"Breeches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... 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
... 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 a parcel of fops; one good Englishman will ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... 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 |
