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More "Breast-high" Quotes from Famous Books



... mile away. Imagine a stream seventy yards broad divided by a pebbly island, running over seductive "riffles" and swirling into deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going further ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... western wall there stood in the centre the factory itself, a good log building of somewhat spacious size; its big room, divided by a breast-high solid railing, with a small gate in the middle, serving as office and general receiving-place. Beyond the railing, in the smaller space toward the north, there stood the great wooden desk of the factor, its massive book of accounts always open ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... for the minister, Miss Caroline gave him a brief, low-toned order, which he hurried away to execute. Within ten minutes, and before Miss Caroline had finished telling how altogether beautiful she found Arcady of the Little Country, Clem returned, bearing breast-high a napkin-covered tray, from which towered twin pillars of glass, topped with fragrant leafage and pierced each by a yellow straw. This tray he placed upon the table beside the poems of Lord Byron, and the minister permitted himself an oblique look thereat, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... a light in the office. Bannon stepped into the doorway, and, with a suppressed word of impatience, stood looking at the scene within. The desk that Peterson had supplied for the use of his clerk was breast-high from the floor, built against the wall, with a high stool before it. The wall lamp had been taken down; now it stood with its reflector on the top of the desk, which was covered with books and papers. A girl was sitting on the ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... at once, large-looming from his wave, Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge, A sea-worn face, sad as mortality, Divine with yearning after fellowship. He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw; So much she sees now, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... come so near Vincennes that they dared not fire a gun for fear of being discovered; besides, the floods had driven the game all away; so that they soon began to feel hunger, while their progress was very slow, and they suffered much from the fatigue of travelling all day long through deep mud or breast-high water. On the 17th they reached the Embarras River, but could not cross, nor could they find a dry spot on which to camp; at last they found the water falling off a small, almost submerged hillock, and on this they huddled through the night. At daybreak they heard ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... a few breast-high bushes and crawled into their thin shade and lay down; before him he spread out the Quigley storekeeper's map. This he studied with thoughtful eyes. The storekeeper had said it would be no trick at all for a man like Howard to make the trip, but he had meant Howard on horseback. On foot ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... became visible behind it, and Seaforth pushed forward when the mounted figures came sweeping down the mountain side. Here and there they swung wide round a fallen tree, but they rode straight through raspberry-canes and breast-high fern, and Alice Deringham wondered when she saw that one of them was a girl. She had left her hat somewhere in the bush, her hair streamed about her, the skirt was blown aside; but she held on with set lips and two vivid spots of colour in her warm-tinted ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... all crowding, crystal silentness, Above all noise, a silver solitude . . . Hatred and cark and care, what place have they In yon blue liberality of heaven? How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise Breast-high thence, some ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... of the pass the snow lay very deep, and we followed the course of a small stream which cut through it, the walls of snow being breast-high on each side; the path was still frequented by yaks, of which we overtook a small party going to Tibet, laden with planks. All the party appeared alike overcome by lassitude, shortness and difficulty of breathing, a sense of weight on the stomach, giddiness and headache, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... a round, grass- roofed affair, with white-washed walls of sun-dried brick. For about four-fifths of the circumference the wall was barely breast-high, the roof being supported on wooden pillars bricked into the wall, as well as by the huge pole that propped it ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... attended only by a courier. The slight eminence, all clad with scrub-oak, all carpeted with wild flowers, was reached. The horsemen turned and looked eastward, the breast-high scrub, the few tender-foliaged young trees sheltering them from view. They looked eastward, and in the distance they saw Dowdall's Tavern. But it was not Dowdall's Tavern that was the strangest thing. The strangest thing was nearer than Dowdall's; it was at no great distance ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... safeguard, and they were too strong to be pillaged by any petty marauder, as any one who has seen a Banjari encampment will be convinced. They encamp in a square, and their grain-bags piled over each other breast-high, with interstices left for their matchlocks, make no contemptible fortification. Even the ruthless Turk, Jamshid Khan, set up a protecting tablet in favour of the Charans of Murlah, recording their exemption from dind contributions, and that there should be no increase in duties, with threats ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... Eskimo threw up his arm and poised the harpoon. For one instant the surprised animal raised 25 itself breast-high out of the water and directed a stare of intense astonishment at the man. That moment was fatal. Annatock buried the harpoon deep under its left flipper. With a fierce bellow the brute dashed itself against the ice, endeavoring in its ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... being washed off. The anchors were then to be taken up on the rail, which kept all hands on the forecastle for an hour, though every now and then the seas broke over it, washing the rigging off to leeward, filling the lee scuppers breast-high, and washing chock aft to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... every direction, and the heavy logs were dragged without loss of time to the prescribed line, where they were piled upon each other in double walls, which were filled in rapidly with earth; and thus, in an inconceivably short space of time the men had defences breast-high which would turn a cannon-shot. In front, for some distance, too, the timber had been felled and an abatis thus formed. A few hours after the arrival of the troops on the line marked out by Lee, they were rooted behind excellent breastworks, with forest, stream, and abatis ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... our last word on board the Sarah. We four, with our four packets, lowered ourselves softly into a skiff, and left that ship behind us as silent as the grave, only for the moaning of some of the drunkards. There was a fog about breast-high on the waters; so that Dutton, who knew the passage, must stand on his feet to direct our rowing; and this, as it forced us to row gently, was the means of our deliverance. We were yet but a little way from the ship, when it began to come grey, and the birds to fly abroad upon the water. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... about the room, peering curiously at its rather primitive fittings. Around three sides extended a breast-high shelf, carved and cut by many a jack-knife, and beneath it a narrower one where books and slates were stowed. In front were rows of backless benches for seats, and in the centre of the room an open stove shaped like ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche of cakes rattled down upon the place he had just left. The rising water had forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the island ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... or nulla, was crossed by a bridge immediately behind the rebels' position. Nicholson advanced from a side-road, which brought him on their right with the nulla flowing between him and them. Even at the ford the water was breast-high, and it was with much difficulty and not without a good deal of delay that our troops crossed under a heavy fire from the serai. It was getting late, and Nicholson had only time to make a hasty reconnaissance. He decided ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... at last and tramped through the heather and ferns and the breast-high golden-rod, stumbling among the rabbit holes with which the ground was riddled, towards the house which stood in a hollow in the centre of the Island. And I stared hard at it, for I had never ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... easy reach of the plate, the batter should hold his bat ready to hit a breast-high ball. It is easier to hit a low ball when expecting a high one than to hit a high ball when a low one was expected, for the reason that it is easier to drop the bat quickly and swing underhand than it is to elevate it and chop overhand. When the ball is pitched ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... obeyed, and together they led the animal between them, wading farther into the lake, with the water gradually getting deeper, when as it grew breast-high Ned ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... across the open space, as though something hidden by the tall growth were cautiously moving there. Apart from the peculiar motion of the grass, however, nothing was to be seen, which was not surprising, since the growth down there was breast-high; but a little farther on, where the village herd had been turned out to graze, it was not so long. The oxen were there now, at the far side of the patch of short grass, lying down asleep in charge of a couple of ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... loss for another instance; however, I have just received from a friend, who took interest in the subject, a sketch of something almost identical from the disused chapel at Chillon in the Canton Vaud. Of this I have not the measurements, but it stands about breast-high. It is there called a "prie-dieu," and is said to have belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, but the size is very unusual for such a use. I send sketches of each of the subjects of my Query, {102} and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various

... were so close to the water's edge that it was dangerous to open them in a seaway, besides which the space between decks was so low that it was with difficulty they could be worked, while the upper-deck had only a light breast-high bulwark. From the length of the lower-deck guns they could not be easily run in, while the 12-pounders on the main-deck were so old and their vents so large that ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... cluster of breast-high rocks, and before moving took a look round. Judge then of my astonishment and delight at the second glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object, looking like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin of the water towards me. Every ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... and half of the boat's crew, were desperately wounded: That at last they cut the rope, and ran off under their foresail, still keeping up their fire with blunderbusses, each loaded with eight or ten pistol balls, which the Indians returned with their arrows, those on shore wading after them breast-high into the sea: When they had got clear of these, the canoes pursued them with great fortitude and vigour, till one of them was sunk, and the numbers on board the rest greatly reduced by the fire, and then they returned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... panic of 1893 bicycle makers prospered. It was estimated in 1896 that no less than $100,000,000 had been spent in the United States upon cycling. A clumsy prototype of the "wheel" was known in 1868, but the first bicycle proper, a wheel breast-high, with cranks and pedals connected with a small trailing wheel by a curved backbone and surmounted by a saddle, was exhibited at the Centennial. Two years later this kind of wheel began to be manufactured in America, and soon, in spite of its perils, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... still; and the war-conch will sound in the hills, and my home will be inclosed in camps, before the year is ended. And all at once—mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot—a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about breast-high, swung up my knife to sever it, and—behold, it was a wire! On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more than—there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... me do," said Gerard; and drawing his huge knife, he cut at every step a hazel shoot or two close by the ground, and turning round twisted them breast-high behind him among the standing shoots. Martin did the same, but with a dogged hopeless air. When they had thus painfully travelled through the greater part of the coppice, the bloodhound's deep bay came nearer and nearer, less and less ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... the longer you follow it, until at last it becomes impossible to puzzle it out. I will, therefore, submit to circumstances, and tell you the whole story, though somewhat tedious, in hopes that I can conclude with such a trail as you will open upon breast-high. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... across after some hostiles that had been skirmishing with his troop. The hostiles had fallen back after some hot shooting, and had dispersed among the brush and tepees on the farther shore, picking up their dead, as Indians do. It was interesting work, this splashing breast-high through a river into a concealed hornets'-nest, and the lieutenant thought a little on his unfinished plans and duties in life; he noted one dead Indian left on the shore, and went steadfastly in among the half-seen tepees, rummaging and beating in the thick brush to be ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... by a courier. The slight eminence, all clad with scrub-oak, all carpeted with wild flowers, was reached. The horsemen turned and looked eastward, the breast-high scrub, the few tender-foliaged young trees sheltering them from view. They looked eastward, and in the distance they saw Dowdall's Tavern. But it was not Dowdall's Tavern that was the strangest thing. The strangest thing was nearer than Dowdall's; it was at ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes, that were for him breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various

... from this innocent pastime, Mark became aware that he was watched and found himself face to face with the object of his search. Robert Redmayne stood separated from him by a distance of thirty yards behind the boughs of a breast-high shrub. He stood bare-headed, peering over the thicket, and the sun shone upon his fiery red scalp and tawny mustache. There could be no mistaking the man, and Brendon, rejoicing that daylight would now enable ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... of boxes was about breast-high. Unable to use his hands, Martin leaned over and explored with his chin. The fourth box rewarded him. He broke his skin upon a bared nail, and, craning further, rubbed his jawbone over the cold, smooth, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... were then to be taken up on the rail, which kept all hands on the forecastle for an hour, though every now and then the seas broke over it, washing the rigging off to leeward, filling the lee scuppers breast-high, and washing chock aft ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... exhausted foe by the neck, and notwithstanding his struggles, and the violent flapping of his long unwounded wing, began to draw him towards the shore. We hurried to meet and help him. Jezebel was the first that dashed breast-high into the water; and seizing a pinion in her strong jaws, she soon drew both the swan and Fig, who would have died rather than let go, through the yielding ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... at all is humiliation, but to retreat as this luckless army did was agony. Deep mud clogged their weary feet; when a halt was called they could but rest on their halberts, to lie down was to be suffocated in filth; mountain torrents swollen breast-high had to be crossed, the wading men were washed away till they built a rude bridge—O crowning humiliation!—out of the wreckage of their own ships. Hasan and a multitude of Turks and Arabs hung forever on their flanks. ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... still, and he crept on in this way from tree to tree, six, eight, and ten feet at a time, till, to his great delight, he found the water waist instead of breast-high. Ten minutes later it was not more than half-way up this height, and in another five he left the rafter still pressed against two trunks, and waded through the rushing stream, holding on by bough after bough, till he stood triumphantly upon dry land. Then after walking ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... horses up a shoulder of a steep hill-top, three shots cracked out from in front of us to left and right. Nobody fell, but if ever there was instantaneous response it happened then. Anazeh and his four galloped forward up-hill, firing as they rode for the cover of a breast-high ridge. One man on the off-side tipped me out of the saddle, so suddenly that I had no chance to prevent him; another caught me, and two others flung me into a hole behind a stone. I heard the rear-guard ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... bore all too palpably the marks of violence and bloodshed. There was an open space in front, where the shattered fragments of the engine lay scattered; and here the rails had been torn up by violence, and there stretched across, breast-high, a rudely piled rampart of stone. A human skeleton lay atop, whitened by the winds; there was a broken pike beside it; and, stuck fast in the naked skull, which had rolled to the bottom of the rampart, the rusty ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... my back to them for a moment. Through the breast-high oval I could see down across the deck-space and out through the side dome windows. And my heart suddenly leaped into my throat. It seemed that down there in the Earthlit shadows, where the spreading base of the giant crater joined the plains, ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... announced over the telephone and told that Mr. Black would be down directly. She looked around her. Two girls were being shown about by a little fat man in a slash-pocket coat, and one of them had indicated a stack of thin parcels, piled breast-high against the wall, and extending ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... from the grass got up, and so, With a caw and flap, away they went; When the grey mare made up her mind to go At the tail of the bounds on a breast-high scent, The best of the startled rooks might fail To match her flight ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... going like flails and the tail was up. Hobson pulled up to look at him for a minute. I got down and went to the wall, knowing that it afforded perfect security. Black Jack came up slowly, as if he meant no mischief. I leant over the wall, which was breast-high, and poked fun at him. In an instant, like a flash of light, he came at me. I saw his great claw over my head, and almost before I could jump back, a couple of heavy stones were driven violently off the top of the wall. To bolt and jump into the cart was almost an involuntary ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... the photography of wild animals by night in the forests of tropical Africa, and has published an interesting book giving his photographic results. In order to take these pictures the track followed by certain animals has to be detected, and then a thread is stretched "breast-high" across the track, so that the animal coming along it by night shall pull the thread. Immediately the thread is pulled it sets an electric contact in action. There is a brief flash of one two-thousandth of ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... a deep ravine that lay Yet darkling in the Moslem's way; Fit spot to make invaders rue The many fallen before the few. The torrents from that morning's sky Had filled the narrow chasm breast-high, And on each side aloft and wild Huge cliffs and toppling crags were piled,— The guards with which young Freedom lines The pathways to her mountain-shrines, Here at this pass the scanty band; Of IRAN'S last avengers stand; Here wait in silence ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... riding with you! Trying to ride with you!" he called out grimly as, taking the lead impetuously again, Eve Edgarton's horse shied off at a rabbit and went sidling down a sand-bank into a brand-new area of rocks and stubble and breast-high ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... a slow sweeping rustle of the wheat. Breast-high it stood down there, outside his window, a moving body, higher than the gloom. That rustle was a voice of childhood, youth, and manhood, whispering to him, thrilling as never before. It was a growing rustle, different from that when the wheat had matured. It seemed to change and ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... a light, and, forsaking what they believed in hopeful moments to be the road, they made for it across country. Across open spaces of sand, into gullies and out of gullies, through stinging patches of yucca and prickly pear, through breast-high chaparral, meshed, knotted, and matted, like a clumsy weaving together of very tough ropes, some with thorns, and all with ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... suddenly roused by the attack of the Carthaginian horsemen, and, without waiting for food, moved out of camp, chasing the horsemen toward the river. Into its icy waters the Romans waded breast-high, and when they came up on the opposite bank they were benumbed with cold. As soon as Hannibal knew that the Romans had crossed the river he attacked them fiercely with all his troops. Two thousand men whom he had placed in ambush fell upon the rear of their line. Their allies ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... may not, be one secret of his popularity, but it is the truth—that Morris's heart is at the level of most other people's, and his poetry flows out by that door. He stands breast-high in the common stream of sympathy, and the fine oil of his poetic feeling goes from him upon an element it is its nature to float upon, and which carries it safe to other bosoms, with little need of deep diving or high flying. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... at the end of the house. There no less than sixteen bodies were found, while around the door and windows were thirteen others. All these were dead. The guns having been discharged through loopholes breast-high, had taken effect upon the head ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to settle himself to the endless routine ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... floods had driven the game all away; so that they soon began to feel hunger, while their progress was very slow, and they suffered much from the fatigue of travelling all day long through deep mud or breast-high water. On the 17th they reached the Embarras River, but could not cross, nor could they find a dry spot on which to camp; at last they found the water falling off a small, almost submerged hillock, and on this they huddled through the night. At ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... large-looming from his wave, Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge, A sea-worn face, sad as mortality, Divine with yearning after fellowship. He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw; So much she sees now, and ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... another against the rapidity of the river, leaving sufficient intervals between their ranks for the passage of the water. "We were nearly a hundred men a-breast," writes Lord George Murray;[157] "and it was a very fine show. The water was big, and most of the men breast-high. When I was near across the river, I believe there were two thousand men in the water at once: there was nothing seen but their heads and shoulders; but there was no danger, for we had crossed many waters, and the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... knees and descended the stool. He stood breast-high behind the counter. He dropped a lack-luster eye to the box. "Velly nice," he ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... preternatural repose and dignity of the adult Russian peasant, and followed the liturgy independently. One little girl of seven, self-possessed and serenely unconscious, slipped through the crowd to the large image of the Virgin near the altar, grasped the breast-high guard-rail, and kissed the holy picture in the middle of her agile vault. When some members of the imperial family arrived, the crowd pressed together still more closely, to make a narrow passage to the small space reserved for them opposite the choir. After the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... along the row of buildings a fire was opened on the bunk house. Apparently one man was detailed to search out a certain crevice between the logs. Harris threw himself flat against the lower log which barely shielded him. One rifleman covered a crack breast-high, another the one next below, drilling it at six-inch intervals. Shreds of 'dobe chinking littered the room. The balls which found an entrance splintered through the bunks and buried themselves in the logs of the far wall. A third marksman worked on the lower crack. Puffs of 'dobe pulverized ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... they cut the rope, and ran off under their foresail, still keeping up their fire with blunderbusses, each loaded with eight or ten pistol balls, which the Indians returned with their arrows, those on shore wading after them breast-high into the sea: When they had got clear of these, the canoes pursued them with great fortitude and vigour, till one of them was sunk, and the numbers on board the rest greatly reduced by the fire, and then they returned to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... to take my place in the stable where the lessons are given. It is a small room, empty and bare, with peat-moss litter bedding and white-washed walls. The horse is separated from the people present by breast-high wooden partitions. Opposite the four-legged scholar is a black-board, nailed to the wall; and on one side a corn-bin which forms a seat for the spectators. Muhamed is led in. Krall, who is a little nervous, makes no secret of his uneasiness. His horses are ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... in. Mrs. Ormonde was deep in her letters. "What an infernal nuisance it is!" he continued, looking out of the window nearest him. "The off days are always soft and the 'meet' days hard and frosty. The scent would be breast-high to-day." Mrs. Ormonde made no reply. "Your correspondence seems uncommonly interesting!" he ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... well-lit shops, crowds of well-dressed people, balconies filled with ladies, colonnades of churches, and facades of palaces, danced dimly before our eyes, instead of the accustomed cordages, the naked masts, the smutty sail, the breast-high bulwarks, and that horrid squat funnel, with its cascade of black smoke tinged, as it rolled forth, with a dull red glow. When I retired to rest, I caught myself holding on to the bed as I prepared to get into it; and I dreamed of nothing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... correct in his supposition. It is true he had now only to descend upon the little roof, cross it, and climb to the window, which was but breast-high; but before descending it was necessary to find some support—stone, wood or iron, to which he could fasten the second rope, which he had brought wound about his neck, shoulders, and waist. Unfortunately he discovered nothing. At last, in leaning over, he perceived at the outer ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... instance; however, I have just received from a friend, who took interest in the subject, a sketch of something almost identical from the disused chapel at Chillon in the Canton Vaud. Of this I have not the measurements, but it stands about breast-high. It is there called a "prie-dieu," and is said to have belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, but the size is very unusual for such a use. I send sketches of each of the subjects of my Query, {102} and hope that, if this should be thought worthy of a place in "N. & Q.," some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various

... would prove but a frail defence against the mighty arms and tremendous claws of a furiously hungry tiger; and after the first shock he crept cautiously to the hiding-place of one of the spears and drew it out, to plant the butt against one retired foot and hold it with the keen blade about breast-high in the direction of the bamboo uprights and palm lath slats that were woven in and out ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... addition of Archbishop Odo, c. 950, the church having been thus turned from west to east, as at the already-described basilica of S. Lorenzo at Rome. The choir, as at S. Clemente's, occupied the eastern part of the nave, and like it was probably enclosed by breast-high partitions. There were attached porches to the north and south of the nave. The main entrance of the church was through that to the south. At this suthdure, according to Eadmer, "all disputes from the whole kingdom, which could not legally be referred to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... with a breast-high parapet around both its inner and outer edges, was beautifully laid out with a variety of flowers and with trellised flower-bearing vines. In one corner were growing a number of small trees with great fan-shaped leaves of blue and bearing a large ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... motive power to propel this spear was derived from a green bamboo, so strong that it required several powerful men to bend it in the form of a bow. A species of trigger was arranged to let the bent bow fly, and a piece of fine cord passed from this across the opening about breast-high for a tiger. The intention was that the animal, in entering the enclosure, should become its own executioner— should commit unintentional suicide, if ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... right hand three or four clerks, shut off from the public by a railing breast-high, were writing down the names of the depositors, and counting out money. Far back, a large opening was visible, where another clerk appeared from time to time, to take in the articles that were pawned. After waiting ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... him now on a breast-high scent, But he leaves us standing still; When we swing round by Westland Pound He's far up Challacombe Hill. The pack are a string of struggling ants, The quarry's a dancing midge, They're trying their reins on the edge of the Chains While ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... grasped his wrists. A white-haired man appeared on the other side of the parapet. He took a good, solid grip, and heaved. He drew Hoddan over the breast-high top of the wall and let him down to the ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... of say thirty or forty feet in diameter; another driver fastening six others, horses and mares, to another long halter, led them to the side opposite the first six. As soon as they were stationed, waving long-lashed whips, plunge! ahead went the wild horses, jumping into the wheat-sheaves breast-high, rearing, squealing, kicking, lashing out their hoofs, their eyes starting from their heads, while each driver stood firm in one spot, whirling his whiplash and keeping his team within a circle one half of which was in the wheat and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... fact it flows W.S.W. in another great bend, and they had gone far to the north without seeing it, but the country was exceedingly difficult from forest and water. As I had already seen, trees fallen across the path formed a breast-high wall which had to be climbed over: flooded rivers, breast and neck deep, had to be crossed, the mud was awful, and nothing but villages eight ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... perhaps I stood there, breast-high in the almost boiling water, dumbfounded at my position, hopeless of escape. Through the reek I could see the people who had been with me in the river scrambling out of the water through the reeds, like ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... blossom, red and honey-sweet, In summer billowed like a crimson sea Across the meadow lands. One day, I stood Breast-high amidst its waves, and heard the hum Of myriad bees, that had gone mad like me With fragrance and with beauty. Over us, A loving sun smiled from a cloudless sky, While a bold breeze kissed lightly as it passed, Clover in ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and knees, holding the knife in one hand and his rifle in the other. He immediately crawled in this way till he came to a secure spot. The men who had not attempted this passage were ordered to return and wade the river at the foot of the bluff, where they found the water breast-high. This adventure taught them the danger of crossing the slippery heights of the river; but as the plains were intersected by deep ravines, almost as difficult to pass, they continued down the river, sometimes in the mud of the low grounds, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks









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