"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the grounds of Greenfield Lodge, two cedar trees of the immense height of 150 feet; the girth of one is 11 ft. 7 in. and its branches extend 50 feet; the girth of the other is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... 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
... Trade with a hand of authority. He was a man of lands and of shops. His dark face, framed in darker hair and beard, was massive and square. Behind the luxurious growth of hair the rich blood glowed on the clear skin. His chest had breadth, his limbs were great, showing girth at the hips and power at the calves. His eyes were large and dark, smouldering in soft velvety tones. The nose was long, the nostrils expressive of a certain animalism, the mouth looked eloquent. His voice was low, of an agreeable even quality, floating over the boxes ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... as best he could to the bull's great girth while Judith rubbed the brute's forehead, talking to him softly. Sioux stood with head lowered, his red nostrils dilating and contracting rapidly. But he did not move. When Peter nodded, Judith jerked the blindfold free and leaped into the saddle. Sioux brought his ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... examine the saddle-girth. He looked furtively over the mare's shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... having eaten the active principle of the sun, it has assumed the form of a three-footed bird, which perches on the fu-sang tree [a tree said to grow at the place where the sun rises] in the middle of the Eastern Sea. This tree is several thousands of feet in height and of gigantic girth. The bird keeps near the source of the dawn, and when it sees the sun taking his morning bath gives vent to a cry that shakes the heavens and wakes up all humanity. That is why I ordered Ling Chen-tzu to put it in a cage on T'ao-hua Shan, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... places, extended nearly to the beach, and was composed chiefly of 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, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... when the trouble came up between Jake and Palmer, the entire party were quartered at a modest little tavern kept by a Pennsylvania Dutchman of large girth and little patience. Palmer had failed to induce him or his good wife, who did all the cooking, to buy pictures or books. "Ve vant no more picturs und ve don't reat der pooks," was the argument with which the old fellow ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Fanny contemplating a brood of hens, which were picking up corn before her. "Take Fanny for a coadjutor; she is eighteen, and a bright girl." She sprang to the chaise, and caught the reins, which he threw into her hands, unbuckled the girth, and, before I was out of sight, was ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... 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 ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spacing produced seedlings of larger girth and shorter height—a desirable characteristic in black walnut budding stocks. The most desirable spacing appeared to be 6 x 7 inches. Even though the number of seedlings resulting from this spacing was approximately half the number produced at 4 x 4 inches spacing, more usable seedlings ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... command of his men to an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. Thus the good man believed he would avoid the horned trappings of cuckoldom, and would still be able to girth, bridle, and curb the factious innocence of his wife, which struggled like a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... elephant has 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... Adam." "Dost thou fear then that he will kill thee?" asked the lion-whelp. "Not so, O son of the Sultan," replied the ass; "but I fear lest he put a cheat on me; for he hath a thing called the pad, that he sets on my back, and a thing called the girth, that he binds about my belly, and a thing called the crupper, that he puts under my tail, and a thing called the bit, that he places in my mouth; and he fashions me a goad and goads me with it and makes me run more than my strength. If I stumble, he curses me, and if I bray, he reviles me; and when ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... stamping, To the clouds his head he lifted, To his knees his beard was flowing, To his spurs his locks descended. Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Prince, living in a tent, on the pole of which hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible to obtain change for a piece of gold anywhere in the interior), and no guard being kept on the tents, I never lost a zwanziger, or any other article than a girth by which the blanket was fastened on my horse when grazing at night; and, as the blanket came back, even that did not ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... back in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... the girth of my saddle. My spirit was taking swift counsel with itself at the brink of the precipice. It was then that I seemed to see the angry face of old Kate—the Silent Woman—at my elbow, and it counseled me to speak out. Again her spirit ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... they had come upon the 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 seven persons could have found protection within it. Its name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... rear their vigorous race: A race predestined, in these choice abodes, To teach mankind to tame their fluvial floods, Retain from ocean, as their work requires, These great auxiliars, raised by solar fires, Force them to form ten thousand roads, and girth With liquid belts each verdant mound of earth, To aid the colon's as the carrier's toil, To drive the coulter, and to fat the soil, Learn all mechanic arts, and oft regain Their native hills in vapor and ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... 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 approach the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Oswald said. "It seems unnatural. Do you not think, Sir William, that it would be well if all were to take the picket ropes from their horses' necks, and knot them two and two, fastening one end to a waggon and the other to a horse's girth. In that way fifty men-at-arms might be roped on to the waggons, and would aid those drawing ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... of wings or other lifting devices. Only a fan-shaped fin projected from the stern like the tail of a fish. The cockpit, if such it could be called, was tiny, just ample enough to accommodate the Mercutian's girth. The sunlight dazzled back from a bewildering jumble of tiny lenses inset in the instrument board. Arranged along the hull, on either side, were larger disks of the ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... compelled me one day to ride in to Salisbury. I had ordered some goods for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land—a portentous matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm, glancing about him on every side as he did so, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... great hoss," muttered Old Mat. "I don't know as ever I see his equal for power. Cannibal stood as high, but he hadn't the girth on him. And Cannibal was a man-eatin' mule, he was. Savage you soon as look at you. I never went into his loose-box without a pitchfork. I seen him pull his jockey off by the toe of his boot afore now. But him!—he's ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... had an accident," said she, breathing quickly. "My girth is broke and I have lost the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... 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 said: This jewel ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... 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 ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... He then marched from the front door with a majestic mien and inspected the horse, the rider, and accoutrements. He walked slowly round, examining with eagle eye the saddle, the bridle, the bits, the girth, the sword, pistols, spurs, and buckles. If he could find no fault with anything, he gave in brief the word of command, "Patrol the forest road," or any other road on which an enemy might be likely to appear. I never saw the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... inducted into the native method of shark-catching. In frail canoes, made of short pieces of wood, sewn together with coco-nut fibre, the Ocean Islanders will venture out with rude but ingeniously contrived wooden hooks, and capture sharks of a girth (not length) that no untrained European would dare to attempt to kill from a well-appointed boat, with ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... of feet or inches, which he will always be able to recollect, and refer to as a unit of measurement. The distance between the eyes is instantly determined, and, I believe, never varies, while measurements of stature, and certainly those of girth of limb, become very different when a man is exhausted by long travel and bad diet. It is therefore particularly useful for measuring small objects. To find it, hold a stick at arm's-length, at right angles ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or pointed talon to enable it to take secure hold on the ice, never requires to be shod; and the load laid upon its back rests securely in its bed of wool, without the aid of girth or saddle. The llamas move in troops of five hundred or even a thousand, and thus, though each individual carries but little, the aggregate is considerable. The whole caravan travels on at its regular pace, passing the night in the open air without suffering from the coldest temperature, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... the musician to cultivate a high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of nourishment, combined with stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when we have closed the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... and, as with the carabao, an estimate of its value is shown by representing the size of the girth of the animal by clasping the hands around one's leg. For instance, a small pig is represented by the size of the speaker's ankle, as he clasps both hands around it; a larger one is the size of his calf; a still larger ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... sudden death by the bullet, but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away—their hair and beard entirely; the rain had come too late to save their nails. Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... "Buckle my girth as tight as you can, and when you have mounted hold fast to my mane and press your feet close to my neck, that you may not hinder me." The prince mounted, and in a moment they were close ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... looking at his size and girth. "It's a mighty tight squeeze under the slab, and that tunnel would beat you. Unless you've been brought up to that kind of thing, you couldn't stand it. It would give you nightmares for the rest ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... black hair parted in the centre of his sleek head, his big weary eyes, his long, yellow walrus moustache, his double chin, his breadth and girth, his enormous hairy hands, now laid upon the table, might stand for force, brutal, remorseless, untiring. He stood for cunning too—the cunning of the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... lightly now and then on his neck—that thrill of generous sympathy which passes between horse and rider. He lost ground steadily and more and more rapidly. Now the outstretched black head was at his tail, now at his flank, now at his girth, now at his shoulder, now they raced nose and nose. Whistling Dan shifted in the saddle. His left foot took the opposite stirrup. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... said Berry. "It's fatal to brood over your fortune." He sat back in his chair and let the smoke make its own way out of his mouth. "There was once a large king. It wasn't his fault. The girth went with the crown. All the Koppabottemburgs were enormous. Besides, it went very well with his subjects. Looking upon him, they felt they were getting their money's worth. A man of simple tastes, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Anita? Mrs. Fortescue, in a beautiful ball gown, looked quite as handsome as her daughter. The regimental tailor had been busy all day letting out Colonel Fortescue's full dress uniform and the Colonel fondly hoped that a couple of inches he had gained in girth were concealed by the tailor's art. But Mrs. Fortescue's quick ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... stabbing the ground, as it seemed, savagely, finally stooping down and picking up the still writhing halves of a snake that had been cut clean in two by a blow of his spear. It was not at all a formidable-looking creature, being not more than eighteen inches long and perhaps three inches girth about the thickest part of its body. But it was an ugly, repulsive- looking brute, its head being heart-shaped, and its body almost the same thickness for the greater part of its length, terminating in a short, blunt tail. Its ground colour was a dirty grey, upon which occurred large, irregular ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the debris, like a mole coming to the surface of the earth to feel the genial sunshine on his dim eyeballs. I found myself standing (oddly enough, on all fours) in an immense pit created by the overthrow of a gigantic dead tree with a girth of about thirty or forty feet. The tree itself had rolled down to the bottom of the ravine; but the pit in which it had left the huge stumps of severed roots was, I found, situated in a gentle slope at the top of the bank! How, then, I could have fallen seemingly so ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... and the Doctor did not seem able to control him. The accident probably happened half an hour later, as he was picked up about three miles from here, and from appearances must have been dragged, with his foot in the stirrup, fully half a mile before the girth broke and freed the saddle and stirrup together. The mustang, with nothing on but his broken bridle, was found grazing at the rancho as early as four o'clock, an hour before the body of his master was discovered by the men sent from the ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... neglect in cutting back branches, and rooting up masses of strangling creeper, would entirely obliterate the path. In six months a tree, supposed to be cut down beyond possibility of resurrection, lately shot up to the height of seventeen feet, with a girth of several inches in diameter, so tenacious is the exuberant life of this irrepressible vegetation, eternally renewing itself in immortal strength and primeval freshness. From the edge of the sombre jungle the azure bay, set in the dark frame of forest and gilded with sunset light, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... are very dexterous in using the laqui, which they constantly carry with them on their excursions. It consists of a strap of leather several fathoms in length, twisted like a cord, one end of which is fastened to the girth under the horses belly, and the other end terminates in a strong noose, which they throw over any animal they wish to catch with so much dexterity as hardly ever to miss their aim[106]. It is used likewise on foot, in which case one end is fixed to the girdle. The peasants ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... everything as accurately as he could. While he was speaking, the doctor, rising to his feet, gathered up the bridle-reins, and hastily bending down, was tightening the girth. When the last item of information had been gathered, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... that was blowing. A few miles to the southwest there was a group of odd looking trees stretching up over the horizon to a considerable height. They were closer than the outer ring, which kept a uniform girth around the prairie, but somehow they looked very peculiar and foreboding, and I got one of those sobering feelings which I like to call predestined deja vu. What I mean is that I got a sense of deja vu, but instead of ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... 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 ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... with straggling outhouses—represent to his mind a town, and he will resent a less appreciative rating of them. This may appear unreasonable: it is, but it is none the less true; and in a great measure the variance of focus between the English and the Colonial mind has been responsible for the girth-galling which at the beginning of the war marked our efforts in harness with our colonial confreres. We have heard all the defects of the British officer, because the Colonial thinks quickly and lightly, and wastes no time in giving expression to his thoughts; we have not heard ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... soil was luxuriant with fertility. As a pioneer himself said: "All they had to do was to tickle it with a hoe, and it laughed into a harvest." There was the proof of its strength in the grass and the trees. Never before had the travelers seen oaks and beeches of such girth or elms and hickories of such height. The grass was high and thick and the canebrake was so dense that passage through it seemed impossible. Down the center of the valley, which was but one of many, separated from each other ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... smell of thyme and lavender and a thousand other scents, an air fraught with memories of sunny days and joyous youth, insomuch that I clenched my hands and hasted from the place. Past sombre trees, mighty of girth and branch, I hurried; past still pools, full of a moony radiance, where lilies floated; past marble fauns and dryads that peeped ghost-like from leafy solitudes; past sundial and carven bench, by clipped yew-hedges and winding walks until, screened in shadow, I paused to look ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the 1st of December, in a bay, which I called the Bay of Frederic Henry. I heard, or at least fancied I heard, the sound of people upon the shore; but I saw nobody. All I met with worth observing was two trees, which were two fathoms or two fathoms and a half in girth, and sixty or sixty-five feet high from the root to the branches: they had cut with a flint a kind of steps in the bark, in order to climb up to the birds' nests: these steps were the distance of five ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... looked up from a task over a saddle girth and inquired pleasantly if Jean ever slept of nights. Guy Isbel laughed and there was warm regard in the gaze he bent ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... as he entered the court-yard of his house, he muttered uneasily,—"And if Lysander is right, and Sparta is too small for Pausanias, do not we bring back a giant who will widen it to his own girth, and rase the old foundations to make room for ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... window, 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 laughing, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the ocean where he usually fed. It has by some authors truly been called the whale of the saurian race, for it is as big and quick in its motions as our king of the seas. This one measures not less than a hundred feet in length, and I can form some idea of his girth when I see him lift his prodigious tail out of the waters. His jaw is of awful size and strength, and according to the best-informed naturalists, it does not contain less than a hundred ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... large, florid man, huge of girth, with brown skin, heavy jowls, puffed eyes, and bald head. As he read, his eyes snapped, and at times he paused and looked up curiously at the priest. Then, without comment, he folded the letters and put them into a pocket ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... though of almost too mettlesome an eye; in length of leg showing just the lack, in girth of waist just the excess, to imply a better dignity on horseback and to allow a proud tailor to prove how much art can overcome. Out on the road a liveried black coachman had halted an open carriage, in which this soldier had arrived with two ladies. Now these bowed delightedly from it to ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... gardens of great girth Fill'd with the strife of birds, With water-springs, and beasts that ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... second division of Plate XIX* indicate the same order, as shown by the increasing girth as ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... from Prague, or the Amtmann's nephew from a Bavarian Dorf, may manage to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap three or four holes. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... fearful valley that, with its narrow girth and its towering walls that seemed to topple over. On the farther side from us the great trees that clothed the slope of the mountain over it grew down to the very edge of the rock, so that their spreading branches hung far over the chasm. And, so far as we could understand, the same condition ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... front seat," said he. "Nephew, you must keep your weight as far forward as possible. Can you do anything on a yard of tin? Well, if you can't, we'll leave the trumpet. Buckle that girth up, Thomas. Have you greased the hubs, as I told you? Well, jump up, nephew, and we'll ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... resolved at once to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... was punctured, her bearings all red hot; She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear in a knot; And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... magnificently embroidered over their whole surface.' [PLATE XCIII., Fig. 2.] These cloths encircled the neck, which they closely fitted, and, falling on either side of the body, were then kept in place by means of a broad strap round the rump and a girth under the belly. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... evidently her intention to pass rapidly. As she gave her horse the rein and he leaped forward, she clutched his mane, and by a word brought him to a standstill. Burt saw the trouble at once, for the girth of her saddle had broken, and hung loosely down. Only by prompt action and good horsemanship had she kept her seat. Now she was quite helpless, for an attempt to dismount would cause the heavy saddle to turn, with unknown and awkward results. She had recognized Burt, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... open space of water, and here there suddenly shot into view above the surface a gigantic fish, the length of which is variously estimated by those who saw it as from four hundred to eight hundred feet, with a girth of between one and two hundred feet. The creature, apparently startled at finding itself in the midst of so many vessels, immediately dived below the surface again, passing directly beneath the keel of the barque Olivia, of London, from Bangkok, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sorrows of a poor "Old Man," Whose pouch is emptied of its golden store; Whose girth seems dwindling to its shortest span, Who needs relief, and needs ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... the importance of what the youngster was likely to know. Through the day there was no chance of getting the fellow apart. But Buck kept his eyes and ears open, and at supper-time Bud's casual remark to Lynch that he "s'posed he'd have to fix that busted saddle-girth before he hit the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... at its original height above the ground, because a tree increases its height and girth only by building on top of the previous growth. There is much of interest that I could tell you along this line, but I will merely describe the various blazes and their meanings, leaving the rest until some ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the slap-jacks—in 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 ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... flare Of burning Death 'mid holiness of Birth. What is our godliness and wisdom worth Against your strength embattled unaware? You are the Master, ever, everywhere, Deadly and gentle o'er the wide World's girth. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... have only just as much of this wholesome evil as shall carry me to a hundred. The next point of consequence is, that the Duke of Cumberland has had a stroke of the palsy— As his courage is at least equal to mine, he makes nothing of it; but being above an inch more in the girth than I am, he is not Yet arrived at skipping about the house. In truth, his case is melancholy: the humours that have fallen upon the wound in his leg have kept him lately from all exercise-. as he used much, and is so corpulent, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... both the living and the non-living worlds tend to correct themselves. When Nature cannot make both ends meet, she diminishes her girth. If there is not food enough for her creatures, she lessens the number of mouths to be fed. A surplus of food, on the other hand, tends to multiply ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... though fed promiscuous, with like ease Their leaders them on every side reduced To martial order glorious;[19] among whom Stood Agamemnon "with an eye like Jove's, To threaten or command," like Mars in girth, 575 And with the port of Neptune. As the bull Conspicuous among all the herd appears, For he surpasses all, such Jove ordain'd That day the son of Atreus, in the midst Of Heroes, eminent above them all. 580 Tell me, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... It is time for this practice of around-the-world humbug and cheatery to stop right now. If it takes our fastest modern globe-trotters a whole year to go around the world by a route equal to or approximating the equatorial girth, then let it take them a year; for the sake of our pride and all that is good and sincere let us do ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... mouse-coloured mule that emerged at length to view and it looked even smaller than it was because the man who straddled it dwarfed it with his own ponderous stature and a girth which was almost an anomaly in a country of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... and powerful. His long neck fitted into well-placed shoulders. He had great depth of girth, immense length from shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns. There was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of brute power, such as may have belonged to ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... was very silent. Once, when he stopped to tighten her saddle-girth for her, she bent his head back, and smiled down into his eyes. He only answered her by a look, but ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... must be to the books themselves. Exclusive of short story, sketch and tale, they include a dozen novels of generous girth—for Meredith is old-fashioned in his demand for elbow-room. They are preeminently novels of character and more than any novelist of the day the view of the world embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does not ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... middle of the morning, Ellen, to her great surprise, saw Sharp brought before the door, with the side-saddle on, and Mr. John carefully looking to the girth, and ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... experience! Life —It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I Go wandering about there, though the gaps We went in and came out by were opposed As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same, By nightfall we should probably have chanced On much the same main points of interest— Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk, Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow, And so forth,—never mind what time betwixt. So in our lives; allow I entered mine Another way than you: 't is possible I ended just by knocking head against ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... laboriously up the other side, over hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes that snatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no more than reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree as wide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and then laughed. After that she ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... figure for a moment, and bending again over Archie's corpse, stood gazing at the dead face, his hands folded across his girth—as one does when watching a body being slowly lowered ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... third-sent ships, from Plymouth Sound, With Acland, Anstruther, impound Souls to six thousand strong. While those, the fourth fleet, that we see Far back, are lined with cavalry, And guns of girth, wheeled heavily To ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... humorous parts, but he had a sweet voice for singing of ditties, and could fetch a tear as readily as a laugh, and he was also exceeding nimble at a dance, which was the strangest thing in the world, considering his great girth. Wife he had none, but Moll Dawson was his daughter, who was a most sprightly, merry little wench, but no miracle for beauty, being neither child nor woman at this time; surprisingly thin, as if her frame had grown ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... 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
... widened and spread out to meet it. This sloping ground was studded with magnificent live oaks; each holding its place in independent majesty, making no interference with the growth of the rest. Some of these trees had a girth that half a dozen men with their arms outstretched in a circle could not span; they were green in spite of the winter; branching low, and spreading into stately, beautiful heads of verdure, while grey wreaths of moss hung drooping from some of them. The house was seen not very distinctly among ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rose, and flames burned in the glass of every window-pane. Up came the tip of the sun's rim, grew to a fiery quarter, to a half; till, bounding free from the horizon, it began to mount and to lose its girth in the immensity ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... married off to some nobody of Portugal, or France, or Austria, for state reasons, and had entered on the usual loveless life of royalty. Or she may have beguiled her maidenly solitude by drinking much wine of Oporto, Madeira, and Xeres with her dinner, thereby acquiring that amplitude of girth, that ruddiness of countenance, and that polish of nose, which add so little to romance. At all events, we hear nothing more of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... seven, I set off after the lost sheep. I could have no horse; all that could be mounted—we have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment—were due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush; missed it; came forth in a great oblong patch of taro ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far enough in at the turn, his saddle girth slipping a little as a result. He felt the saddle give a little beneath him, but did not realize what had happened until the pony had straightened away on the home stretch. The saddle then slipped still further under ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... Its girth six feet from the ground is thirty-two feet! I think it might be called Big Tom. It stood here, of course, a giant, when Columbus sailed from Spain, and perhaps some sentimental traveler will attach the name of Columbus ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... now he slacked his speed, A moment breathed his panting steed; Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band, And loosen'd in the sheath his brand. On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint, Where Barnhills hew'd his bed of flint; Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest, Where falcons hang their ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... mere pigmy among the giants of these wilds, whose stature is so wonderful that the eye never becomes tired of admiration. Often have I halted on my journey to ride around and admire the prodigious height and girth of these trees. Their beautiful proportions render them the more striking; there are no gnarled and knotty stems, such as we are accustomed to admire in the ancient oaks and beeches of England, but every trunk rises like a mast from the earth, perfectly free from branches ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load. O the oont, 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. ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... commencing to tell; number 3 gun was struck and part of the crew wiped out. Our telephonist 'phoned headquarters for the weightier women to get busy, telling them of our plight, and inside six minutes the ladies of larger girth, the 9.02 howitzers, started debating the question with Fritzie so vigorously that inside of thirty minutes not a single reply was to ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... unexpectedly given, and so suddenly executed by those of the party who had gradually closed behind and around Morton, that he was overpowered, disarmed, and a horse-girth passed round his arms, before he could offer any effectual resistance. When this was accomplished, a dead and stern silence took place. The fanatics ranged themselves around a large oaken table, placing Morton amongst them bound and helpless, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... huge of girth and height and wherever was room so spreading, so rich of grain, so full, I knew, of strange virtues! We found one that I thought was cinnamon, and broke twigs and bark and put in our great pouch for the Admiral. Only time might tell the wealth of this green ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... laughing hilarity, the painted cavaliers have been making approach, and are now halted, within less than half-a-mile from its walls. In such fashion as shows, they do not intend a long stay in their stopping place. Not a saddle is removed, or girth untightened; while the bridles, remaining on their horses' heads, are but used as halters to attach ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... long;" but Magnus made it at once even much longer, and said it was still too short. There were many spectators. They began the race, and Harald followed always the horse's pace; and when they came to the end of the race course, Magnus said, "Thou hadst hold of the saddle-girth, and the horse dragged thee along." Magnus had his swift runner, the Gautland horse. They began the race again, and Harald ran the whole race-course before the horse. When came to the end Harald asked, "Had I ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... stirred the foliage of the white birches to a sea of tremulous gold; and at the same moment a rider appeared in the marsh beyond, galloping through the blanched swale-grass, which rose high as the horse's girth. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... course and turned cold, or been cast back at 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 ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... two of the remaining lumbermen were forced out toward the middle of their fourth pie, leaving only Jimmy and a jolly man of large girth, who before the start had been picked by his companions as the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... away. I put a burr un'er his girth. Den when he plunged I cotched de bridle and let him loose. He, he, he! Hi, hi, hi!" and Caesar rolled in his saddle in convulsions of mirth, while the shore echoed ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... and by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie's self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... be best Well is a man's purse better at home Than open where folk go and come." "Come ye carles of the south country, Now shall we go our kin to see! For the lambs are bleating in the south, And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth, Girth and graithe and gather your gear! And ho for the other Whitewater!" Bright was the moon as bright might be, And Snbiorn rode to the north country. And Odd to Reykholt is gone forth, To see if his mares be ought of worth. But Hallbiorn into the bower is ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... improved somewhat upon the estimates of distance, and thus made his case still more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... of silk and wool, sometimes coral beads or copper plates, and of a morocco saddle, usually red, rising up in front to prevent falls, but without any cantle. The saddle is placed upon a piece of carpet or striped stuff, and is fastened by a broad girth which passes diagonally under the animal's tail like a crupper-strap; another girth fastens the saddle-cloth, and two short stirrups flap against the animal's sides. The harness is more or less rich according ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... might catch heedless collars and spoil sport, when, lying lazily almost on the surface where the backwater met the stream from the meadows, he beheld the great grandfather of all trout, a fellow two feet long and a foot in girth at the shoulders, just moving fin enough to keep him from turning over on to his back. He threw himself flat on the ground and crept away to the other side of the strip; the king fish had not seen him; and the next ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... weighs one hundred and ten pounds. His stomach is three times its former girth, and he has four wives. He has many other things—rifles and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an excellent collection of bushmen's heads. But more precious than the entire collection is another ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... mertensiana). The principal timber of commerce is the Douglas fir. The tree is often found 300 ft. high and from 8 to 10ft. in diameter. The wood is tough and strong and highly valued for ships' spars as well as for building purposes. Red or giant cedar, which rivals the Douglas fir in girth, is plentiful, and is used for shingles as well as for interior work. The western white spruce is also much employed for various purposes. There are about eighty sawmills, large and small, in the province. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Here my saddle girth broke and I was nearly thrown to the ground. I scrambled off, walked to the little inn where I inquired how far I had ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... among the curious flowering trees; other foreign palms, some of them very rare, beside them; and on the lawn opposite my bedroom window stood a young Palmiste, which had been planted barely eight years, and was now thirty-eight feet in height, and more than six feet in girth at the butt. Over the roofs of the outhouses rose scarlet Bois immortelles, and tall clumps of Bamboo reflecting blue light from their leaves even under a cloud; and beyond them and below them to the right, a park just like an English one carried stately ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured in ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by force of intellect alone. O slayer of hostile heroes, all the kings of the earth now living in subjection to thee, await thy commands, as they did before under Yudhishthira, awaiting his. O monarch, the goddess Earth with her boundless extent with girth of seas, with her mountains and forests, and towns and cities and mines, and decked with woodlands and hills is now thine! Adored by the Brahmanas and worshipped by the kings, thou blazest forth, O king, in consequence of thy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in a professional point of view. If he should be so unfortunate as to gain flesh, his attractions would diminish in an inverse ratio, so he starved himself almost to death, and was constantly seen anxiously examining the buckle of his belt, to make sure that he had not increased in girth since his last meal. Voluntary Tantalus, he scarcely allowed himself enough to keep life in his attenuated frame, and if he had but fasted as carefully from motives of piety he would have ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... enchantment awaited, when the next few steps brought me to a pool; a pool of crystal transparency, though dark for reflecting the black bowl of earth in which it lay. Without a ripple it nestled close against the roots of a golden-fig tree—an unfruitful parasitic giant of squat stature and tremendous girth; while, pendant from one gnarled out-reaching branch, and almost touching the mirror-like surface into which it looked, hung a solitary streamer of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... cold looks, cold words and colder consolations: but I escaped; they tried to bind me with fetters that they thought silken, yet which weighed on me like iron, although I broke them more easily than a girth formed of a single ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Earth. Old England proudly stands. Like arteries her Colonies Reach out from sea to sea. She clasps all races in her girth; Her gaze the world commands; And far and wide where strong ships ride, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness, power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, you ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... longer any one to hide behind, the fat little priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet when this grip was gained he could get no farther on his ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... 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 Centaur out of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Ah 'ranges 'at steed." The Wildcat loosened the saddle girth. Unseen by Honey Tone, he removed a small horseshoe from between the saddle blanket and the mule's epidermis. "Sho' brings de luck. Some boy got de luck hunch figgered wrong. Git aboa'd, Honey Tone.—Blanket got ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... four inches in his office slippers, and measured fifty-two inches in girth of chest. He habitually smoked the strongest shag tobacco, and imbibed cold rum and water at short intervals from morning to night; but these excesses had neither impaired his complexion, which was ruddy, jovial and almost ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of their bows was made of a single piece of fir, four feet eight inches in length, flat on the inner side and rounded on the outer, being five inches in girth about the middle, where, however, it is strengthened on the concave side, when strung, by a piece of bone ten inches long, firmly secured by tree-nails of the same material. At each end of the bow is a knob of bone, or sometimes of wood covered with leather, with a deep notch ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... uncertain light of the early morning, that he had undergone the same torments which they had applied to me. His face was pinched and thin with suffering, and his great frame seemed to have been crushed and bruised until it had shrunk in height and girth. Yet he bore himself with composure and bravery, and I felt at once that, however the rest of us behaved, he at least would not disgrace the name ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... hit was the sperits, but I knowed when they told me that she was a thinkin' o' that ole tree thar. But I never let on. I reckon that's ONE reason made me come here that day." They were close to the big tree now and Hale dismounted to fix his girth ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... coarse cloth hanging from his neck to his ankles. Of water and cleanliness he knew naught, and his beard and hair grew as the weeds grow in the fields. Peter, too, was in Jerusalem, and come into a great girth since the toil of his craft, as a fisher, had been abandoned, as it had to be, for, as ye know, it is dry desert about Jerusalem, without lakes or streams. But he lived there better than he had ever lived before, by talking ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... have little but praise for the performance itself, though I think Sir HERBERT TREE'S own lethargy was not wholly to be excused by the hampering rotundity of his girth; and that all this deliberate sword-play, where you wait till your enemy has got his right guard before you arrange a concussion between your weapon and his, fails to impose itself as an image of War. But it was no ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various |
