"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be frightened also. Henry saw at once that his fear was of his officers, and that it had not been caused by any suffering in captivity. In truth, Private Doran looked very well, having suffered no diminution of either girth or ruddiness. His fears in regard to his officers were justified, as he was taken at once before Colonel de Peyster, who examined him with ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... changing to roads. The local freight intermittently disgorged tons of harvesting machinery. The sound of the Klaxton was heard in the land. Despite the times and the manners, Bud's girth increased insidiously. His hard-riding days were past. Progress marched steadily onward, leaving an after-guard of homesteaders intrenched behind miles of barbed-wire fence and mazes of irrigating-ditches. ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... as I could follow, in the grey morning light, coolly, nay disdainfully, seeming to regard the bullets from the converging sharp-shooters as just so many bees buzzing harmlessly about him. Next, he tightened the girth, which Mack's panting had loosened, bridled the horse again, vaulted lightly into the saddle, touched his bonnet in mock salutation, and rode ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... tent, on the pole of which hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible to obtain change for a piece of gold anywhere in the interior), and no guard being kept on the tents, I never lost a zwanziger, or any other article than a girth by which the blanket was fastened on my horse when grazing at night; and, as the blanket came back, even that did not look ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Nanjulian. It was easy to see, even in the uncertain light of the early morning, that he had undergone the same torments which they had applied to me. His face was pinched and thin with suffering, and his great frame seemed to have been crushed and bruised until it had shrunk in height and girth. Yet he bore himself with composure and bravery, and I felt at once that, however the rest of us behaved, he at least would not disgrace the name ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... being measured with Frank's pocket rule proved to be a trifle over twenty feet long and of great girth. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... will accompany me to Dunbar, by way of making a parade of me as a sweetheart of hers, among her relations. She mounts an old cart-horse, as huge and as lean as a house; a rusty old side-saddle without girth, or stirrup, but fastened on with an old pillion-girth—herself as fine as hands could make her, in cream-coloured riding clothes, hat and feather, &c.—I, ashamed of my situation, ride like the devil, and almost shake her to pieces on old Jolly—get ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... low water of the swamp accounted in a measure for the unusual number of snakes to {212} be seen. Exercising a fair amount of caution, I slew that morning fourteen poisonous reptiles, one of which measured more than five feet in length and had a girth I was just able to encompass with ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Rulledge. Being of no employ whatever, and spending his whole life at the club in an extraordinary idleness, Rulledge was always using the most strenuous expressions, and requiring everybody to be practical. He leaned directly forward with the difficulty that a man of his girth has in such a movement, and vigorously broke off the ash of his cigar against the edge of his saucer. We had been dining together, and had been served with coffee in the Turkish room, as it was called from its cushions and hangings of Indian and Egyptian stuffs. "What is the instance ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... displaced bone, and sometimes the empty socket, may be palpable. Discoloration is usually later of appearing than in fractures. Alteration in the length of the injured limb—usually in the direction of shortening—is a common feature; while girth measurements usually show an increase. A peculiar soft grating or creaking sensation is often felt on attempting to move the joint; this is due to cartilaginous or ligamentous structures rubbing on one another, and must not be mistaken for the crepitus of fracture. In the majority of cases, ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... conductress cared to show us, we drove in the park, along the "three-mile walk," and in the by-roads leading from it. The beautiful avenue, the open spaces with scattered trees here and there, made this a most delightful excursion. I saw many fine oaks, one about sixteen feet of honest girth, but no one which was very remarkable. I wished I could have compared the handsomest of them with one in Beverly, which I never look at without taking my hat off. This is a young tree, with a future ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York .. packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. this ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Circus and Menagerie Combination Company. The ground leading up to the front of the canvas was garnished in the usual way. There were two small parasitic tents near the great one, on which primitive pictures hung of the woman of enormous girth and the calf with six legs. A man stood at the flap entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose proprietor was handing out ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... with a saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow "Boots and Saddles," and in five minutes to sound, "To Horse;" then he turned to me and said, "You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out here." I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I eat ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... called out: "Master Brandon is wanted." So that gentleman rode forward, and I followed him. When we came up with the girls, Mary said: "I fear my girth is loose." ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... long I turned and twisted within the battle-girth Before those bears of onset: while out from the grey world streamed The broad red lash of the lightening and in our byrnies gleamed. And long I leapt and laboured in that garland of the fight 'Mid the blue blades and ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... back in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... at her, that he forgot her great chuckle head, greyhound-flanks, and drooping hind-quarters, and began to see the great length of those same quarters,—the thighs let down into the hocks, the arched loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the sloping shoulder, the long arms, the flat knees, the large, well-set hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and speed, and justified ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... plate-jack was braced, and his helmet was laced, And his vaunt-brace of proof he wore: At his saddle-girth was a good steel sperthe, Full ten ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... were no sooner out of his mouth than he dwindled down to his usual height, and spread out in girth till he exactly resembled, in appearance, what one looks like in a concave mirror—that is, he was about twice as ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... compliments, as well as to a very perceptible slanting of the deck, and the captain piped out to the hands to shift the chain-box. And by this action was resolved for me a riddle with regard to the properties and uses of a prematurely stout man of fabulous girth, who had been dimly revealed to me, once or twice in the course of the voyage, through some long vista of the 'tween-decks, but seemed always to melt into air,—or, more probably, oil,—upon any advance being made to a closer inspection. Now, as a couple of the deck-hands hauled and howled ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... on the importance of what the youngster was likely to know. Through the day there was no chance of getting the fellow apart. But Buck kept his eyes and ears open, and at supper-time Bud's casual remark to Lynch that he "s'posed he'd have to fix that busted saddle-girth before he hit the hay" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... urges the syrup on you with pleasant and insistent hospitality. With satisfaction he drains a can. By June he has a dozen of these empty cabins on the shelf alongside his country boots. Time was when he was lean of girth—as becomes an accountant, who is hinged dyspeptically all day across his desk—but by this agreeable stowage he has now grown to plumpness. When in the country Colum rises early in order to stretch the pleasures of the day, and he walks about before breakfast from tree to tree to view his feathered ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and over heaven To the balmy western verge Sail the victor fleets of even, And the pilot stars emerge, Then my city rounds and rises, Like a vapour formed afar, And its sudden girth surprises, And its ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... fighting men—'Orsini!' 'Colonna!'—the long-drawn syllables coming up distinct through the evening air to the garden where Messalina died, while the sun sets red behind the spire of old Saint Peter's across the river, and gilds the huge girth of dark Sant' Angelo to a rusty red, like battered iron ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... hog and, as with the carabao, an estimate of its value is shown by representing the size of the girth of the animal by clasping the hands around one's leg. For instance, a small pig is represented by the size of the speaker's ankle, as he clasps both hands around it; a larger one is the size of his calf; a still larger one is the size of a man's thigh; and one still larger ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... grew confoundedly corpulent by degrees, and suffered plaguily from gout; but was always well dressed, and courageously buckled in, and, I dare say, two inches less in girth, thanks to the application of mechanics, than nature would have ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... honors of royalty it is imperative that the P'hra-mene be constructed of virgin timber. Trunks of teak, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and of proportionate girth, are felled in the forests of Myolonghee, and brought down the Meinam in rafts. These trunks, planted thirty feet deep, one at each corner of a square, serve as pillars, not less than a hundred and seventy ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... unconcernedly. As for myself, though I have seen plenty of rough riding, and am as ready as most men to follow, if not to lead, I thought it no shame to dismount more than once. The rolling of a stone, or the parting of stirrup, girth, or crupper, would have involved the safety of one's neck. Nor did the very common sight of wooden crosses along the path, indicating sudden death by accident or crime, tend to lessen the sense of insecurity. The frequent casualties among these precipitous paths, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... for some days after the passage of the Potomac; but the Confederacy was near paying a heavy price for the "good grey mare." When Jackson first mounted her a band struck up close by, and as she reared the girth broke, throwing her rider to the ground. Fortunately, though stunned and severely bruised, the general was only temporarily disabled, and, if he appeared but little in public during his stay in Frederick, his inaccessibility was not due ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Barrow-in-Furness rendered timely assistance yesterday in an accident which occurred in the main street of Carlisle. Part of the harness of a heavily-laden cart broke, and the horse was becoming restive, when the Bishop, who was passing, prevented further danger by buckling up the girth while the carter held up the cart shafts, which would otherwise have fallen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... Hell? What Elf that hath heard the gold growing, but hath heard not the light winds tell That the Gods with the world have been dealing and have fashioned men for the earth? Where is he that hath ridden the cloud-horse and measured the ocean's girth, But seen nought of the building of God-home nor the forging of the sword: Where then is the maker of nothing, the earless and eyeless lord? In the pouch of my net he lieth, with his head on ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and fat—those imprisoned for long terms or for life bearing witness of the good treatment which they receive at the hands of the authorities. One youngish man in particular attracted our attention, a merry laughing fellow whose girth had reached alarming proportions. He was imprisoned for life, and his crime, which sat so lightly upon him, had been a particularly atrocious and dastardly murder for plunder—a crime practically unknown ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... within a yard of where I had sat, was a figure—the luminous nude figure of a creature, half man and half ape. Standing some six feet high, it had a clumsy, thick-set body, covered in places with coarse, bristly hair, arms of abnormal length and girth, legs swelling with huge muscles and much bowed, and a very large and long dark head. The face was DREADFUL!—it was the face of something long since dead; and out of the mass of peeling, yellow skin and mouldering tissues gleamed two lurid and wholly malevolent ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... it's awful funny!" she cried, rocking herself to and fro—and steadily increasing her girth. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... word, And heaven grows gladder, knowing that earth has heard. Ere half the flowers are jubilant in birth, The splendour of the laughter of their mirth Dazzles delight with wonder: man and bird Rejoice and worship, stilled at heart and stirred With rapture girt about with awe for girth. ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for me now to say how much I saw at that time, because my impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First of all impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and that its ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... four inches in his office slippers, and measured fifty-two inches in girth of chest. He habitually smoked the strongest shag tobacco, and imbibed cold rum and water at short intervals from morning to night; but these excesses had neither impaired his complexion, which was ruddy, jovial and almost unwrinkled, nor dimmed ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... way toward them. Crimmins darted into the underbrush bordering the pike. The horse came fast. It flashed past Garrison. Its rider was swaying in the saddle; swaying with white, tense face and sawing hands. The eyes were fixed straight ahead, vacant. A broken saddle-girth flapped raggedly. Garrison recognized the fact that it was a runaway, with Sue ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... and Khadir(98) six and six; Six, made of the Palasa(99) tree, Of Fig-wood one, apart to be: Of Sleshmat(100) and of Devadar(101) One column each, the mightiest far: So thick the two, the arms of man Their ample girth would fail to span. All these with utmost care were wrought By hand of priests in Scripture taught, And all with gold were gilded bright To add new splendour to the rite: Twenty-and-one those stakes in all, Each one-and-twenty cubits ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse, Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... ravine itself, and in some instances stretched across it from side to side, lay the decayed remains of huge giants of the vegetable world, that had flourished and died long ages ere, in at least our northern part of the island, the course of history had begun. There were oaks of enormous girth, into whose coal-black substance one could dig as easily with a pickaxe as one digs into a bank of clay; and at least one noble elm, which ran across the little stream that trickled, rather than flowed, along the bottom of the hollow, and which ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... which the Fire King laughed As he his bowl of frantic pleasure quaffed, Whilst the doomed structure tottered in the girth Of his wild, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... Borne up on roots, or rather walls, of twisted board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... clangor. Screaming and huddling together, some fled under the wide skirts of sable, which Darkness, climbing to the roof in fear, drew up after her; some hid with lesser shadows between columns of great girth, or in the remotest murky niches, or down in the black profound of resounding chasms; some, bewildered or quite blinded by the flashes of the co-eternal beam, dashed themselves against the stony walls, and fell crippled, gasping, staring, at our feet. And when, at last, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... she ate too much and was getting as fat as a pig. Did I not think so? Voila! In her artless way she guided my finger into her waistband and then swelled herself out like the frog in the fable to prove the increase in her girth. She spoke in awestricken whispers of the Master himself. Save that he was utterly kind, impulsive, generous, boastful, and according to her untrained ear a violinist of the first quality, she knew not what ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... reply; but as he entered the court-yard of his house, he muttered uneasily,—"And if Lysander is right, and Sparta is too small for Pausanias, do not we bring back a giant who will widen it to his own girth, and rase the old foundations to make room for ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... specimen of this pine stands on the sloping ground to the southwest of Penrhyn Castle. It shows off to advantage the peculiar outline of this pine, which is so marked a characteristic of those grown in the Mediterranean region. The trunk, which is about 4 1/2 feet in girth at a yard up, rises for three-fourths its height without branches, after which it divides into a number of limbs, the extremities of which are well covered with foliage, thus giving to the tree a bushy, well-formed, and, I might almost add, rounded appearance. At a casual glance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... heart, as her own sunbonnet. She drew back in dismay; she would have no more of this weird mirror of the rocks and woods, and looked up again at the shining of the star amidst the darkening shadows of the scarlet oak. How tall that tree was, how broad of girth! And how curiously this stranger talked! What was there to do with all these trees! Would he cut down all the trees on the mountain? A sudden doubt of his sanity crossed her mind. It was the first, and her heart stood ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill. In summer this bar of shadow moved like a clock-hand on the green dial of the pasture, and the help could tell the time by the slant of it. Lone Pine had a mighty girth at the bottom, and its bare body tapered into the sky as straight as an arrow. Uncle Eb used to say that its one long, naked branch that swung and creaked near the top of it, like a sign of hospitality on the highway of the birds, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... otherwise. If you had no teeth and no digestion, you were allowed a pint and a half of sowens porridge instead; and thus helped your portion of exhausted cavalry mount or your bit of tough mule-meat down. And so you went on like your neighbours, playing the game, while your eyes grew larger and your girth less, and your cheekbones more in evidence with every ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... without incident. Another fire was lighted, and whilst Iris attended to the kitchen the sailor felled several young trees. He wanted poles, and these were the right size and shape. He soon cleared a considerable space. The timber was soft and so small in girth that three cuts with the axe usually sufficed. He dragged from the beach the smallest tarpaulin he could find, and propped it against the rock in such manner that it effectually screened the mouth of the cave, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... not liking for Squire Pettijohn which had caused Montgomery to vanish when called to meet him. Quite the reverse. The name of that man of mighty girth and stature struck terror into the soul of every young Marsdenite. He was a person of fierce temper and a propensity for managing his neighbors' affairs, especially the affairs of his youthful neighbors. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... Corinthian pillars were added to the east front. The beautiful sheets of water—feeders of the Yeo (for we have crossed the "divide") lend an added grace to a park rich with groves of magnificent trees. One of them, called "Billy Wilkins," is a famous oak, thirty-seven feet in girth. Sampford church is a cruciform Decorated building with some interesting monuments to the Strangeways, the family of Lord Ilchester. The late peer was the donor of the beautiful modern reredos, and the decoration of the chancel is due ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... temporal muscles, which have been mistermed callosites, as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. Five of this form, measured by me, varied only from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 2 inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from 3 feet to 3 feet 71/2 inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from 7 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 6 inches; the width of the face from 10 to 131/4 inches. The color and length of the hair varied in different individuals, and in different parts of ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... myself, then," resumed Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cyprus (the ancient Chittim), was probably a species of cypress at that time composing the forests which ornamented a considerable portion of the surface. There are two varieties of cypress in the island: that which would have been celebrated grows upon the high mountains, and attains a girth of from seven to nine feet, the wood being highly aromatic, emitting a perfume resembling a mixture of sandal-wood and cedar; the other cypress is a dwarf variety that seldom exceeds twenty feet in height, with a maximum circumference of two ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... His notion was that the earth was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth; Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving in time and trouble would be immense.—Thus did he argue—shoving ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... feet away, the General himself—the host-in-chief of the evening—condemned, despite increasing years and girth, to the Eton jacket of boyhood, pranced and glided with elaborate precision, and took every opportunity of twirling plump little Mrs Mayhew almost off her feet. Both laughed inordinately at each repetition ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... I felt that this seal brought all these adventures in realistic fashion before me. As long as that seal remained there I haunted the neighborhood of the market day after day. I measured it, and I recall that, not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its girth with a folding pocket foot-rule, a difficult undertaking. I carefully made a record of the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal. This, and subsequent natural histories, were written down in blank books in simplified ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of unexpected comedy riveted the attention of the spectators the duke and his followers had slowly ridden to their side of the inclosure. Here hovered the squires, adjusting a stirrup, giving a last turn to a strap, or testing a bridle or girth. Behind stood the heralds, trumpeters and pursuivants in their bright garb of office. At his own solicitation had the duke been assigned an active part in the day's entertainment. The king, fearing for the safety of his guest and the possible postponement ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... boasted that they could build and fit out a ship from the keel to the masthead without looking to resources beyond those of their own island. The ash, pine, cypress, and oak flourished on the sides of the range of Aous, while cedars grew there to a greater height and girth than even on the Lebanon. Wheat, barley, olive trees, vines, sweet-smelling woods for burning on the altar, medicinal plants such as the poppy and the ladanum, henna for staining with a deep orange colour the lips, eyelids, palm, nails, and fingertips of the women, all ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and another, I was able to form, by the outlines of the grey sheeting that enveloped him, some rough notion of his posture and his costume. Round what was evidently his neck the sheeting was constricted by ropes; and the height and girth of the bundle above—to half-closed eyes, even now, an averted poke-bonnet—gave token of a tall helmet with a luxuriant shock of plumes waving out behind. Immediately beneath the ropes, the breadth and sharpness of the bundle ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—I am very much in the condition of the gentleman who, being about to be married and having had his wedding suit brought home a day before the event, returned it to the tailor with instructions to increase the girth just two inches. His explanation was that not enough room had been left to accommodate the wedding breakfast he had to eat or for the emotion that was to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of the Earth. Old England proudly stands. Like arteries her Colonies Reach out from sea to sea. She clasps all races in her girth; Her gaze the world commands; And far and wide where strong ships ride, The British ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... turned and began to saddle. Then suddenly as he pulled at the girth, he stopped. "It's no use," he said. "We can't get away except over the rise, and they'll see us there"; he nodded at the hill which rose beyond the camping ground three hundred yards away, and stretched in a long, level sweep into other ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... bed long when the dog barked and a horse entered the yard. There was a clink of girth-buckles; a saddle thrown down; then a thump, as though with a lump of blue-metal, set the dog yelping lustily. We lay listening till a voice called out at the door—"All in bed?" Then we knew it was Dan, and Dad and Dave sprang out in their shirts ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear;— Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: Rough culture,—but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Nature in both the living and the non-living worlds tend to correct themselves. When Nature cannot make both ends meet, she diminishes her girth. If there is not food enough for her creatures, she lessens the number of mouths to be fed. A surplus of food, on the other hand, tends to ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To limber out ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... himself in a great measure deserted, "he hearkened to a message from Tyrone, who desired a conference; and a plain near the two camps was appointed for this purpose. The two generals met without any attendants. A river ran between them, into which Tyrone entered to his saddle-girth, but Essex stood on ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the feeders of the Duweir, a wild gorge is clothed from top to bottom with a forest of trees, untouched by the axe, the haunt of the panther and the bear, which on examination have been found to be all cedars, some of a large size, from fifteen to eighteen feet in girth. They grow in clusters, or scattered singly, in every variety of situation, some clinging to the steep slopes, or gnarled and twisted on the bare hilltops, others sheltered in the recesses of the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... mertensiana). The principal timber of commerce is the Douglas fir. The tree is often found 300 ft. high and from 8 to 10ft. in diameter. The wood is tough and strong and highly valued for ships' spars as well as for building purposes. Red or giant cedar, which rivals the Douglas fir in girth, is plentiful, and is used for shingles as well as for interior work. The western white spruce is also much employed for various purposes. There are about eighty sawmills, large and small, in the province. The amount of timber cut on Dominion government ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and the honesty (Lunaria biennis), "in sorceries excelling," was equally employed. By Scotch witches the woodbine was a favourite plant,[23] who, in effecting magical cures, passed their patients nine times through a girth or ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... difference between Gog and Magog?' somebody wants to know; and I am glad that somebody asked the question, for it gives me the opportunity of pointing out that between Gog and Magog there is all the difference in the world. There is a difference in girth; there is a difference in height; and there is a difference in fibre. I have just run a tape round both trees. Magog gives a measurement of just six feet; whilst Gog puts those puny proportions to shame with a record of seven feet six inches. I have not attempted to climb the ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... his quarter, and on still I brought her, And up to his girth, to his breast-plate she drew; A short prayer from Neville just reached me, "The Devil!" He muttered—lock'd level the ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... small whispering voice—that hand touching lightly now and then on his neck—that thrill of generous sympathy which passes between horse and rider. He lost ground steadily and more and more rapidly. Now the outstretched black head was at his tail, now at his flank, now at his girth, now at his shoulder, now they raced nose and nose. Whistling Dan shifted in the saddle. His left foot took the opposite stirrup. His ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... immersing the maniac in the very acme of his paroxysm; and this may be easily accomplished if the patient, previously secured by a strait waistcoat, be fixed in a common Windsor chair by strong broad straps of leather or web girth" (p. 135, 3rd edit., 1813). The author observes that it is certainly worth trying whether keeping a patient for days in succession in a state of intoxication would be beneficial, where every other means ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the full moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth. The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy snorer, and his voice in speaking came thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and stifled by feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, and eat ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's skin laid over it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of girth, a thong of hide passing around the horse's belly. The rider's dark features and keen snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which, like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened by grease ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... incomparably stronger and more luxurious than that of the cold North. The pine-trees in higher altitudes, for instance in Norway, appear miserably puny and almost stunted when compared with the giants of the South. Trees of 100 to 150 feet high and 10 to 15 feet in girth are frequent. We noticed some species of pines the needles of which were over a ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth. A rangar came up to the prince and spoke to him—a slim, young-looking man, a head the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over his eyes, and the loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face. Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded. After that Utirupa appeared ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... its produce. The eight olives of which we are speaking are charged only eight medinas. By some it is supposed that these olive-trees may have been in existence even in the time of our Saviour; the largest is about thirty feet in girth above the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... supporting betwixt them a third, who had probably got some of your marks about him, Harry. They got to the postern gate before we could overtake them, and rang the sanctuary bell; the gate opened, and in went they. So they are safe in girth and sanctuary, and we may go to our cold ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... looking at his size and girth. "It's a mighty tight squeeze under the slab, and that tunnel would beat you. Unless you've been brought up to that kind of thing, you couldn't stand it. It would give you nightmares for the rest ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... moment later as he passed the first of the company buildings. There he heard his name pronounced in a voice which halted him, and in an open doorway he beheld a huge, loose- hung man of tremendous girth, with a war-bag in his hand and a wide black hat thrust ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... further than I reckoned; for so it was that I presently became aware of a companion in my solitudes. This was a Capuchin of great girth and capacity, who sat under a chestnut tree, secluded from observation, and was at that time engaged ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... this protest I have little but praise for the performance itself, though I think Sir HERBERT TREE'S own lethargy was not wholly to be excused by the hampering rotundity of his girth; and that all this deliberate sword-play, where you wait till your enemy has got his right guard before you arrange a concussion between your weapon and his, fails to impose itself as an image ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... darning stockings in the coolest room in the house,—a bedroom with a northern exposure. A white shirt-waist gave a puffy look to a body that could ill endure such appearance of enlargement, and a black belt accentuated the amplitude of girth that it encircled. The good lady sat in an armless rocking-chair, or rather on it, for she was by no means contained therein, but bulged over and beyond at all points. Her feet, shod in heelless black slippers, above which puffed white ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which another boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up. Jargonelle trees grew against the house, stretching their arms round it as if to measure its girth, and it was also remarkable for several "dumb" windows with the most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's fruit was famous, but she loved her flowers best, and for long a notice board in her garden said, appealingly: "Persons ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... practically demonstrated that the lesser can contain the greater, the snake was but triflingly increased in girth. It was just in that phenomenal condition which entitled it to the honour of preservation in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... determined Jackson coolly dismounted from his horse, and unbuckling the girth, proceeded to deposit the saddle, with the valise attached to it, within the hut the door ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... eclipse, When darkness sat above the thrones, seven thunders on her lips, The woe of cities entered it, the clang of idols' falls, The scream of filthy Caesars stabbed high in their brazen halls, The dim hoarse Hoods of naked men, the worldrealms snapping girth, The trumpets of Apocalypse, the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... a small neck, too, maybe?—'And thou shalt make a necklace to fit her neck,' said the Lord. It would not be half the girth of yours, Mrs. M'Pherson?" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... where there are hot springs. The road was very bad, and it took us nearly three hours to accomplish the distance, but this may be partly accounted for by our stopping every half-hour to mend some one's broken harness. My only girth, a dilapidated old thing, was mended with string, and when trotting along soon after starting, the saddle and I both rolled off together, the only fall I have ever had in my life, and from a little Icelandic pony too! I was thoroughly disgusted ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... "Buckle my girth as tight as you can, and when you have mounted hold fast to my mane and press your feet close to my neck, that you may not hinder me." The prince mounted, and in a moment they were close to ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... have some news for you," he said, approaching and testing the girth of her saddle. "Sit still and let me ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... representation. To make one, a pole eighteen or twenty feet long should be firmly fixed in the ground: three feet of the but-end should be sunk, secured by sleepers to keep it steady: it should be at least three quarters of a yard in girth at bottom, and taper gradually to the top to half that size. An iron rim is to be driven on the head of the pole to keep it from splitting, and then a spindle at least an inch in diameter, with a shoulder, is to be fixed in it; an iron wheel with four spokes turned up at the end like a hook, to which ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... all went shopping on the elephant, Captain Kirke kindly showing us round. He and his pony might have passed under our steed's girth. It made a pretty fair block in the traffic of China Street, but the style of shopping seemed to take the popular taste; and from our point of view we could study at ease the various types of people. The old ladies in tall blue serge turbans and tunics and putties of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... edged with gold, is a looking-glass platform upwards of four-feet square, and representing water. From the centre of this fairy lake rises a glass column supporting a golden basket. In this is placed a bouquet some two feet high, and of proportionate girth, in which are clustered all the flowers we ever saw, and a great many which we never saw—from the humble favorites of our Rigolettes and Fleur de Maries, up to the floral aristocracy of the conservatory. There they are exquisitely reproduced in all their graces of form and ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... mats were strewn upon the pavement. Sheets of packing paper pirouetted down the roadway before the wind. While, standing in the midst of the litter, watching the process of unloading with perplexed and even agitated interest, was a whimsical figure—large of girth, short of limb, convex where the accredited lines of beauty demand, if not concavity, at least a ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, A liquid cool elixir—all its girth Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, Nor mars one whit ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... was exposed to view; it was coated and scaly with rust to such an extent, that we were unable to form any idea as to its age or nationality. It would most probably have been a twelve or eighteen-pounder howitzer, for it was about four feet in length, and disproportionately large in girth; but one of the trunnions, and the button at the breech, were broken off, the portion that had lain undermost had entirely disappeared, and the remainder was so honeycombed, that beyond ascertaining that it was a piece of ordnance, we could elicit nothing from this ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, and ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... up, and people said they had a million, his brown beard grizzled a little, and his brow crept up and up and his girth stretched out to forty-four. But his hands did not whiten or soften, and though he was "Honest John," and every quarter-section of land that he bought doubled in value by some magic that he only seemed to know, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... though of almost too mettlesome an eye; in length of leg showing just the lack, in girth of waist just the excess, to imply a better dignity on horseback and to allow a proud tailor to prove how much art can overcome. Out on the road a liveried black coachman had halted an open carriage, in which this soldier had arrived with two ladies. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... probably to his principles—patriotic or private; they certainly did not to his directions, which led me two miles astray, before I had ridden twice that distance; no trifling error, when you had to struggle back over steep, broken ground, through drifts fully girth deep. ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Ferrando's shield, at his breast, so that nothing availed him. Ferrando's breast-plate was threefold: two plates the spear went clean through, and drove the third in before it, with the velmes and the shirt, into the breast, near his heart; ... and the girth and the poitral of his horse burst, and he and the saddle went together over the horse's heels, and the spear in him, and all thought him dead. Howbeit Ferrando Gonzalez rose, and the blood began to run out of his mouth, and Pero Bermudez drew his sword and went against him; ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... forth; what a tremendous creature! I had frequently seen him before, and wondered at him; he was barely fifteen hands, but he had the girth of a metropolitan dray-horse; his head was small in comparison with his immense neck, which curved down nobly to his wide back: his chest was broad and fine, and his shoulders models of symmetry and strength; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely, and spectral, and sombre ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... finest elms we had ever seen, stretching their thick branches till they met and formed a canopy so dense that only a stray sunbeam or two pierced through and fell upon the smooth green sward. Peerless among them stood an elm of mighty girth and lofty height, its widely-stretching branches as large around, where they left the trunk, as a common tree, and clothed to the farthest twig with luxuriant foliage. And all up and down the mossy trunk and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... man above the waist-line, thick-shouldered, with large head and bull throat, his muscular torso tapered down to clean-lined hips, his legs of no greater girth than those of the lean-bodied man confronting him, his feet small in glove-fitting boots. His eyes, prominent and full and a clear brown, were a shade too innocent. Chin, jaw, and mouth, the latter full-lipped, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... party of astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million metres they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches now go through from pole to pole, So we'll stick to inches, feet, and yards, and our own old ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... third-sent ships, from Plymouth Sound, With Acland, Anstruther, impound Souls to six thousand strong. While those, the fourth fleet, that we see Far back, are lined with cavalry, And guns of girth, wheeled heavily To roll the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... went, he would go in style on the back of "Chestnut Bess." He wanted to show his Uncle Henry and the others what the "little runt" was capable of accomplishing as an equestrian. Accordingly, he placed a good strong bridle upon the mare's head, gave an extra pull at the saddle-girth to assure himself there was no possibility of that failing him, and, taking a hoe, which he wished to use in his work on the farm, in his right hand, he led the mare quietly down the path, out through the gate, and into the road. Gathering the reins in his left hand, without ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... as he noticed the increasing heaviness at his girth. "Fat and soft," he added, as a huge muscle yielded under the grip of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... girth and a handmade complexion pushed her coffee cup away and lighted a fresh cigarette. She had just finished reading Mary Randall's manifesto. Nature had made her beautiful, but advancing years and too much art had all but destroyed Nature's ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... believe that their only aim in life is to rise so high that they may look over the crest of the coast range and have a free view of the Pacific Ocean. One of these giants which fell long ago had a height of 435 feet and a girth of 110 feet at the base. It was called the 'Father of the Forest.' The trunk is hollow. There is also another fallen mammoth called the 'Riding School,' because a man on horseback can ride some way into the inside. These trees are supposed to be several thousand ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... breadfruit trees interlaced their noble branches. Banana and plantain trees were burdened with great bunches of ripening fruit. And huge, golden melons of the papaia, ready for the eating, globuled directly from the slender-trunked trees not one-tenth the girth of the fruits they bore. And, for Jerry, most delightful of all, there was the gurgle and plash of a brooklet that pursued its invisible way over mossy stones under a garmenture of tender and delicate ferns. No conservatory ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the summit of the hill when he felt the saddle slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken. As he dismounted, the saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup. The mare shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but Mary gave a vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, and began trotting down the declivity. Her trot at once ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... nature into a ten-talent man. No agony of effort can add a cubit to the stature. The eagle flies over the chasm as easily as an ant crawls over the crack in the ground. Shakespeare writes Hamlet as easily as Tupper wrote his tales. Once an oak, always an oak. Care and culture can thicken the girth of the tree, but no degree of culture can cause an oak bough to bring forth figs instead of acorns. Rebellion against temperament and circumstance is sure to end in the breaking of the heart. Happiness and success begin with the sincere acceptance of the birth-gift ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the largest that I ever saw; a wagon with a four-horse team might be on one side, and quite concealed from any one standing upon the other. When I knew it, it was a ruin, the great trunk a mere shell, though the two giant forks,—themselves immense in girth—still had life in them. In one side of the trunk was an opening, about as large as an ordinary door; through this we used to enter, and I have danced a quadrille of ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... "I think the girth is broken," said she. "The saddle is loose, and I was nigh losing my balance. Thank you, I can ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... its forests have all kinds of trees, some of them growing to a size which, but for the force of testimony, would be incredible. One of these is stated by Humboldt as of one hundred and eighteen feet in girth. "But this is a walking-stick compared with another at Bodega, as described to Sir George by Governor Etholine, of Sitka." It is thirty-six Russian fathoms (seven feet each) in span, and seventy-five in height; so that, if tapered into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... a pretty baby out at the brick house, began to be named "our esteemed fellow townsman" by the Canaan Call. Madeira built a hotel for Canaan, promoted the Canaan Short Line, and established the Bank of Canaan. His wife died, and his little girl grew, and he became large of girth. It was not until his daughter was twelve that he had to share honours with anyone as the foremost personage of Tigmore County. At twelve the daughter began to show that she had inherited her father's vitality, though the sphere of her ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... I meant was a large-waisted willow, of the weepiest variety, with girth enough and tears enough to hide us all, especially as Pat and I were darkly dressed—she in green ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... London, and had to endure for some weeks cold looks, cold words and colder consolations: but I escaped; they tried to bind me with fetters that they thought silken, yet which weighed on me like iron, although I broke them more easily than a girth formed of a single straw ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... gone first. I saw him, while I was detained by the loosening of a girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more difficult than any we had yet passed. He reached the top, and the dark outline of his figure stood in relief against the sky. He seemed to behold something unexpected and wonderful; for, pausing, his head stretched out, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... others — except that the Punans make it up with a longer femur. Women and young people have longer legs than men. The Punans have the fattest calves approximating to the Tenggerese, the other Bornean tribes are more like the Gorontalese. The chest girth of Ulu Ayars and Tenggerese is almost the same, despite the difference in the breadth of the chest, in which the Ulu Ayars resemble the inhabitants of Atchin measured by Lubbers. The proportion of the length of the foot to ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... sun. One of the monks was winding his way up hill, at a pace which gave me full opportunity of observing him. A little black cap covered his scalp; his round bullet-head, which bristled with short, thick-set hairs, joined on, by a neck of considerably more than the average girth, to shoulders of Atlantean dimensions. His body was enveloped in a coarse brown mantle, which descended to his calves, and was gathered round his middle with a slender white cord. His naked feet were thrust into sandals. The features of the "religious" were ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... dressed, coatless, our waistcoats rakishly unbuttoned or vulgarly upstairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not altogether unlike that demanded by a home-exerciser to reduce the abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they never have been advised to shine their own shoes—twenty-five times in the morning and twenty-five times ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... powerful. His long neck fitted into well-placed shoulders. He had great depth of girth, immense length from shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns. There was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of brute power, such as may have belonged to the knights of the Middle Ages. Now and again he curled his lips away from the bit and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the devoted almond-tree: a gnarled old personage, of a great age and girth, having that pathetic look of sorrowful dignity which I find always in superannuated trees—and now and then in humans of gentle natures who are conscious that their days of usefulness are gone. Esperit, who was beside me, felt ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... and begged he would relate to me the Odyssey of his terrible night. As he told me the story he pointed to his big leg: "They were as thick as that, Madame. Yes, like that——" And he quaked with fear as he recalled the dreadful girth of the reptiles. I thought that they were about one quarter as thick as his leg, and that would have been enough to justify his fright, for the serpents in question were not inoffensive water-snakes that bite out of pure viciousness, but have ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... and when, after a moment's converse, Tony put his hand in his pocket, and drew forth something which he gave to Theodore, the florist darted from his shop, and rushed across the street with an agility which was hardly to be expected from one of his years and girth. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... to his horse, he unfastened the saddle girth, and, hurrying back to where Manuel was floundering in the mud, he threw the saddle outwards, holding the end of the girth. It was just long enough to reach. With the help of the flat surface given by the saddle and ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... kitchen which penetrated the room seemed especially grateful to the manager who smiled with satisfaction as he conjured up visions of the forthcoming repast. By his Falstaffian girth, he appeared a man not averse to good living, nor one to deny himself plentiful libations ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... reach eighteen inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is usually attained when the trees are ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... great delight to me, and says he will never cease to pray for my internal welfare! Talking of babus, one wrote to Mr. Royle the other day about a pair of riding-breeches, and said, "I have your Honour's measurements, but will be glad to know if there is any improvement in the girth." Don't you think that was a very pretty way of asking if he ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... struck him with open palm and set off at a thunderous gallop. Away, away they sped up the sunny glade, past oak and beech and elm, through light and shadow, until before them showed a tree of vast girth and mighty spread of branches. Now would Beltane have reined aside, but the great horse, ears flat and eyes rolling, held blindly on. Then Beltane frowned and leaning forward, seized the bridle close beside the bit, and gripping it so, put forth ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... there is a drawing of a fine old pair of jougs, "found," says Wilson, "imbedded in a venerable ash tree, recently blown down, at the churchyard gate, Applegirth, Dumfriesshire. The tree, which was of great girth, is believed to have been upwards of three hundred years old, and the jougs were completely imbedded in its trunk, while the chain and staple hung down within the decayed and hollow core." The jougs belonging to ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... with this resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom or two in girth." ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... into the office. Now he reappeared, holding something under his coat. He approached Mr. Merrill's side, and, while Bob Harding was leaning over examining his saddle-girth, the German slipped the object he held to ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Felix, who had been previously looking very carefully into the firs upon his right hand, suddenly stopped, and Oliver, finding this, pulled up as quickly as he could, thinking that Felix wished to tighten his girth. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... which gives it a marketable value destroys its picturesque effect. A few noble stems—however poor their heads—have a fine effect when surrounded by others which have had elbow-room; but a forest of stems, with Lilliputian heads—great though the girth of the stem may be—conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit. The underwood was enlivened by shrubs of every shade and hue, the wild flowering ivy predominating. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the wand'rer in us wakens And out from citied girth, To go a-vagabonding down The wide ways ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... will rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia, leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... whom he was indebted for his name. Alexander the Great, so the school-books say, was small in stature and mighty in mind. Bilk was small in mind and lanky in stature. They called him "Lamp-post" as a pet name, and as regarded his height, his girth, and the lightness of his head, the term conveyed a very fair idea of our hero's chief characteristics. In short, Bilk had very few brains, and such as he had he occupied by no means to the best advantage. He read trashy novels, and believed every ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed |
