"Girdle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the weather. About their heads they generally twisted a strip of cotton, save when blazing sun or pouring rain called for the protection of their wide straw hats covered with oiled cotton. Generally they wore the queue tucked into the girdle to keep it out of the way, but occasionally it was put to use, as, for example, if a man's hat was not at hand to ward off the glare of the sun, he would deftly arrange a thatch of leaves over his eyes, binding it firm with his long braid of black ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... utterances, however much desired, is never for repetition; nor is the cast of divine sweet looks; nor are the particular deeds-once pardonable, fitly pleaded. A second scaling of her window—no, night's black hills girdle the scene with hoarse echoes; the moon rushes out of her clouds grimacing. Even Fleetwood's devil, much addicted to cape and sword and ladder, the vulpine and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those who call wine "old men's milk." He maintained that wine wears them out and corrodes them; and pleaded with all the force of his eloquence against that liquor, fatal in common both to the young and old—that friend with a serpent in its bosom—that pleasure with a dagger under its girdle. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... took the shape of a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon's disk as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his girdle, and steered with it in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... recollection of a sunny summer in Milan) said was invariable in Nuremberg; but after the one-o'clock table d'hote they took a noble two-spanner carriage, and drove all round the city. Everywhere the ancient moat, thickly turfed and planted with trees and shrubs, stretched a girdle of garden between their course and the wall beautifully old, with knots of dead ivy clinging to its crevices, or broad meshes of the shining foliage mantling its blackened masonry. A tile-roofed open gallery ran along the top, where so many centuries of sentries had paced, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull?—pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here!" whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it—that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her—start her, my silver-spoons! ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... place of greater safety. The whole air was full of sparks and of flying masses of cotton, shingles, etc., some of which were carried four or five blocks, and started new fires. The men seemed generally under good control, and certainly labored hard to girdle the fire, to prevent its spreading; but, so long as the high wind prevailed, it was simply beyond human possibility. Fortunately, about 3 or 4 a.m., the wind moderated, and gradually the fire was got under control; but it had burned out the very heart of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... beautiful as the hair of Absalom, falls about his haughty, high-bred face, and so magnificently is he clothed that when I was a child I used to associate him in my mind with those "captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, all of them desirable young men, ... girdled with a girdle upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to" ... whom Aholibah "doted upon when her eyes saw them portrayed upon the walls ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... mid-winter, unheeded, unperished, Like the autumn-sown wheat 'neath the snow lying green, Like the love that overtook us, unawares and uncherished, Like the babe 'neath thy girdle that groweth unseen; ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... priests to luncheon yesterday: the Bishop and Pere Remy. They were very pleasant, and quite clean too, which has been known sometimes not to be - even with bishops. Monseigneur is not unimposing; with his white beard and his violet girdle he looks splendidly episcopal, and when our three waiting lads came up one after another and kneeled before him in the big hall, and kissed his ring, it did me good for a piece of pageantry. Remy is very engaging; he is a little, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the baggage, some encouraging him as if he had been victor, some accusing the other commanders, till at last they all fell upon him, and seizing his sword, bound his hands behind him with his own girdle. When Antigonus had sent Nicanor to receive him, he begged he might be led through the body of the Macedonians, and have liberty to speak to them, neither to request, nor deprecate anything, but only to advise them what would be ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as before heard in silence the king— Till a youth with an aspect unfearing but gentle, 'Mid the tremulous squires—stept out from the ring, Unbuckling his girdle, and doffing his mantle; And the murmuring crowd as they parted asunder, On the stately boy cast their looks ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... eyes were clear blue, her features regular, and, but for a certain hardness and sternness about the mouth, she might have been pronounced beautiful. She was dressed in a short-waisted gown of white muslin, with a blue girdle; her bodice was cut square, leaving her neck uncovered; her tight sleeves reached to the wrists. The gown was so scanty, and the skirt clung so closely to her figure, that it made her appear even taller than she really was. And at this day, on the wall of a modern London mansion, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... side, and stood on deck where she could touch him. He did not know that the lump of blackness almost beneath his hand was a breathing woman; and if he had known, he would have disregarded her then. But she knew him, from indistinct cap and the white pouch at his girdle to ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Cyane, a water nymph. But Cyane, before Demeter came to her, had been changed into a spring of water. And now, not being able to speak and tell Demeter where her child had gone to and who had carried her away, she showed in the water the girdle of Persephone that she had caught in her hands. And Demeter, finding the girdle of her child in the spring, knew that she had been carried off by violence. She lighted a torch at Etna's burning mountain, and for nine days and nine nights she ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... week there was the joy of a victory won. Untoward circumstances had been vanquished—the butcher, the baker had been settled with or—done without. For sometimes Amelia Craven came to give us a day's baking, and an array of fragrant scones and girdle-cakes, which I was taken into the kitchen to see on my return home, gave us the assurance of not having to ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... No. 358, the article headed "Memorable Days," the writer, in that part of which the Avver Bread is treated of, says it is made of oats leavened and kneaded into a large, thin, round cake, which is placed upon a girdle over the fire; adding, that he is totally at a loss for a definition of the word Avver; that he has sometimes thought avver, means oaten; which I think, correct, it being very likely a corruption of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... Ocean cannot sever. And if we come nearer home, we shall find a project matured which will carry a fiery cordon around the entire coast of our country, linking fortress to fortress, and providing that last, desperate resource of unity, an outer girdle and jointed chain of force, to bind together and save a nation whose inner bonds of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... was evidently a rich old fellow; he had a girdle of jewels, and was otherwise habited much like ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... craftsmen by the side of that made by their brethren of the other side. It could have been scarce visible to Britannia, looking down from a pinnacle of calico ready for a year's export over and above her home consumption, long enough, if unrolled, to put a girdle thirty times round the globe, though not all of it warranted to stand the washing-test that would be imposed by the briny part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... old opponents took his side against the Greeks under their queen Penthesileia, who was slain by Achilles (Quint. Smyr. i.; Justin ii. 4; Virgil, Aen. i. 490). One of the tasks imposed upon Heracles by Eurystheus was to obtain possession of the girdle of the Amazonian queen Hippolyte (Apollodorus ii. 5). He was accompanied by his friend Theseus, who carried off the princess Antiope, sister of Hippolyte, an incident which led to a retaliatory invasion of Attica, in which Antiope perished fighting by the side of Theseus. The Amazons ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a wedding, Mrs. Girdle," said the tailor. "A quarrel may end wi' the whip, but it begins wi' the tongue, and it's the women have got the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... metal mirror while the maid made the tea, smoothed a pretended stray hair, powdered her neck slightly, drew her robe more tightly around her waist, adjusted her girdle, which did not need any adjusting, and then, taking up the tray, containing a tiny tea-pot, a half dozen upturned cups, and as many brass sockets for them, hastened into the front room, bowed with her face on her hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... he seemed to carry weight, With leathern girdle braced; For all might see the bottle necks Still dangling at ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... to oust our neighbours' fortunes from our minds, and waited patiently for Mr. Carville's reappearance, had not a most exciting game of cow-boys, a game in which I for the nonce was a fleeing Indian brave, led to an abrupt encounter with Mrs. Carville. Benvenuto Cellini's scalp already hung at my girdle, visible as a pocket-handkerchief; and he lay far down near the cabbages, to the imaginative eye a writhing and disgusting spectacle. The intrepid Giuseppe Mazzini, however, had thrown his lariat about me with no mean adroitness, and I was down and captured. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... were. As I spoke, Constantine appeared to give some order; and while he and the boy stood looking on, Constantine leaning on his gun, the boy's hand resting with jaunty elegance on the handle of the knife in his girdle, the others leaped over the hurdles. Crack, went the rifle! A cow fell! I reloaded hastily. Crack! And the second cow fell. It was very fair shooting in such a bad light, for I hit both mortally; and my skill was rewarded by a shout of anger from ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... standing with the creature in her arms, feeding it with pieces of comfits from a pouch fastened at her girdle. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the sad plight of old Megan, who was bemoaning the loss of her property on the wrong side of the gorge so many years ago, when there appeared to her suddenly a cowled monk, whose dark face was scarcely discernible, with a rosary hanging to his girdle, and ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... panels of the wainscoted room on the ground floor: and the painting-room over the stables, with its large window, probably one of his improvements on first taking the house, looking on to the pleasant garden below. Doubtless the widow locked up the painting-room, and kept the key on the ring at her girdle. Years after, Sir Richard Phillips jotted down his memories of Chiswick—how he, a schoolboy then with his eyes just above the pew door, the bells in the old tower chiming for church, watched 'Widow Hogarth and her maiden relative, Richardson, walking up the aisle, draped in their ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... this, it then struck me that something more might be elicited from this adventure than I had at first imagined. 'Let me inspect the good man's pockets,' said I, 'and the roll of paper in his girdle; perhaps they may contain the history of my future plans.' In his right-hand pocket were two notes, a rosary, and his seals. In the left his ink-stand, a small looking-glass, and a comb. His watch was kept in the breast of his coat, and in another small pocket, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... not only made statements and comparisons, she had given her friend practical advice, and shown her how the thing was to be done. And every night and morning Meg pulled away ruthlessly at her corset laces, and crushed her beautiful little body into narrower space. She had already brought it within a girdle of twenty-one inches, which was a clear saving of two, and she had taken in all her dresses ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... beams were lighting up the dewy grass. Near by, the Terek murmured in the awakened wood and, greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over the sunken stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay stretched straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round head with the clotted wound on one side of it was thrown ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. Wherever their kettle-drums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood of the hyaena and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be kepte in safegarde in some close house or chamber where there is lytell light; and that we have a keeper the whiche the madde man do feare." The remainder is conceived in quite a kindly spirit. The patient is to have no knife or shears; no girdle, except a weak list of cloth, lest he destroy himself; no pictures of man or woman on the wall, lest he have fantasies. He is to be shaved once a month, to drink no wine or strong beer, but "warm suppynges three tymes a daye, and a lytell warm meat." Few words are to be used ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... pulled from his girdle a handkerchief with cakes and fruit, and during this short repast he exhorted his nephew to leave off bad company, and to seek that of wise and prudent men, to improve by their conversation; "for," said he, "you will soon be at man's estate, and you cannot too early begin ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... showed me that we were in a desperate position. "Flash Harry," who was all but stark-naked—he had only a girdle of ti tree leaves round his waist—was covering the boat with his Winchester rifle, and his followers, armed with other guns, were ready to fire a volley into us, although most of ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Brahman'; just as according to the Purva Mimamsa the compound 'Nishada-sthapati' denotes a sthapati who is a Nishada (not a sthapati of the Nishadas). A thing even which is known as one only may be designated by a plural form, as in a mantra one girdle is spoken of as 'the fetters of Aditi.' And as to the case under discussion, we know on the authority of Scripture, Smriti, Itihasa, and Purana, that the wonderful worlds springing from the mere will of a perfect and omnipresent being cannot be ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... down ten pigs. If the visitors, in recounting and shouting out in public, as they do, what they had got, said that there were eleven pigs, it was supposed that the god had added one. Then they would compare notes, and say: "Oh yes, it must have been that old woman we saw with a dry shrunk leaf girdle." There were other instances of ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... dangerous river, indeed, a perpetual menace to the place—every drawback, or nearly so, which a town may conceivably possess, and all of them huddled into a fatally unhealthy environment, compressed in a girdle of fire and poison. Human ingenuity has obviated them so effectually, so triumphantly that, were green pastures not needful to me as light and air, I, for one, would nevermore stray ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... seller shall himself be responsible; both the agent and the principal shall be equally liable. If a person wishes to find anything in the house of another, he shall enter naked, or wearing only a short tunic and without a girdle, having first taken an oath by the customary Gods that he expects to find it there; he shall then make his search, and the other shall throw open his house and allow him to search things both sealed and unsealed. And if a person will not ...
— Laws • Plato
... find, have Teusinke [a perhaps untranslatable article]; also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells; so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells (Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, especially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too how fond they are ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... to read this while the turnkey unlocked the door with one of a heavy bunch of keys that he carried at his girdle. But when we entered, what a disappointment!—for there were no banquets now, no banners, no love, but the whole place gutted and turned into a barrack for French prisoners. The air was very close, as where men had slept all ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... dungeon-like, but presently we turned towards an opening where the sun shone through, and my guide ascended a steep flight of stone stairs, at the top of which was a massive door of oak, heavily clamped with iron. Taking a key from his girdle, he unlocked this door, and throwing it open, signed to me to pass in. I did so, and found myself in a plain stone-walled room with a vaulted roof, and one very large, lofty, uncurtained window which looked out upon the sea and sheer ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... the base of the tree to which they form a crawling, writhing girdle.] The Toads, croak! croak! ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... fully understand the nature of his proposition; but if he had proposed to "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes," she would have said and acted, "Yes, Sir, I am ready," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and the earrings, and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... Shenandoah by Keyes' Ford, were placed in a position whence they could enfilade the enemy's works at effective range. Lawton and Jones pushed forward their lines until they could hear voices in the intrenchments; and a girdle of bayonets, closely supported by many batteries, encircled the hapless Federals. The assault was to be preceded by a heavy bombardment, and the advance was to be made as soon ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the many points which make this such an exceptionally fine piece of work. In the original drawing the grace of the arms and wrists is truly matchless, and the chest muscles are displayed in the most perfect manner. The embroidered girdle and folded drapery of the figure, as well as the drapery around the leopard's neck, are arranged with taste. The head-dress is not unlike a Roman helmet in front, with the addition of numerous plumes. The sandals of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Italians and Spaniards were sent foorth in a Galeot to take a Greekish Carmosell, which came into Africa to steale Negroes, and went out of Tripolis vnto that place, which was two hundred and fourtie leagues thence, but wee were chained three and three to an oare, and wee rowed naked aboue the girdle, and the Boteswaine of the Galley walked abaft the maste, and his Mate afore the maste, and eche of them a bulls pissell dried in their handes, and when their diuelish choller rose, they would strike the Christians for no cause: and they allowed vs but halfe a pound of bread a man in a ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... eyes of the damsel lost their fire and sought the floor; and she plucked at her girdle, and would not look on Deodonato. And they said outside, "It is very still in the Hall of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... as any. He came ashore dressed, not in the gleaming armor and crimson robes of a conqueror, as on his first return, but in the garb of what was known as a penitent—the long, coarse gown, the knotted girdle and peaked hood of a priest. For, you see, he did not know just what terrible stories had been told by his enemies; he did not know how the king and queen would receive him. He had promised them so much; he had brought them so little. ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... green waves, curls of foam, flecks of silver, under low-flying grey-dark cloud-curtains shaken to a rift, where at one shot the sun had a line of Nereids nodding, laughing, sparkling to him. Skepsey enjoyed it, at the back of thoughts military and naval. Visible sea, this girdle of Britain, inspired him to exultations in reverence. He wished Mr. Durance could behold it now and have such a breastful. He was wishing he knew a song of Britain and sea, rather fancying Mr. Durance to be in some way a bar to patriotic poetical recollection, when he saw his Captain Dartrey mounting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... went on emphatically, and as she spoke she disengaged her watch from her girdle, "that you fired it at six o'clock. It ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and knelt by her, very sorrowful; but at last the maiden said, "Be still, dear little fawn, and I will never forsake you!" and, taking off her golden garter, she placed it around his neck, and, weaving rushes, made a girdle to lead him with. This she tied to him, and taking the other end in her hand, she led him away, and they travelled deeper and deeper into the forest. After they had gone a long distance they came to a little hut, and the maiden, peeping ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... in a little natural glade of the bush that bordered one side of the kraal, when, at the end of it, looking like some wood nymph of classic fable in the light of the setting sun, appeared the lovely Mameena, clothed only in her girdle of fur, her necklace of blue beads and some copper ornaments, and carrying upon ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... it yet once more." Not long afterwards she was sent for to become sponsor, and was conducted into the lake, where she found the toad now in guise of a woman. After the ceremony was over, the lake-woman rewarded her with a bushel of straw, and sent by her hand a girdle for her mistress. On the way home the girl tried the girdle on a tree to see how it would look, and in a moment the tree was torn into a thousand pieces. This was the punishment devised by the lake-woman for her mistress, because she had wished to put her to death while in ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... scorn upon princes, And looseth the girdle of the strong; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, And bringeth ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... layd downe my burden uppon the grasse, I thought to have heard a noise in the wood by me, which made me to overlook my armes; I found one of my girdle pistols wette. I shott it off and charged it againe, went up to the wood the soffliest I might, to discover and defend myselfe the better against any surprise. After I had gone from tree to tree some 30 paces off I espied ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... way down the calf. They are made of nankeen, or dark blue, brown, or black silk. During the cold season both men and women wear one summer garment over the other, keeping the whole together with a girdle; in the extreme heat, however, they suffer them to float as free as "Nora Creina's robes" in ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... their jewels and rich ornaments to amuse her, and each one contributed to give her from out their store some becoming ornament, now a diamond broach, and now a ruby ring, next a necklace of emeralds, interspersed with glowing opals, a fourth added a girdle of golden chain braced at every link by close and richly cut garnets, and other rings of sapphire and amethysts, until the lovely stranger was dazzling with the combined brilliancy and reflection of so many rare and beautiful ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... have been informed by a credible person who went up to the king (at Susa), that he passed through a large tract of excellent land, extending for nearly a day's journey, which the people of the country called the queen's girdle, and another, which they called her veil; and several other fair and fertile districts, which were reserved for the adornment of the queen, and are named after her several habiliments. Now, I cannot help thinking to myself, What if some one were ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... all right," she said; "and I don't think even he would ever have thought of 'impinging'; it's lovely, isn't it? Thank you very much indeed," she added, as she folded up the paper and slipped it under her girdle. "You are a most helpful person. I really think I must—" I felt a touch on my cheek, lighter than the caress of a butterfly's wing, softer than the tip of a baby's finger, sweeter than the perfume of jessamine at night. For a moment the Queen continued to flutter ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... forehead where once had blazed the giant's single eye. The tub of Diogenes, Medea's caldron, and Psyche's vase of beauty were placed one within another. Pandora's box, without the lid, stood next, containing nothing but the girdle of Venus, which had been carelessly flung into it. A bundle of birch-rods which had been used by Shenstone's schoolmistress were tied up with the Countess of Salisbury's garter. I know not which to value most, a roc's egg as big as an ordinary hogshead, or ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difference between the mandritto and the roverso, the false edge and the true, the stramazone and the tondo; and he left me spellbound by that marvellous guard appropriately called by Marozzo the iron girdle—a low guard on the level of the waist, which on the very parry gives an opening for the point, so that in one movement you ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... would have fallen to the cold earth, but luckily for the valiant youth, the melodious voice of the enchanting girl again breathed the tenderest hopes for the safety of her adored Alonzo. He sprang upon his legs and drew a pistol from his girdle, which he discharged with unerring aim at the dreaded goblin. A horrible groan followed this murderous act, which was succeeded by a confused noise, and a solemn silence ensued! "It's vanished, Carlotta! I have hurried the intruding demon to the nether world!" exclaimed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... again. After an interval of suspense on my part that was quite enthralling and almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss Skiffins stopped it with the neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to represent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that during the whole time of the Aged's reading, Wemmick's arm was straying from the path of virtue and being recalled to it ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... altogether peculiar. To the pillars that support the same arches, are attached whole-length figures, in high relief, of less than the natural size. Two of them represent females; the third, a man; and one of the former has her hair disposed in long braided tresses, that reach on either side to a girdle. All of them hold labels with inscriptions, which fall down to their feet in front. The braided locks, and the general style of sculpture, shew a resemblance between these statues and those on the portals of the churches of St. Denys and Chartres, as well as those which ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Fucus saccharatus.—This grows upon rocks and stones by the sea-shore. It consists of a long single leaf, having a short roundish foot-stalk, the leaf representing a belt or girdle. This is collected and eaten the same as laver, as are also the two ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... a huge man, dressed in the universal costume, saving only a scarlet sash in place of the cord-girdle which the others wore round their waists. The vehicle stopped near the air-ship, over which the Astronef was hanging, and, as the figure dismounted, a door opened in the side of the vessel and three other figures, similar both ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... their course and ended their canticles of grief they gathered about the pulpit and the Capuchin got up to preach. He was a bearded man with a face full of light, almost of frenzy, and a cross and a rosary hung from his girdle. He spoke of their poverty, their lost ones, their privations, of the dark hour they were passing through, and of answers to prayer in political troubles. During this time the silence was breathless; but when he told them that God had sent their ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... secret it held in its dead heart. Yes, the box was there! The box in which lay the outbursts of a girl's fancy and imaginings. With a mischievous laugh Cynthia removed the old letters and put them in the bag that hung from a girdle at her waist. Then she walked on to the old Walden Place. There a shock awaited her. What had happened? The crumbling walls had fallen in many places; but there were props and scaffoldings, too! Sandy had begun his work of redemption ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... were most impressive. I shook and trembled beneath the impact of its vibrations; in its surging glory of sound I became fully reincarnated. I awoke naked and ashamed. The man saw my confusion. He hurried to a niche in the wall and handed me the tunic of the Martians with its girdle of blue cord and its cap and shoes of the blue metal exquisitely wrought and light. I put them upon me and lifting the cakes and the mellow-soaked ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the spark to the magazine. The knife griped by Lone Bear was snatched from his girdle, and he sprang forward, striking with lightning-like viciousness at the chest of the Shawanoe, who avoided ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... when Stephen saw the minaret of the town mosque and the crown of an old watch-tower, pointing up like a thumb and finger of a buried hand. Soon after, he passed through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Nail, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand, gave ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... She was not long in choosing such a disguise. She decided upon the costume of the Compagnia della Misericordia—one which was eminently Florentine, and, at the same time, better adapted for purposes of concealment than any other could possibly be. It consists of a black robe with a girdle, and a hood thrown over the head in such a way as to show only the eyes. It would be as suitable a disguise for a woman as for a man, and would give no possible chance of recognition. At the same time, belonging ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... his staff, and tightening his girdle, faced the hairy Gefroi; and there befell that, the which, though you shall find no mention of it in any chronicle, came much to be talked of thereafter; so that a ballade was writ of it ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the courage that distinguished his race, and although for a moment startled at the sudden entry he did not recoil, but drawing a sword from his girdle he ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... "It is not a girdle—it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus's reply. "The gods gave it to him because he was a favourite. There was a lady called Artemis—she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... who accosted them was evidently of some consequence. His dress was, to a certain degree, Mahometan, but mixed up with Malay—he carried arms in his girdle and a spear in his hand; his turban was of printed chintz; and his deportment, like most persons of rank in that country, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... flew and flew till they reached another sea. The Eagle shook off the King right in the middle of the sea; the King sank up to his girdle. The Eagle jerked him on to its wing again, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... which by all accounts they abused extraordinarily. And while some condemned themselves to an almost sepulchral regularity and seclusion, others fled the schools, swaggered in the street "with their thumbs in their girdle," passed the night in riot, and behaved themselves as the worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo in the romance of NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. Villon tells us himself that he was among the truants, but we hardly needed his avowal. The burlesque erudition in which ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any Wench Venus's Girdle wear, Though she be never so ugly; Lilies and Roses will quickly appear, And her Face look wond'rous smugly. Beneath the left Ear so fit but a Cord, (A Rope so charming a Zone is!) The Youth in his Cart hath the Air of a Lord, And we cry, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... with his lance, rushed to encounter the dragon, whom he reached just as the monster was about to devour the royal virgin. And when St. George had overthrown the dragon, the king's daughter fastened her girdle round the beast's neck and he followed her like a dog led ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips and thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with golden sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... young brother, the Big Pine,"—for so the Delaware had named March—"want to see Huron scalps at their belts," said Chingachgook to his friend. "There is room for some on the girdle of the Sarpent, and his people will look for them when he goes back to his village. Their eyes must not be left long in a fog, but they must see what they look for. I know that my brother has a ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... can imagine that among these figures sanctified to God there were fine ones, stout ones, lank ones, thin ones, plump ones, supple ones, shrunken ones, and figures of all kinds. Then they would quarrel amongst themselves as to who took the least to make a girdle, and she who spanned the least was pleased without knowing why. At times they would relate their dreams and what they had seen in them. Often one or two, at times all of them, had dreamed they had tight hold of the keys of the abbey. Then they would consult each other about their little ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... she has no child; in one hand she holds out a cup, in the other a lotus blossom. The personage who confronts her wears a conical cap, and is clothed, like the worshipper of the corresponding representation, in a long robe pressed close to the body by a girdle a cordeliere; he has also the crux ansata, and holds in the right hand an object the character and use of which I am unable to conjecture. We may associate with these two scenes of homage and worship ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... again restored to the grave in a new coffin, amid the fragments of the former ones. Those portions of the inner coffin which could be preserved, including one of its rings, with the silver altar, golden cross, stole, comb, two maniples, bracelets, girdle, gold wire of the skeleton, and fragments of the five silk robes, and seme of the rings of the outer coffin made in 1541, were deposited in the library of the Dean and Chapter, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... see if I can draw it,' said Arthur, 'not because I think myself the best Knight, for well I know how far I am outdone by others, but to set them an example that they may follow me.' With that the King took the sword by the sheath and by the girdle, and pulled at it with all his force, but the sword stuck fast. 'Sir,' said the damsel, 'you need not pull half so hard, for he that shall pull it out shall do it with little strength.' 'It is not for me,' ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... house Angus bumped the door open without knocking, and stamped into the kitchen. Jean was bending over the fire turning a scone on the girdle, when the noise at the door made her jump and look around. She was so amazed at the sight which met her eye that for an instant she stood stock-still, and Angus, seeing that he had only two children to deal with, gave Jock's ear a vicious tweak and ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... made, and I am a rich man for life," exclaimed Pierre, clapping his hands; "why, I shall have to marry you like the girls of Acadia, with a silver thimble on your finger and a pair of scissors at your girdle, emblems of industrious habits and proofs of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... come around the stage in abundance, and are welcome, as in the time of Elizabeth; but the stage is no longer a mere appendage of court-life, no longer a mere mirror of patrician vice hanging at the girdle of fashionable profligacy as it was in the days of Congreve and Wycherley. It is now the property of the educated people. It has to satisfy them or pine in neglect And the better their demands the better will ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... observed where the handsomest girl was seated among the spectators on the house terraces, he ran up the ladder as if to offer her a prayer emblem, but instead he drew out a sharp flint knife from his girdle and cut her throat. He threw the body down where all could see it, and ran along the adjoining terraces till he cleared the village. A little way up the mesa was a large flat rock, upon which he sprang and took off his dancer's ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... enough," replied Alice, who had seemed ready to laugh outright, during this encomium. "I think I see one of these paragons now, in a Bloomer, I think you call it, swaggering along with a Bowie knife at her girdle, smoking a cigar, no doubt, and tippling sherry-cobblers and mint-juleps. It must be a ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... throat and neck. Gold earrings swung with his agitation and a gold chain gleamed round his neck. He wore a bright silk jacket with long sleeves, and long, loose-flowing trousers and richly embroidered shoes with turned-up toes. From a girdle round his waist hung a dagger whose handle and ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... dressed like the trunk of a tree in winter when it is clothed in the rough fustian of moss. He wore a cowl on his head and sandals on his feet. He carried no stick. His hands were clasped inside the sleeves of his robe, and a cord served as girdle. He kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the moon was less pale than it. One could clearly distinguish his eagle's nose and his deep eyes, which were like those of asses, and his black beard on which tufts of lamb's wool had been ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... from a tradition that it supplied him with food in the wilderness; and currants, from beginning to ripen at this time, have been nicknamed "berries of St. John." The artemisia was in Germany "St. John's girdle," and in Sicily was ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... bring the sop quickly," said I, "or by Peter-and-Paul I will speak to my father. He and I can well be doing with beaten cakes made crisp on the iron girdle. In these ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... "And I suspect he's so cross with me that he hates to keep this engagement. But I don't care. I wish I had a new dress. But I've made the sleeves small in my organdy and made a new girdle. It looks as well as could ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... again, woke and told his dream. He slept again and this time we saw his dream. There was a juggling with the lights and a red gauze was let down. Two quivering clouds descended from heaven; St. Peter, with the keys at his girdle, and St. Paul, with a sword, burst through. They made passes at the sleeping emperor and spoke antiphonally, one being a tenor and the other a bass. They announced that the Padre Eterno was pleased with him for pardoning the six children, and that if he would send for Silvestro, a hermit living ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... negroes; and not long and lank like the common Indians. The colour of their skins, both of their faces and the rest of their body, is coal-black like that of the negroes of Guinea. They have no sort of clothes but a piece of the rind of a tree tied like a girdle about their waists, and a handful of long grass, or three or four small green boughs full of leaves thrust under their girdle to cover their nakedness. They. have no houses, but lie in the open air without covering, the earth being their ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Indian wars in the Territory had been bloody and vindictive, they had not been protracted as in the old days. Around the country of the red man was drawn closer and more securely, day by day, the girdle of civilization. Within its constricting grasp the spirit of savagery, if not crushed, was at least subdued. Tribes naked but for their blankets, unadorned save by the tattoo, found themselves pressed close to other tribes which, already civilized, had relinquished ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... ever she fluttered near to me but never near enough. When my arm went out to her to girdle her, presto, she was not there. I knew, as never before, nor since, the thousand dear and delightful anguishes of love frustrated but ever resilient and beckoned on by the ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... pushed himself back in his chair, and Josip was only mildly surprised to note that the man seemed considerably paunchier than his photos indicated. Perhaps he wore a girdle in public. ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... he looks from his windows, as from those of an anchored vessel, he sees a boundless level plain, which inspires him with just such sentiments of freedom and solemnity as are awakened by the sea. The trees that surround his house like a green girdle allow only a delicate broken light to enter it; boats freighted with merchandise glide noiselessly past his door; he does not hear the trampling of horses or the cracking of whips, or songs or street-cries; all the activities of the life ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, silver, gold, and gems could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at fourscore thousand pounds, besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat, and spurs."[262] In the masques and banquets with which Buckingham entertained the court, he usually expended, for the evening, from one to five thousand pounds. To others I leave to calculate the value of money: the sums of this gorgeous wastefulness, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... betide unto him so, And as he did not blessing love it shall be farre him fro, As he with cursing clad himselfe so it like water shall Into his bowels and like oyl Into his bones befall. As garments let it be to him to cover him for aye And as a girdle wherewith he ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... central axis, the chain of little bones, the vertebrae, threaded on the spinal cord (see Figure 1 and Section 1); the thorax, the box enclosed by ribs and sternum; the fore-limb and bones connected with it (pectoral girdle and limb), and the hind-limb and bones connected with it (pelvic girdle). Finally there is the skull, but following the London University syllabus, we shall substitute the skull of the dog for of that of the rabbit, as more typically ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... spread over Cairo that Mahmoud and Abdullah were to run a race, the winner to receive a costly girdle of rich embroidery, finished with a clasp set with gems. Great was the interest, and on the day appointed crowds assembled to see the race, gathering long before ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... throwing out words, not as a sop to the necessity for talk, but as a bait to catch Anne's voice, mentions girdle-cakes, remembers that his old housekeeper used to be famous for the making of them, and wonders if she ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... Thurnall to himself, as Frank left the room, "to begin life again with an old penknife and a pound of honeydew. I wonder which of them got my girdle. I'll stick here till I find out that one thing, and stop the notes by to-day's post if I can but recollect them all;—if I could but ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... pitiless breakers, and great sea-lights; much of heathery mountains, wild clans, and hunted Covenanters. Breaths come to him in song of the distant Cheviots and the ring of foraying hoofs. He glories in his hard-fisted forefathers, of the iron girdle and the handful of oat-meal, who rode so swiftly and lived so sparely on their raids. Poverty, ill-luck, enterprise, and constant resolution are the fibres of the legend of his country's history. The heroes and kings ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cried Mr Barstowe. 'Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry of motion. I never ride in a motor-car without those words of Shakespeare's ringing in my mind: "I'll put a girdle round about ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... we must send for the girdle the old woman sent the Empress Eugenie. She had a succession of seven sons, and requested her to wear it for luck. As it was very dirty the royal lady sent it back. It might be procured and undergo the purifying influence of water. All I can say at ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Socialist never beats a retreat. They are pressing forward here, there, everywhere, in all the zones that girdle this globe. These workers, these class-conscious workers, these children of honest toil are wiping out the boundary lines everywhere. They are proclaiming the glad tidings of the coming emancipation. Everywhere they are having their hearts attuned to the sacred cause; everywhere ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... love me, do you not?—next to this new creed of yours, I am most of all to you. Well, since you have divorced me, I will tell you, I go straight to another man. Now, look your last on me; for you love me, do you not?" and she slipped the mantle from her shoulders and except for her girdle stood before him ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... on the go. I was in a short time made acquainted with the reason. It was more blood, more butchery, and more treachery. And oh! such a sight presented itself to my eyes. The Indians were all attired in full war habiliments. They had removed their clothes. A girdle around their waists, was all—and their paint—every shade and color. Heads with feathers, and those, who had killed a white, with quills. A quill for every man scalped. Eyes painted like stars, in red, yellow and green; faces, arms, legs and bodies elaborately ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... exceptions, let him turn the buckle of his girdle, I care not. I owe thee nothing (Reader), I look for no favour at thy hands, I am independent, I ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... exceedingly simple. They just lay aside the girdle of beauty or chastity which they ordinarily wear and present themselves to the public as Eve did to Adam; or like so many brown-skinned Venuses with ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... The guard who brought in his food was a Sicilian, and was evidently of a talkative disposition, for he had several times entered into conversation with the captives. In addition to a long knife, he carried a small stiletto in his girdle, and Francis thought that, if he could obtain this, he might possibly free himself. Accordingly, at the hour when he expected his guard to enter, Francis placed himself at his window, with his face against the bars. When he heard the guard come in, and, as usual, close the ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... (and it required only three days to finish them), the peons sallied forth from the yerba colony by couples. I accompanied two of the stoutest and best of them. They had with them no other weapon than a small axe; no other clothing than a girdle round their waist and a red cap on their head; no other provision than a cigar, and a cow's horn filled with water; and they were animated by no other hope or desire, that I could perceive, than those of soon discovering a part of the wood thickly studded with the yerba ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... which seemed to lessen the size of his face and concentrate its expression to a shining point, Johnny Appleseed slid his leather bags along the rope girdle, and searched them, one after the other. I thought he wanted me to notice his apple seeds, and inquired how many kinds he carried. So he showed them in handfuls, brown and glistening, or gummed with ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... way, had not then been invented—had not a more chilling mystery of mien. He is above the average height—not much under six feet—and the nodding plumes of his crest make him look several inches taller than he is in reality. His tomahawk, which hangs loosely exposed at his girdle, glitters like highly-polished silver; and the hand which ever and anon toys with the haft is long and bony. The dark, piercing eyes seem almost to transfix every one upon whom they rest. One half of the face seems to be covered by a mask, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... some commissions, and I will perform them as far as oo poo Pdfr can.(3) The letter I sent before this was to have gone a post before; but an accident hindered it; and, I assure oo, I wam very akkree(4) MD did not write to Dean Pdfr, and I think oo might have had a Dean under your girdle for the superscription. I have just finished my Treatise,(5) and must be ten days correcting it. Farewell, deelest MD, MD, MD, FW, FW, FW, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... garden that evening with a fowling-piece on his shoulder, and two brace of prairie hens at his girdle. May was seated at her cottage door, basking in sunshine, chatting with her mother—who was knitting of course—and Shank was conversing with Hunky Ben, who rested after a day ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the letter solemnly into the purse at his girdle, shot out of the door with clenched teeth, as a man upon a fixed purpose which it would lighten his heart to carry out. He ran rapidly through the large outer hall, past the long oak table, at which Hereward ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... fruits as were in season. To judge by Nausicaa, their breeding must have been exquisite. Nausicaa standing still, when the uncouth figure of Ulysses emerged from under the wood, all sea slime and nakedness, and only covered with a girdle of leaves—standing still to meet him when the other girls ran away tittering and terrified, is the perfect conception of true female modesty; and in the whole scene between them, Homer shows the most finished understanding of the delicate and tremulous relations which occur occasionally ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... food, they proceeded to the village inn to refresh themselves. Suddenly some people rushed into the room where they were sitting, and told them that the soldiers were about to roast the old man, naked, on his own girdle. This was too much for them to stand, and they repaired immediately to the scene of this gross outrage, and at first merely requested that the captive should be released. On the refusal of the two soldiers who were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... evening. My men were rather quiet. Perhaps the general calmness was affecting them with kindred thoughts, though an Englishman never shows them. On the left stood the stumpy spire of Bayencourt Church just left by us. On the right lay Sailly-au-Bois in its girdle of trees. Along the side of the valley which ran out from behind Sailly-au-Bois, arose numerous lazy pillars of smoke from the wood fires and kitchens of an artillery encampment. An English aeroplane, with a swarm of black ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... left in the world—to die in Jerusalem. His feeling for Jerusalem was unique. All the hunted Jew in him combined with all the battered man to transfigure Zion with the splendor of sacred dreams and girdle it with the rainbows that are builded of bitter tears. And with it all a dread that if he were buried elsewhere, when the last trump sounded he would have to roll under the earth and under the sea to Jerusalem, the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... unpleasing and unfit for company, paining those whom they think to gratify, and become a laughing-stock to those who they think admire them, and objectionable to those who they think love them. As then he cannot be a favourite of the goddess who with Aphrodite's charmed girdle[558] repels and drives away those who associate with him, so he who with his speech bores and disgusts one is without ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... revelry. Gerald was not in a mood for talking, and he felt little inclined to disturb her. It was companionship enough merely to glance at her ever and anon as she sat silently in the stern, the red ropes of the tiller drawn loosely around her slender waist like a silken girdle. He wondered idly what she was thinking of. Her broad hat threw too deep a shadow for him to see her face save when they neared one of the beacon rafts; then it was suddenly in brilliant illumination, and it was impossible not to watch for these moments of revelation, which lit ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... tea-house proper are rows of summer pavilions, in one of which the party make themselves at home, while gentle little tea-house girls toddle forth to serve them the invariable preliminary tea and confections. Each man then produces from up his sleeve, or from out his girdle, paper, ink, and brush, and proceeds to compose a poem on the beauty of the spot and the feelings it calls up, which he subsequently reads to his admiring companions. Hot sake is next served, which is to them what beer ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... its elfin hues Was as the pure enamel on The early morning dews; And gloriously they shone, Waving everyone his wing, Like a young aerial thing! That Iris came Over the shells of gold, beside The blue and waveless tide; Its girdle, of resplendent flame, Met shore and sea, afar, Like angel that shall stand On flood and land, Crown'd ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... at least in Lu, were hereditary in some families, just as other families provided successive generations of ministers. A Lu envoy to Tsin, who carried a very valuable gem- studded girdle with him, had very great pressure put upon him by a covetous Tsin minister who wanted the girdle. The envoy offered to give some silk instead, but he said that not even to save his life would he give up the girdle. The Tsin magnate thought better of it; but it is remarkable how many cases ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... all are well! They are just going in to matins. You come in good time, my sisters! But who is she whom you bring with you?" inquired the old nun, nodding toward Salome, even while she detached a great key from her girdle, and unlocked the door, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... well-shaped women, being that of the Medicean Venus, the receptacle occasionally serves for a little gold watch, or some other trinket, which is suspended to the neck by a collar of hair, decorated with various ornaments. When they dance, the fan is introduced within the zone or girdle; and the handkerchief is kept in the pocket of some sedulous swain, to whom the fair one has recourse when she has occasion for it. Some of the elderly ladies, like myself," added she, "carry these appendages in ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... could," she answered and by that time I had thought out a nice little squeeze for her very pretty waist in its silver girdle under my arm. Then I had to put her into the arms of a nice young man named Miles Menefee. To get my breath and to think up some more of the compliments that had been given to me for my pleasure ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... all their seams exhibiting numerous "holidays." Pretty children, with their hair clipped around their heads like a priest's tonsure, sport around us, but are not intrusive. Each child has a little pouch attached to his girdle, which, we are informed, contains the address of the child's parents, and also an invocation to the little one's protecting god, in case of his straying from home. We meet with cheerful looks and pleasant greetings everywhere. The gentle and musical "o-hi-o," "good day," ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... those two malicious youths did was to take their jack-knives and girdle that Wild Rose Sweeting tree close to the ground. They went clear round the tree, cutting away the bark into the sap-wood; and not content with girdling it once, they went round it three ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... at home they met with fitting welcome and reverence. The doors of the town house were thrown open wide, and in the hall the servants stood in line, the housekeeper at the head with her keys at her girdle, the little jet-black negro page grinning beneath his turban with joy to see his lady again, he worshipping her as a sort of fetich, after the manner of his race. 'Twas his duty to take heed to the ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sober and modest. She had not necklace or coronal or women with ornamented shoes or girdle which was more to be looked at than the person. Nor yet did the daughter at her birth give fear to her father, for the time and dowry did not outrun measure on this or that side. She had not houses empty of families. I saw Bellencion Berti go girt with leather and bone and his lady ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery |
