"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Euboea accustom their horses to carry sacks which they can at pleasure fill with air, and which in case of need they carry instead of the girth of the saddle above and at the side, and they are well covered with plates of cuir bouilli, in order that they may not be perforated by flights of arrows. Thus they have not on their minds their security in flight, when the victory is uncertain; a horse thus ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... 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
... hair should vanish from my brow, My girth, in time, to great dimensions grow— If youth's sweet-scented "Buds" should pass me by, ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... town can boast of, but it possesses a compensation for many monuments—I allude to its noble grove of venerable chestnuts. Well-planted boulevards of plane-trees lead to what appears a bit of primeval forest—an assemblage of ancient trees, their knotted, hoary trunks each in girth huge as a windmill, in striking contrast to the bright foliage and abundant fruit. Nothing can be more weird and fantastic than these broken, corrugated stems, battered by storm, worn out by time, apparently dropping ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... answered De Bracy, "nor did I think there had been within the four seas that girth Britain a champion that could bear down these five knights in one day's jousting. By my faith, I shall never forget the force with which he shocked De Vipont. The poor Hospitaller was hurled from his saddle like a stone from ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... to know each other's mind: What shall blood and iron loose that we cannot bind? We who swept each other's coast, sacked each other's home, Since the sword of Brennus clashed on the scales at Rome, Listen, court and close again, wheeling girth to girth, In the strained and bloodless guard ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... feet long, by sixty feet diameter at the point of her greatest girth," quietly replied ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... unwieldy conveyance, while the front horse or horses do most of the pulling. The harness is heavy and the rear horse is protected from sores that might be caused by rubbing, by a heavy and well padded saddle and a heavy girth. It was a common sight to see a woman driving one of these carts and guiding the wheel horse and handling the brakes, while boys were either driving or leading the leaders. These strange and cumbersome rigs, so different ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... confess to herself that she had never seen a grander specimen of the natural man than that presented by the chief of the People of the Mist, as he stood before her in her rock prison. The light of the candles fell full upon him, revealing his great girth and stature, beside which those of the finest men of her own race would have seemed insignificant. It shone upon the ivory torques, emblems of royalty, which were about his neck, wrists, and ankles, upon the glossy garments of black goat-skin that hung ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... the ceiling. In dwellings other than peasant huts, what is known as the "German stove" is in use. Each stove is built through the wall to heat two rooms, or a room and corridor. The yard porter brings up ten or twelve birch logs, of moderate girth, peels off a little bark to use as kindling, and in ten minutes there is a roaring fire. The door is left open, and the two draught covers from the flues—which resemble the covers of a range in shape and size—are taken out until the wood is reduced to glowing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Vrain spoke, we were about slipping off our saddles. Back went the girth buckles with a sneck, down came the stirrups, up went we, and off in the "twinkling ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... 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
... Planchet, gallop up to it whilst I tighten my horse's girth, and come back and tell me if there is a light in any of the ...
— 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 ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 be more likely ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... who is now at this moment, I warrant, smoking his pipe in the lodge at my park gates. I was eleven years old, a thin slip of a boy, small for my age, and giving no promise, to be sure, of my present stature and girth. The neighbors shook their heads sometimes as they looked at me, and wondered why Mr. John Ellery, if he must adopt a boy—a strange thing, they thought, for a bachelor to do—did not choose one of a sturdier make than poor ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... over it, in spite of the humorous account of the defeat of Lady Coryston which her father had given to the Chancellor, at their little dinner of the night before; and those deep laughs which had shaken the ample girth of Glenwilliam. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by all the gods that it was untrue. He had not got very stout, though undeniably he had got stouter. "How well you are looking!" would have been a very ladylike way of saying it, but his girth was best not referred to at all. Those who liked him had learned this long ago, and Grizel always shifted the buttons ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... thing divine. If St. Michael had stepped down from a church 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 ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... adjacent lines of fracture or folding. In the northwestern islands the volcanoes have long been extinct and are worn low by erosion. In the southeastern island. Hawaii, three volcanoes are still active and in process of building. Of these Mauna Loa, the monarch of volcanoes, with a girth of two hundred miles and a height of nearly fourteen thousand feet above sea level, is a lava dome the slope of whose sides does not average more than five degrees. On the summit is an elliptical basin ten miles in circumference and several hundred feet deep. Concentric ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... Near a spring where our sailors were in use to fill our water casks, not far from the banks of the river, there grew an exceedingly large tree, but its height was by no means proportional to its thickness; for, though it measured seventeen cubits in girth near the ground, its height, by estimation, was only twenty paces. This tree was hollow, but the branches were very large, avid extended to a great distance, forming a thick and ample shade. But there were many other trees much larger than this, by which the richness and fertility of the soil may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... was not mistaken in this comforting supposition. His appearance as a whole was still handsome and stately. Time had not marred the lines of his slender figure, no increase of flesh enlarged his girth, no weakness made his shoulders droop and rounded his back, and when dressed with exquisite taste, and carrying his head proudly erect, he walked with a light, elastic step through the streets or across the carpet of a drawing-room, ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... whose huge trunks, of such girth that two men together could not encompass them with outstretched arms, rose to a height of more than sixty feet before throwing out a horizontal branch, and these branches, almost trees in themselves, spread forty-eight feet on each side of the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I 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 fault ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... not likely to forget that long and arduous night. It was impossible to force the horse out of a walk, for the drifts were in some places to the creature's girth. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... ground. He sent his last shot at the man on the left and drew his second gun. Before he could fire again his mare gave a tremendous lunge forward and stumbled upon her knees, and with a gasp of horror Philip felt the saddle-girth slip as he ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... slender wisp of a girl she was, not more than ten years in appearance, though her age had been given to us as fourteen. The spindle ankles that she so airily flourished from the sparse concealment of a worn and shadowy calico skirt seemed scarce a fraction more in girth than the slim blue-veined wrists she tossed among the loose and ragged tresses of her yellow hair, as she danced around the room. She was, from the first, an object of curious and most refreshing interest to our family—to us children in particular—an interest, though years and ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... number of measurements made by Doctor Seaver showed that the boys who did not use tobacco gained in four years one twentieth more in weight and one fourth more in girth and height than the users of tobacco. These boys were between sixteen and twenty-two years of age. It is likely that tobacco will have a more ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... strong swift horses, and good shields, fresh and new. With such fury they strike each other that both their lances fly in splinters. Never was there seen such a blow. They rush together with shields, arms, and horses. But neither girth nor rein nor breast-strap could prevent the king from coming to earth. So he flew from his steed, carrying with him saddle and stirrup, and even the reins of his bridle in his hand. All those who witnessed the jousting were filled with amazement, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... sailors hoist him up with a strong tackle. It is a curious sight to behold a strongly-bound struggling ox, hanging by the tackle, and swinging between wind and water. My little Chilotean pony, which I intended to take to Peru, was dealt with more gently: he was got on board with a girth, purposely made for hoisting horses on ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... 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 ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... filled with spouting foam, opened up before him; there a trunk upon which he was about to step rolled over and sank. But he worked his way forward towards the center of the fir which keyed the growing mass. This log was many feet in girth. Pressed down level with the water, it was already bending like ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... by the most delicious odor of coffee, and when I rolled out of my blanket I found Jose standing over me with a cup of it in his hand, and Aiken buckling the straps of my saddle-girth. We took a plunge in the stream, and after a breakfast of coffee and cold tortillas climbed into the saddle and again ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... a tasselled bridle, and a pink-nosed white charger that stepped and pranced in the bazar so that Ram Dass himself had to get out of the way. It ought to be said that the horseman's clothes did not fit him very well, that his saddle girth was helped out by a bit of rope, and that his charger was rather tender on his near fore-foot; but these are not things that would be noticed in Rubbulgurh, being lost in the general splendour of ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... cast of his glance fell on you candid and 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 vitality ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the old man in his beard, and went along the stalls, looking for his own black charger. Having found him, he returned to saddle first the king's. But the maid had already the saddle upon him, and so girt that the colonel could thrust no finger tip between girth and skin. He left her to finish what she had so well begun, and went and made ready his own. He then chose for the princess a great red horse, twenty years old, which he knew to possess every equine virtue. This and his own he led to the palace, and the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... and other land animals which are not found in islands, but only on the mainland. Going inland one day with twenty men, we saw a serpent which was about twenty-four feet in length, and as large in girth as myself. We were very much afraid of it, and the sight of it caused us to return immediately to the sea. I oftentimes saw many ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... for blood outstripped 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 ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... dining-room and reached the cave without incident. Another fire was lighted, and whilst Iris attended to the kitchen the sailor felled several young trees. He wanted poles, and these were the right size and shape. He soon cleared a considerable space. The timber was soft and so small in girth that three cuts with the axe usually sufficed. He dragged from the beach the smallest tarpaulin he could find, and propped it against the rock in such manner that it effectually screened the mouth of the cave, though admitting light ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... a dense wood, deserted because all people feared the fierce beast it protected. On he went till after many days he sighted the lion at rest near the cave which was its den. Standing behind a tree of great girth, Hercules fitted and let fly an arrow. It struck and glanced, leaving the animal unharmed. Then he tried another shot, aiming at the heart. Again the arrow failed. But the lion was by this time roused, and his eyes shot ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... on the 22nd. The animal was a little over seventeen feet long and thirteen and a half feet in girth just at the back of the flippers, while the total weight was more than four tons. It took Hamilton about a day to complete the skinning, and, during the process, the huge brute had to be twice turned over, but such is the value of the nautical handy-billy that two men managed it rather ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Nature in 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 ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... 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 her ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that at thirty-six he had a weak voice, stood slouched over and inerect, was troubled with catarrh, and knew too well what it was to have the stomach and bowels work imperfectly. Most people can not inflate the chest so as to increase its girth over two inches. By steady practice at his little pipe, he in about a year got so that he could inflate five whole inches. But now his chest is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as any in a dozen. His weak voice has ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... portly society matron of Pittsburgh now—she whose name had been a synonym for pulchritude these thirty years; she who had had more cold creams, hats, cigars, corsets, horses, and lotions named for her than any woman in history! Her ample girth would have wrought sad havoc with that eighteen-inch waist now. Gone are the chaste curves of the slim white silk legs that used to kick so lithely from the swirl of lace and chiffon. Yet there it hangs, pertly pathetic, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... of unexpected comedy riveted the attention of the spectators the duke and his followers had slowly ridden to their side of the inclosure. Here hovered the squires, adjusting a stirrup, giving a last turn to a strap, or testing a bridle or girth. Behind stood the heralds, trumpeters and pursuivants in their bright garb of office. At his own solicitation had the duke been assigned an active part in the day's entertainment. The king, fearing for the safety of his guest ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... 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 old Chinaman ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... know her measurements, including her height, her weight, her waist measure, her chest girth and her chest expansion. Not only are these things convenient to know when ordering uniforms and buying clothes, but any physical director, gymnasium teacher or doctor can tell her if these are in good proportion for her age and general development and advise her as to how she may go about ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... away. Grace watched the saddling with keen interest, especially the saddling of the first pony selected for her, which squealed and pawed and danced as the cinch-girth was being tightened. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... replied Fran Christine laughing: "It's lucky it happened, because I was just going to take a bath!" But it pleased her to have her husband's companionship, and she did not approach her horse until he had examined the saddle-girth and the bridle with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 it ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... seemingly healthy and well-fed, were not fat. Those that we maintained on a presumably minimal diet remained slender and did not grow in length. Two individuals captured in 1957, however, were maintained on food in excess, and these grew in length and in girth; from an initial size of about 37 mm. snout-vent length (a subadult size) they attained about 45 mm. snout-vent length (an adult size) in a period of five months. The observations on foraging behavior were made primarily on these ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... 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
... infantry. Phocion now expelled Plutarch from Eretria, and possessed himself of the very important fort of Zaretra, situated where the island is pinched in, as it were, by the seas on each side, and its breadth most reduced to a narrow girth. He released all the Greeks whom he took out of fear of the public speakers at Athens, thinking they might very likely persuade the people in their anger into committing ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to decide intelligibly upon the issue raised. Then I fell into a long and abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to compare the distance driven by him during eight years' service on the box of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. We tackled the question most conscientiously, made all necessary allowance for Sundays and leap-years, and were just coming to a triumphant conclusion of our labours when we were ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... looked his horse over carefully. The pinto had many good points. He had ample girth of chest at the cinches, where lung capacity is best measured. He had rather short forelegs, which promised weight-carrying power and some endurance, and he had a fine pair of sloping shoulders. But his croup sloped down too much, and he had a short neck. Andy ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... on being measured with Frank's pocket rule proved to be a trifle over twenty feet long and of great girth. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... always remains 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... girth, staring out of the vision port for a sight of Craven's ship. They were nearing the position the little mechanical ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... 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 not ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... gave another; he drove his lance through Ferrando's shield, at his breast, so that nothing 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 run out of his mouth, and Pero Bermudez drew his sword and went ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... 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 ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... scene o'er which the Fire King laughed As he his bowl of frantic pleasure quaffed, Whilst the doomed structure tottered in the girth Of his wild, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... castle would look crushed by the redundancy of its upper protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... weight of a full-grown grizzly is over eight hundred pounds, and the girth around the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Englishman saw that 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... 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 at a loss for water. Sometimes they ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... they were now accustomed to it. They often had to go a considerable distance before they could find trees available for bridging the torrents, but, on the other hand, they sometimes came upon some of much smaller girth than those they had first tackled. The labour in getting these down was comparatively slight. Sometimes these stood a little way from the stream, but after they were felled two mules could easily drag them to the site of the bridge. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... 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
... classed. Among the most remarkable is the species of Eucalyptus, or gum tree, that forms some of the largest timber yet discovered, having been seen of the height of one hundred and fifty feet, and thirty to forty in girth near the root. The leafless acacias are also found here, as well as the Nepenthes distillatoria and the Cephalotus follicularis, two remarkable varieties of the monkey-cup or pitcher-plant; while many very beautiful ferns and flowering vines adorn the coasts and lave their graceful fringes in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... of inch-wide straps of skin, forming a neck or shoulder band, united on both sides by a strap to a girth, to one side of which the draught strap is fastened. Thanks to the excellent protection against the harness galling which the bushy coat of the dogs affords, little attention is needed for the harness, and I have never ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... 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 ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... which I abridge from the accurate Maitland, once marked the Girth, or Asylum, belonging to the Abbey of Holyrood, and which, being still an appendage to the royal palace, has retained the privilege of an asylum for civil debt. One would think the space sufficiently extensive for a man to stretch his limbs in, as, besides a reasonable proportion ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... four-horse team might be on one side, and quite concealed from any one standing upon the other. When I knew it, it was a ruin, the great trunk a mere shell, though the two giant forks,—themselves immense in girth—still had life in them. In one side of the trunk was an opening, about as large as an ordinary door; through this we used to enter, and I have danced a quadrille of eight ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... kinds, with straight, curved, or lyre-shaped horns; fierce-looking gnus, with theirs stumpy and hooked; ugly quaggas; and farthest off of all, but easily seen from their size, great, well-fed elands, ox-like in girth. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... and stout; 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
... to answer, I crept between the spreading wooden limbs, and, with the expenditure of no small effort, succeeded in wriggling into the narrow hole beyond. It was a cramped passage for a man of my girth, yet, by digging in firmly with both hands and feet, I managed to advance, until I finally emerged, within space of perhaps a yard, into a much larger excavation, resembling the tunnel ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... waving goldenrods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper, whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... draped with varied-hued mosses and lichens, were scattered about, where in ages past the melting glacier had left them. The trees that densely shaded the place seemed primeval in their age, loftiness, and shaggy girth. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,—of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,—cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... made his appearance in the middle of the circus. He was decked out for the occasion. He had a new bridle of polished leather with brass buckles and studs, and two white camelias in his ears. His mane was divided and curled, and each curl was tied with bows of colored ribbon. He had a girth of gold and silver round his body, and his tail was plaited with amaranth and blue velvet ribbons. He was, in fact, a little donkey to fall ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... be along some road. Prince would probably keep to the highways, and if the girth should break and the saddle come off it would be seen. Then, by the papers in the pockets, persons could ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... the best, I cannot dispute that; but whether you can act it out—reformers do not make money, you know." He examined his saddle-girth and began to tighten it. "One can condemn—too cautiously—by a kind of—elevated cowardice (I have that fault); but one can also condemn too rashly; I remember when I did so. One of the occupants of those two graves you see yonder side ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... six feet 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 ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... corners of the aprons are tipped with silver; the stirrups are faced and edged with silver half an inch thick, elaborately chased and carved. The saddle-tree is hung with silver rings, fore and aft, to answer all the requirements of the vaquero in lacing up his riata. The girth, which passes under the horse's belly and cinches the saddle in place, is woven of hair from horses' manes by a native artisan, and is fully eight inches broad, with a tassel hanging at its middle. The saddle, the bridle, and all its appointments are marvels of beauty. The reins, martingale, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... crest to heel Snow-white have no speck; No curb, no bit her mouth must feel, No tightening rein her neck; No saddle-girth drawn with buckle of steel Shall her ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... named "our esteemed fellow townsman" by the Canaan Call. Madeira built a hotel for Canaan, promoted the Canaan Short Line, and established the Bank of Canaan. His wife died, and his little girl grew, and he became large of girth. It was not until his daughter was twelve that he had to share honours with anyone as the foremost personage of Tigmore County. At twelve the daughter began to show that she had inherited her father's vitality, though the sphere of her activities was different. He bought and sold and made ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... 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 said: This jewel shalt thou ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... with the first tree-fern. This species seldom reaches the height of forty feet; the black trunk is but three or four in girth, and the feathery crown is ragged in comparison with the species of many other countries: it is the Alsophila gigantea, and ascends nearly to 7000 ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the more she saw. The very leanness of Alcatraz made it easier to trace his running-muscles; she estimated, too, the ample girth at the cinches where ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... Juliet's door, and hearing no sound, went to the stable. Niger greeted him with a neigh of pleasure. He made haste to saddle him, his hands trembling so that he could hardly get the straps into the girth buckles. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... a man much like Arcot; quite tall, and of tremendous girth, with a huge chest and great powerful arms. His hands, like those of the ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... the Great, so the school-books say, was small in stature and mighty in mind. Bilk was small in mind and lanky in stature. They called him "Lamp-post" as a pet name, and as regarded his height, his girth, and the lightness of his head, the term conveyed a very fair idea of our hero's chief characteristics. In short, Bilk had very few brains, and such as he had he occupied by no means to the best advantage. He read trashy novels, and believed every word of them, and, like poor Don Quixote of old, ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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, ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... sunbonnet. She drew back in dismay; she would have no more of this weird mirror of the rocks and woods, and looked up again at the shining of the star amidst the darkening shadows of the scarlet oak. How tall that tree was, how broad of girth! And how curiously this stranger talked! What was there to do with all these trees! Would he cut down all the trees on the mountain? A sudden doubt of his sanity crossed her mind. It was the first, and her heart stood still for a moment. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... guess we'd better take off the saddles and get to work," said Norah, slipping off Bobs and patting his neck before undoing the girth. The boys followed her example and soon the saddles were safely stowed in the shade. Then ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... years had acted as a magic bellows—the first quarter-century had blown him full with life, and the last had sucked it all back. It had sucked in the cheeks and the chest and the girth of arm and leg. It had tyrannously demanded his teeth, one by one, suspended his small eyes in dark-bluish sacks, tweeked out his hairs, changed him from gray to white in some places, from pink to yellow in others—callously ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 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 heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... taking care always to have the animal on the opposite side. To have got into a safer situation he would have climbed the tree; but it happened to be a poplar, without a branch for many feet from the ground, and of too great a girth to be "embraced." He could do nothing, therefore, but remain upon the ground, and keep the tree-trunk between himself and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... condition. After close observation for several years, she submitted to a thorough examination, although entirely free from any abnormal symptoms. The examination revealed the following physical condition: Weight, 105 pounds (her weight before leaving Ireland was 130); girth of chest, twenty-nine and a half inches; girth of abdomen, twenty-five inches; girth of pelvis, thirty-four and a half inches; girth of thigh, upper third, twenty inches; heart healthy, sounds and rhythm perfectly normal; pulse, 76; lungs healthy; respiratory murmur clear and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 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 ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... at the most exciting part, and the tumult at its height. The brown jacket with the blue sleeves held the lead as they came up the rise, but the black and orange hoops were close on to them, and Rainstorm's head was at Bandmaster's girth. ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... me to Dunbar, by way of making a parade of me as a sweetheart of hers, among her relations. She mounts an old cart-horse, as huge and as lean as a house; a rusty old side-saddle without girth, or stirrup, but fastened on with an old pillion-girth—herself as fine as hands could make her, in cream-coloured riding clothes, hat and feather, &c.—I, ashamed of my situation, ride like the devil, and almost shake her to pieces on old Jolly—get ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 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
... everything I cried out, "One hundred and fifty dollars!" "Going at that," said the auctioneer. "Going at that! once! twice! three times! gone! Mr. Talmage has it." It was one of the proudest moments of our life. There she stood, tall, immense in the girth, horns branching graceful as a ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... without wavering at the other two. At the end of that time she and the mother began, as with a common impulse, to talk. And at the end of five minutes more they had told each other where they were going, where they had been, what their husbands were, the number, age, and girth of their children, and all the adjectives that might most conveniently be used to describe their servants. The adjectives, very lurid ones, took some time. Priscilla shut her eyes while they were going on, thankful to be left ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sound broke the silence save the monotonous clank of his sabre and the creak of girth ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... he named the Bay of Rest, as the crew had been long 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
... 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, he bounded into the saddle, rallied his men, and swept ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... hall that was adorned with things more splendid than ever his eyes had seen, and stood before the King. With him came Skallagrim, driving the two captive viking chiefs before him with his axe, as a flesher drives lambs. Now, during these many months Brighteyes had grown yet more great in girth and glorious to look on than he was before. Moreover, his hair was now so long that it flowed like a flood of gold down towards his girdle, for since Gudruda trimmed it no shears had come near his head, and his locks grew fast as a woman's. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard |
