"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the determined Jackson coolly dismounted from his horse, and unbuckling the girth, proceeded to deposit the saddle, with the valise attached to it, within the hut the door of which ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the full moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth. The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy snorer, and his voice in speaking came thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and stifled by feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... its picturesque effect. A few noble stems—however poor their heads—have a fine effect when surrounded by others which have had elbow-room; but a forest of stems, with Lilliputian heads—great though the girth of the stem may be—conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit. The underwood was enlivened by shrubs of every shade and hue, the wild flowering ivy predominating. The carriage-springs ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of the brightest lights in the district, handsome, dare-devil Tony. There was not a horse he could not ride, and his rivals had brought some pretty tough buckjumpers to test him at different times—"fair holy terrors," they called them—but Tony sat them, even when girth and crupper had carried away. He was the only individual who had been able to solve the mysteries of the form of the balls and the bumps in the cushions of the alleged billiard table which the owner of the Rest had bought ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... with spurs in flanks, and freed Of rein, they dash.—The warriors all their might And skill unite to strike the surest blow. Bucklers beneath the shock are torn and crushed, White hauberks rent in shreds, asunder bursts Each courser's girth, the saddles, turning, fall. One hundred thousand ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... of the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... not so much the girth of the tree as its whole bearing that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery of the ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... three." "My wut?" sez I.—your gret-gret-gret," sez he: "You wouldn't ha' never ben here but for me. Two hundred an' three year ago this May, The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; I'd been a cunnle in our Civil War,— But wut on girth hev ,you gut up one for? Coz we du things in England, 'tain't for you To git a notion you can du 'em tu: I'm told you write in public prints: ef true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two."— "Thet air's an argymunt I can't endorse,— 'Twould ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... a word, Miles turned and began to saddle. Then suddenly, as he pulled at the girth, he stopped. "It's no use," he said. "We can't get away except over the rise, and they'll see us there;" he nodded at the hill which rose beyond the camping ground three hundred yards away, and stretched in a long, level sweep into other hills and the west. "Our chance is that they're not ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... tremendous girth, but who sat his horse easily despite his size, grinned down at Jack. He was white-haired and under the brim of his sombrero little eyes twinkled genially and shrewdly in a ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... to the effect that it was the especial symbol of sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning this stone—it was well known to the Chinese from the days of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sea at 2,400 feet, and the distance of its summit from the coast at eleven miles. Mr. Kent says they were surprised at the size of the trees on the immediate brow of it; they measured one and found it to be 43 feet in girth. Indeed, he adds, vegetation did not appear to have suffered either from its elevated position, or from any prevailing wind. Eucalypti were the general timber on the ranges; one species of which, resembling strongly the black ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... closely they were clipped; but these beat all I had ever imagined. I could see no hair on them; and I saw them quite close; for in the hurry each horse, as his turn came, was run out alongside the boat; the man who led him standing knee-deep until the kegs were slung across by the single girth. As soon as this was done, a slap on the rump sent the beast shoreward, and the man scrambled out after him. There was scarcely any talk, and no noise except that caused by the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... circumference. The age of this prodigy of the forest cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The oak viewed by the present King, in Oxfordshire, and some years ago felled in the domains of one of the Colleges, though only twenty-five feet in girth, is said to have been six hundred years old. Fairlop oak having been nearly thrice as large, is supposed to be at least twice ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... an orphan asylum to be given "a right religious education." It's a queer old world, Terese, and what would have become of Gerhard Gerhards had he fallen heir to his father's titles and estate, no man can say. He might have accumulated girth and become an honored burgomaster. As it was he became powder-monkey to a monk, and scrubbed stone floors and rushed the growler for cowled ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... oont, 1 O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks. ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... of astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million metres they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches now go through from pole to pole, So we'll stick to inches, feet, and yards, and our own old ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... chanced to dismount to tighten the girth of Mrs. Norton's horse, when a fresh boar broke from cover and was instantly pursued by all the others of the hunt. The subaltern ruefully accepted the lady's apologies and hurriedly swung himself up into the saddle again to follow, when his ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... brought up in confinement since its early existence, when it was about 4 feet 6 inches high. That elephant was carefully weighed and measured before it left England, with the result, of height at shoulder, 11 feet; weight, six tons and a half. The girth of the fore-foot when the pressure of the animal's weight was exerted, was exactly half the perpendicular height of the elephant. I have seen very much larger animals in Africa, but there is nothing in India to ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a standard ball, So many to the pound; Whether its girth is trim and svelte Or built to take an out-size belt, I hardly seem to care at all So long ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... unable to leave the towns, we shall probably find that they nearly always lose weight in hot weather. Some support is given to this idea by the following very curious facts. Very many years ago I was engaged for certain purposes in determining the weight, height, and girth of all the members of our city police force. The examination was made in April and repeated in the beginning of October. Every care was taken to avoid errors, but to my surprise I found that a large majority of the men had lost weight ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the hothouse—tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas—of more integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... girth, but not lofty, and a peculiarity about them was that they were ill-grown, and gnarled and knotted in a way that made them seem as if they were diseased. For every now and then one of them displayed a huge lump or boss, such as is sometimes ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... leaving the dragon slain, he would have looked no otherwise than she, all gleaming with steel, and with grey eyes full of promise of victory: the holy sword girdled about her, and a little battle-axe hanging from her saddle-girth. She sprang on her steed, from the mounting-stone beside the door, and so, waving her hand, she cried farewell to Elliot, that stood gazing after her with shining eyes. The people went after the Maid some way, shouting Noel! and striving to kiss her stirrup, the archers ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... availed him. Ferrando's breast-plate was threefold: two plates the spear went clean through, and drove the third in before it, with the velmes and the shirt, into the breast, near his heart; ... and the girth and the poitral of his horse burst, and he and the saddle went together over the horse's heels, and the spear in him, and all thought him dead. Howbeit Ferrando Gonzalez rose, and the blood began to ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... look at the wreck? You'll then be better able to judge as to what's best to be done, an' I've got a noo dress by the firm of Denayrouze, with a speakin'-apparatus, which'll fit you. I got it for myself, and we're much about a size—barrin' the waist, in which I have the advantage of you as to girth. Their noo pump and lamp, too, will interest you. See, here ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... slapped her as hard as she could with her hands; but, even when the mare raised her head and walked about, the little girl could not get at the reins because she was tightly fastened to the girth. So the pinto went where she pleased, paying no attention to angry commands, or to the pounding inflicted upon her flanks by the fists of the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... will rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia, leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... forth; what a tremendous creature! I had frequently seen him before, and wondered at him; he was barely fifteen hands, but he had the girth of a metropolitan dray-horse; his head was small in comparison with his immense neck, which curved down nobly to his wide back: his chest was broad and fine, and his shoulders models of symmetry and strength; he stood well and powerfully upon his legs, which were somewhat ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his fleet horse, who seemed to him, in his impetuous haste, to be creeping like a snail. He drove his spurs deep into the sides of the frightened animal, which almost leaped through his girth. A less expert horseman would have been unseated; but an earthquake could not have thrown this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... she stands, Scarce might he hear her whispered message: "Ask, Lord, and I answer thee." Strung to his task: "Tell me now all," he said, "from that far day Whenas embracing thee, I stood to pray, And poured forth wine unto the thirsty earth To Zeus and to Poseidon, in whose girth Lie sea and land; to Gaia next, their spouse, And next to Here, mistress of my house, Traitress, and thine, for grace upon my faring: For thou wert by to hear me, false arm bearing Upon my shoulder, glowing, lying cheek Next unto mine. Ay, and thou prayedst, with meek Fair seeming, prosperous ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... hundred. The next point of consequence is, that the Duke of Cumberland has had a stroke of the palsy— As his courage is at least equal to mine, he makes nothing of it; but being above an inch more in the girth than I am, he is not Yet arrived at skipping about the house. In truth, his case is melancholy: the humours that have fallen upon the wound in his leg have kept him lately from all exercise-. as he used much, and is so corpulent, this ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... spoyl'd with the Staggers, begnawne with the Bots, Waid in the backe, and shoulder-shotten, neere leg'd before, and with a halfe-chekt Bitte, & a headstall of sheepes leather, which being restrain'd to keepe him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots: one girth sixe times peec'd, and a womans Crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name, fairely set down in studs, and heere and there peec'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... all this, as I could follow, in the grey morning light, coolly, nay disdainfully, seeming to regard the bullets from the converging sharp-shooters as just so many bees buzzing harmlessly about him. Next, he tightened the girth, which Mack's panting had loosened, bridled the horse again, vaulted lightly into the saddle, touched his bonnet in mock salutation, and rode over the hills ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... yards of the wagons. The remainder of the command, then in retreat for the train corral, followed the path led by Thornburgh and his men. As Captain Payne's company was about to start, or had started, his saddle-girth broke and he got a fearful fall. One of his men dismounted and assisted him on his horse, the captain's horse having run away. F Company, Fifth, followed by the captain, he being badly bruised, reached the wagon-train to find it being packed, and Lieutenant Paddock wounded, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... splendour of silence, felt, Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt, Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense, Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow, tense As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... under any other circumstances, would have brought forth Bill's most scathing contempt. The saddle was set awry upon an ill-folded blanket. It was so far back from the mare's withers that the twisted double cinchas were somewhere under her belly, instead of her girth. Then the bit was reversed in her mouth, and the curb-strap was ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... sweet, Warm breathing of love, and the friends we shall meet; And the rocks of the desert, so rough when we roam, Seem soft, soft as silk, on the dear path of home; The white waves of the Jeikon, that foam through their speed, Seem scarcely to reach to the girth of my steed. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... flushed into pink when I found myself once more at the gate of the Boulogne Camp. There was no sign of my companions, but a tall man, dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons like a small country farmer, was tightening the girth of a magnificent black horse, whilst a little further on a slim young ostler was waiting by the roadside, holding the bridles of two others. It was only when I recognised one of the pair as the horse which I had ridden on my first coming to camp that I answered the smile upon the keen handsome face ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... young officer was seen to leap from his horse. His followers, sore pressed though they were, could not help turning toward him, wondering what had happened. The bullets flew like hail everywhere; and yet, with steady hand, the gallant soldier stood by the side of his horse and drew the girth of his saddle tight. He had felt it slip under him, and he knew that upon just such a little thing as a loose buckle might hinge his own life, and, perhaps, the turn of the battle. Having secured the girth, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... figures in the second division of Plate XIX* indicate the same order, as shown by the increasing girth as we proceed toward ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... had a face like an ancient lemon. He was small and wizened—which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows in prosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firm is not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them, their confidence becomes unlimited. You can do no wrong. So Davidson's ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... comfort, but the Chief said: "Ride!" So I rode; and I mean just that. I rode every inch of that horse several times over. What time I wasn't clinging to his tail being dragged up a precipice, I was hanging around his neck like a limpet. One time, when the girth slipped, both the saddle and I rode upside down under his belly. Some time ago I saw a sloth clinging, wrong end to, to the top bars of his cage. It brought back painful memories of ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... natural niche in a cliff, walling in the valley of Monlova And here stood Keevi, with his five eyes, ten hands, and three pair of legs, equipped at all points for the vocation over which he presided. Of mighty girth, his arms terminated in hands, every finger a limb, spreading in multiplied digits: palms twice five, and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... half a pace away, and yet he did not know me. I think it was that, more than anything else, which robbed me of my elation. To him the whole thing seemed an ordinary piece of business. I saw him test his girth, preparatory to mounting again, saw him slowly readjust his cloak, and then I took the paper he handed me and buttoned it carefully in my inside pocket. He turned to his horse again and laid a hand on his withers, but still he did not mount. I ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... a constable even bigger than himself, stouter by far, a man who looked as though he had lived on the fat of the earth, and had derived intense enjoyment from it. One would have imagined from his proportions, from the beefiness of his face, from his girth, that this second individual might have proved—as is the case with so many men of size—of a genial and gentle disposition. Yet Henri and Jules knew well enough that no such thing was to be expected; indeed, to speak only ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... ride on Twinkleheels' back, he buckled the saddle girth and slipped on the pony's bridle. Then he led him out of the barn, clutched the basket, the tin pail, and the reins as well in one hand, mounted, and then reached out his other hand for the pole, which he had leaned against the ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... remains of some gigantic creature of a past age. Every precaution was taken, and finally the shell was fully exposed. The restoration shows it as dome-shaped, nearly fourteen feet long, thirty-three feet in horizontal circumference, and twenty feet in girth in a vertical direction. Its length when alive must have been nearly thirty feet, and its feet were as large as those of a rhinoceros. The capacity of the shell of this ancient boatman was such that six or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... hibiscus, pandanus, and cocoa-nut trees, with here and there a large pisonia, close to the lagoon. One gigantic specimen of this last species, which we stopped a moment to admire, could not have been less than twenty feet in girth. Max, Morton, Arthur, and myself, could not quite span it, taking hold of hands, and Johnny had to join the ring, to make it complete. For several hours we continued our journey pretty steadily, encountering no living thing, except tern, gannets, and other ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... "I think the girth is broken," said she. "The saddle is loose, and I was nigh losing my balance. Thank you, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... we went on and on, with the trees seeming to get taller and taller, and of mightier girth. Now and then we caught a glimpse of the blue sky, but only seldom, the dense foliage forming a ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... foot of which to the farther end of the cave is 145 feet, the greatest breadth of the cave being 148 feet. Immediately below the portal I found a piece of the trunk of a large column of ice, 7 feet long and 12 feet in girth, its fractured ends giving the idea of the interior of a quickly-grown tree, in consequence of the concentric arrangement of convergent prisms described in the account of the Glaciere of S. Georges. The wife of the farmer told me afterwards that there had been two glorious columns ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... strength. 'Stand thou,' he cried; 'no more upon the ground Thou liest at thy will — here must thou stay Within mine arms constrained; against this breast, Antaeus, shalt thou fall.' He lifted up And held by middle girth the giant form, Still struggling for the earth: but she no more Could give her offspring rigour. Slowly came The chill of death upon him, and 'twas long Before the hero, of his victory sure, Trusted the earth and laid the giant down. Hence ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... certain unromantic yearning for oats under his loosening girth, the stallion Sooltan raced Damaris back to ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... summit. In many parts the Eucalypti grew to a great size and composed a noble forest. In some of the dampest ravines tree-ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner; I saw one which must have been at least twenty feet high to the base of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet. The fronds, forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy shade, like that of the first hour of night. The summit of the mountain is broad and flat and is composed of huge ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... with centennial trees,— Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby, Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... increased immensely, since last year, in stature and girth. He is remarkably neat in his person, wisping himself all over with hay for hours at a time. Whether he does this for cleanliness or to obtain a flavor of elephant for the hay is doubtful, however, for he always eats ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... esplanade and little wall, there grows an enormous oak, not very tall, but with an immense girth of trunk, and such a spread of branches that it completely overshadows the summer-house, and overhangs the whole surface of the small pool in front of it. Thenceforth, the tall and tangled hedge runs on, as usual denying all access of the eye, and the deep, clear ditch all access of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... which we give a figure is growing at Broadlands, Hants, and is about 40 feet in height, with a trunk that measures 7 feet in girth at 3 feet from the ground, with a spread of branches measuring 45 feet. These dimensions have been considerably exceeded in other cases. In 1837 a tree at Purser's Cross measured 60 feet and more in height. Loudon himself had a small tree in his ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... up to it whilst I tighten my horse's girth, and come back and tell me if there is a light in any of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... subdued animal; "but I can't never refuse her nothin'—that's where it is. Easy now, miss!" as Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him to hurry and let her mount. "Easy now. There! You're on, high and dry. Here" (tugging at the girth), "let me tauten up a bit! Steady now! Don't try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute. Get ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... of a full-grown grizzly is over eight hundred pounds, and the girth around the body ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... gained the summit of the hill when he felt the saddle slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken. As he dismounted, the saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup. The mare shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but Mary gave a vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and the prowling bear;— Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: Rough culture,—but such trees large fruit may bear, If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... noble realm through which she moved as she went forward under the great trees that rose straight and tall from a black soil, making pillared aisles away from her on every side. The fern was thick under foot—it would brush her saddle-girth, come midsummer. Down the long vistas under the greening trees, where the moist air hung thick, her bemused eyes caught the occasional roseflash of azalea through the pearly mist, her nostril was greeted by their wandering, intensely sweet perfume, with ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible to obtain change for a piece of gold anywhere in the interior), and no guard being kept on the tents, I never lost a zwanziger, or any other article than a girth by which the blanket was fastened on my horse when grazing at night; and, as the blanket came back, even that did not ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... of the Myne[r] the debtor shall not have right to implead the Miner neither noe right to grieve him for the Trespasse done But at all tymes the Myner have [hath] right to take other distresse till gree be made Also for the Myne of an horse as is aforesayd the Miner Horse girth and halter.shall take the foregirth for three half-pence and for one penny the halter Also the Myner hath such franchises to enquire the Myne {74c} in every soyle of the Kings of which it may be named {75a} and also of all other Folke To dige in ye king's ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... ought to see all these things, and if you would come here I would take you in heart and house, and you should have a little room in our cottage. The history of the cottage is this: I found a hut built close to a great live-oak twenty-five feet in girth, and with overarching boughs eighty feet up in the air, spreading like a firmament, and all swaying with mossy festoons. We began to live here, and gradually we improved the hut by lath, plaster, and paper. Then we threw out a wide veranda ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... had been marked by the British and the Indians. The last runner from Ft. Pitt had informed him that the description of Miller tallied with that of one of the ten men who had deserted from Ft. Pitt in 1778 with the tories Girth, McKee, and Elliott. Col. Zane was now satisfied that Miller was an agent of Girty and therefore of the British. So since all the weaknesses of the Fort, the number of the garrison, and the favorable conditions for a siege were known to Girty, there ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... piled up, and people said they had a million, his brown beard grizzled a little, and his brow crept up and up and his girth stretched out to forty-four. But his hands did not whiten or soften, and though he was "Honest John," and every quarter-section of land that he bought doubled in value by some magic that he only seemed ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... seconds later, the door opened, and Moishe BenChaim came in. He was not a big man, but he was broad of shoulder and broad of girth, built like a wrestler. He had a heavy, graying beard, and wore it with a patriarchal air. He was breathing rather heavily as he came through the door, and he stopped suddenly to pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He began coughing—harsh, racking, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to know. Through the day there was no chance of getting the fellow apart. But Buck kept his eyes and ears open, and at supper-time Bud's casual remark to Lynch that he "s'posed he'd have to fix that busted saddle-girth before he hit the hay" did ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... who had stopped to tighten his saddle-girth, came Dick Gordon's rather uncertain tenor in ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... tree is often found 300 ft. high and from 8 to 10ft. in diameter. The wood is tough and strong and highly valued for ships' spars as well as for building purposes. Red or giant cedar, which rivals the Douglas fir in girth, is plentiful, and is used for shingles as well as for interior work. The western white spruce is also much employed for various purposes. There are about eighty sawmills, large and small, in the province. The amount ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... husband dead to shame. Mean-hearted coward, false and vile, Whose cruel soul delights in guile, Could Dasaratha, noblest king, Beget so mean and base a thing? Alas! an elephant, in form Of Rama, in a maddening storm Of passion casting to the ground The girth of law(592) that clipped him round, Too wildly passionate to feel The prick of duty's guiding steel,(593) Has charged me unawares, and dead I fall beneath his murderous tread. How, stained with this my base defeat, How wilt thou dare, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... on; there was a brief struggle, but he was no match in size or strength for his opponent, who was thick-set and of considerable girth. He fell backwards, overborne by the man's weight. His head struck on the road; dazed by the blow he loosened his clutch, and lay for a moment in semi-consciousness while the man ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... them. After all, there were so few people who were really happy, why should she complain because her love could not come to rice and old shoes, instead of being a beautiful secret thing, the more perfect, perhaps, because Commonplace, that ogre whose girth increases from year to year, and who sits remorseless in the dwellings of the united, could not breathe ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... which the Fire King laughed As he his bowl of frantic pleasure quaffed, Whilst the doomed structure tottered in the girth Of his wild, bellowing, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... disappeared in the gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and moribund among the cushions. He had been borne ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... college walls and at the junction of two avenues of elms, between the trunks of which shone the acres of a noble meadow, level and green. The avenues ran at a right angle, east and south; the one old, with trees of magnificent girth, the other new and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pretty well open, so that we had no difficulty in holding on our course. To the westward we saw some icebergs of incredible size, and in the afternoon passed very near one whose summit could not have been less than four hundred fathoms from the surface of the ocean. Its girth was probably, at the base, three-quarters of a league, and several streams of water were running from crevices in its sides. We remained in sight of this island two days, and then only lost it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thee, Danger, slaughterous fire— Thou shalt on a charger gallop, Curbing at desire; And a saddle girth all silken Sadly I will sew, Slumber now my wide-eyed ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... cunning to let the fact appear. My reward began then, and most voluptuously I savoured it. I had Mistress Nelly on her biscuit-coloured knees to me before I finally reached the cabin floor on my hands, my toes still clinging to the port-hole. Poor Fred could not possibly equal this feat. His girth would ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and let the regiment form up and be put through its evolutions." Whereupon, at a word from the induna, a man dismounted, and, uncoiling his hobble rope, slipped the noose round one of the ankles of the corpse, attached the other end to his horse's girth, and, mounting, galloped off toward the edge of the plateau, dragging the body after him until it was removed to a sufficient distance to be quite out of the way of the manoeuvring troops, when it was abandoned to become a prey to the ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... weeks, nay, months together. Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool, without the aid of girth or saddle. The llamas move in troops of five hundred or even a thousand, and thus, though each individual carries but little, the aggregate is considerable. The whole caravan travels on at its regular pace, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... midst of the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at the same time something very significant. But nothing could ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... crept back close to the body of Slade. She waved Lennon to hurry. He ran back for his rifle and the food. Elsie already had packed two pairs of saddlebags with flour, bacon, and dried meat, and was unlashing the broad stiff hair girth from another saddle. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... I fell asleep—I dreamt, and I woke upon these two questions. In the whole world there was no answer to them, except where one dark little man stood, sat, walked, lectured, under the head-piece of a bandit bonnet-grec, and within the girth of a sorry paletot, much be-inked, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... she was led out, and the saddle thrown deftly across her back, she was passive. Was it possible that some drop of her old Spanish blood responded to its clinging embrace? She did not either look at it nor smell it. But when Enriquez began to tighten the "cinch" or girth, a more singular thing occurred. Chu Chu visibly distended her slender barrel to twice its dimensions; the more he pulled the more she swelled, until I was actually ashamed of her. Not so Enriquez. He smiled at us, and ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... fatigued when the found it. Here a landing was effected, and Allan Cunningham took occasion to measure one of the gigantic ant-hills of that coast. He found it to be eight feet in height and twenty-six in girth, which after all is not so large as some to be seen in that region. All examinations of the country tending to give King and his companion a very poor opinion of the place; they left the inlet in which they had found shelter, and the large bay in which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... when, though according to the callendar it should be cold, there is a warmth in the sunshine that seems borrowed from Spring. Tired out by his tramp, young Edgar at length sat down upon a bench in the Common, under an elm, great of girth and wide-spreading. The sunshine fell pleasantly upon him, through the bare branches. Roundabout were other splendid, but now bare elms and he sat gazing upward into their sturdy brown branches and dreamily picturing ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... swift, like a boy's; but because of the ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability of his attention acquired the character of a dark and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old tree presenting no symptoms of decay; and even the opulent, lustrous ripple of white hairs upon his chest seemed an attribute of unquenchable ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... serves with such devotion will betray her if, when DORA is in her grave—consummation devoutly to be wished—her work on allotment gardens is not continued. There is always a ring of land round a town, like a halo round the moon. As the town's girth increases, so should that halo; and even in time of peace, larger and larger, not less and less, should grow the number of town dwellers raising vegetables, fruit and flowers, resting their nerves and expanding lungs and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... slouched over and inerect, was troubled with catarrh, and knew too well what it was to have the stomach and bowels work imperfectly. Most people can not inflate the chest so as to increase its girth over two inches. By steady practice at his little pipe, he in about a year got so that he could inflate five whole inches. But now his chest is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Massoudy cut down the girth of the world even more than Ptolemy. The latter had left an ocean to the west of Africa: the former made the Canaries or Fortunate Islands, the limit of the known Western world, abut upon India, the limit of ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... filed slowly from The Sorrels' big corral and headed straight for the Platte. Swift and unfordable in front of Frayne in the earlier summer, the river now went murmuring sleepily over its stony bed, and Ray led boldly down the bank and plunged girth deep into the foaming waters. Five minutes more and every man had lined up safely on the northward bank. In low tone the order was given, starting as Ray ever did, in solid column of fours. In dead ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... summer's day, and even in midwinter it was enchanting. The road is cut through a forest of high eucalyptus-trees, varying from 100 to 450 feet in height, and from twenty to fifty, and even seventy, feet in girth. At intervals roaring torrents rush down gullies overgrown with tree-ferns, and full of dicksonia-antarcticas and alsophilas. To-day they looked very curious; for, instead of growing as usual, with their fronds erect or nearly ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... unbuttoned or vulgarly upstairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not altogether unlike that demanded by a home-exerciser to reduce the abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they never have been advised to shine their own shoes—twenty-five times in the morning and twenty-five times just before going ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... no dissentient voices. Martin warned us that it would take some time. We should have to shape out all the ribs, and search for birch trees of sufficient girth to afford large sheets of bark. The chief object for consideration was, that it would take us almost as long to build a canoe as to travel to Fort Ross, but then we should be saved the fatigue and dangers of the journey, and we should ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... through the ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... looked down on his monster bracelet. "That," he said, "does not altogether do me credit, for it shows the difference in girth between me and Edmund Ironside. When we set the peace between us, we exchanged ornaments and weapons. Think if we had followed the custom in every respect and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... altogether satisfactory ceiling, with its great cross beams and pendant bosses. An admiring contemporary account tells us that the largest of these bosses, though looking so small from below, are 3 feet 3 inches in diameter, while the beam mouldings are 5 feet 3 inches in girth, and the wall mouldings 5 feet 7 1/2 inches. The ceiling is coloured, but for neither colouring nor ornament does it ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... Riding girth high through the lovely natural grass, from which the ripe seed scattered as they passed, or camping at night surrounded by it, the horses and camels improved in condition each day, and were never ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... and took his sword, and went up to the slain man's body and smote the head from off it. Then he went to the two horses of Sir Thomas and of me, and took from them such gear of girths and thongs as he would, and therewith he dight me as ye saw, doing a girth about my middle and making me fast to a line wherewith to hold me in tow. And then he did that other thing which sickens my very soul to tell of, to wit, that he took the slain man's head and tied a lace thereto, and hung it about my neck; and as he did so, he ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... when once we have grasped the design of the architect, we shall usually find that he has conformed in some respects to unmeaning traditions inherited from an earlier period, and further that his work incorporates the remnants of an older, simpler structure. Here are pillars of massive girth altogether disproportionate to the delicate arches which they carry; there an old tower has been buttressed to make it capable of supporting a new spire. For all the builder's cunning, we can yet distinguish between the new and the renovated. So it is with the papal ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis |
