"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hotel next ours which would have made a dog laugh, as the saying is, unless it was a Roman dog. It was a quarrel, more or less murderous, between a fat, elderly man and an agile stripling of not half his age or girth, of whom the tumult about them permitted only fleeting glimpses. By these the elder seemed to be laboriously laying about him with a five-foot club and the younger to be making wild dashes at him and then escaping to the skirts of the cabmen, mounted and dismounted, who surrounded them. Now and ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the most delicious odor of coffee, and when I rolled out of my blanket I found Jose standing over me with a cup of it in his hand, and Aiken buckling the straps of my saddle-girth. We took a plunge in the stream, and after a breakfast of coffee and cold tortillas climbed into the saddle and again ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... one to hide behind, the fat little priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet when this grip was gained he could get no farther on ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... befall thee, Danger, slaughterous fire— Thou shalt on a charger gallop, Curbing at desire; And a saddle girth all silken Sadly I will sew, Slumber now my wide-eyed ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... enable it to dispense with any supply of water for weeks, nay, months together. Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool, without the aid of girth or saddle. The llamas move in troops of five hundred or even a thousand, and thus, though each individual carries but little, the aggregate is considerable. The whole caravan travels on at its regular pace, passing the night in the open air without suffering from the ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... wretched of all the children now, for he was in a panic about Peter, bitterly regretted what he had done. Madly addicted to the drinking of water when he was hot, he had swelled in consequence to his present girth, and instead of reducing himself to fit his tree he had, unknown to the others, whittled his tree to ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... the girth of the tree as its whole bearing that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... ornamented with incrusted hips, and caparisoned with long-straw back-suggauns that reached from the shoulders to the tail, under which ran a crupper of the same material, designed, in addition to a hay girth, to keep this primitive riding gear firm upon the animal's back. Behind the farmer, generally sat either a wife or a daughter, remarkable for their scarlet cloaks and blue petticoats; sometimes with shoes and stockings, and very often without them. Among those assembled, we cannot omit to ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... creatures; but with the bitter cold of the planet, the first land-creatures to emerge from the primeval swamp of Morua VIII had developed the heavy furs and the hibernation characteristics of bear-like mammals. They towered over Dal, and even Tiger seemed dwarfed by their immense chest girth ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... but deep chests, longer legs than the average for their height, the lower leg being especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet, small arms, narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs of small girth. Every player must be studied by trainers for ever finer individual adjustments. His dosage of work must be kept well within the limits of his vitality, and be carefully adjusted to his recuperative power. His personal nascent periods ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the sound of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... as shall carry me to a hundred. The next point of consequence is, that the Duke of Cumberland has had a stroke of the palsy— As his courage is at least equal to mine, he makes nothing of it; but being above an inch more in the girth than I am, he is not Yet arrived at skipping about the house. In truth, his case is melancholy: the humours that have fallen upon the wound in his leg have kept him lately from all exercise-. as he used ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... telegraph 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 ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... and if you would come here I would take you in heart and house, and you should have a little room in our cottage. The history of the cottage is this: I found a hut built close to a great live-oak twenty-five feet in girth, and with overarching boughs eighty feet up in the air, spreading like a firmament, and all swaying with mossy festoons. We began to live here, and gradually we improved the hut by lath, plaster, and paper. Then we threw out a wide veranda all round, for in these regions the veranda is the living-room ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... but at last I came to myself and struggled up from the debris, like a mole coming to the surface of the earth to feel the genial sunshine on his dim eyeballs. I found myself standing (oddly enough, on all fours) in an immense pit created by the overthrow of a gigantic dead tree with a girth of about thirty or forty feet. The tree itself had rolled down to the bottom of the ravine; but the pit in which it had left the huge stumps of severed roots was, I found, situated in a gentle slope at the top of the bank! How, then, I could have fallen ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... the seat—the front seat," said he. "Nephew, you must keep your weight as far forward as possible. Can you do anything on a yard of tin? Well, if you can't, we'll leave the trumpet. Buckle that girth up, Thomas. Have you greased the hubs, as I told you? Well, jump up, nephew, and we'll see ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is a thing which all may verify in their own circles. In daily life, who is the really formidable woman to encounter?—the black-browed, broad-shouldered giantess, with arms almost as big in the girth as a man's? or the pert, smart, trim little female, with no more biceps than a ladybird, and of just about equal strength with a sparrow? Nine times out of ten, the giantess with the heavy shoulders and broad black ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... how he did come! It was splendid; He gained on them yards every bound, Stretching out like a greyhound extended, His girth laid right down on the ground. A shimmer of silk in the cedars As into the running they wheeled, And out flashed the whips on the leaders, For Pardon ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the crest from which there opened before him a view of Avar: but at the very moment his exhausted horse fell under him; the blood spouted from his open mouth, and his last breath burst the saddle-girth. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... gained 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 broke ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was that! Not prurient Mars, Pointing his toe through ten celestial bars— Not young Apollo, beamily arrayed In tripsome guise for Juno's masquerade— Not smartest Hermes, with his pinion girth, Jerking with freaks and snatches down to earth, Looked half so bold, so beautiful, and strong, As thou, when pranking through the glittering throng! How the calmed ladies looked with eyes of love On thy trim velvet doublet laced above; The hem of gold, that, like ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... both had fine arms, and strong swift horses, and good shields, fresh and new. With such fury they strike each other that both their lances fly in splinters. Never was there seen such a blow. They rush together with shields, arms, and horses. But neither girth nor rein nor breast-strap could prevent the king from coming to earth. So he flew from his steed, carrying with him saddle and stirrup, and even the reins of his bridle in his hand. All those who witnessed the jousting were ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the tower's black turret-girth Suppressed the multiplied steep chasm of fathoms, So that immediately the fields far down Lay to their heaving distance for the eyes, Satisfied with one gaze unconsciously, To pass to glory of heaven, and to know light. Here ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... 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, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... between Australasians and Canadians in France to decide which could fell trees in the quickest time. It began really with the French forest authorities, who insisted on the well-known forest rule that no young trees under one metre twenty in girth must be felled after the middle of May, because if you cut the young tree after the sap begins to rise it will not grow again. The British officer in control of the forest had obtained an extension until the end of May, but he had ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... the gleaming girth of stars That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... and a tasselled bridle, and a pink-nosed white charger that stepped and pranced in the bazar so that Ram Dass himself had to get out of the way. It ought to be said that the horseman's clothes did not fit him very well, that his saddle girth was helped out by a bit of rope, and that his charger was rather tender on his near fore-foot; but these are not things that would be noticed in Rubbulgurh, being lost in the general ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... African tropical tree, remarkable for the girth of its trunk, the thickness of its branches, and their expansion; its leaves and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... dining-room and reached the cave 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, though ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... one who came on slightly in front of his companion, was very broad and heavy and thick. Thick of arm, of thigh, of neck. He was not short, standing close to six feet, and yet his bigness of girth made him seem of low, squat stature as she looked down upon him. She did not see his face under the wide, soft hat but guessed it to be heavy like the rest of him, square jawed and massive. She noted curiously that his ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... 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 Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... its illustrious citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yards of him, so that I had full time to remark the peculiarities of his form and appearance. He was about four feet eight or nine inches in height, with legs that seemed short in proportion to the length and girth of the body, but only because, as was apparent on more careful scrutiny, the chest was proportionately both longer and wider than in our race; otherwise he greatly resembled the fairer families of the Aryan breed, the Swede or German. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... hill above the Palace the way narrowed and I fell behind; and, dismounting, I affected to be fixing something about the girth. I wanted to see the Princess go down that tree-lined way as once before I had seen her. Then they came to the bend; and, leaning against my horse's shoulder, I ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... because it happened that we saw divers animals, such as lions, stags, goats, wild hogs, rabbits, and other land animals which are not found in islands, but only on the main-land. Going inland one day with twenty men, we saw a serpent all of twenty-four feet in length and as large in girth as myself. We were very much afraid, and the sight of it caused us to return immediately to the sea. Ofttimes, indeed, I saw many ferocious animals and enormous serpents. When we had navigated four hundred ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... however, she went off with a melancholy cry. When it was getting light, we got on to the nest, and found on examination that it was composed like a vast raft of large trees. There were five hundred eggs, larger in girth than a tun of Chian. We could make out the chicks inside and hear them croaking; we hewed open one egg with hatchets, and dug out an unfledged chick bulkier ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sublimity, nor even purity, of pitch. It is splendidly vast and dim; the altarlamps twinkle afar through the incense-thickened air like foglights at sea, and the great columns rise straight to the roof, which hardly curves to meet them, with the girth and altitude of oaks of a thousand years; but there is little refinement of design—few of those felicities of proportion which the eye caresses, when it finds them, very much as the memory retains and repeats some happy lines of poetry or some haunting musical phrase. Consistently brave, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... an interchange of bad 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... lean 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it was set on her matchless throttle, might well "haunt the imagination for years." Her straight superbly proportioned neck, her shoulder and girth, might have fascinated the eye for ever!—but for her beautiful hind quarters and the speed and power they indicated! The arch of her back rib, her flank, her clean legs, with firm, dry muscle, and tendons like steel wires, her hoofs, almost ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... love of God, goodman," said his wife, in a remonstrating tone, "haud your peace! Think what ye're saying, and we hae sae muckle wild land to go over before we win to the girth gate." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... tall, robust, nay, of great strength of frame and limb; with a countenance extremely winning, not only from the comeliness of its features, but its frankness, manliness, and good nature. His was the bronzed, rich complexion, the inclination towards embonpoint, the athletic girth of chest, which denote redundant health, and mirthful temper, and sanguine blood. Robert, who had lived the life of cities, was a year younger than his brother; nearly as tall, but pale, meagre, stooping, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gate of the station every morning at ten o'clock. He then marched from the front door with a majestic mien and inspected the horse, the rider, and accoutrements. He walked slowly round, examining with eagle eye the saddle, the bridle, the bits, the girth, the sword, pistols, spurs, and buckles. If he could find no fault with anything, he gave in brief the word of command, "Patrol the forest road," or any other road on which an enemy might be likely ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... watched Tod's retreating figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth—as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered into ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... For the commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load. O the oont, 1 O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks. ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... the questions that they are agitating. Mother says, that Sybil must and shall come back; father says he will go and see her; and Frank—" he broke off abruptly and bent down to look at his saddle girth. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... wheel without a rim, or, to speak with more propriety, a number of spokes fixed in a nave, should be employed. (Plate 2. Fig. 9.) Pieces like the heads of crutches should be fixed at the ends of these spokes, to receive a piece of girth-web, which is used instead of a cord, because a cord would be unsteady; and a strap of iron with a hook to it should play upon the centre, by which it may at times be suspended, and from which at other times a ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... to see how much good was in that gold, how large a fund of blessing was hidden in that crock: Reuben Scott gained health, the family were fed, clad, taught; Susan grew in happiness at least as truly as in girth; and Hagglesfield beheld the goodness of that store, whose curse had ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... villain under the left ear, levelled him with the earth, and made him bite the dust. The knife fell from his hand, and I instantly seized it, and before the two-legged brute, who lay stunned upon the ground, could rise, I cut the girth which bound the load upon the back of the ass, and relieved him from his burden. The cowardly ruffian still lay sprawling, fearing to rise, because he dreaded a repetition of my chastisement, which I was ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... hieroglyphs, Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, out of it— But bigger in chest and paunch, In the girth of his muscular shackle-bones, Round his colossal shoulders, Round his Memnonian countenance, Over the dome of his skull-crypts— From crown to foot of his body— Than grimmest of old Welsh giants, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... returning. To Rowdy fell the duty of pack horse. He had led the outward march, and was entitled to an easy berth on retreat. The tarpaulin was folded the full length of the horse's body girth, both saddles being required elsewhere, and the corn and blankets laid within the pack and all lashed securely. The commissary supplies being light, saddle pockets and cantle strings were found sufficient for ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... surface as early as the last week in August. A herring seldom measures more than fourteen inches in length; but we were told that one was caught some years ago seventeen and a half inches in length, seven and a half in girth, and that it weighed thirteen ounces! Each lugger carries from sixty to a hundred nets; each net is about fifteen yards long, and is floated by corks placed a few feet apart. The united nets form what is called a train fleet, or drift of nets. The depth to which they are ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... NO! It is time for this practice of around-the-world humbug and cheatery to stop right now. If it takes our fastest modern globe-trotters a whole year to go around the world by a route equal to or approximating the equatorial girth, then let it take them a year; for the sake of our pride and all that is good and sincere let us do our ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... 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
... 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 of a ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... satirist, but of any theologian who really believes that God made the physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness, power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, you will see that in every case ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh: but that great statesman must have been a person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the tumult at its height. The brown jacket with the blue sleeves held the lead as they came up the rise, but the black and orange hoops were close on to them, and Rainstorm's head was at Bandmaster's girth. ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... 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 measured in ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the little railhead dorp of Winburg was remarkable. Scarcely were we halted and hand put to loosen girth before the loyalist leaders came running out in the morning sunshine to meet us. De Wet had left the place two hours before, disappearing with his following over the first kopje. He had caused absolute panic. His forces ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... 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 ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... of quick recurrence. There "is" a something, an essential something, wanting in me. I feel it, I "know" it—though what it is, I can but guess. I have read somewhere, that in the tropical climates there are annuals as lofty and of as an ample girth as forest trees:—So by a very dim likeness I seem to myself to distinguish Power from Strength—and to have only the former. But of this I will speak again: for if it be no reality, if it be no more than a disease of my mind, it is yet deeply rooted and of long ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... no questions of myself about the great trees that wove the garments of the magical forest about me; I felt the stir of their ancient life, rooted in the centuries that had left no record in that place save the added girth and the discarded leaf; I had no thought about the bird whose note thrilled the forest save the rapture of pouring out without measure or thought the joy that was in me; I felt the vast irresistible movement of life rolling, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... forest timber, that 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
... lacked was that 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 right ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... word, Miles 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 hills and the west. "Our chance ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... went along the stalls, looking for his own black charger. Having found him, he returned to saddle first the king's. But the maid had already the saddle upon him, and so girt that the colonel could thrust no finger tip between girth and skin. He left her to finish what she had so well begun, and went and made ready his own. He then chose for the princess a great red horse, twenty years old, which he knew to possess every equine virtue. This and his own he led to the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... could be. Fearful at first, they gathered around it, as children gather around a live horse; they marvelled at its wondrous height and girth, and were for moving it into the city as a ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... At the end of that time she and the mother began, as with a common impulse, to talk. And at the end of five minutes more they had told each other where they were going, where they had been, what their husbands were, the number, age, and girth of their children, and all the adjectives that might most conveniently be used to describe their servants. The adjectives, very lurid ones, took some time. Priscilla shut her eyes while they were going on, thankful to be left quiet, feeling unstrung to the last degree; and she gradually dropped ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... You'll then be better able to judge as to what's best to be done, an' I've got a noo dress by the firm of Denayrouze, with a speakin'-apparatus, which'll fit you. I got it for myself, and we're much about a size—barrin' the waist, in which I have the advantage of you as to girth. Their noo pump and lamp, too, will interest you. See, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... and above Storm out of heaven, and dearth Shaken down from the shining thereof, Wrecks from afar overseas And peril of shallow and firth, And tears that spring and increase In the barren places of mirth, That thou, having wings as a dove, Being girt with desire for a girth, That thou must come after these, That thou must lay ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... us down among fresh earthy Sweet flowers breaking overhead, Sore needed rest for our frail girth, For our ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... design of the architect, we shall usually find that he has conformed in some respects to unmeaning traditions inherited from an earlier period, and further that his work incorporates the remnants of an older, simpler structure. Here are pillars of massive girth altogether disproportionate to the delicate arches which they carry; there an old tower has been buttressed to make it capable of supporting a new spire. For all the builder's cunning, we can yet ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Atherstone shook her head over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the ample girth of Glenwilliam. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... still untired. So, sorrowfully they retraced their steps to the East, and the place of Gibson's death remains a secret still. I have heard that months after Giles's return, Gibson's mare came back to her home, thin and miserable, and showing on her belly and back the marks of a saddle and girth, which as she wasted away had become slack and so turned over. Her tracks were followed back for some distance without result. Poor thing! she had a long journey, and Giles must have spoken truly when he said, "The Fair Maid was the gamest horse I ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... kept on playing the fat man's game of mental solitaire. I inwardly insisted, and I think partly believed, that my lung power was too great for the capacity of my throat opening, hence pants. I cast a pitying eye at other men, deep of girth and purple of face, waddling down the platform, and as I scudded on past them I would say to myself that after all there was a tremendous difference between being obese and being merely well fleshed out. The real reason of course was that my legs had remained ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... was more for fowling, and I was more for horses—before I increased so much in girth. Is it for ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... near side, should always be attached to a bar, and not, as is sometimes done, to the balance strap (p. 53); because, in this case, its length will be subject to frequent variation, not only when the saddle is put on different animals, but also when the horse gets slack in his girth from work. When it is fixed to a bar, which should always be of the safety kind, no alteration in the correct length of ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... whose leafy shade The warbling birds their vigils paid, Stood neighbours—each as noble tree In height and girth as one might see. The one, sequestered in the vale, All sheltered from the boisterous gale, Had passed his days in soft repose; The other from the cliff arose, And bore the brunt of stormy wind That lashed him ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... 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 handicraft. ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that caused—is there any harm in saying it?—her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth—if silk it were—was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring. Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose too, she ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gift that some horses learn; When the floods are out they will splash along In girth-deep water, and twist and turn From hidden channel and billabong. Never mistaking the road to go, For a man may guess—but the ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... good. Yessir, I got you good. Quit that rearing, you ol' fool! Stan' still, can't you?" The pony sidled as the saddle hit its back and evoked profane abuse from the indignant puncher as he risked his balance in picking it up to try again, this time successfully. He began to fasten the girth, and then paused in wonder and thought deeply, for the pin in the buckle would slide to no hole but the first. "Huh! Getting fat, ain't you, piebald?" he demanded with withering sarcasm. "You blow yoreself up any more'n I'll bust you wide open!" heaving up with all ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... obediently close to her side, she timidly opened the stable door and crept swiftly in. Rob knew her well enough by this time, and only looked mildly surprised at her appearance. He had a horse-cloth over him, fastened round him by a girth, and while he scrunched up the sugar Huldah had brought him she secured her basket on his back by the girth, as fast as her nervous fingers could manage it. "Miss Rose can't help seeing it there," she thought, delightedly, "and Rob can't harm it before she comes." She stood for a second gazing ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... on the march; mass had just been celebrated, and the men were at breakfast, when the outposts suddenly saw young Mansana galloping towards them, carry a lady before him and with two riderless horses secured to his saddle-girth. The lady was a spy from the enemy's camp; her two attendants—officers of the enemy's force—were lying wounded in the forest. The lady was promptly recognised, and Mansana's "evviva" was echoed and re-echoed by a thousand voices. The camp was immediately broken up, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... come back in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... six hundred feet long, by sixty feet diameter at the point of her greatest girth," quietly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... lambertiana) occurs mainly in Oregon and California. The grain is fine and soft and the trees reach a large girth. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Eryri Prone to the plough-lands cast! Then shall be roaring and warring And ferment of sea and firth, Ocean, in turmoil upboiling, Confounding each bound of earth. The flow of the Deluge of Noah Were naught by that fell Flood's girth! ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... Heavens! what a monster he was; and how the moonlight gleamed upon his one splendid tusk—for the other was missing—as he stood among the mealies gently moving his enormous ears to and fro, and testing the wind with his trunk. While I was still marvelling at his girth, and speculating upon the weight of that huge tusk, which I swore should be my tusk before very long, out stepped a second bull and stood beside him. He was not quite so tall, but he seemed to me to be almost thicker-set than the first; and even in that ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... that! I may do one good thing before I die. That fine fellow's life is worth a hundred of my wasted one! Here! some of you fellows help me with Hector. We must take him from the cart and get a girth on him instead of the saddle. We shall want something to hold on to without pulling his head down ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... look crushed by the redundancy of its upper protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Cook's crews, the harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,—of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,—cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... dispatch with a growl of satisfaction. He would have bowed, but his neck was too short. I cannot but laugh when I remember his strange aspect. In form he looked nearly as broad as he was long, being nearly eight feet in girth, and completely enveloped in a rough blue rocquelaure, which imparted to his figure the roundness of a ball. His face, reddened by skiedam and the frost, was glowing like crimson, while the broad beaver hat that overshadowed it, and the feathers with which the beaver was edged, were ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... as becomes an amateur photographer who loves his calling. "Never have I set eyes on such a majestic king of the woods. I'm sure it will make a splendid picture with you standing alongside, Steve, just to show its enormous girth. The pity of it is that I can't dream of trying to get the whole tree in the picture, for no camera could do that in these dense woods, where you can't get far away from ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... 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 to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... scene o'er which the Fire King laughed As he his bowl of frantic pleasure quaffed, Whilst the doomed structure tottered in the girth Of his wild, bellowing, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... hair on them; and I saw them quite close; for in the hurry each horse, as his turn came, was run out alongside the boat; the man who led him standing knee-deep until the kegs were slung across by the single girth. As soon as this was done, a slap on the rump sent the beast shoreward, and the man scrambled out after him. There was scarcely any talk, and no noise except that caused by the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; and it was the half-a-yard that did ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... 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 ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... hurled from catapults; they struck and grappled and fell and rolled together, one now as they strove, locked in the embrace of death. An embrace in which Brodie's was the greater weight, the greater girth, the greater strength—and Mark King's the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... only monument the town can boast of, but it possesses a compensation for many monuments—I allude to its noble grove of venerable chestnuts. Well-planted boulevards of plane-trees lead to what appears a bit of primeval forest—an assemblage of ancient trees, their knotted, hoary trunks each in girth huge as a windmill, in striking contrast to the bright foliage and abundant fruit. Nothing can be more weird and fantastic than these broken, corrugated stems, battered by storm, worn out by time, apparently dropping to pieces, yet at the root full ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Heaven and Earth, with the Mouth of a Shell-Fish to feed upon the Dew of the Morning; Her Age must not exceed 200 Courses of the Moon; let her Stature be equal to that of an Ear of green Corn, and her Girth ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Salisbury. I had ordered some goods for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land—a portentous matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm, glancing about him on every side as he did ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... per cent. more lung capacity. In the graduating class of Amherst College of the present year, those not using tobacco have in weight gained 24 per cent. over those using tobacco, in height 37 per cent., in chest girth 42 per cent., while they have a greater average lung capacity by 8.36 cubic ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... chanced to dismount to tighten the girth of Mrs. Norton's horse, when a fresh boar broke from cover and was instantly pursued by all the others of the hunt. The subaltern ruefully accepted the lady's apologies and hurriedly swung himself up into the saddle again to follow, when ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... from fairyland after three hundred years dalliance there, rode back to his own country on horseback. He saw men imprisoned under a block of marble and others trying to lift the stone. As he leaned over to aid them the girth broke. With the touch of earth "straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian became aged, ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... share in the disaster, which depressed him, and he started for the smoking-room, wherever that haven might be found. He got into the ball-room, however, by mistake, and adorned the wall, during the cotillon, as closely as his girth permitted, until an old lady sent for him; and he went and talked about bishops for nearly an hour to her, until his condition bordered on frenzy, the old lady being deaf ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 a gradual pulling of the girth by Stuart, the ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... prowling bear— Such were the needs that helped his youth to train: Rough culture—but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The latter had left an ocean to the west of Africa: the former made the Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world, abut upon India, the limit ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the long strip of raw-hide from the raft and tied one end of it around the mule's neck, mounted Field on the mule behind the large pack, which made the whole outfit look quite comical indeed. Before leaving the other side of the river I had discovered that the saddle girth was not very strong, so I cut a wide belt from the hide of the lately slaughtered horse and fitted it to the saddle as a girth, knowing that the pack, now containing all of our goods and a supply of more than a bushel of jerk, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... 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. The once open range was now ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the boy's eye, which, as he said this, naturally surveyed his great frame, for he regarded him in an amused way, and putting his hands on his girth, he said laughingly: "You are thinking I would have to do a great deal to spread ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... 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 and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, the bridle ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the issue raised. Then I fell into a long and abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to compare the distance driven by him during eight years' service on the box of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. We tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary allowance for Sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a triumphant conclusion of our labours when we were stayed by a small lacuna in my information. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the adult woman— that is, the under-arm girth around the chest— that is consistent with health is twenty-eight inches; and this girth must be enlarged three inches in forced inspiration. In ordinary respiration the waist expansion should be one-half to one inch, while during great muscular activity ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... hugest English oak would have seemed a stunted bush beside it. 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. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... such tragic hours Venice keeps up her old tradition of light-heartedness. The cafes round the great piazza are full in the evenings with a cheerful crowd. Moreover, to go into St. Mark's is to enter a sort of neolithic grotto; the pillars, set about with sand-bags, have the girth of the arcades of a Babylonian temple; bulging poultices of sacks protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel. The Doge's Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding than it could have been when it was being built; each of those delicate columns ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... a charger's hoof Makes the frosty hill-side ring: Give the bugle breath, and a spirit of Death To each horse's girth will spring. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the same time jangling and shaking the Ncheke a rude beginning of the bell, the gong, the rattle, and the instruments played before idols by more advanced peoples. It is a piece of wood, hour-glass-shaped but flat, and some six inches and a half long; the girth of the waist is five inches, and about three more round the ends. The wood is cut away, leaving rude and uneven raised bands horizontally striped with white, black, and red. Two brass wires are stretched across the upper and lower breadth, and each is provided with a ring ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... a glove," he answered. "I was only figuring that it's a bit too ornamental for its present purpose. I see the girth has been broken and mended—mended with a doubtful piece of string. Why wasn't it sent to the saddler t' be properly fixed up? I've half a notion ter chuck it right away and ride bare-backed. But there ain't time to fool around now. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Colour! From the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... worn out by incessant marchings and must rest for a while. The people gave him a splendid horse, but one that had not been broken well. The first time he mounted it a band happened to begin playing, the horse sprang wildly, the saddle girth broke and Jackson was thrown heavily ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is more than Isaiah's previous Messianic prophecies had told. He is to come at a time when the fortunes of David's house were at their worst. There is to be nothing left but the stump of the tree, and out of it is to come a 'shoot,' slender and insignificant, and in strange contrast with the girth of the truncated bole, stately even in its mutilation. We do not talk of a growth from the stump as being a 'branch'; and 'sprout' would better convey Isaiah's meaning. From the top of the stump, a shoot; from the roots half buried in the ground, an outgrowth,—these two images mean ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... board. The lady was almost twice the height of her better half, and the daughters promised to grow into the same proportions. The major was undoubtedly a short man, although not a small one either in girth or in his own estimation. He had a rubicund countenance, huge ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... stood slouched over and inerect, was troubled with catarrh, and knew too well what it was to have the stomach and bowels work imperfectly. Most people can not inflate the chest so as to increase its girth over two inches. By steady practice at his little pipe, he in about a year got so that he could inflate five whole inches. But now his chest is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as any in a dozen. His weak voice has gone; indeed, he says ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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 ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... five feet 7 3/4 inches; 88 quarts of fluid were drawn off and the woman recovered. In the College of Physicians, Philadelphia, there are photographs of this case, with an inscription saying that the patient was a young Chinese woman who measured but four feet eight inches in height, while her girth was increased by an ovarian cyst to five feet 9 1/8 inches. The tumor was removed and weighed 182 1/2 pounds; it contained 22 gallons of fluid. Figure 265 shows the appearance of the woman two months ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... numbers and movement and noise of so many folk, made a new world for me, after the moorland braes, the sea-sands, and the still country-sides that I had frequented up to then. The throng of the citizens in particular abashed me. Rankeillor's son was short and small in the girth; his clothes scarce held on me; and it was plain I was ill qualified to strut in the front of a bank-porter. It was plain, if I did so, I should but set folk laughing, and (what was worse in my case) set them asking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
