"Breeches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... windy and misty—a combination of weather possible only in Ireland—but there was no snow, and Robert Trinder, seated at breakfast in a purple-red hunting coat, dingy drab breeches, and woollen socks, assured me that it was turning out ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... his breeches and with trembling hands produced a roll of bills still of some dignity. Gottlieb stretched forth a claw, took them, placed them in his own pocket, and then swung his feet to the ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here, But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches,—and all that, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... coat, and breeches Were all cut off the same web, Of a beautiful snuff-colour, Of a modest genty drab; The blue stripe in his stocking, Round his neat slim leg did go, And his ruffles of the cambric fine, They were whiter ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with lace panels; feet encased in high heel satin slippers with jewelled buckles; and gracefully managing their ostrich feather fans as they curtsy to their partners; the latter wearing wigs also powdered white, long coats of brocade, elaborately embroidered waistcoats with lace jabots, satin knee breeches, silk stockings and a garter with jewelled buckle on the right leg, and helping themselves to snuff out of gold or silver boxes during brief pauses in the dance. Such is the picture that can be conjured up in imagination ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... and of a full, open, handsome countenance, which gained dignity from its long, dark-brown beard, which fell in rich curls upon his chest. His picturesque dress—that of the Tyrol—comprised a red waistcoat, crossed by green braces, which were fastened to black knee breeches of chamois leather, below which he wore red stockings. A broad black leather girdle clasped his muscular form, while over all was worn a short green coat. On his head he wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed Tyrolean hat, black in color, and ornamented with green ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... subsequently became quite a feature of the place. It was held on a Sunday, and the entire population turned out colimente and endimanche to a degree. The French and Belgian uniforms were extraordinarily smart, and the Belgian guides in their tasselled caps, cheery breeches, and hunting-green tunics ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... society was inimical to the kind of education that the Earl of Chesterfield prescribed for his son. The earl was well aware of it, indeed, and marked with repugnance divers young bucks of his day with leathern breeches and unpowdered hair, who would exclaim; "Damn these finical outlandish airs, give me a manly resolute manner. They make a rout with their graces, and talk like a parcel of dancing masters, and dress like a parcel of fops; one good Englishman ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... worth nothin', there is no market for such critters, no one would buy him at no price. A Scotchman is wus, for he is prouder and meaner. Pat ain't no better nother; he ain't proud, cause he has a hole in his breeches and another in his elbow, and he thinks pride won't patch 'em, and he ain't mean cause he hante got nothin' to be mean with. Whether it takes nine tailors to make a man, I can't jist exactly say, but this I will say, and take my ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... fisherman was admitted by special favour to look upon the magnificent clothing which Father Anthony had worn as a colonel of French Horse. The things were laid by in lavender as a bride might keep her wedding-dress. There were the gold-laced coat and the breeches with the sword-slash in them, the sash, the belt, the plumed hat, the high boots, the pistols, and glittering among them all, the sword. That chest of Father Anthony's and its contents were something of a fairy tale to the boys ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... Lumignon," said Stidmann, "you remind me of the publisher before the Revolution who said—'If only I could keep Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau very poor in my backshed, and lock up their breeches in a cupboard, what a lot of nice little books they would write to make my fortune.'—If works of art could be hammered out like nails, workmen would make them.—Give me a thousand francs, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... most eager of the spectators to get the first glimpse of honest Thade Crowley as he walked in front of his own particular lodge of the Hibernians. He was a portly, well-built man, of ruddy complexion, and open, genial countenance. He wore buckskin breeches, top boots, green tabinet double-breasted waistcoat, bottle-green coat with brass buttons, and beaver hat. The Crowleys were very popular in the neighbourhood, as they never had but a kindly word ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... turned half of the money which remained with me, in all about seventeen pounds, into small wares and merchandise such as travelling traders used to deal in; and the rest, excepting some shillings which I carried home for my immediate expenses, I sewed carefully in the lining of my breeches waistband, hoping that the sale of my commodities might easily supply me with subsistence upon ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... let my emotions take the form of words, because I had wit enough to know that I could not put a better barrier between myself and a real danger than those husky lads of the leather breeches and white hats. For all that, I had a yearning to see one of them encounter the deer at his worst. I did not wish anyone hurt, and was so confident of their physical ability that I did not think anyone would ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... question was no longer of the least importance, to Poland or the Universe; and in point of fact, the frugal Destinies had ceased to have it put, in that quarter. Not Grandees of Poland; but Intrusive Neighbors, carrying Grandees of Poland 'in their breeches-pocket' (as our phrase is), were the voting parties. To that pass it was come. Under such stern penalty had Poland and its Grandees fallen, by dint of false voting: the frugal Destinies had ceased to ask about their vote; and they were become machines for voting with, or pistols ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... known to his intimates as "fussy-breeches," because he lived in a dream-fever of commercial enterprise, and believed himself to be a Napoleon of finance—he ran a store, at which he sold a collection of hardware, books, candy, stationery, notions and "delicatessen"—was ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... to work and collected some dried grass, and soon I had enough to serve as bed and covers. It took me a month to do all this, and by that time winter was down on me in earnest. I had spent my evenings in making myself, out of the skins of the three cows, breeches, high boots, and a coat with a hood over the head, and in order to make these soft I rubbed them with hot oil. They were rough things, but I hoped that I might get a bear later on. Fortunately the boat had two balers, for I required ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... kind for the troops, feels an unwillingness to recommend, much more to order any kind of uniform; but as it is absolutely necessary that men should have clothes and appear decent and tight, he earnestly encourages the use of hunting shirts with long breeches made of the same cloth, gaiter fashion about the legs to all those yet unprovided." (Force 5th Series, Vol I, ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... 'Eat my dear birdies,' is it, young man? 'Eat, dear birdies,' indeed! I'll tickle your breeches, and see if you say, 'Eat, dear birdies,' again in a hurry! And you've been idling at the schoolmaster's too, instead of coming here, ha'n't ye, hey? That's how you earn your sixpence a day for keeping the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the same classes in France, though much less extravagant. The long, wide-frocked coats were of gay-coloured and costly material, with lace at neck and wristbands. The waistcoat might be richly embroidered with gold or silver. Knee-breeches took the place of our unsightly trousers, and were fastened with bright buckles at the knee. Stockings were of white or coloured silk, and shoes were set off by broad buckles at the instep. These, of course, were the dresses of ceremony, the dresses seen at balls and grand ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... arguing and boasting that he knew many and various tricks. Another among the bystanders said: "I know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever I like pull off his breeches." The first man— the boaster—said: "You won't make me pull off mine, and I bet you a pair of hose on it." He who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... While I was doing this, I found the tide began to flow, though very calm; and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on shore, upon the sand, swim away; as for my breeches, which were only linen, and open-knee'd, I swam on board in them, and my stockings. However, this put me upon rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took no more than I wanted for present use, for I had other ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... dresses are shaken out and the gloves smoothed, at the foot of the grand staircase, an usher, in a short, bedizened red tunic and white knee-breeches, with a cap surmounted by three colossal white plumes upon his head, steps before you and leads the way onward through the spacious halls, ablaze with light from thousands of wax candles. I always admired the silent gravity of these ushers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... did not meet him, Jim. He's the head director of the school at Oak Knowe, and one of the very dearest of men. I shall never forget my first impression of him—a venerable man, with a queer-shaped cap on his head, and wearing knee breeches and gaiters, much as our old Colonial statesmen were wont to do. 'So this is my old friend, Betty Calvert's child, is it?' he said. Dorothy imitated the bass tones of a man with such precision that Jim smiled in spite of himself. 'Well, ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... his person, ripe in council, continent in his actions, an enemy to avarice, liberal and grateful for services, and obliging in his carriage. In his ordinary dress, he wore a black coat, instead of the cloak now used, a doublet of crimson satin of which the sleeves were seen, and black breeches reaching from the waist to the feet. He is represented in his portrait as carrying a truncheon in his right hand, while the left rests on the guard of his sword, which hangs ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... to thinkin' of the pleasant long ago, When I still had on knee breeches, an' I wore a flowing bow, An' my Sunday suit was velvet. Ma an' Pa thought it was fine, But I know I didn't like it—either velvet or design; It was far too girlish for me, for I wanted something rough ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... boot," was the milder rumor; which we adopted (supra, vol. vi. p. 472), but this sadder one, too, was current; and "Broglio's breeches," or the vain aspiration after them, like a vanished ghost of breeches, often enough turn up in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he dropped anchor and pulled on shore, and was married, and, of course, off she went to sea with him. A very useful wife, too, she made, for though she didn't wear the breeches, she could take command of the ship better than any one else on board. Thus it was that I came to be born at sea. There was a terrific gale blowing, and the ship was running under bare poles during the time that important event ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... "lots of things you would not expect depend on it. I know people who sometimes go without the food they want so that they can buy expensive cakes to show off when their acquaintances come to tea—that's silly, isn't it? Then I know other people who blush if a pair of breeches, or something equally inoffensive, are mentioned; that seems equally silly. One lot of people is ashamed to be seen eating bread-and-cheese suppers, another lot is ashamed to be seen walking off the side-walk, and with no gloves on. One would hardly expect in, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... ostensible weaknesses of his kind, would claim regard for the strength that he knew not. He occupied a costly apartment in St. James's Street; his morning dress was a crimson damask banjam, a silk shag waistcoat, trimmed with lace, black velvet breeches, white silk stockings, and yellow morocco slippers; but since his magnificence added no jot to his courage, it was rather mean than admirable. Indeed, his whole career was marred by the provincialism ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... what inarticulate traditions, remnants of old wisdom, priceless though quite anonymous, survive in many modern things that still have life in them. Ben Brace, with his taciturnities, and rugged stoical ways, with his tarry breeches, stiff as plank-breeches, I perceive is still a kind of Lod-brog (Loaded-breeks) in more senses than one; and derives, little conscious of it, many of his excellences from the old Sea-kings and Saxon Pirates themselves; and how many Blakes and Nelsons ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... hast a wife that wears the breeches, thou shalt be condemned to live: Get thee home for a hen-pecked traitor.—What, are we encompassed? Nay, then, faces this way; we'll sell our skins to the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to read was precious. She looked like a slender boy in the soft riding-shirt and smart-cut breeches, one slim foot in a long brown boot drawn up under her, and the other swinging idly against the side of the divan. She finished her coffee hastily, and, lighting a cigarette, leaned back with a sigh of ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... a girl's pinafore and a boy's breeches, came to the door, and whispered that the old people were demanding a snack ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... avarice, and their cunning. Now he is merely an author. In winter he may be seen at Munich in company garb at first performances in the theatres; in summer, at Tegernsee he appears in the midst of his beloved peasants dressed in their costume, homespun jacket and leather breeches. In the same way his writings have two aspects, satire on society and tales of rustic life. In the comic paper Simplicissimus he has often published political verses over the pseudonym Peter Schlemihl; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... this, Stedman himself kept his health. His theory of the matter almost recalls the time-honored prescription of "A light heart and a thin pair of breeches," for he attributes his good condition to his keeping up his spirits and kicking off his shoes. Daily bathing in the river had also something to do with it,—and, indeed, hydropathy (this may not be generally known) was first learned of the West India Maroons, who did their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... an hour, when I saw another man, and he asked me, 'What luck?' and I replied, 'No luck; but I've a little left yet.' So I tossed with him and lost all my things—my coat, my shirt, and all, except my breeches. Then I went home with nothing but my breeches on—I borrowed a coat of ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... his manner, in his dress, and in his kindly, old-fashioned dignity, was Lord Suffolk. He dressed like "the Squire" in the old Punches. He wore a low-crowned, broadish-brimmed hat, Bedford cord breeches and gaiters, and a light-brown or buff cloth coat and waistcoat. He had two invalid daughters, and these, if I remember rightly, were the cause of the family having a ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Bishop came—came in knee-breeches, hobnailed shoes, and shovel hat, and the little church was decked with greens. The Bishop came from Paradise, little Jane used to think, and once, to be polite, she asked him how all the folks were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... bare-headed, and his hair hung in graceful curls, well powdered. I only hope he had honestly paid the tax, which we were all then exclaiming against—so fondly does custom cling to deformity. Despite the powder, the blue coat, and the shabby velvet breeches, Mr. Charles was a very handsome and striking-looking man. No wonder the poor hay-makers had collected from all parts to hear ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Mrs. Hippesley, attempted to be kind to her. The Dean himself came down and called with much decanal grandeur, conspicuous as he walked up to the Hall door with shovel hat and knee breeches. But even the Dean could not do much. He had intended to take Mrs. Western's part as against his brother-in-law, having been no doubt prompted by some old feeling of favour towards Cecilia Holt; but now he was given to understand that this Mr. Western had ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... to have been men hired by Madame Yatchevski's husband—who, hustling the "saint" into a narrow side street, gagged him, stripped him of the silk blouse embroidered by the Tsaritza's own hands, his wide velvet breeches, and his beautiful boots of ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... latter, the emperor looks exceedingly well, especially on horseback. The helmet is surmounted by a silver eagle with outstretched wings, the white tunic is partly concealed by a silver cuirass, adorned with a gold sun, and with the white, tight-fitting knee-breeches are worn high jack-boots. In fact, it is no flattery to Emperor William to declare that his appearance in this uniform invariably suggests "Lohengrin." At court entertainments, in the evening, he frequently wears the so-called gala, or court ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... table. The bar must be near because she could hear voices and the clinking of glasses, but, in spite of those sounds the house seemed very dead. Through the walls and rooms she could hear the pounding beat of the sea. She walked to the end of the passage and there found an old wrinkled man in riding breeches and a brightly-coloured ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... captain to a captain, and the captains to some of the soldiers, saying always, "Say nothing." And it was just so much hid, that next day early in the morning there was seen the greater part of the soldiers with their boots and breeches cut loose at the knee for the better mounting of the breach. The King was told of this rumour that ran through the camp, that the attack was to be made; whereat he was astonished, seeing there were but ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... obliging, and gentlemanly set of fellows, according to their enlightenment, I never met any where, than the government officials of Asiatic Turkey. Were I to make the simple statement that I am starting into Asia with a pair of knee-breeches that are worth fourteen English pounds (about sixty-eight dollars) and offer no further explanation, I should, in all probability, be accused of a high order of prevarication. Nevertheless, such is the fact; for among other subterfuges to outwit possible brigands, and kindred ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... had no breeches to wear, So he bought him a sheepskin and made him a pair. With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in, "Ah, ha, that is warm!" said ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... any signs of human culture or habitation that you perceive within the horizon. There is no traffic on the road; and only at rare intervals do you meet with a solitary peasant, looking like a satyr in shaggy goat-skin breeches, and glaring wildly at you from his great black eyes as he crosses the waste. Far as the eye can see there is nothing but a melancholy plain, studded here and there with a ruin, and populous only with the visionary forms ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... and rhythm and color and humanness as well. And ladies walking along with huge white balloons from the White House as though they had been blowing bubbles from some great clay pipes. And a plump, rosy Chinese woman so dainty in her breeches with her shiny, black hair bound in a head dress of jade ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... yellow-green on the mountain sides against the dark pines, and Cynthia was driving the minister's gig to Brampton. Ahead of her, in the canon made by the road between the great woods, strode an uncouth but powerful figure—coonskin cap, homespun breeches tucked into boots, and all. The gig slowed down, and Cynthia began to tremble with that same delightful fear. She knew it must be wicked, because she liked it so much. Unaccountable thing! She felt ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... manufacture, made to be strapped round the waist under the dress. This is the Asiatic method of concealing valuables, and a more civilized one than ours in the last century, when Roderick Random and his companion "sewed their money between the lining and the waistband of their breeches, except some loose silver for immediate expense on the road." The great inconvenience of the belt is its weight, especially where dollars must be carried, as in Arabia, causing chafes and inconvenience at night. Moreover it can scarcely be called safe. In dangerous countries ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... school near Brentford, Mr Drummond lost no time in procuring me admission; and before I had quite spoiled my new clothes, having worn them nearly three weeks, I was suited afresh in a formal attire—a long coat of pepper and salt, yellow leather breeches tied at the knees, a worsted cap with a tuft on the top of it, stockings and shoes to match, and a large pewter plate upon my breast, marked with Number 63, which, as I was the last entered boy, indicated the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... greeted Desmond as he emerged from his tent where his servant had been pressing on him a half-cold cup of cocoa; and the two men faced each other, bareheaded, in shirt and breeches, unmistakable stains upon their ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Inn the Bohemians used to sing songs about the Bonheur breeches, and "the Lady who keeps a Zoo." The offense of Rosa Bonheur was that she minded her own business, and sold the "Horse Fair" for more money than the entire Barbizon School had ever ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... or nuggars. These carried all the regimental belongings, and also most of the men's things, for the Khedivial troops never marched with kits, blankets, or any encumbrances upon them. Clad in comfortable knitted jerseys, with breeches, putties, and good serviceable high-lows, the men of the native regiments stride freely along, each bearing ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... transformed into an Angel of Light; and this somewhat appeased the people; and the executions went on. When he was cut down, he was dragged by the halter to a hole, or grave, between the rocks, about two feet deep, his shirt and breeches being pulled off, and an old pair of trowsers of one executed, put on his lower parts; he was so put in, together with Willard and Carrier, that one of his hands and his chin, and a foot of one of them, were ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... are generally powdered and very neatly dressed in livery, in the swell carriages, but the coachmen are not so highly gotten up as formerly. Occasionally one sees a very grand fat old coachman in wig and knee- breeches, but Jeames Yellowplush is growing a thing of the past even ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... distinction for an attorney in Dublin to have a son living amongst the wits in London, and discoursing familiarly on the 'Sublime and Beautiful,' than one prosecuting some poor countryman, with a brogue as rich as his own, for stealing a pair of breeches; for we find him generously allowing the young couple 200 pounds a year, which no doubt went some way towards maintaining them. Burke, who was now in his twenty-eighth year, seems to have given up all notion of the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... sailing like a gray shadow along the walks of the Jardin des Plantes, on his head a shabby cap, a cane with an old yellow ivory handle in the tips of his thin fingers; the outspread skirts of his threadbare overcoat failed to conceal his meagre figure; his breeches hung loosely on his shrunken limbs; the thin, blue-stockinged legs trembled like those of a drunken man; there was a notable breach of continuity between the dingy white waistcoat and crumpled shirt frills and the cravat ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the whole long double line of soldiers, from the Pope's chair at the western end to the eastern door, with a rattle of arms that ran from end to end of the church, dropped on one knee—saluted. Then, crac!—and as they had dropped, they rose, the stiff white breeches and towering helmets of the Guardia Nobile, the red and yellow of the Swiss, the red and blue of the Papal guards—all motionless as before. It was like the movement of some gigantic toy. And who or what else ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... defendants are condemned and afterwards excommunicated in all the churches of the town, unless they agree thereto; and if they are not absolved of the sentence before the Chancellor, they are despoiled even to their breeches, and must give all their goods to the clerk. In the same way a plea of trespass in which there has been a cession to a clerk is made to terminate in a plea of debt, and thus charges of rent upon free tenements are proved, against law ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... wake him up to a point," said Grimshaw, "that that abolition consul ha'n't learnt before; and if he'd stuck his old petition in Charles Sumner's breeches pocket instead of sending it to our legislature, he might have saved his old-womanish ideas from the showing' up that Myzeck gave 'em. It takes Myzeck to show these blue-skin Yankees how to toe the mark when they come to South Carolina. If South Carolina should secede, I'd say give us Myzeck ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... the hospital for Europeans, I will describe this institution later. On the reverse slope of the central hill of Boma are the quarters of the army, the Force Publique. The soldiers are fine looking fellows with a very pretty uniform; blue wide cut breeches to the knee, the legs and feet being bare, blue shirt with red facings and belt, and a red fez. They are armed with Albini rifles, a very strong weapon which will stand any amount of rough usage. Everything is scrupulously clean and the married quarters especially ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... most valuable find of all was a leather bag in the breeches of the uniform, containing the sum of the honest gains of the leader of the party, which he had preferred to keep in his own company even on his travels. On examination this bag was found to hold something ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... of the other; nor, though roguish enough, a certain evil expression which that of the other bore, and which the face of the woman possessed in a yet more remarkable degree. For the rest, he wore drab breeches, with certain strings at the knee, a rather gay waistcoat, and tolerably white shirt; under his arm he bore a mighty whip of whalebone with a brass knob, and upon his head was a hat without either ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... worse for wear, treading lightly under half-a-quintal weight of grapes; well-to-do peasant men—galantuomini, they are all called in Calabria—driving laden mules before them, their dark blue jackets flung upon one shoulder, their white stockings remarkably white, their short home-spun breeches far from ragged, as a rule, but their queer little pointed hats mostly colourless and weather-beaten. Boys and girls, too, meet you and stare at you, or overtake you at a great pace and almost run past you, with an enquiring backward glance, each carrying something—mostly grapes ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... of Guernsey, the inspector and I got into a 'rickshaw, locally called a go-cart. It was pulled in front by two government negroes and pushed behind by another pair, all neatly attired in white jackets and knee breeches, and crimson cummerbunds yards long, bound round their middles. Now it is an ingrained characteristic of the uneducated negro, that he cannot keep on a neat and complete garment of any kind. It does not matter what that garment may be; so long as it is whole, off it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... lace, likewise did our eyes good; and the large feathers particularly, that waved most splendidly from the hats, which were cocked in the antique style. But what did not please me were the short modern breeches, the white silk stockings, and the fashionable shoes. We should have liked half-boots,—gilded as much as they pleased,—sandals, or something of the kind, that we might have seen a ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... friend to proceed to his regular day's work. Blake's groom was a very different person in appearance, from the sort of servant in the possession of which the fashionable owner of two or three horses usually rejoices. He had no diminutive top boots; no loose brown breeches, buttoned low beneath the knee; no elongated waistcoat with capacious pockets; no dandy coat with remarkably short tail. He was a very ugly man of about fifty, named John Bottom, dressed somewhat like a seedy gentleman; but ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... The tilma is usually a piece of coarse rug—a cheap woollen cloth of the country, called "gerga," of a whitish colour, with a few dyed threads to give the semblance of a pattern. This with a pair of dressed sheepskin breeches and rude sandals—guaraches—constitutes the wear of most of the "Indios mansos" of Mexico. The head is bare; and the legs, from the knee to the ankle, shine forth ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... "I've got enough for one night at least. I suppose I'll never forget those men with the red bags in place of breeches, and that tune, 'Dixie.' As soon as I get my breath back I'm going to make a bee line for our ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Lutali. They surge up the slope in one dense charge of lightning swiftness. Bullets are hailed upon them. They waver not. The hands of the defenders are skinned and blistered by contact with the breeches of their own rifles, so hot have these become through quick firing, and still the firing is not quick enough. Stumbling, leaping, flying over the defences they come—a great cloud of dark, grim faces, and bared teeth, and protruding eyeballs. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of scarlet, and as he knelt at the altar his train spread to the chancel steps. From the side appeared ten boys and knelt before the altar, and stood in two lines facing one another. They were dressed like pages of the seventeenth century, with white stockings and breeches, and a doublet of blue and silver, holding in their hands hats with long feathers. The archbishop, kneeling in front of the throne, buried his ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... he thrust the weapon through the cover of his breeches pocket. At this moment Hector entered, who had been to a neighbouring height to ascertain whether the alarm ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the good opinion of his relation, Mr. Stephens, leather-breeches maker of Salisbury, and, from some quality, which it is possible his keen observation had noticed in this Mr. Stephens, he deems it the most effectual way, to flatter his vanity, and accordingly tells him, with great gravity, that he traces his descent from Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen, Earl of Ammerle, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... which changed with the fashions, and at the close of the mediaeval period they were wearing blue cloaks in summer, and in winter blue coats or gowns, their stockings being of white broadcloth "sewed close up to their round slops or breeches, as if they were all but of one piece." Later on, none were allowed to wear "any girdle, point, garters, shoe-strings, or any kind of silk or ribbon, but stockings only of woollen yarn or kersey; nor Spanish shoes; nor hair with any tuft or lock, but cut short in decent and comely ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... We were close to the open door of a warehouse, with the scent of oranges coming out strongly, and great muscular men with knots on their shoulders, bare-armed, and with drab breeches and white stockings, were coming up a narrow court leading to a wharf, bearing boxes of fruit from a schooner, and going back wiping their foreheads with their ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... dynasty, what Herculaneum and Pompeii are to ancient Rome and the glorious days of the empire. Here every thing remains in statu quo, as it was in the days of Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches; the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present day is ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... to their tint of burnt umber, they are all garishly painted; their faces escutcheoned with chalk-white, charcoal-black, and vermillion-red. Of their bodies not much can be seen. Blankets of blue and scarlet, or buffalo robes, shroud their shoulders; while buckskin breeches and leggings wrap their lower limbs; mocassins encasing their feet. In addition to its dress, they wear the usual Indian adornments. Stained eagle-plumes stand tuft-like out of their raven-black hair, which, in trailing tresses, sweeps back over the hips of their horses; while strings of peccaries' ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... threw off his clothes and got ready to go into the water. He went in a cloak and breeches of coarse stuff. He tucked up the cloak, tied a cord of bast round his waist, and took a barrel with him. Then he jumped overboard, swam across the channel and reached the land on the other side. There he saw a house standing and heard sounds of talking and merriment issuing ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... elicit a profane protest from the patient. The toe of his heavy boot, sharply applied where it would do the most good, would produce further evidences of life. Then Lynch would take firm grasp of the scruff of the neck and seat of the breeches, and hurl the resurrected one through the door onto the deck, and out of range of my vision. A waspish voice streaming blistering oaths proved that Mister Fitzgibbon was welcoming each as he emerged into daylight. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the orthodox black frock, that, after all, is perhaps more suitable to the figure of a man approaching—let us say, the nine-and-twenties? Or, better still, why not riding costume? Did we not hear her say how well Jones looked in his top-boots and breeches, and, "hang it all," we have a better leg than Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women have become ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... seemed to play little part. He was startled by the strength of her attractiveness, amazed to learn how pleasing it was to be in her company. She was very young and brisk: wore clothes of a smart sporting cut, and was (he thought) quite divine in her riding breeches. But she was also completely devoted to the chapel, where she played the music on Sundays. She was a volatile creature, full of mischievous surprise: at their first music practice, after playing over ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... cunning than one would think to the putting thy clothes together. Thy doublet and breeches are Guelphs and Ghibellins to one another; and the stitches of thy doublet are so far asunder, that it seems to hang together by the teeth. No man could ever guess to what part of the body these ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... fashion of to-day, by the way—or is it yesterday, in these times of sudden changes?—and when they were cut off square at the knee and shirred or gathered or reefed in at the waist, they looked singularly like the typical "Dutchman's breeches." I might have worn them as one of Hendrik Hudson's crew in "Rip Van Winkle"—which was, even in those days, the most popular play in which Joseph Jefferson appeared. You can see how long ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... band-box. Mrs. Pole came forward, and Ann Penhallow pleased to have been able to amuse her husband said, "We are curious, Mrs. Pole, open it." Mrs. Pole obeyed, and as she held up the rolled package it dropped into the unmistakable form of a man's breeches. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... asleep. But I could see through my apparently closed eyelids. In came, walking on tip-toe, with a slow care that defeated its object, two men. The first was aged from thirty to forty, in the dress of a Black Forest peasant,—old-fashioned coat and knee-breeches of strong blue cloth, but of a thoroughly good quality; he was followed by an older man, whose dress, of more pretension as to cut and colour (it was all black), was, nevertheless, as I had often the opportunity of observing ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... feature in the dress of the men before me. They were clad in the ordinary garb of the mountain-peasants. Short coarse jackets and loose trousers, confined at the waist by a faja, or girdle of bright-coloured woollen stuff, were worn by some; blouses of serge, knee-breeches, and stockings or gaiters, by others; but all, without exception, had the boina, or pancake-shaped woollen cap of the Basque provinces, and the alpargatas, or flat-soled canvas shoes. By-and-by was heard a bugle-blast and the quick, regular tread ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... stained his visage—and once also of sufficient length to defend his legs, though the skirts had long since been transferred to the cuffs and elbows, where they appeared in huge patches—covered the upper part of his body; while the lower boasted a pair of buckskin breeches and leather wrappers, somewhat its junior in age, but its rival in mud and maculation. An old round fur hat, intended originally for a boy, and only made to fit his head by being slit in sundry places at the bottom, thus leaving a dozen yawning gaps, through which, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Concession and kept two men working on it all the time to prove that he was a practical farmer. They sent in fat hogs to the Missinaba County Agricultural Exposition and the World's Fair every autumn, and Bagshaw himself stood beside the pig pens with the judges, and wore a pair of corduroy breeches and chewed a straw all afternoon. After that if any farmer thought that he was not properly represented in Parliament, it showed that ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabrick; wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... and sprang down from the appletree in a hurry. There at the corner of the shed stood a man in varnished top boots, with spurs in the heels—great, cruel looking spurs—velveteen breeches, a short, dirty white flannel coat, and a hard hat—something between a stovepipe and a derby. Agnes realized that it was some kind of a riding costume that he wore, and he lashed his bootleg with his riding ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... while nothing would please him more than to produce such a figure of Pan, and while William Penn's square-toed shoes, probably, might be made into cloven hoofs without a very strenuous effort, still he hardly felt as if he could fix up those knee-breeches to resemble shaggy legs; and as for trying to turn that hat into a pair of horns, Mr. Whitaker might as well talk of emptying the Atlantic Ocean ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... an vnsconscionable vast gor-bellied volume, bigger bulkt than a Dutch hoy, and more cumbersome than a payre of Switzer's galeaze breeches."[90] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... used to encounter wind and rough weather. He was so constantly on horseback, that it seemed strange to see him standing on his own legs, and more so to see him walk, which, indeed, he did with an odd movement of the knees, as though it were some difficult exercise. He wore riding-boots and breeches, and had a short pipe in his mouth. At his heels were his two ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... Attired in white corduroy breeches, a blue velvet waistcoat, and a light boating-jacket of yellow flannel, your reporter left the Battery at 6 hrs. 22 m, and 5 secs, on Friday morning, and steamed slowly down the bay in the editorial row-boat Punchinelletto, which was manned by an individual of remarkable oar-acular powers. So highly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... door Creede reeled in the saddle, and even Rufus Hardy gasped. There was nothing immodest about her garb—in fact, it was very correct and proper—but not since the Winship girls rode forth in overalls had Hidden Water seen its like. Looking very trim and boyish in her khaki riding breeches, Kitty strode forth unabashed, rejoicing in her freedom. A little scream of delight escaped her as she caught sight of the calico-pony; she patted his nose a moment, inquired his name, and then, scorning ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability, and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... door was opened by a man in dark breeches and gaiters with a dirty coat, a foul old neck cloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... first time that my spirit had been hurt. His words were a torment that left a scar upon my very soul. Even to this day when I awake from some bad dream, it is a dream that I am wearing crazy breeches and all the world is jeering at me. It has made me tender toward poor children who have ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... brown from the gentle toasting of the summer sun, making the fairness of his closely cropped hair even more noticeable. At his side was his long bow, carefully wrapped in water-resistant flying-dragon skin, and from the belt which supported his short breeches of tanned duocorn hide swung a two-foot blade—half wood-knife, half sword. To the eyes of his Terran forefathers he would have presented a barbaric picture. In his own mind he was amply clad and armed for the man-journey which was both ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... happened In our parts,—a strange thing," Remarked a tall fellow With bushy black whiskers. 70 (He wore a round hat With a badge, a red waistcoat With ten shining buttons, And stout homespun breeches. His legs, to contrast With the smartness above them, Were tied up in rags! There are trees very like him, From which a small shepherd Has stripped all the bark off 80 Below, while above Not a scratch can be noticed! And surely no raven Would scorn ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... jacket, talma jacket^, vest, jerkin, waistcoat, doublet, camisole, gabardine; farthingale, kilt, jupe^, crinoline, bustle, panier, skirt, apron, pinafore; bloomer, bloomers; chaqueta^, songtag [G.], tablier^. pants, trousers, trowsers^; breeches, pantaloons, inexpressibles^, overalls, smalls, small clothes; shintiyan^; shorts, jockey shorts, boxer shorts; tights, drawers, panties, unmentionables; knickers, knickerbockers; philibeg^, fillibeg^; pants suit; culottes; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... headstrong. The Catholic religion! 'Tis no more than fine manners; as we say in Hebrew, derech eretz, the way of the country. Why do I wear breeches and a cocked hat—when I am abroad, videlicet? Why does little Ianthe trip ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... ghost other than a very morbid spirit in search of penance. In the centre of the room lay in hopeless confusion a pile of all sorts and varieties of garments, many of them of most antiquated description. Plumed hats and velvet knee-breeches of the cavalier period, Jersey jackets and tea-gowns, with Watteau plaits, such as were in fashion when Victoria was queen, were mingled with articles of a more recent date. On the top lay an open volume, the pages ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... a worthy peer, His breeches cost him but a crown, He held them sixpence all too dear; Therefore he called the tailor lown. He was a wight of high renown, And thou's but of a low degree: It's pride that puts this country down; Man, take ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... dressed after the fashion of shabby gentility, a fashion which the rich not seldom try to copy. He wore low shoes beneath gaiters of the pattern worn by the Imperial Guard, doubtless for the sake of economy, because they kept the socks clean. The rusty tinge of his black breeches, like the cut and the white or shiny line of the creases, assigned the date of the purchase some three years back. The roomy garments failed to disguise the lean proportions of the wearer, due apparently rather to constitution than to a Pythagorean ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... (the original pen-and-ink sketch is in the "Rowfant Library:" see Cruikshank's frontispiece to Catalogue, 1886) Wilkes squints more than "a gentleman should squint." The costume—long coat, waistcoat buttoned to the neck, knee-breeches, and stockings—is not unpleasing, but the expression of the face is something between a leer and a sneer. Walpole (Letters, 1858, vii. 274) describes another portrait (by Zoffani) as "a delightful piece of Wilkes looking—no, squinting tenderly at his daughter. It is a caricature ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... they frequently make use of their fingers. The most wealthy farmer here is considered as being well dressed in a jacket of home-made cloth, or something of the kind made of any other coarse cloth, breeches of undressed leather, woollen stockings, a striped waistcoat, a cotton handkerchief about his neck, a coarse calico shirt, Hottentot field-shoes, or else leathern shoes with brass buckles, and a coarse hat. Indeed, it ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... above, and the wheels and pulleys and other gear. As for Ham, the first time Yvon saw him in the mill, he cried out "Mont Blanc!" and would not call him anything else for some time. For Ham was whiter than all the rest, in his working-dress, cap and jacket and breeches, white to begin with, and powdered soft and furry, like his face and eyebrows, with the flying meal. Down-stairs there was plenty of noise; oats and corn and wheat pouring into the hoppers, and the ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... Hartrotts was in keeping with these new relationships. In the home in Berlin, the servants wore knee-breeches and white wigs on the nights of great banquets. Karl had bought an old castle with pointed towers, ghosts in the cellars, and various legends of assassinations, assaults and abductions which enlivened its history in an interesting way. An architect, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... charms. The night was very stormy, and about nine we heard a galloping towards the door, and then a loud knocking; it was opened, and in rushed a wild-looking man mounted upon a donkey. He wore a jerkin of sheepskin, called in Spanish zamarras, with breeches of the same as far down as his knee; his legs were bare. Around his sombrero, or shadowy hat, was tied a large quantity of the herb called in English rosemary, in Spanish romero, and in the rustic language of Portugal ellecrin, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... being so very little used; but generally a married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion: his behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married,—and, if we could look within his breeches, we should ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... is Chaucer, Old Fr. chaussier, a hosier (Lat. calceus, boot), while Admiral Hozier's Ghost reminds us of the native word. The oldest meaning of hose seems to have been gaiters. It ascended in Tudor times to the dignity of breeches (cf. trunk-hose), the meaning it has in modern German. Now it has become a tradesman's euphemism for the improper word stocking, a fact which led a friend of the writer's, imperfectly acquainted with German, to ask a gifted lady of that nationality if she were a Blauhose. A Chaloner or Chawner ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... which, God knows, he isn't cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Coll. at base-camp (we're always in force for a frontier row), but I'd heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help me. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went—forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties. Macnamara's—'member old Mac, the Sapper, who played the fiddle so damnably at Umballa?—Mac's party was ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... a man in livery opened the door of the car, and in the vestibule another man in livery bowed the way. Lined up just inside the door was a corps of imposing personages, clad in scarlet waistcoats and velvet knee-breeches, with powdered wigs, and gold buttons, and gold buckles on their patent-leather pumps. These splendid creatures took their wraps, and then presented to Montague and Oliver a bouquet of flowers upon a silver salver, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... fancied, for instance, on seeing the haggard pale young old-clothesman, who wakes the echoes of our street with his nasal cry of "Clo'!"—I have often, I said, fancied that, besides the load of exuvial coats and breeches under which he staggers, there is another weight on him—an atrior cura at his tail—and while his unshorn lips and nose together are performing that mocking, boisterous, Jack-indifferent cry of "Clo', clo'!" who knows what woeful utterances are crying from the heart within? There he is, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in high glee, having received a message from Captain Johnston, to inform him that the latter was pressed! The captain used to dress in a blue long-tog, drab-breeches and top-boots, when he went ashore. "He thought he could pass for a gentleman from the country," said Mr. Irish, laughing, "but them press-gang chaps smelt the tar in his very boots!" Cooper was sent to ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots. Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair—mutes who could not write. If you are guilty, tremble. That fellow behind your chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches pocket. If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some one were staring at him fixedly. But no one was. There was a Dutchman in the gate who had not been there just before. "He must have sprung up out of the ground," thought Nick, "or else he is a very sudden Dutchman!" He had on breeches like two great meal-sacks, and a Flemish sea-cloth jacket full of wrinkles, as if it had been lying in a chest. His back was turned, and Nick could not help smiling, for the fellow's shanks came out of his breeches' bottoms like the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... fate befell the warlock Playfair in 1597. He was found strangled in his prison at Dalkeith with the 'point' of his breeches tied round ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... says, that it ought to be "about four years old, though some prefer it much older." And he afterwards observes, that "if new seed only can be had, it should be carried a week or two in the breeches-pocket, to dry away some of the more watery particles!" If age be a recommendation in rules as well as in melon-seed, this rule has it; for English authors published it, and French authors laughed at it, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... position, the breeches of the guns closed, and a minute later the air-chambers were filled with air at a pressure of two hundred atmospheres, pumped from the forward engines through pipes leading up to the guns ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Uther came to him, and commanded his knights to weapon them forth-right. And they very speedily grasped their knives, and off with their breeches—strange were their looks—and grasped in their hands their long spears, and hung on their shoulders great battle-axes. Then said Gillomar the king a thing very strange:—"Here cometh Uther, Aurelie's brother; ...
— Brut • Layamon
... phenomenon, while the latter expressed his feelings by a prolonged whistle. Two canoes and several Indian canoemen had been provided by Sir William for the transportation of the party. Christie had exchanged his uniform for a flannel shirt, gray breeches, leggings, and moccasins, and except for Mr. Bullen's presence everything was in readiness ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... most people; to us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions and new styles worry us, till we get well used ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... a glance that Mr. Alfred Barton was the most important person present. His character of host gave him, of course, the right to control the order of the coming chase; but his size and swaggering air of strength, his new style of hat, the gloss of his blue coat, the cut of his buckskin breeches, and above all, the splendor of his tasselled top-boots, distinguished him from his more homely apparelled guests. His features were large and heavy: the full, wide lips betrayed a fondness for indulgence, and the small, uneasy eyes a capacity for concealing this and any other ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... riflemen were at first called by the British "regulars," "a rabble in calico petticoats," as a term of contempt. Their uniform consisted of tow linen or homespun hunting shirts, buckskin breeches, leggings and moccasins. They wore round felt hats, looped on one side and ornamented with a buck tail. They carried long rifles, shot pouches, tomahawks, and ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... had to be done. In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... colored pictures, supposed to represent the procession, which has done service at the show from time immemorial, but it is each year as welcome as ever to the children who each have a penny to buy one. Through the streets we have passing visions of pink silk stockings, canary-colored breeches, and dark green coats and gold lace, also tri-colored rosettes as large as saucers; and pass by shop-windows full of sweet, eager little faces, in the place ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... Belindy, "dem Grammont gals be glad to see any t'ing dat got breeches on; lef 'lone good ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... petticoat, a cotton gown, and a MOB CAP (as the court parasites call it;—it will be well for them if, one of these days, they don't wear a mob cap—I mean a WHITE CAP, with a MOB to look at them); and Macbeth is to appear in an honest yeoman's drab coat, and a pair of black calamanco breeches. Not SALAmanca; no, nor TALAVERA neither, my most Noble Marquess; but plain, honest, black calamanco stuff breeches. This is right; this is as it should be. MOST THINKING PEOPLE, I have heard you much abused. There is not a compound in the language but is strung fifty in a rope, like onions, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... and Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle: from a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. The dog by the side of Selwyn is his favourite, Raton. Selwyn is dressed in a pale brown coat and breeches, a red vest trimmed with gold lace, and light grey stockings; the Earl of Carlisle in a reddish brown coat and pale yellow vest. He wears the green ribbon and star of the Order of the Thistle. This picture was probably painted about the year 1770, and is in the possession ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... whole pile of sashes, and breeches, and boots, and goodness knows what in the way of wearing apparel, all in a state of dry rot; in fact, they made such a dust that we ascended to terra firma for a few minutes to get it out ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... present age. But we solemnly declare that we grew up in the belief that the President of the United States was daily ushered to his carriage by a long array of bareheaded and bowing menials, and that his official dress was a cocked hat and knee-breeches. We furthermore make affidavit that we supposed all the nobility of Europe to be in the habit of driving four-in-hand over wooden-legged beggars. And we also depose and say, that we had no other idea of royalty than as continually clad in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Arnold's courtesy and satirical temperance in dealing with what he discredits is a pose by the side of this man's mental grace and courage. And you know how we usually denominate style: it is the little lace-frilled petticoat of the lady novelist's mincing passions, or the breeches that belong to a male author's mental respirations. But with this man, style is a spirit sword which cleaves between delusions and facts, which separates religion from reality and establishes it in our upper consciousness ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... and choose eight poor boys inhabiting Hammersmith within the age of twelve and above the age of seven, and provide for every boy a doublet and a pair of breeches of frieze or leather, one shirt, one pair of stockings, and a pair of shoes on the 1st of November; and also to provide yearly, against Ascension Day, a doublet and a pair of breeches of coarse canvas lined, and deliver the same unto the said boys, and also a ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... threats and menaces of death to the king. Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet. One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them by the hair ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet, that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company, that took them for rogues. His sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... went out of fashion, but lace was liberally used on other parts of the dress. Lace frills of costly Point edged the knee-breeches, lace cravats were worn and deep falling cuffs. Charles II., in the last year of his reign, spent L20 for a new cravat for his ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... was about to escape from Spain, and to make his way to the Netherlands. The King also believed himself in danger of assassination from Carlos, his chief evidence being that the Prince always carried pistols in the pockets of his loose breeches. As Carlos wished always to be alone at night without any domestic in his chamber, de Foix had arranged for him a set of pulleys, by means of which he could open or shut his door without rising from his bed. He always slept with two pistols and two drawn swords under his pillow, and had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Johnny shall see What makes a man free, Not parchments, or statutes, or paper; And stripped of his riches, Great charter and breeches, Shall cut ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... yellows. On the terrace in front of the club-house an occasional withered leaf fluttered down on the table where the Oldest Member sat, sipping a thoughtful seltzer and lemon and listening with courteous gravity to a young man in a sweater and golf breeches ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... letter lath night," continued the breeches-maker, bending forward confidentially over the table. (The document looked at least twelve months old.) "I got thith letter latht night with thethe three fiverth in it; and not havin' no friendth in London—I'm an American thitithen, by birth,—Levinthky, my name ith—Abraham Levinthky—I'm ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... delivered a fifteen minute address. He abolished the presidential levees, and concealed his birthday to prevent its being celebrated. He even detested the word minister prefixed to one's name, and eschewed breeches, wearing pantaloons. It was during his administration that Louisiana was purchased, although, according to his own theory, he had no constitutional right to do so, but the great benefit derived from this ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... corduroy breeches, a large hat, a cartridge belt, and is armed with a Winchester rifle. He is a crack shot and has taken charge of the deputies in the wrecked portion of the city. Yesterday afternoon he discovered two men and a woman ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... shirt and put it on; then, with growing curiosity, the rest of the garments, until he came to the shoes. Khaki shirt, khaki breeches, a wide, webbed belt, a flat-brimmed hat. And the shoes—they weren't shoes, but knee-length leather boots, like a dressy version of lumberman's boots or a rougher version of riding boots. He hadn't seen even pictures of such things since ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... clothed in a sort of frock-coat, buttoned, and a broad sword-belt girded round the waist, and fastened with a large steel buckle; the hilt of the sword steel,—altogether very striking. Sir William Pepperell, in English regimentals, coat, waistcoat, and breeches, all of red broadcloth, richly gold-embroidered; he holds a general's truncheon in his right hand, and extends the left towards the batteries erected against Louisbourg, in the country near which he is standing. Endicott, Pyncheon, and others, in scarlet robes, bands, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to show the absurdity of breeches and petticoats, with many other curious observations, which I shall reserve for another occasion: I cannot, however, conclude this paper without taking notice that amidst these wild remarks there now and then appears something very reasonable. I cannot likewise forbear observing, that we ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... well-beloved, the nearest approach to the gracious fiction aviator of them all, yet never drawling in affected modesty, never afraid of grease; smiling and industrious and reticent; smooth of hair and cameo of face; wearing khaki riding-breeches and tan puttees instead of overalls; always a gentleman, even when he tried to appear a workman. He pretended to be enthusiastic about the lunch-wagon, and never referred to his three generations of army officers. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had been valet-de-chambre to the last Sir Richard Bethune Baliol, and was, a person highly trusted by the present lady. A full stand, as it is called in Scotland, of garments of a dark colour, gold buckles in his shoes and at the knees of his breeches, with his hair regularly dressed and powdered, announced him to be a domestic of trust and importance. His mistress used ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... a nose. Arered, an eye. Keiotot, a tooth. Mutchatet, the head. Chewat, an eare. Comagaye, a legge. Atoniagay, a foote. Callagay, a paire of breeches. Attegay, a coate. Polleuetagay, a knife. Accaskay, a shippe. Coblone, a thumbe. Teckkere, the foremost finger. Ketteckle, the middle finger. Mekellacane, the fourth finger. Yacketrone, the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... towards which you, choose to turn your face. Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with white-washed front, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted the figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches, shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals is a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of these strapping hens is good augury;—hark, a cackle from the barn—another egg ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... assemblage; every one was there for sport, and nobody cared an ounce how he or anybody else was dressed. Slouch hats, brown coats, corduroy breeches, and leggings, or boots, were the order of the day. We cast off in a thick wood. The dogs struck a trail almost immediately and were off with clamorous yelping, while the hunt thundered after them like ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... hands he took down an old-fashioned hat from a peg and turned towards the door. When we had passed through it he carefully locked it and dropped the key into his breeches' pocket. Then he led the way upstairs by the beautiful oak staircase I had so much admired on ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... suckle their children when they came to have them. If a little whimsical, it was a harmless and respectable pastime. It is pleasanter to think of a philosopher finding diversion in weaving laces, than of noblemen making it the business of their lives to run after ribands. A society clothed in breeches was incensed about the same time by Rousseau's adoption of the Armenian costume, the vest, the furred bonnet, the caftan, and the girdle. There was nothing very wonderful in this departure from use. An Armenian ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... in a child is to become a man. But the first symptom of virility, the first serious step taken in life, is marked by the assumption of breeches. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first, on the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not to say venerable, appearance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... .... In his earlier lectures his ways were awkward, his speech was too rapid, and he did not know what in world to do with his hands. It was quite to see him run them under his coat tails, spread them across his shirt front, stick them in his breeches pockets, twirl them in the arm-holes his vest, or hold them behind his back. He has now found out how to dispose of them in a more or less natural way. His delivery is less rapid, his voice better modulated, and his enunciation more distinct .... One of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... that is, of themselves, as though they were Indigenae, or people bred upon that very soyle that never changed their seate from one place to another, as most Nations have done. They are clad in Seale-skinnes, with the hayrie side outwards downe as low as the knees, with their Breeches and Netherstocks of the same, both men and women. They are all Blacke hayred, naturally beardless. And therefore the Men are hardly discerned from the Women by their lookes: saue that the Women weare a locke of hayre down along both ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... further up the lane, then turn in at the wicket gate and follow the footpath across the lawn. "Then," said he, "you'll come to the kitchen door. Knock, and ask for a horn of beer." "But whose word shall I give?" I asked, "Tell them an old gentleman called Duncan Dhew, in black knee breeches and leggings has sent you, and it will be all right. And then (added he) if you wish it you can go further into the park by crossing another path over the lawn." I thanked the kind old gentleman, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... happy to hear it, you can't think," continued Thompson, fumbling about his breeches pocket, and drawing from it at length something which he concealed in his fist. "There, take that," he suddenly exclaimed; "take it, my old fellow, and God bless you. It's no good trying to make a fuss ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... with his legs extended on either side of the log, was Peterkin. At the moment we saw him he was gazing intently into the cat's face, with his nose about four inches from it,—his hands being thrust into his breeches pockets. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne |
