"Breast-high" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Angelo have stemmed the Tiber. Figures indistinct or invisible, as usual, in the foreground, but farther on a mingled procession of coaches, cabs, carts, and people. See the groups in the recesses over the piers. The parapet is breast-high;—a woman can climb over it, and drop or leap into the dark stream lying in deep shadow under the arches. Women take this leap often. The angels hear them like the splash of drops of blood out of the heart of our humanity. In the distance, wharves, storehouses, stately edifices, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of the rock, seven feet wide; the sea lies perpendicularly down, about forty fathoms on one side, and the mountain is about the same height above it on the other side. It looks dismal, but not at all dangerous, for there is now a wall breast-high along the precipice. However, there is an ale- house at the bottom of the hill on the other side, with this inscription, "Now your fright is over, take a dram." From hence I proceeded to a little town ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... Gaskell describes the house as it was in those July days. "It had the appearance of a dwelling-house two hundred years old or so, such as one sometimes sees in ancient country towns; the ceilings of the small rooms were low, and had heavy beams running across them; the walls were wainscoted breast-high; the stairs were shallow, broad, and dark, taking up much space in the centre of the house. The gray-haired elderly man who officiated as waiter seems to have been touched from the very first by the quiet simplicity of the two ladies, and he tried to make them feel comfortable and ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... at Fidenae, it was better. We had a travesty of the taking of Troy, which was eminently ludicrous, and which deserves a better description than I can give. Troy was a space inclosed within paper barriers, about breast-high, painted "to present a wall," and within these were the Trojans, clad in red, and all wearing gigantic paper helmets. There was old Priam, in spectacles, with his crown and robes,—Laocooen, in white, with a white wool beard and wig,—Ulysses, in a long, yellow beard and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... her little huddled grave. It was from something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which in spite of caricature remained indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her term with her mother was over, drew this sense of a support, like a breast-high banister in a place of "drops," that would never give way. If she knew her instructress was poor and queer she also knew she was not nearly so "qualified" as Miss Overmore, who could say lots of dates straight off (letting you hold the book yourself), state the position of Malabar, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... my first quick glance took in these details. I saw also that the room had four small oval window openings. They were breast-high above the floor; from the deck below I knew that the angle of vision was such that the men down there could not see into this room except to glimpse its upper portion near the ceiling. And the helio set was banked on a low table near ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... thing to me was to see what they had done to the great timber bridge itself, for they had made that also into a fortress. The old railing along the roadway was gone, and in its place were breast-high bulwarks of strong timber, and on each span of the bridge was a high wooden tower whose upper works overhung the water, looking downstream, as if they feared assault from the ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... who can do it," said Molly. "First you lead off your dog on a straightaway and warm him up a bit by nearly letting him catch you. Then keeping just one hop ahead, you lead him at a long slant full tilt into a breast-high barb-wire. I've seen many a dog and fox crippled, and one big hound killed outright this way. But I've also seen more than one rabbit lose ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... no sooner touches the port, than all the passengers fall into captivity: being boarded by an overpowering force of Custom-house officers, and marched into a gloomy dungeon. In the second place, the road to this dungeon is fenced off with ropes breast-high, and outside those ropes all the English in the place who have lately been sea-sick and are now well, assemble in their best clothes to enjoy the degradation of their dilapidated fellow-creatures. 'Oh, my ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... compensation. Lines of well-lit shops, crowds of well-dressed people, balconies filled with ladies, colonnades of churches, and facades of palaces, danced dimly before our eyes, instead of the accustomed cordages, the naked masts, the smutty sail, the breast-high bulwarks, and that horrid squat funnel, with its cascade of black smoke tinged, as it rolled forth, with a dull red glow. When I retired to rest, I caught myself holding on to the bed as I prepared to get into it; and I dreamed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... undoubled his knees and descended the stool. He stood breast-high behind the counter. He dropped a lack-luster eye to the box. "Velly nice," he murmured with vague, ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... regular tax-paying subjects has proved their safeguard, and they were too strong to be pillaged by any petty marauder, as any one who has seen a Banjari encampment will be convinced. They encamp in a square, and their grain-bags piled over each other breast-high, with interstices left for their matchlocks, make no contemptible fortification. Even the ruthless Turk, Jamshid Khan, set up a protecting tablet in favour of the Charans of Murlah, recording their exemption from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... stubble field; A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines; A wagon moving in a "cloud by day." Two city sportsmen with a dove between, Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep— A solitary dove, the only dove In twenty counties, and it sick, or else It were not there. Two guns that fire as one, With thunder simultaneous and loud; Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... addition of Archbishop Odo, c. 950, the church having been thus turned from west to east, as at the already-described basilica of S. Lorenzo at Rome. The choir, as at S. Clemente's, occupied the eastern part of the nave, and like it was probably enclosed by breast-high partitions. There were attached porches to the north and south of the nave. The main entrance of the church was through that to the south. At this suthdure, according to Eadmer, "all disputes from the whole ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... nearing Flynn's house, the dog leading the pack by not fifty yards, when I saw him cut across a field to the left, while the hounds tumbled into a little boreen that runs up from the railway-station and went streaking down it singing out as if they were on a breast-high scent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... raving and the wild tide races, The Blue Men ere breast-high with foam-grey faces; They'll plunge along with fury while they sweep the spray behind, O, they'll bellow o'er the billows ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Salazar's door and called his name. Then he turned and ran to the corner, dodged round it, and crept along the breast-high adobe wall. He whistled again. A rope snapped, and there came the sound of quick trampling. A rush and the great, tawny shape of Dexter reared in the moonlight and swept over the wall. With head up, the horse snorted a challenge. Waring called softly. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Munger's, Skiet's, Maritz, and Potgieters drifts. Of these the four first named were difficult for loaded wagons. Eastward of Colenso the only practicable drift was that by which the Weenen road crosses the river. Other fords, through which single horsemen or men on foot, breast-high, could wade, existed both to the east and to the west, but with the exception of a bridle drift near Colenso they were not marked on the maps in possession of the troops, and could only be discovered by ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice |
