperate storm. The ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... of hand-loom weaving, which, a century ago, made every town in Scotland resonant with the din of shuttles, is thus almost a thing of the past, and the men who engaged in it have gone the way of their shoe-buckles, knee-breeches, and seventeen-hundred linen. Yet weavers were typical of all that was intellectual in Scottish life: every shop was in its way a miniature university, and every weaver a man who believed himself capable of giving Pitt a lesson or two on the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... speed. At length it seemed to strike the Egyptians that though they could not manage to knock over the young giaours with their matchlocks they might with their scimitars; so a band of fierce-looking fellows with long moustachios, wonderfully wide breeches, and gleaming blades, sallied out of the fortress to endeavour to overtake them. The Egyptians ran very fast and felt very savage, but they might just as well have tried to catch three active tomcats. Dick Needham, their companion, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the wide-seated, peg-top variety, quite like the fashion of to-day, by the way—or is it yesterday, in these times of sudden changes?—and when they were cut off square at the knee and shirred or gathered or reefed in at the waist, they looked singularly like the typical "Dutchman's breeches." I might have worn them as one of Hendrik Hudson's crew in "Rip Van Winkle"—which was, even in those days, the most popular play in which Joseph Jefferson appeared. You can see how long ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... signification explained in turn by the speaker. First, as a sepulchre had been provided the day before for the dead man, it was now necessary to clothe and equip him for his journey to the next world; and to this end three presents were made. They represented a hat, a coat, a shirt, breeches, stockings, shoes, a gun, powder, and bullets; but they were in fact something quite different, as wampum, beaver-skins, and the like. Next came several gifts to close up the wounds of the slain. Then followed three more. The first closed the chasm in the earth, which ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... much about uniform at first. High boots and breeches, a thick felt hat that will turn the edge of a sword, and a loose coat-jacket of dark-gray cloth. Here is the name of the tailor who has got the pattern, and will make them. So I should advise you to go to him at once, for he will ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... this Road towards us I saw a man dressed in a green coat, riding-breeches and boots and a peaked cap, who held in his hand a hunting-whip. He was a fine-looking person of middle age, with a pleasant, open countenance, bright blue eyes, and very red cheeks, on which he wore light-coloured whiskers. In short a ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... of religious radicals, there enters a plain Man in Leather Breeches, and sees fetters on the limbs of all of them. "Does thee call it freedom, Friend Winthrop," says he, "to fear contact with such as believe otherwise than thee does? Can truth fear aught? And fear, is it not bondage? As for ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... along, and even to toss my petticoats over my head, and lay my thighs bare, which I obstinately kept close, nor could he, though he attempted with his knee to force them open, effect it so as to stand fair for being master of the main avenue; he was unbuttoned, both waistcoat and breeches, yet I only felt the weight of his body upon me, whilst I lay struggling with indignation, and dying with terrors; but he stopped all of a sudden, and got off, panting, blowing, cursing, and repeating "old and ugly!" ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... moccasins, and native blankets. These were superseded by what has been the more universal costume during the present generation: close-fitting cotton or velvet shirt, without collar, cut rather low about the neck and left open under the arms; breeches fashioned from any pleasing, but usually very thin, material, and extending below the knees, being left open at the outer sides from the bottom to a little above the knees; deerskin moccasins with rawhide soles, which come to a little above ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... Tchelisheff is generally found in a luxurious suite of rooms in one of the best hotels. He goes about clad in a blue blouse with a tasseled girdle, and baggy black breeches tucked into heavy boots. He offers his visitors tea from a samovar and fruit from the Crimea. Speaking of what he had accomplished for the cause of sobriety in Russia, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... greenish and full of bubbles. Some were open, and from them hung checked mattresses and sheets to air. Lines were stretched in front of others, on which the family wash was hung to dry—men's shirts, women's chemises and children's breeches! There was a look as if the dwellers under that roof found their quarters too small and were oozing out at ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... fluttering veil and mantilla—fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce to us the human heart's sadness ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... entering the drawing-room by the balcony window, or mounting to the parapet and taking the attics by storm. There was also great inconvenience, and even expense, attending this painful operation, since in those days all officers wore white knee-breeches, or shorts, as they were called, and many useful garments which could not readily be replaced, were torn and spoiled in this attempt at juvenile activity, and many oaths probably sworn, which but for this needless exertion ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... with his quick, elastic step, Loring came forth to the side gate, dumped his valise into the stage, turned and looked keenly over the group, then as quickly approached them. He had discarded his linen coat and trousers in favor of a pair of brown cord breeches with Hualpai leggings and light spurs. A broad belt with knife and revolver was buckled to his waist. A silk handkerchief was loosely knotted at his throat. A light-colored felt hat was pulled down to his eyebrows, and dust-colored gantlets were drawn upon his hands. "Sancho," said he, "have ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... unctuous and soft outwardly, Monsieur Grandet's nature was of iron. His dress never varied; and those who saw him to-day saw him such as he had been since 1791. His stout shoes were tied with leathern thongs; he wore, in all weathers, thick woollen stockings, short breeches of coarse maroon cloth with silver buckles, a velvet waistcoat, in alternate stripes of yellow and puce, buttoned squarely, a large maroon coat with wide flaps, a black cravat, and a quaker's hat. His gloves, thick as those of a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... close in front of her, tall and strong and handsome in his tunic, knee breeches and puttees. She could feel the vibration of his intense, ardent life, of his excitement. And suddenly, before his young manhood, she had it again, the old feeling, shooting up and running over her, swamping her brain. She wondered ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... they sometimes met with good windfalls. Thus, when they were upon the ice on the Island of Crosses they found there seventy eggs of the mountain-duck. "But they did not know what they should put them in to carry them. At length one man took off his breeches, tying them together by the ends, and having put the eggs into them, they carried them on a pike between two, while the third man carried the musket. The eggs were very welcome, and we eat them like lords." From the 19th July, the Dutchmen sailed over a sea, which, if not altogether free ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... fact, sir, he wanted to buy about everything in the house—including the portraits. There are two by Peale and one by Stuart—here are the Peales, sir—the lady in white, and the young officer in Continental uniform; and this is the Stuart—the gentleman in knee breeches and velvet coat. I think he is the same as the one in uniform, only later in life. They are the Colonel's grandparents, sir: Major Daniel Duval, of the Tenth Maryland Line, and his wife; she was a Miss Paca—you know the family, of course, sir. The Major's commission, sir, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... bottle, and a clean tidy over the pincushion. On the walls she hung three old-fashioned pictures, which she ventured to borrow from the garret till better could be found. One a mourning piece, with a very tall lady weeping on an urn in a grove of willows, and two small boys in knee breeches and funny little square tails to their coats, looking like cherubs in large frills. The other was as good as a bonfire, being an eruption of Vesuvius, and very lurid indeed, for the Bay of Naples was boiling like a pot, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... all were the people who lived in this queer country. There were milkmaids and shepherdesses, with brightly colored bodices and golden spots all over their gowns; and princesses with most gorgeous frocks of silver and gold and purple; and shepherds dressed in knee breeches with pink and yellow and blue stripes down them, and golden buckles on their shoes; and princes with jeweled crowns upon their heads, wearing ermine robes and satin doublets; and funny clowns in ruffled gowns, with round red ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... consists of a green coat with yellow vest and brownish breeches, and when he requires a change of uniform, he pulls off the old one and swallows it. This fact has been doubted; but why should It be deemed incredible? Are there not parallel cases in the human family? GOLDSMITH tells us that he once lived for a fortnight ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... at last my foot slipped, and I shot down and came plump into the middle of a peat fire; and a moment later Desmond shot down on to the top of me. We scattered the fire all over the place, as you can imagine; but I burned my hands and face, and I believe the leg of my breeches is on fire—something is hurting ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches' pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Jonathan—had long been noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... rigid punctuality the observances of the law. Their dress was almost uniformly a black cloak and doublet, cut straight and close, and undecorated with lace or embroidery of any kind, black Flemish breeches and hose, square-toed shoes, with large roses made of serge ribbon. Two or three had large loose boots of calf-leather, and almost every one was begirt with a long rapier, which was suspended by leathern thongs, to a plain belt of buff, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... first Catholics and then Jesuits. For let there be no illusions about strength of mind, and so on,—this is effected by means of a vast machinery. As, in the old story, the calves were put in at one end of the cylinder and taken out leather breeches at the other, or as glass is cut and wood carved, so does the raw human material, put into the machine of the Catholic Church, become fashioned according to the will of those who guide it. Hulia Protestante! you have a free step and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... stimulus and protection of the sea-dogs. And the Queen took precious good care that it all paid toll to her treasury through the customs, so that she could have more money to build more ships. And if her courtiers did stuff their breeches out with sawdust, she took equally good care that each fighting man among them donned his uniform and raised his troops or fitted out his ships when the time was ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Perry protested that as the charts showed a life-saving station every five miles or so all down the shore it was a shame not to take a chance. "I've always wanted to be taken off a sinking ship in a breeches-buoy," he said. ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the beaters, who were standing waiting for instructions a few yards away. There were a dozen of them, stalwart men for the most part, clad in rough smocks and breeches ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... snuff-colored coat reaching to his knees, a long vest of the same color, buff breeches, and a three-cornered hat. With him the fashion never changed; he had but one suit; not an extra coat, hat, or even two handkerchiefs. When his wardrobe gave out, and he was forced to see his tailor, he became very nervous. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... deer-skin, close all round, worn with the hair next the skin, and an over-coat of the same material reaching to his knees, the hair outside. This coat overlaps in front, and is secured by a belt, from which depends his knife and smoking-bag. A pair of leather breeches, and leggings, or stockings of cloth, protect his legs, though but imperfectly, from the cold; his hands, however, are well defended by a pair of gauntlets that reach his elbows; and on his head he wears a cap richly ornamented ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... the boy laughed, 'there is!' He stuck his hands into his breeches pocket and pulled out a big fistful of crowns that he had won over-night at dice, and a long and thin Flemish chain of gold. 'I have enow to last me till the thaw,' he said. 'I came to beg my grandfather's blessing on the first day ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... by a footman, looking very quaint and queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, and one bottle of claret, all very good; but they take here much heavier wines than we drink now in America. After ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and justices with epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] He soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all over the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, "I know what I'll do: I'll talk it over wi' Riley; he's coming to-morrow, t' arbitrate ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... created an immense sensation, made a round of the world, and was everywhere either enthusiastically praised or severely condemned. It became the fashion of young men to dress themselves in blue coats and yellow breeches in imitation of the hero, and many of them were moved to follow Werther's example as the simplest way of settling their love affairs. Nevertheless, "Werther" formed the real basis of Goethe's fame. It was the first revelation to the world of the genius, which, a quarter of a century later, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... recalling an incident which had befallen him some time previously (see letter to Moore, January 19, 1815): "When I thought he was going to enact Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him." See, too, for another thrust at Argus, Don Juan, Canto III. stanza xxiii. But he should have remembered that this particular Argus "was half a wolf by the she side." His portrait ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... and shoes I had none, but I had made a pair of somethings, I scarce knew what to call them, to slip over my legs; a jacket, with the skirts coming down to the middle of my thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same, completing my outfit. I had a broad belt of goat's skin, and in this I hung, on one side, a saw, on the other, a hatchet. Under my arm hung two pouches for shot and powder; at my back I carried my basket, on my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... They likewise have breeches made of skins. The rich often line their garments with silk shag, which is exceedingly soft, light, and warm. The poor line theirs with cotton cloth, wadded with the finest wool which they can sort out from their fleeces; and of the coarser wool they make felts for covering their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... Bleeding-heart (B. eximia) of old- fashioned gardens, found growing wild in the Alleghanies, and with the exquisite White Mountain Fringe (Adlumia fungosa) often brought from the woods to be planted over shady trellises, or with the Dutchman's breeches, need not be told that the little squirrel corn is next of kin or far removed from the pink corydalis. It is not until we dig up the plant and look at its roots that we see why it received its name. A delicious perfume like hyacinths, only fainter and subtler, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... stateroom and into his arms, a slim, boyish figure in her snug leather jacket and breeches. Together they were flung violently against the partition by a heavy ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... rude construction; the harness is profusely ornamented with brass, and the horse's hend decorated with tufts and tassels and dangling bobs of scarlet and yellow worsted. I had for calasero, a tall, long-legged Andalusian, in short jacket, little round-crowned hat, breeches decorated with buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside his horse, rousing him occasionally ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... on its rock, it seemed to shoot its towers into the zenith, when, rounding a corner, I came to a part where the height sank from the foundation of the house to the level by a grassy slope, and at the foot of the slope espied an elderly gentleman, in a white hat, who stood with his hands in his breeches-pockets, looking about him. He was tall and stout, and carried himself in what seemed to me a stately manner. As I drew near him I felt somewhat encouraged by a glimpse of his face, which was rubicund and, I thought, good-natured; but, approaching him rather ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... looked over his shoulder, hesitated, and finally came back, with a rolling air of nautical indifference, and his hands thrust into his breeches pockets. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... till about the seventh decade of the century. After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be found against the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the white stockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, in which clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear. A writer at the very end of the century pointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of his brother clergy to the distinctly ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... wake him up to a point," said Grimshaw, "that that abolition consul ha'n't learnt before; and if he'd stuck his old petition in Charles Sumner's breeches pocket instead of sending it to our legislature, he might have saved his old-womanish ideas from the showing' up that Myzeck gave 'em. It takes Myzeck to show these blue-skin Yankees how to toe the mark when they come to South Carolina. If South Carolina should secede, I'd say ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... pounds at the very least. Pere Leger belonged to the species of farmer which has a square back, a protuberant stomach, a powdered pigtail, and wears a little coat of blue linen. His white gaiters, coming above the knee, were fastened round the ends of his velveteen breeches and secured by silver buckles. His hob-nailed shoes weighed two pounds each. In his hand, he held a small reddish stick, much polished, with a large knob, which was fastened round his wrist ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of no ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... and horsey. His stiff, tight choker, his horse-shoe pin, the cut of his breeches, his alert and wary air of a man of the world, all betrayed the racing-lad. From the corner of his mouth hung a cigarette waggishly a-rake; and his billycock had just the correct and knowing cock. He kept well under the lee of the tent; and if he was brazen, it was clear that ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... seems to have been perpetually in disgrace over his tasks and lessons. These punishments included the extra copying of lines in such numbers that he has been declared the inventor of the three-pointed pen; and then there was imprisonment in the dormitory, "the wooden breeches," as it was called in the college, and where he remained for weeks at a time. Whether he suffered from these punishments and from the contempt of his teachers, Honore at least never complained; for whatever left his mind free to follow its ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... nakedness, and then anon they understood that they had trespassed. And thus they knew that they were naked, and they took fig leaves and sewed them together for to cover their members in manner of breeches. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... no more than a stutter. He was an extremely little man, dressed in the Sunday garb of a civilian—fustian breeches, moleskin waistcoat, and a frock of blue broadcloth, very shiny at the seams. His hat had fallen off in the struggle, and his eyes, timorous as a hare's, seemed to plead for mercy while he ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this particular occasion, pertained to the style of the costume which would most become him as the lover of Mrs. Slapman, in an original play to be enacted at her house toward the close of the week. The question was chiefly of knee breeches. Overtop was mentally debating whether he ought not, in justice to his thin legs, to substitute ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... bosom as a jewel. The chances are small of yees iver gitting another glimpse of heaven—that is, of Miss Cora's face. The darlint; if she's gone to heaven, then Teddy McFadden don't care how soon somebody else wears out his breeches—that is, on the presumption that St. Peter will say, 'Teddy, me lad, ye can inter an' make yerself at ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... them that they were not yet married! On the ground lay the rib, out of which Eve, who stood a head higher than Adam, had been formed: both of them were very respectably clothed in the ancient Saxon costume; even the angel wore breeches, which, being blue, contrasted well with ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... educational stimulus, that a resolute selection of subjects, which is the only remedy, is not attempted; and accordingly the victim of educational theories is in the predicament of the man described by Dr. Johnson who could not make up his mind which leg of his breeches he would put his foot into first. Meanwhile, said the Doctor, with a directness of speech which requires to be palliated, the process of ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
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