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More "Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield. But this has much the appearance of having been formed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in laughing confusion from this later benefactor, when he had made plain one day the service he sought to do her soul. A moment later he had stood before her father in all his years of patriarchal dignity, hale, ruddy, and vast of girth. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... all but the smaller fish from ascending the river. The salmon, swimming near the surface, as is their custom, run their heads through these meshes, and are prevented from going on through by their larger girth of body, and from going back because of their gills, which catch in the mesh. It requires two fishermen to set such a net,—one to row the boat, while the other, standing in the stern, carefully pays out the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... then," resumed Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... then must be to the books themselves. Exclusive of short story, sketch and tale, they include a dozen novels of generous girth—for Meredith is old-fashioned in his demand for elbow-room. They are preeminently novels of character and more than any novelist of the day the view of the world embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does not mean that they are wanting in emotional force or interest: ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... tell Pollyooly about Devonshire, the wet garden of England. Its horticultural advantages seemed to weigh but lightly with her; she dwelt chiefly on the loneliness of the life she had been leading, and deplored bitterly the fact that its inglorious ease was spoiling her figure by increasing her girth. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... first, the German struck him upon the visor, but without breaking it or harming Zbyszko. At the same time, Zbyszko, instead of giving stroke for stroke, grasped the knight by the middle, but, in the attempt to take him alive, engaged in a close struggle, during which the girth of his horse gave way from the intense strain of the contest, and both fell to the ground. For a while they wrestled; but the extraordinary strength of the young man soon prevailed against his antagonist; he pressed his knees against his stomach, holding him ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a familiar voice, "the secret place alluded to should chance to be a hollow cedar-tree of inadequate girth, the unfortunate spirit in question ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... easy task to find a mount of size and strength sufficient to carry so heavy a burden. It was necessary that the poor animal should be progressively trained; and in order to accomplish this the king's equerry fastened round the horse a girth loaded with pieces of lead, increasing the weight daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, if what is said at Stuttgart be true, increased the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the spacing produced seedlings of larger girth and shorter height—a desirable characteristic in black walnut budding stocks. The most desirable spacing appeared to be 6 x 7 inches. Even though the number of seedlings resulting from this spacing was approximately half the number produced at 4 x 4 inches spacing, more usable seedlings were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... 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
... romance readers and minds of sensibility. Amongst other things which our conductor showed us was an immense onen or ash; it stood in one of the courts and measured, as she said, pedwar y haner o ladd yn ei gwmpas, or four yards and a half in girth. As I gazed on the mighty tree I thought of the Ash Yggdrasill mentioned in the Voluspa, or prophecy of Vola, that venerable poem which contains so much relating to the mythology ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... hundred feet long, by sixty feet diameter at the point of her greatest girth," quietly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... no reply; but as he entered the court-yard of his house, he muttered uneasily,—"And if Lysander is right, and Sparta is too small for Pausanias, do not we bring back a giant who will widen it to his own girth, and rase the old foundations to make room for the buildings ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... 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 found a sufficiency in a natural well or claypan; or again ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... scarred her a little—put some lines into the corners of her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore's thriving, when they had foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in her father's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... which are the arboreal gems of the place. Major Budden informs us that they are about one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and were planted in their present position when they had attained about twenty years' growth. Some idea of their luxuriance may be formed when it is mentioned that the girth of each tree exceeds sixteen feet, and the longest branch of one of them measures eighty-four feet in length. In consequence of the habit of these trees "fastigiating" at the base, a very numerous series of lateral ramifying branches is the result. These branches spread out in terraces, and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Master Dupe—Droop," said the knight, his face brightening mightily. "Five yards are a mile for a man of my girth, Master Droop, but praise God such words as these of yours cheer my heart to still greater deeds ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... set it down as a fact that Little Barnstable was out on a frolic. As to the figure cut by the major, that may be safely left to the reader's fancy. His short legs scarce reached below old Battle's saddle girth; and, in addition to the slouchy suit of Uxbridge satinet, he wore a shabby white hat, very like that worn by Philosopher Greeley on election days. Never was departure of foreign ambassador attended with such demonstrations, all of which the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... likened to A desert ship. (This is not new.) He is a most ungainly craft, With frowning turrets fore and aft We little realize on earth, How much we owe to his great girth, For should he ever shrink so small As through the needle's eye to crawl, Rich men might climb the golden stairs And so ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... on the commons, determined to catch one for me. They found an old passing one which could not run away, and brought him in, rigged a rope from the boat into a bridle, and borrowed a saddle without either stirrup, girth, or crupper. Thus accoutred they pursued me, and found me at the house where I had stopped. The rain ceasing, I mounted; my legs hung down the sides of the horse, and I was obliged to steady the saddle by holding by the mane. In this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... organ, the forenoon service being near conclusion. If I had never seen the interior of York Cathedral, I should have been quite satisfied, no doubt, with the spaciousness of this nave and these side aisles, and the height of their arches, and the girth of these pillars; but with that recollection in my mind they fell a little short of grandeur. The interior is seen to disadvantage, and in a way the builder never meant it to be seen; because there is little or no painted glass, nor any ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... said Big Ben, dismounting. The horse which the trapper had secured, though not his own, was almost equal to it in point of size and strength. He eyed it with evident satisfaction as he tightened the girth, saying that if it wasn't for the difference in colour he would have thought it was the old one. The others having also seen to their harness mounted, and the cavalcade advanced at a walking pace ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... keeps up her old tradition of light-heartedness. The cafes round the great piazza are full in the evenings with a cheerful crowd. Moreover, to go into St. Mark's is to enter a sort of neolithic grotto; the pillars, set about with sand-bags, have the girth of the arcades of a Babylonian temple; bulging poultices of sacks protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel. The Doge's Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding than it could have been when it was being built; each of those delicate ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... her as hard as she could with her hands; but, even when the mare raised her head and walked about, the little girl could not get at the reins because she was tightly fastened to the girth. So the pinto went where she pleased, paying no attention to angry commands, or to the pounding inflicted upon her flanks by the fists ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... dazed, and to be frightened also. Henry saw at once that his fear was of his officers, and that it had not been caused by any suffering in captivity. In truth, Private Doran looked very well, having suffered no diminution of either girth or ruddiness. His fears in regard to his officers were justified, as he was taken at once before Colonel de Peyster, who examined ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were 20 per cent. taller than the smokers, 25 per cent. heavier, and had 62 per cent. more lung capacity. In the graduating class of Amherst College of the present year, those not using tobacco have in weight gained 24 per cent. over those using tobacco, in height 37 per cent., in chest girth 42 per cent., while they have a greater average lung capacity by ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... glove," he answered. "I was only figuring that it's a bit too ornamental for its present purpose. I see the girth has been broken and mended—mended with a doubtful piece of string. Why wasn't it sent to the saddler t' be properly fixed up? I've half a notion ter chuck it right away and ride bare-backed. But there ain't time to fool around ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... swollen and all congested with purple spots. They thought he was about to have a stroke or a seizure of some sort. But they were wrong. This merely was Nature's warning to a man with a size seventeen neckband and a forty-six-inch girth measurement. The stroke he was to have on the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... stamping, To the clouds his head he lifted, To his knees his beard was flowing, To his spurs his locks descended. Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which he ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... A noble instance is the great wild park with which Colonel Parsons has protected the Natural Bridge in Virginia. I saw there an arbor-vitae said by botanists to be not less than nine hundred years old, a chestnut twenty-six feet in girth at the height of my shoulders, and oaks past praise. But trees are everywhere, and if my observant pupil likes them, let her next note the mode in which the branches spread and their proportion to the trunk. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the ground, take the pummel with the right hand, place the side of the left foot against the girth, the toe between the horse's elbows, bring the back of the right leg on to the top of the saddle, and let yourself down to the full stretch of your right arm; this is very easy at the halt, still easier on the move, if your horse is quiet. If you fail, you only dismount on your hands instead of ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... claim of Nature's worth. Though I forget the forms of earth, Of gilded cloud and circling planet, I know His fire lives within their girth. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... increased immensely, since last year, in stature and girth. He is remarkably neat in his person, wisping himself all over with hay for hours at a time. Whether he does this for cleanliness or to obtain a flavor of elephant for the hay is doubtful, however, for he always eats it after having made use of it as a flesh-brush ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... a yellow group Was creeping on her bosom, like a troop Of stars, far up amid the galaxy, Pale, pale, as snowy showers; and two or three Were mocking the cold finger, round and round, With likeness of a ring; and, as they wound About its bony girth, they had the hue Of pearly jewels glistering in dew. That deathly stare! it is an awful thing To gaze upon; and sickly thoughts will spring Before it to the heart: it telleth how There must be waste where ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... as he noticed the increasing heaviness at his girth. "Fat and soft," he added, as a huge muscle yielded under the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... great girth—crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet hollow—he would speculate on the passage of time. That tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; and it was the half-a-yard that did ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... open, so that we had no difficulty in holding on our course. To the westward we saw some icebergs of incredible size, and in the afternoon passed very near one whose summit could not have been less than four hundred fathoms from the surface of the ocean. Its girth was probably, at the base, three-quarters of a league, and several streams of water were running from crevices in its sides. We remained in sight of this island two days, and then only lost ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... limb; with a countenance extremely winning, not only from the comeliness of its features, but its frankness, manliness, and good nature. His was the bronzed, rich complexion, the inclination towards embonpoint, the athletic girth of chest, which denote redundant health, and mirthful temper, and sanguine blood. Robert, who had lived the life of cities, was a year younger than his brother; nearly as tall, but pale, meagre, stooping, and with a careworn, anxious, hungry ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... built of stone; its top came scarcely to the top of the surrounding trees, and it was in fact not more than two stories high; it appeared, with its wide girth, low and squat. Its sides were pierced here and there with deep and narrow slits, for windows, and on one side was a heavy oaken door, with great iron hinges and an iron lock. Through two or three of the upper slits in the wall ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... the harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow 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 drumming their spring song ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... time when he should be old enough to be an equerry, and gave the command of his men to an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. Thus the good man believed he would avoid the horned trappings of cuckoldom, and would still be able to girth, bridle, and curb the factious innocence of his wife, which struggled like a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... near and leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse, Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak, helpless, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... girth, but who sat his horse easily despite his size, grinned down at Jack. He was white-haired and under the brim of his sombrero little eyes twinkled genially and shrewdly ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... one to hide behind, the fat little priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... unexpectedly given, and so suddenly executed by those of the party who had gradually closed behind and around Morton, that he was overpowered, disarmed, and a horse-girth passed round his arms, before he could offer any effectual resistance. When this was accomplished, a dead and stern silence took place. The fanatics ranged themselves around a large oaken table, placing Morton amongst ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for "Little Sorrel," the companion of so many marches, was lost for some days after the passage of the Potomac; but the Confederacy was near paying a heavy price for the "good grey mare." When Jackson first mounted her a band struck up close by, and as she reared the girth broke, throwing her rider to the ground. Fortunately, though stunned and severely bruised, the general was only temporarily disabled, and, if he appeared but little in public during his stay in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the river we saw numbers of white whales which frequent it at this season of the year, and many of which are harpooned from a boat that is employed, and usually carries three or four of the Company's servants. The harpooner killed one to-day, which measured fourteen feet long, and eight in girth, and weighed it was supposed a ton weight. The blubber is boiled at the Fort, and the oil sent to England as an article of the Company's trade. When the Esquimaux visit us from the tent, they generally ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... 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
... about me, they were attracted by a great tree that grew near by, a tree of vast girth and bigness. And, as I looked, I saw that it was an oak-tree, near the root of which there was a jagged, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... mouse-coloured mule that emerged at length to view and it looked even smaller than it was because the man who straddled it dwarfed it with his own ponderous stature and a girth which was almost an anomaly in a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... to hear people talk about losing flesh—unless, of course, the decrease in weight is due to illness. No healthy person, predisposed to fat, ever lost any flesh. If that person gets rid of any weight, or girth, or fat, it isn't lost—it is fought off, beaten off. The victim struggles with it, goes to the mat with it, and does not debonairly drop it. He eliminates it with stern effort and much travail of the spirit. It is a job of work, a grueling combat to the finish, ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... the girth of my saddle. My spirit was taking swift counsel with itself at the brink of the precipice. It was then that I seemed to see the angry face of old Kate—the Silent Woman—at my elbow, and it counseled me to speak out. Again ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... news for you," he said, approaching and testing the girth of her saddle. "Sit still and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... support millions of people. Its lakes and rivers all abound in fish, its forests have all kinds of trees, some of them growing to a size which, but for the force of testimony, would be incredible. One of these is stated by Humboldt as of one hundred and eighteen feet in girth. "But this is a walking-stick compared with another at Bodega, as described to Sir George by Governor Etholine, of Sitka." It is thirty-six Russian fathoms (seven feet each) in span, and seventy-five in height; so that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... on, and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however, had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost trees, a man on horseback, muffled in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... now worn on the stage, appear different from anything which is to be met with elsewhere. Are these figures meant for the Lares themselves? On each side are represented different sorts of eatables. On the left a bunch of small birds, a string of fish, a boar with a girth about his body, and a magnificently curling tail, and a few loaves, or rather cakes, of the precise pattern of some which have been found in Pompeii: on the right, an eel spitted on a wire, a ham, a boar's head, and a joint ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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
... and the saddle and rider tumbled off together. I arrived without accident at my destination, although I had frequently been in danger of falling from my horse without its being necessary that the girth should break. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... monotonous. The canal population, so long distinct, will be merged in the rest of the community. The tug will displace the tow-rope. The pullers will be housed on land, mastering the three R's instead of learning to strain at the girth. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... It is time for this practice of around-the-world humbug and cheatery to stop right now. If it takes our fastest modern globe-trotters a whole year to go around the world by a route equal to or approximating the equatorial girth, then let it take them a year; for the sake of our pride and all that is good and sincere let us do our stunts ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... was a log until he struck it with the stirrup iron; we then saw that it was an immense snake, larger than any I have ever before seen in a wild state. It measured eight feet four inches in length and seven inches in girth round the belly; it was nearly the same thickness from the head to within twenty inches of the tail; it then tapered rapidly. The weight was 11 1/2 pounds. From the tip of the nose to five inches back, the neck was black, both above and below; throughout ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 'ranges 'at steed." The Wildcat loosened the saddle girth. Unseen by Honey Tone, he removed a small horseshoe from between the saddle blanket and the mule's epidermis. "Sho' brings de luck. Some boy got de luck hunch figgered wrong. Git aboa'd, Honey Tone.—Blanket got wrinkled. He done ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... and it was not till the stranger had looked twice at her, that he forgot her great chuckle head, greyhound-flanks, and drooping hind-quarters, and began to see the great length of those same quarters,—the thighs let down into the hocks, the arched loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the sloping shoulder, the long arms, the flat knees, the large, well-set hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and speed, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... climbers. The cocoa-palm grows here in small numbers, usually several together, overtopping the other trees among which one of the Bombaceae (silk-cotton trees) and Pisonia grandis attain the greatest dimensions, having frequently a girth of twelve or fifteen feet, with a height of sixty or seventy. A large-leaved Calophyllum is the prevailing tree of the island, and among the others I may mention a Myristica and a Caryophyllum, neither of which, however, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... in 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 ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... it is you," he said, "who, I perceive, will some day come over upon the very ground I now occupy. Our modern ways of thinking have become too free and lax. We cannot draw the rein and tighten the girth." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... than I reckoned; for so it was that I presently became aware of a companion in my solitudes. This was a Capuchin of great girth and capacity, who sat under a chestnut tree, secluded from observation, and was at that time engaged ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... harder. "Oh, it's awful funny!" she cried, rocking herself to and fro—and steadily increasing her girth. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... 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 on the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly lie 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 somber and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of the branches twelve feet, in circumference. The age of this prodigy of the forest cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The oak viewed by the present King, in Oxfordshire, and some years ago felled in the domains of one of the Colleges, though only twenty-five feet in girth, is said to have been six hundred years old. Fairlop oak having been nearly thrice as large, is supposed to be ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... 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 ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... best Well is a man's purse better at home Than open where folk go and come." "Come ye carles of the south country, Now shall we go our kin to see! For the lambs are bleating in the south, And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth, Girth and graithe and gather your gear! And ho for the other Whitewater!" Bright was the moon as bright might be, And Snbiorn rode to the north country. And Odd to Reykholt is gone forth, To see if his mares be ought of worth. But Hallbiorn into the bower is gone And there sat Hallgerd all alone. ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap three or ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... party of artists and students drank and talked and smoked. A great live peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a heavy wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in arm-chairs of ample girth, had its loggia windows and doors open to the air. There were singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary, iris, and arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge vase filled to overflowing with oranges and lemons, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with this resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom or two in girth." ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... and was getting as fat as a pig. Did I not think so? Voila! In her artless way she guided my finger into her waistband and then swelled herself out like the frog in the fable to prove the increase in her girth. She spoke in awestricken whispers of the Master himself. Save that he was utterly kind, impulsive, generous, boastful, and according to her untrained ear a violinist of the first quality, she knew not what manner of man he was. She had enough imagination to feel vaguely that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, A liquid cool elixir—all its girth Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, Nor mars one whit their ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... if he could," insisted John, with a humorous glance at his old friend, who was much too heavy and huge of girth for quick transit over rough ground. John York himself had grown lighter ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... very upright old man that he saw in the chair before him, of medium height and girth, with hands clasping the bosses of his chair-arms, and an appearance of great and deliberate dignity. But it was at the face chiefly that he looked, dropping his gaze three or four times, as the Pope's blue eyes turned on him. They were extraordinary ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mathias," Judas muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, and his garments ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... to his horse, he unfastened the saddle girth, and, hurrying back to where Manuel was floundering in the mud, he threw the saddle outwards, holding the end of the girth. It was just long enough to reach. With the help of the flat surface given by the saddle and a gradual pulling of the girth by ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... them. Crimmins darted into the underbrush bordering the pike. The horse came fast. It flashed past Garrison. Its rider was swaying in the saddle; swaying with white, tense face and sawing hands. The eyes were fixed straight ahead, vacant. A broken saddle-girth flapped raggedly. Garrison recognized the fact that it was a runaway, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier, despite of himself,—and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a little prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting on that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth, with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smiles and glow. He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously particular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, he was not a little ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a deadly hue, And all the rose to one small spot withdrew, They call'd it hectic; 'twas a fiery flush, More fix'd and deeper than the maiden blush; His paler lips the pearly teeth disclosed, And lab'ring lungs the length'ning speech opposed. No more his span-girth shanks and quiv'ring thighs Upheld a body of the smaller size; But down he sank upon his dying bed, And gloomy crotchets fill'd his wandering head. 'Spite of my faith, all-saving faith,' he cried, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is usually attained when the trees ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... everything, and he will stay converted probably. If you convert him at twelve, he probably will fall from grace before he is fifteen. It is rather interesting to notice that those periods when his experiences are likely to be very deep and very strong, are the years when his chest girth is expanding the most rapidly. A very good bit of physiology or psychology or of anything else you choose to call it, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... at this juncture that a slight accident occurred to Frau von Wallmoden; her saddle girth broke, and she would have had a disagreeable fall had she not had the presence of mind to slip at once from her saddle to the ground. To follow the riders was now an impossibility, for her groom could not ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... direction. The little white house had been built close to the grand old oak which was the pride of Milford. It was indeed a giant of its kind; there was something wonderfully fine about its vigorous spread of branches and its enormous girth. Close by was a peaceful-looking river, flowing between green banks fringed with willow and marestail and pink river-herb. The house itself had a nice little garden, gay with geraniums and gladiolus, and bounded by a hedge of sunflowers which would have gladdened the heart of an aesthete. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... troops were resting on the march; mass had just been celebrated, and the men were at breakfast, when the outposts suddenly saw young Mansana galloping towards them, carry a lady before him and with two riderless horses secured to his saddle-girth. The lady was a spy from the enemy's camp; her two attendants—officers of the enemy's force—were lying wounded in the forest. The lady was promptly recognised, and Mansana's "evviva" was echoed and re-echoed by a thousand voices. The camp was immediately broken up, as it was more than ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... postponed suddenly weighed him down. Ossian, released from fairyland after three hundred years dalliance there, rode back to his own country on horseback. He saw men imprisoned under a block of marble and others trying to lift the stone. As he leaned over to aid them the girth broke. With the touch of earth "straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian became ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... back from the steepest brae in Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which another boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up. Jargonelle trees grew against the house, stretching their arms round it as if to measure its girth, and it was also remarkable for several "dumb" windows with the most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's fruit was famous, but she loved her flowers best, and for long a notice board in her garden said, appealingly: ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million metres they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches now go through from pole to pole, So we'll stick to inches, feet, and yards, and our own ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the shadow of the lodge, he thrust his arm in at the door, and stealthily possessed himself of the enchanted moccasins. He would have taken away Onwee's war-club too, if he could have carried it; but although he was twice the size and girth of Onwee, he had not the strength to lift it; so he borrowed a club from an old chief, who was purblind, and mistook Ko-ko for his brother who was a brave man; and raising a terrible tumult with his voice, and a great dust with his heels, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... best 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 treenails of the same material. At each end of the bow ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... master of ceremonies, tall, erect, wide of girth, serious, his face framed in white whiskers, approached the newcomers, asking with a short and haughty bow: "Whom shall ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... his years, from five to fifteen pounds under weight, and from one to three grades behind his proper school position. Very often, also, his chest is inclined to be narrow, the tip of his breastbone to be sunken, and his abdomen larger in girth than his chest. Is it possible that the mere inhaling of air directly into the lungs, even though it be imperfectly warmed, moistened, and filtered, as compared with what it would be if drawn through the elaborate "steam-coils" in the nostrils for this purpose, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Whitton, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... and when, after a moment's converse, Tony put his hand in his pocket, and drew forth something which he gave to Theodore, the florist darted from his shop, and rushed across the street with an agility which was hardly to be expected from one of his years and girth. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... for hot applications when our horses were sick. He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly diminish in girth. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Scorn your grim power—till we glimpse the flare Of burning Death 'mid holiness of Birth. What is our godliness and wisdom worth Against your strength embattled unaware? You are the Master, ever, everywhere, Deadly and gentle o'er the wide World's girth. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... chanced to dismount to tighten the girth of Mrs. Norton's horse, when a fresh boar broke from cover and was instantly pursued by all the others of the hunt. The subaltern ruefully accepted the lady's apologies and hurriedly swung himself up into the saddle again to follow, when ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... years his temper became worse, and his girth greater. The violent exertion of his earlier days was exchanged for the ease of a man who had nothing to do but stand about, eat, sleep, and throw things at cabin-boys. He had all the peremptory disposition of an Eastern tyrant; and the notion of ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... fresh-water gudgeon," replied the traveller, "that never in your life sailed farther than the Isle of Dogs, do you pretend to play a sailor, and not know the bridle of the bow-line, and the saddle of the boltsprit, and the bit for the cable, and the girth to hoist the rigging, and the whip to serve for small tackle?—There is a trick for you to find out an Abram-man, and save sixpence when he begs of you as a disbanded seaman.—Get along with you! or the constable shall be charged with the whole ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... head is rounded at the front, while its jaw is not long and straight, but bowed. It is as frolicsome as the porpoise, gambolling about in schools of from twenty to fifty or more, as if really delighted to be alive. Its average size is from ten to twenty feet long, and seven or eight feet in girth, weight from one to three tons. Blubber about three inches thick, while the head is almost all oil, so that a good rich specimen will make between one and two barrels of oil ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... weighing-machines, the owners of which cried out continually and amain,—"Come, know your weight! Come, come, know your weight to-day! Come, know your weight!"—and a multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were moved by this vociferation to sit down in the machines. I know not whether they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their standing as members of society at so much a pound; but I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the prevalence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... admire thce, master of the tides, Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall; The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides, The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall; Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, and granite of it: past all Grasp God, throned behind Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... of something more than average girth, always took her time in ascending to that fifth storey where she and her husband shared a tenement with the Hewett family. This afternoon her pause on each landing was longer than usual, for a yellow fog, which mocked the pale glimmer of gas-jets on the staircase, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... or ridges, over the temporal muscles, which has been mis-termed 'callosities', as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. Five of this form, measured by me, varied only from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 2 inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from 3 feet to 3 feet 7 1/2 inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from 7 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 6 inches; the width of the face from 10 to 13 1/4 inches. The colour and length of the hair varied in different individuals, and in different parts of the same individual; some possessed ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... demonstrated that the lesser can contain the greater, the snake was but triflingly increased in girth. It was just in that phenomenal condition which entitled it to the honour of preservation in a ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... may help themselves freely from time to time, as occasion demands. The tribe to which he belongs lives underground, in a dome-roofed vault, and only one particular caste among the workers, known as rotunds from their expansive girth, is told off for this special duty of storing honey within their own bodies. Clinging to the top of their nest, with their round, transparent abdomens hanging down loosely, mere globules of skin enclosing the pale amber-coloured ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... with a touch of bonhomie in his voice in keeping with his ample girth, "you mustn't give way like this, my child! What's amiss? Come, sit down here and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... which, by way of reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's skin laid over it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of girth, a thong of hide passing around the horse's belly. The rider's dark features and keen snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which, like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... humble Odyssey, wrought in coloured paper on pig-skin, and the one work I never, never was weary of. If the distinguished Ithacan had travelled with a hat-box, how finely and minutely Homer would have described it—its depth and girth, its cunningly fashioned lock and fair lining withal! And in how interminable a torrent of hexameters would he have catalogued all the labels on it, including those attractive views of the Hotel Circe, the Hotel Calypso, and other high-class ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... black turret-girth Suppressed the multiplied steep chasm of fathoms, So that immediately the fields far down Lay to their heaving distance for the eyes, Satisfied with one gaze unconsciously, To pass to glory of heaven, and to know light. Here was no need of thinking:—merely sense Was found sufficient: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, out of it— But bigger in chest and paunch, In the girth of his muscular shackle-bones, Round his colossal shoulders, Round his Memnonian countenance, Over the dome of his skull-crypts— From crown to foot of his body— Than grimmest of old Welsh giants, Grimmest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... them to-day I found that only seven real prisoners of war are left here, the others being suspects or possible traitors, arrested on suspicion of signalling or sending messages to the enemy. Among them is the French deserter I mentioned weeks ago. The little man is much reduced in girth, and terribly lonely among the Dutch, but he appears to grow no wiser for solitude and ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... horsemen were about to ford the river, a hare, startled by the sound of the horses' hoofs, started up from the grass and ran towards the thicket. The young Prince pursued the little creature, and had almost overtaken it, when the girth of his saddle suddenly broke in two and he fell heavily to the ground. No sooner had his foot touched the earth than he disappeared before the ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... 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 harmful ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... switch off at the holler thet heads near the trail a few miles down," Nels was saying, as he tightened his saddle-girth. "Thet holler heads into a big canyon. Once in thet, it'll be every man fer hisself. I reckon there won't be anythin' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... not want a standard ball, So many to the pound; Whether its girth is trim and svelte Or built to take an out-size belt, I hardly seem to care at all So long as it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... variety, coarsened through much mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were good, and he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three times his size, and a tail which I never saw equalled—indeed it was a tail per se; it was of immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was of great power, and acted in a way, as far as I have been able to discover, quite original. We called it ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... far as the ridge that bisected it would allow, finding the elevated ground clothed with thickly growing trees, principally a species of spruce fir called the antarctic beech, which runs to a height of some thirty or forty feet, with a girth of five or six feet. It is a magnificent evergreen, and would look well on an English lawn, for it has a ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... coolly dismounted from his horse, and unbuckling the girth, proceeded to deposit the saddle, with the valise attached to it, within the hut the door of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... 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 ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... north end of the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the American elm in ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... come back in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Cyprus (the ancient Chittim), was probably a species of cypress at that time composing the forests which ornamented a considerable portion of the surface. There are two varieties of cypress in the island: that which would have been celebrated grows upon the high mountains, and attains a girth of from seven to nine feet, the wood being highly aromatic, emitting a perfume resembling a mixture of sandal-wood and cedar; the other cypress is a dwarf variety that seldom exceeds twenty feet in height, with a maximum circumference ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the man himself seemed to have little enough sentiment about him. His shoulders were broad and his head massive. A short-cut beard concealed his chin, but his mouth was of iron and his eyes were hard and keen. He was of no more than the average stature by reason of his breadth and girth; he seemed even to fall short of it, which was not however the case. A man not easily led or controlled, a man of passions and prejudices, emphatically not a man to be ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... their front and so bring them to. Being mounted on a young full-blooded charger, fresh and strong from the stable, I bid fair to gain my point too, for I was coming up with them hand over hand. — But, in that very juncture of time, as the Lord was pleased to order it, my girth gave way, my saddle turned, and my charger fetching a ground start, threw me, saddle, holsters, and all, full ten feet over his head, and then ran off. I received no harm, God be praised for it, but recovering my ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... 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 gone; indeed, he says he has the strongest ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... vulgarly upstairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not altogether unlike that demanded by a home-exerciser to reduce the abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they never have been advised to shine their own shoes—twenty-five times in the morning and twenty-five times just ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... a hose-pipe; and this astoundingly thirsty man drank with such rapidity that the water, with huge boats floating on it, subsided at the rate of about a foot a second, and the drinker waxed enormously in girth. The laughter grew uproarious. Rachel herself gave a quick, uncontrolled, joyous laugh, and it was as if the laugh had been drawn out of her violently unawares. Louis Fores ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... sooner out of his mouth than he dwindled down to his usual height, and spread out in girth till he exactly resembled, in appearance, what one looks like in a concave mirror—that is, he was about twice as ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... point of it south south-east half east, and the south point of Norfolk Isle north-east. The pine trees on this island are of an immense size, measuring from twenty to twenty-seven and even thirty feet in girth, and so tall that it was not easy to form any exact judgment of their height. This place affords vast numbers of cabbage trees, and amazing quantities of fish may be procured on the banks that ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... intention of sharing that privilege even with you; I merely desire you to inspect the accoutrements, to examine reins, and girth, and stirrup. I lend my hobby to no one, and it is far too mettlesome to 'carry double'. Uncle Mitchell, I feel so unhappy about that poor girl, that I must do something to comfort her, and only one avenue presents itself. I want ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... been waiting since nine in the morning, and it was now well past noon. He was a placid gentleman of curvilinear type, short of limb and large of girth. His trousers, of that morose hue termed by the country people "plum," reached to his armpits, and his hat, large and felt and weather-beaten, was only prevented from eclipsing his head by the stubborn resistance of two small, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning this stone—it was well known to the Chinese from the days of Hwen ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the party had taken their seats in the carriage he examined the saddle-girth; then, putting his foot in the stirrup, he sprang to the saddle. The animal began to curvet and nearly ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... daughters on board. The lady was almost twice the height of her better half, and the daughters promised to grow into the same proportions. The major was undoubtedly a short man, although not a small one either in girth or in his own estimation. He had a rubicund countenance, huge mustachios, and small, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... his fleet horse, who seemed to him, in his impetuous haste, to be creeping like a snail. He drove his spurs deep into the sides of the frightened animal, which almost leaped through his girth. A less expert horseman would have been unseated; but an earthquake could not have thrown this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... ants, magpies in every meadow, and coffee-cups without handles, but of great girth, are some of the objects that soon become familiar to strangers who wander in that part of France which was at one time as much part of England as any of the counties of this island. The ants and the coffee-cups certainly give one a sense of being in a foreign land, ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... and unable to leave the towns, we shall probably find that they nearly always lose weight in hot weather. Some support is given to this idea by the following very curious facts. Very many years ago I was engaged for certain purposes in determining the weight, height, and girth of all the members of our city police force. The examination was made in April and repeated in the beginning of October. Every care was taken to avoid errors, but to my surprise I found that a large majority of the men had lost weight during the summer. The sum total of loss was enormous. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... began to dance round the room. He caught March about his stalwart girth and tried to make him waltz; the office- boy came to the door and looked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... see how much good was in that gold, how large a fund of blessing was hidden in that crock: Reuben Scott gained health, the family were fed, clad, taught; Susan grew in happiness at least as truly as in girth; and Hagglesfield beheld the goodness of that store, whose curse had startled ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden inferior—Oh how inferior!—to me in charms, wit, beauty, intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... at about seven, I set off after the lost sheep. I could have no horse; all that could be mounted—we have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment—were due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush; missed it; came forth in a great oblong patch of taro ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exceptions to this rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few words from foreign languages c is soft before other vowels, though in such cases it should always be written with a ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... man in a half-apologetic tone. Then in brisker accents, "The very thing I want! I say, can you give me a bit of it? The ring of my saddle girth has fetched loose. I ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree, which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... on; there was a brief struggle, but he was no match in size or strength for his opponent, who was thick-set and of considerable girth. He fell backwards, overborne by the man's weight. His head struck on the road; dazed by the blow he loosened his clutch, and lay for a moment in semi-consciousness while the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the Zoological Society of London, was brought up in confinement since its early existence, when it was about 4 feet 6 inches high. That elephant was carefully weighed and measured before it left England, with the result, of height at shoulder, 11 feet; weight, six tons and a half. The girth of the fore-foot when the pressure of the animal's weight was exerted, was exactly half the perpendicular height of the elephant. I have seen very much larger animals in Africa, but there is nothing in India to approach the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... saint's day in the Scottish calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient "girth" or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... of the mighty girth—a man like a soda-water bottle, from my one glimpse of him on his feet—seemed sobered rather than stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice no more, but we could feel him straining every thew against the trap-door upon which Raffles and I stood side ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... been, and chewers of tobacco, and everything concerned with filth except a scavenger. At every hundred yards some unhappy man treads upon the silken swab which she trails behind her—loosening it dreadfully at the girth one would say; and then see the style of face and the expression of features with which she accepts the sinner's half muttered apology. The world, she supposes, owes her everything because of her silken train, even room enough in a crowded thoroughfare to drag it along unmolested. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... changed greatly in stature in the past few months, but there was a very noticeable decrease in the girth of her little arms and body, and her big dark eyes seemed the larger for the whiteness of her face. On her head she wore an old calico bonnet several sizes too large and the gingham dress which scarcely reached to her bare, brown ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... hadst covered me, Earth, O Earth, Or e'er I had looked on my lord thus low, In the palled marble of silvern girth! What hands may shroud ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... serves me, he said words to that effect. A few handfuls of dust will hide the stains. Now we may jog upon our way without any fear of being called upon to answer for another man's sins. Let me but get my girth tightened and we may soon ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... although Murphy guessed the narrow stream they had just forded might be the upper waters of the Tongue. Their horses stood with heads hanging wearily down, their sides rising and falling; and Hampton, rolling stiffly from the saddle, hastily loosened his girth. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... us will deliver battle strong; Great bands of Moors and Christians he brings with him along. He will not for any reason without fighting let us go. Here let us have the battle since they pursue us so. So get you on your armour and girth the horses tight. Down the hill they come in hosen and their saddles are but light, And loose their girths. Each man of us has a Galician selle, And moreover with the jackboots are our hosen covered well. We should beat them though we numbered but fivescore cavaliers. Before they reach the ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... churches. But when once we have grasped the design of the architect, we shall usually find that he has conformed in some respects to unmeaning traditions inherited from an earlier period, and further that his work incorporates the remnants of an older, simpler structure. Here are pillars of massive girth altogether disproportionate to the delicate arches which they carry; there an old tower has been buttressed to make it capable of supporting a new spire. For all the builder's cunning, we can yet distinguish between the new and the renovated. So it is ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Bavarian Dorf, may manage to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap three or four holes. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... just been celebrated, and the men were at breakfast, when the outposts suddenly saw young Mansana galloping towards them, carry a lady before him and with two riderless horses secured to his saddle-girth. The lady was a spy from the enemy's camp; her two attendants—officers of the enemy's force—were lying wounded in the forest. The lady was promptly recognised, and Mansana's "evviva" was echoed and re-echoed by a thousand voices. The camp was immediately broken up, as it was more ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... brothers of the woods and hills as to say good-morning to his fellow mortals. And, in the joy of seeing Black Spur rising again to his level in the distance before him, he doffed his hat to it with a return of his old boyish habit, laid his arm caressingly around the great girth of the nearest pine, clapped his hands to the scampering squirrels in his path, and whistled to the dipping jays. In this way he quite forgot the more serious affairs of the preceding night, or, rather, saw them only in the ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... calculated than himself to excite the risible faculties of the field, being a sort of mouse colour, with dun mane and tail, got by Nicolo, out of a flibbertigibbet mare, and he stands seventeen hands and an inch. His head is small and blood-like, his girth a mere trifle, and his legs, very long and spidery, of course without any hair at the pasterns to protect them from the flints; his whole appearance bespeaking him fitter to run for half-mile hunters' stakes at Croxton Park or Leicester, than contend for foxes' brushes ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... perceptible slanting of the deck, and the captain piped out to the hands to shift the chain-box. And by this action was resolved for me a riddle with regard to the properties and uses of a prematurely stout man of fabulous girth, who had been dimly revealed to me, once or twice in the course of the voyage, through some long vista of the 'tween-decks, but seemed always to melt into air,—or, more probably, oil,—upon any advance being made to a closer inspection. Now, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... with rich cloths, magnificently embroidered over their whole surface.' [PLATE XCIII., Fig. 2.] These cloths encircled the neck, which they closely fitted, and, falling on either side of the body, were then kept in place by means of a broad strap round the rump and a girth under ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... freely from time to time, as occasion demands. The tribe to which he belongs lives underground, in a dome-roofed vault, and only one particular caste among the workers, known as rotunds from their expansive girth, is told off for this special duty of storing honey within their own bodies. Clinging to the top of their nest, with their round, transparent abdomens hanging down loosely, mere globules of skin enclosing the pale amber-coloured honey, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Todd, the "Poet of Manhattan," had stalked in with a Prussian helmet on his head, his girth draped in a rich blue shawl embroidered and fringed with white, a bitter frown on his jovial round face; and in his hand a long rod with a large blue bow on the metal point designed to shut refractory ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... well in this particular activity. And the Government she serves with such devotion will betray her if, when DORA is in her grave—consummation devoutly to be wished—her work on allotment gardens is not continued. There is always a ring of land round a town, like a halo round the moon. As the town's girth increases, so should that halo; and even in time of peace, larger and larger, not less and less, should grow the number of town dwellers raising vegetables, fruit and flowers, resting their nerves and expanding lungs and muscles with healthy ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... me one day to ride in to Salisbury. I had ordered some goods for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land—a portentous matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm, glancing about him on every side as he did so, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... in the middle of the morning, Ellen, to her great surprise, saw Sharp brought before the door with the side-saddle on, and Mr. John carefully looking to the girth, and shortening the stirrup. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... a work of no slight difficulty, and even danger. Occasionally plunging to the knees in a deep bog, then wading to the girth in a hillock of sand and prickly bent grass (the Arundo arenaria, so plentiful on these coasts), the horses were scarcely able to keep their footing—yet were they still urged on. Every step was expected to bring them within sight ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... rest solidly against the most distant wall, and looks so small an object in that vast space as to render a realization of its actual measurement impossible. The height of the Throne is sixty-five feet and the girth two hundred. It is a mass of dripstone resting on a limestone base reserved from the ancient excavation to receive it, and on careful inspection the perpendicular lines, observed on the front, are found to be a set of rather large organ pipes. A fresh ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... of silk and wool, sometimes coral beads or copper plates, and of a morocco saddle, usually red, rising up in front to prevent falls, but without any cantle. The saddle is placed upon a piece of carpet or striped stuff, and is fastened by a broad girth which passes diagonally under the animal's tail like a crupper-strap; another girth fastens the saddle-cloth, and two short stirrups flap against the animal's sides. The harness is more or less rich according to ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... really believes that God made the physical universe. Let me, I pray you, appeal to your common sense for a moment. When any one chooses a horse or a dog, whether for strength, for speed, or for any other useful purpose, the first thing almost to be looked at is the girth round the ribs; the room for heart and lungs. Exactly in proportion to that will be the animal's general healthiness, power of endurance, and value in many other ways. If you will look at eminent lawyers and famous orators, who have attained a healthy old age, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... harness consisting of two light side slats and a girth and neck strap in such a way that the cow cannot reach her udder. Unless she is particularly valuable for milk, it will save you a lot of worry to fix her up ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... resumed Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... kind. He was then committed to an orphan asylum to be given "a right religious education." It's a queer old world, Terese, and what would have become of Gerhard Gerhards had he fallen heir to his father's titles and estate, no man can say. He might have accumulated girth and become an honored burgomaster. As it was he became powder-monkey to a monk, and scrubbed stone floors and rushed the growler for cowled ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade, bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade. House and tree transcended any similes of sex. Margaret thought ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... hour away from the town are situated two large dingy buildings. Here the traveler is transferred to the care of the miners. These men wear dark and generally steel-blue colored jackets, of ample girth, descending to the hips, with pantaloons of a similar hue, a leather apron tied on behind, and a rimless green felt hat which resembles a decapitated nine-pin. In such a garb, with the exception of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the dying and the dead, The cloven cuirass, and the helmless head; 1040 The war-horse masterless is on the earth,[kt][284] And that last gasp hath burst his bloody girth; And near, yet quivering with what life remained, The heel that urged him and the hand that reined; And some too near that rolling torrent lie,[ku] Whose waters mock the lip of those that die; That panting thirst which scorches in the breath Of those that die the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... The tree is often found 300 ft. high and from 8 to 10ft. in diameter. The wood is tough and strong and highly valued for ships' spars as well as for building purposes. Red or giant cedar, which rivals the Douglas fir in girth, is plentiful, and is used for shingles as well as for interior work. The western white spruce is also much employed for various purposes. There are about eighty sawmills, large and small, in the province. The amount of timber cut on Dominion government lands in 1904 was 22,760,222 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... a measure for the unusual number of snakes to {212} be seen. Exercising a fair amount of caution, I slew that morning fourteen poisonous reptiles, one of which measured more than five feet in length and had a girth I was just able to ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... accident," said she, breathing quickly. "My girth is broke and I have lost the rest ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Abbot in sarcastic displeasure and eyeing the good monk's ample girth and heavy, jowly face. "Your doze would need a pole-axe to awaken. An army could have marched by with trumpets sounding and you never lift an eye. Other duty shall be given you and a more slender brother assigned to the night watch. You ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... and on, with the trees seeming to get taller and taller, and of mightier girth. Now and then we caught a glimpse of the blue sky, but only seldom, the dense foliage ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... practical demonstration. His notion was that the earth was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth; Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... hog and, as with the carabao, an estimate of its value is shown by representing the size of the girth of the animal by clasping the hands around one's leg. For instance, a small pig is represented by the size of the speaker's ankle, as he clasps both hands around it; a larger one is the size of his calf; a still larger one is the size of a man's thigh; and ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... 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[62-10] was hurled from his saddle like ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... for some days after the passage of the Potomac; but the Confederacy was near paying a heavy price for the "good grey mare." When Jackson first mounted her a band struck up close by, and as she reared the girth broke, throwing her rider to the ground. Fortunately, though stunned and severely bruised, the general was only temporarily disabled, and, if he appeared but little in public during his stay in Frederick, his inaccessibility ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... 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 ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Circus and Menagerie Combination Company. The ground leading up to the front of the canvas was garnished in the usual way. There were two small parasitic tents near the great one, on which primitive pictures hung of the woman of enormous girth and the calf with six legs. A man stood at the flap entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose proprietor was handing out glasses of his ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... frightful misunderstanding. The man you have sent us is not Fosco. Of Fosco he has only the baldness, the air benevolent, and the girth. The brand on his right arm is no more than the mark of vaccination. Brought before the Commissary of Police, the prisoner, who has not one word of French, was heard through an interpreter. He gives himself the name of Piquouique, rentier, English; and he appeals ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... described and 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Hartley, moving slowly from north to south; and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to Grange-farm, both in this parish. It began with vast drops of rain, which were soon succeeded by round hail, and then by convex pieces of ice, which measured three inches in girth. Had it been as extensive as it was violent, and of any continuance (for it was very short), it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood. In the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm; but Norton, which lay in the centre of the storm, was greatly ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... gallop up to it whilst I tighten my horse's girth, and come back and tell me if there is a light in any ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was written, I have had opportunity of seeing a Ryu-ja within a few hours after its capture. It was between two and three feet long, and about one inch in diameter at its thickest girth The upper part of the body was a very dark brown, and the belly yellowish white; toward the tail there were some beautiful yellowish mottlings. The body was not cylindrical, but curiously four-sided—like those elaborately woven whip-lashes ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse, Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the full moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth. The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy snorer, and his voice in speaking came thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and stifled by feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... "the comone Crose."—Probably the Girth Cross, at the foot of the Canongate, near Holyrood. But Arnot also makes mention of St. John's Cross, and of a third, near the Tolbooth in that street.—(Hist. of Edinburgh, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... horse-racing, gambling, either with cards, dominoes, or coin, a sort of pitch and toss game, and they would frequently make bets on the strength of their horses. To settle the point their plan was to fasten the two horses stern to stern by a short lasso, secured to the saddle, or girth of either animal, at a short distance from each other. The gauchos having mounted their respective horses, one being placed on one side of a line, drawn on the ground, and the other on the other side, then set to work to lash and spur their steeds in opposite ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... A heavy step sounded in the little hall, the door was pushed open, and a man entered. He was a young man, big and broad-shouldered, and Ravenslee's keen eyes were quick to heed the length and ponderous carriage of the arms, the girth of chest, and firm, heavy poise of the feet; lastly he looked at the face, aggressively handsome with its dominating nose and chin, and blue eyes shaded by thick lashes, that looked out beneath heavy brows—a comely-seeming face from the dark, close-cropped hair ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Plymouth Sound, With Acland, Anstruther, impound Souls to six thousand strong. While those, the fourth fleet, that we see Far back, are lined with cavalry, And guns of girth, wheeled heavily ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... dark and moonless, with a heaviness in the air which was oppressive. Campbell had to grant men and horses a breathing period. He put out pickets, leaving the rest of them to lie with their mounts saddled and to hand. Drew loosened the girth, stripped off saddle and blanket, and wiped down the sweaty back of his new mount. But he dared not leave the gelding free. So, against all good practice, he re-equipped the tired beast. No mount was going to be able to take that kind of treatment for long. They had a half dozen ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... to go nutting? Brazil has the greatest groves on earth. Some of these nut trees grow to a height of a hundred and fifty feet and have a girth of twenty feet, fifty feet up from the ground. A single tree is said to produce as many as three tons of nuts during a season. In the trees of Brazil are found sixteen hundred species of birds. There are parrots galore and sixty-five varieties of woodpeckers have been catalogued. One family ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... withdrew, They call'd it hectic; 'twas a fiery flush, More fix'd and deeper than the maiden blush; His paler lips the pearly teeth disclosed, And lab'ring lungs the length'ning speech opposed. No more his span-girth shanks and quiv'ring thighs Upheld a body of the smaller size; But down he sank upon his dying bed, And gloomy crotchets fill'd his wandering head. 'Spite of my faith, all-saving faith,' he cried, 'I fear of worldly works the wicked pride; Poor ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the American ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 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 ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh: but that great statesman must have been a person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... and limb; with a countenance extremely winning, not only from the comeliness of its features, but its frankness, manliness, and good nature. His was the bronzed, rich complexion, the inclination towards embonpoint, the athletic girth of chest, which denote redundant health, and mirthful temper, and sanguine blood. Robert, who had lived the life of cities, was a year younger than his brother; nearly as tall, but pale, meagre, stooping, and with a careworn, anxious, hungry ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... let the fact appear. My reward began then, and most voluptuously I savoured it. I had Mistress Nelly on her biscuit-coloured knees to me before I finally reached the cabin floor on my hands, my toes still clinging to the port-hole. Poor Fred could not possibly equal this feat. His girth ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... had been, O'Neil's greatest surprise came a moment later as he passed the first of the company buildings. There he heard his name pronounced in a voice which halted him, and in an open doorway he beheld a huge, loose- hung man of tremendous girth, with a war-bag in his hand and a wide black hat thrust ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... had been marked by the British and the Indians. The last runner from Ft. Pitt had informed him that the description of Miller tallied with that of one of the ten men who had deserted from Ft. Pitt in 1778 with the tories Girth, McKee, and Elliott. Col. Zane was now satisfied that Miller was an agent of Girty and therefore of the British. So since all the weaknesses of the Fort, the number of the garrison, and the favorable conditions for a siege were known ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... 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
... saddles was an odd-looking object. It resembled a gigantic book, partly open, and set upon the opened edges. It was a pack-saddle, also of Mexican fashion, and in that country called an "alpareja." It had a strong leathern girth, with a breech-strap to keep it from running forward upon the shoulders of the animal that might wear it. At a short distance from the saddles, several blankets—red and green ones—with a bear-skin and a ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... more for fowling, and I was more for horses—before I increased so much in girth. Is it for horses ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... panic, when he saw the walking bear still drawing nearer, poor Bumpus managed to push his legs under the lower rim of the tightly stretched canvas. Only the lower half of him could find admittance; the balance was of such larger girth that in spite of his frantic labor he could ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... my man's horse, which they had caught, and set me on it, making my feet fast under the girth. The men who had fallen they hid in the bushes, and it troubled me more than aught to think that Wulf should lie among them. My horse they dragged into a hollow, and piled snow over him. Then they went swiftly down the hillside into the deep combe, leaving only the trampled ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... lean in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To limber out each ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... size and strength sufficient to carry so heavy a burden. It was necessary that the poor animal should be progressively trained; and in order to accomplish this the king's equerry fastened round the horse a girth loaded with pieces of lead, increasing the weight daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... would go in style on the back of "Chestnut Bess." He wanted to show his Uncle Henry and the others what the "little runt" was capable of accomplishing as an equestrian. Accordingly, he placed a good strong bridle upon the mare's head, gave an extra pull at the saddle-girth to assure himself there was no possibility of that failing him, and, taking a hoe, which he wished to use in his work on the farm, in his right hand, he led the mare quietly down the path, out through the ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... out of heaven, and dearth Shaken down from the shining thereof, Wrecks from afar overseas And peril of shallow and firth, And tears that spring and increase In the barren places of mirth, That thou, having wings as a dove, Being girt with desire for a girth, That thou must come after these, That thou must ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... higher and higher as he came round the ring, till it passed the "record." The stubborn rider would not say enough, but the stubborn horse was disposed to shy and refuse to leap. Grant gritted his teeth and spurred at it, but just as the horse gathered for the spring, his swelling body burst the girth and rider and saddle tumbled into the ring. Half stunned, he gathered himself up from the dust only to hear the strident, cynical voice of the riding-master calling out, "Cadet Grant, six demerits for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Isle bearing south, the easternmost point of it south south-east half east, and the south point of Norfolk Isle north-east. The pine trees on this island are of an immense size, measuring from twenty to twenty-seven and even thirty feet in girth, and so tall that it was not easy to form any exact judgment of their height. This place affords vast numbers of cabbage trees, and amazing quantities of fish may be procured on the banks that lie on the west side of the small island; those they got on board ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... hardly even sister to the Madame Loisel of Saturday afternoon on "the line" or Sunday morning at the French Church. By what process man may not imagine, this second Madame Loisel took six inches from her girth, fifty pounds from her weight, fifteen years from her age. Her step was like a dancer's; her figure was no more than comfortably plump; her Sunday complexion brought the best out of her alluring eyes and her black, ungrizzled hair; her hands, in their perfect ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... according to temperament; the girls with a cap, a derby, or a beaver with a white veil, and the lad's eye caught one of them quickly, for a red tam-o'-shanter had slipped from her shining hair and a broad white girth ran around both her saddle and her horse. There was one man on a sorrel mule and he was the host at the big house, for Colonel Pendleton had surrendered every horse he had to a guest. Suddenly there came ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... (London, 1863), there is a drawing of a fine old pair of jougs, "found," says Wilson, "imbedded in a venerable ash tree, recently blown down, at the churchyard gate, Applegirth, Dumfriesshire. The tree, which was of great girth, is believed to have been upwards of three hundred years old, and the jougs were completely imbedded in its trunk, while the chain and staple hung down within the decayed and hollow core." The ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... A man whose girth would have put Falstaff to shame greeted Rutherford wheezily. "Fall off and 'light, Ford. She's in full swing and ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... beautiful ball gown, looked quite as handsome as her daughter. The regimental tailor had been busy all day letting out Colonel Fortescue's full dress uniform and the Colonel fondly hoped that a couple of inches he had gained in girth were concealed by the tailor's art. But Mrs. ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... as he entered the court-yard of his house, he muttered uneasily,—"And if Lysander is right, and Sparta is too small for Pausanias, do not we bring back a giant who will widen it to his own girth, and rase the old foundations to make room for ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... looked at the girth of the trees, appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest, and wherever ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... load. O the oont*, O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks. ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... mingled in the pasture, portion out Their sev'ral charges, so the chiefs array'd Their squadrons for the fight; while in the midst The mighty monarch Agamemnon mov'd: His eye, and lofty brow, the counterpart Of Jove, the Lord of thunder; in his girth Another Mars, with Neptune's ample chest. As 'mid the thronging heifers in a herd Stands, proudly eminent, the lordly bull; So, by Jove's will, stood eminent that day, 'Mid many heroes, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... whose banks were overgrown with thick brushwood. Just as the horsemen were about to ford the river, a hare, startled by the sound of the horses' hoofs, started up from the grass and ran towards the thicket. The young Prince pursued the little creature, and had almost overtaken it, when the girth of his saddle suddenly broke in two and he fell heavily to the ground. No sooner had his foot touched the earth than he disappeared before the eyes of ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes that snatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no more than reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree as wide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and then laughed. After that she frowned ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... that ever lived in the state. It was in keeping with his methods that he always seemed to be acting in response to a demand from the public rather than that he excited the public to demand what Scattergood wanted. But that was when Scattergood's hair was touched with gray and his girth had increased by ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... earth. With strange melodious stories of my birth, Phoebus men call me, and Latona's son. "And now my servitude with thee is done, And I shall leave thee toiling on thine earth, This handful, that within its little girth Holds that which moves you so, O men that die; Behold, to-day thou hast felicity, But the times change, and I can see a day When all thine happiness shall fade away; And yet be merry, strive not with the end, Thou canst not change it; for the rest, a friend ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the men was old, grey-haired, and large of girth, with a huge expanse of snowy shirt, and a head guiltless of hair. The other was comparatively young, not many years past my own age, perhaps, and a curious thrill, which I could not myself have explained, passed through me as I looked, through half-shut eyes, at his face. Where had I seen it ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... cliff so as to avoid being crushed by my horse. The fall was not a very long one, and I came down uppermost, but narrowly escaped having my head broken by my animal's hoofs as he struggled to regain his feet. He was somewhat cut and bruised, but not seriously hurt, and tightening the saddle-girth I waded along through the water, leading him after me until I was able to regain the path. Then climbing into the saddle again, with dripping clothes and somewhat ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Charley rode over a large snake; he did not touch him, and we thought that it was a log until he struck it with the stirrup iron; we then saw that it was an immense snake, larger than any I have ever before seen in a wild state. It measured eight feet four inches in length and seven inches in girth round the belly; it was nearly the same thickness from the head to within twenty inches of the tail; it then tapered rapidly. The weight was 11 1/2 pounds. From the tip of the nose to five inches back, the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... general order he made him parade outside the gate of the station every morning at ten o'clock. He then marched from the front door with a majestic mien and inspected the horse, the rider, and accoutrements. He walked slowly round, examining with eagle eye the saddle, the bridle, the bits, the girth, the sword, pistols, spurs, and buckles. If he could find no fault with anything, he gave in brief the word of command, "Patrol the forest road," or any other road on which an enemy might be likely to appear. I never saw the sergeant himself on horseback. He might have been a gay ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... chests, longer legs than the average for their height, the lower leg being especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet, small arms, narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs of small girth. Every player must be studied by trainers for ever finer individual adjustments. His dosage of work must be kept well within the limits of his vitality, and be carefully adjusted to his recuperative power. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... half from the top of Tahawus, having already entered the great belt of spruce encircling the middle regions of the mountain, and having left behind all deciduous trees except a few birches. The forest here is especially grand, the original wood still remaining, tall, wide of girth, dark, and sturdy. The girdled trees standing near our camp looked at us reproachfully in the morning light; ten giants doomed to death to furnish a night's covering to six pigmies! Our fires, too, were they safe, or might they not run along the inflammable turf and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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
... sage, When writing of the past stone age, Tell us man once was clothed in skins And tattooed patterns on his shins. Rough bearded and with shaggy locks He lived in dug-outs in the rocks. Was often scared and run to earth By creatures of abnormal girth: Mammoths and monsters; truth to tell We find their names too long to spell. He joined in little feuds no doubt; And with his weapons fashioned out Of flint, went boldly to the fray; And cracked a skull ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... difference between Gog and Magog?' somebody wants to know; and I am glad that somebody asked the question, for it gives me the opportunity of pointing out that between Gog and Magog there is all the difference in the world. There is a difference in girth; there is a difference in height; and there is a difference in fibre. I have just run a tape round both trees. Magog gives a measurement of just six feet; whilst Gog puts those puny proportions to shame with a record of seven feet six inches. I have not attempted ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... Cologne counted its illustrious citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips, but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness and of Jean's devotion. She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people of her class in Jersey, and ever since that night ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shied violently at something black in the road. Then he saw Peggy's horse galloping riderless. Instantly, with fear at his throat, he had dismounted and was at the girl's side. She was not hurt, they found, only bruised and dazed and somewhat lamed. A girth had broken and her saddle turned. The crowd waited, silent and somewhat awed, until the carriage with the servants came up and she was put into it. Mrs. Dan's maid was there and Peggy insisted that she would have no one else. But as Monty helped her in, ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... getting as fat as a pig. Did I not think so? Voila! In her artless way she guided my finger into her waistband and then swelled herself out like the frog in the fable to prove the increase in her girth. She spoke in awestricken whispers of the Master himself. Save that he was utterly kind, impulsive, generous, boastful, and according to her untrained ear a violinist of the first quality, she knew not what manner of man he was. She had enough imagination to feel vaguely that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... wove by the branches of some strong parasitical plant, which had warped itself round and round it, by numberless snakelike convolutions, as if it had been a vegetable Laocoon. The tree itself shot up branchless to the uncommon height of fifty feet; the average girth of the hunk being four—and twenty feet, or eight—feet in diameter. The leaf of the cedar is small, not unlike the ash; but when I looked up, I noticed that the feelers of this ligneous serpent had twisted round the larger boughs, and blended their broad leaves with those of the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... proved. They gradually become shorter, and the shape changes from knife-blade-like to cylindrical. During this change they fast, and the weight of their delicate body decreases. They turn into glass-eels, about 2-1/2 inches long, like a knitting-needle in girth. They begin to move towards the distant shores and rivers, and they may be a year and a half old before they reach their destination and go up-stream as elvers. Those that ascend the rivers of the Eastern Baltic must have journeyed three thousand miles. It is certain ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... 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 seen a single dog that was idle in consequence of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... King looked down on his monster bracelet. "That," he said, "does not altogether do me credit, for it shows the difference in girth between me and Edmund Ironside. When we set the peace between us, we exchanged ornaments and weapons. Think if we had followed the custom in every respect and exchanged ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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
... thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a sword. When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to the standard of their race, and are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! these proportions,—these bones,—and this their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed this fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady's fingers! Can this ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... great little horses we had these days, with little heads such as I have seen in the paintings of Arab steeds, and an alert eager look to them, broad forehead, and soft neat muzzle. Close coupled they were, with a great girth, broad chest and sloping shoulders, and legs like iron. But it was the pride and the strength of them I never tired of, and it may be there was truth in the talk of the old folk, that the Hielan' horse was come off Spanish or Moorish horses of the Armada. But none ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... was as though the sun had suddenly sunk from the heavens. The pines, of magnificent height and girth, were so closely set that far overhead, where the branches began, was a heavy roof of foliage, impervious to the sunshine, brooding, dark and sullen as a thundercloud, over the cavernous world beneath. There was no undergrowth, no clinging vines, no bloom, no color; only the dark, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Quaker! Here," and he put back the pistol, crying, as the men laughed, "sergeant, strap this on your back. Quick! fetch out the horses; we will look him over later. Up with him behind Joe! Quick—a girth! We have no time to waste. A darned rebel spy! No doubt Sir William may like to ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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
... we found him sitting on a block facing the sun, lying against his shield, which was supported by the side of the house. The body was in a terrible state of decomposition. It was swollen to three times its living girth. Great blisters had collected under the epidermis, which broke from time to time, a brownish red fluid escaping. The spear wound in his neck was plugged by a wooden spear-head. In each hand Aliguyen held a wooden spear. No attempt whatever had been made to prevent ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... is far to the east around Staten Island, which means a loss of westing, and here, at the tip of the world, where the great west wind, unobstructed by any land, sweeps round and around the narrow girth of earth, westing is the thing that has to be fought for mile by mile and inch by inch. The Sailing Directions advise masters on the Horn passage: Make Westing. Whatever ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... used to express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... said not another word. Now there happened to pass that way a soldier with a horse, and he asked a woman if there was any shoemaker in that street. She said there was one near by, and took him to the house. The, soldier asked the shoemaker to come and cut his horse a girth, and he would pay him. The latter made no answer but "Leulero! leulero!" and his wife "Picici! picici! picicio!" Then the soldier said, "Come and cut my horse a girth, or I will cut your head off." The shoemaker ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... found himself a changed man. To his surprise, in spite of his white hair, brought on by the horror of what he had seen, he found that he had gained two inches in height, and that he was larger of girth. This, Professor Gurlone told him, was the effect ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... found guilty, and four days after the murder, on the 5th of July, was taken to the Girth Cross of Holyrood, at the foot of the Canongate, and there decapitated by that machine which rather anticipated the inventiveness of Dr Guillotin—"the Maiden.'' At the same time, four o'clock in the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... 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
... shorter than in others — except that the Punans make it up with a longer femur. Women and young people have longer legs than men. The Punans have the fattest calves approximating to the Tenggerese, the other Bornean tribes are more like the Gorontalese. The chest girth of Ulu Ayars and Tenggerese is almost the same, despite the difference in the breadth of the chest, in which the Ulu Ayars resemble the inhabitants of Atchin measured by Lubbers. The proportion of the length of the foot to the stature is 16 : 100 in Kayans of both sexes, 154 ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... headed straight for the Platte. Swift and unfordable in front of Frayne in the earlier summer, the river now went murmuring sleepily over its stony bed, and Ray led boldly down the bank and plunged girth deep into the foaming waters. Five minutes more and every man had lined up safely on the northward bank. In low tone the order was given, starting as Ray ever did, in solid column of fours. In dead silence the little command ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... 49: Shoulders kept down and chests well girthed)—Ver. 314. Ovid, in the Art of Love, B. iii., l. 274, alludes to the "strophium" or "girth" here referred to: "For high shoulders, small pads are suitable; and let the girth encircle the bosom that is too prominent." Becker thinks that the "strophium" was different from the "fascia" or "stomacher," mentioned in the Remedy of Love, l. 338: "Does a swelling bosom ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Hodgson Burnett's tiger cat Dick attracted a great deal of attention at the first New York show. He weighs twenty-two pounds and is three feet long, with a girth of twenty-four inches; and he has attained some degree ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... mud-plastered stone oven, close to 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 ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the cinch girth. He was obliged to make several efforts before he freed the pack, which then swung out and away from the dead mule, swaying back and forth for a moment or so, but safe. The boys uttered ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... it grew under the tendance of the Lord's hand. And in later years, though it lent its shadow as a grove for the idols and temples of gods, the most of it faced Heaven, and for that the Lord loves it still. The Pharaohs have lopped its branches, unmolested, but lo! now that the ax strikes at its girth, the Lord will uproot it and plant it elsewhere than in Mizraim. But the soil will not relinquish it readily, for it hath struck deep. There shall be a gaping wound in Mizraim where it stood and all the land shall be rent with ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... state reasons, and had entered on the usual loveless life of royalty. Or she may have beguiled her maidenly solitude by drinking much wine of Oporto, Madeira, and Xeres with her dinner, thereby acquiring that amplitude of girth, that ruddiness of countenance, and that polish of nose, which add so little to romance. At all events, we hear nothing ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... face like an ancient lemon. He was small and wizened—which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows in prosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firm is not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them, their confidence becomes unlimited. You can do no wrong. So Davidson's ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... white handkerchief—if from his mother, we conjecture, a gift to a bloodhound from his dam. His heavy handcuffs make his broad shoulders more narrow. Yet we can see by the outline of the sleeves what girth the muscles has, and the hand at the end of his long and bony arm is wide and huge, as if it could wield a claymore as well as a dirk. He also wears carpet slippers, but his ankles are clogged with so heavy irons that two men must carry them when he enters ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... himself, and the whole earth Of man the wonderful, and of the stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of earthquakes, and of wars, How many miles the moon might have in girth, Of air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect knowledge of the boundless skies;— And then he thought ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... on these abandoned ruins, succeeding other vegetable growths; the huge girth of the decaying trunks proving their longevity. Man, impelled by motives we cannot fathom, had abandoned the districts where everything bears witness to his power and intelligence, and the vigorous vegetation of nature once more has it all ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... The reason why he did not appear to be tall was that in truth his great bulk shortened him to the eye, and also because his carried himself ill, more from a desire to conceal his size than for any other reason. It was in girth of chest and limb that Martin was really remarkable, so much so that a short-armed man standing before him could not make his fingers touch behind his back. His face was fair as a girl's, and almost as flat as a full moon, for of nose he ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... education in physics to equal that of the camel, he would have knelt down to let him put it on his back, but that was more than could be expected of him, and then Diamond had to creep quite under him to get hold of the girth. The collar was almost the worst part of the business; but there Diamond could help Diamond. He held his head very low till his little master had got it over and turned it round, and then he lifted his head, and shook it ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... large African tropical tree, remarkable for the girth of its trunk, the thickness of its branches, and their expansion; its leaves and seeds are ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... stands on the sloping ground to the southwest of Penrhyn Castle. It shows off to advantage the peculiar outline of this pine, which is so marked a characteristic of those grown in the Mediterranean region. The trunk, which is about 4 1/2 feet in girth at a yard up, rises for three-fourths its height without branches, after which it divides into a number of limbs, the extremities of which are well covered with foliage, thus giving to the tree a bushy, well-formed, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... village green, stood an old yew-tree which, six centuries before, had been traditionally called The Old Yew of Eastham, and was probably at least coeval with the village itself, which was one of the oldest in England. It was of enormous girth, and was still in leaf; but nothing but the bark was left of the great trunk; all the wood had decayed away so long ago that the memory of man held no record of it. There was a great conical gap in one side, like an open door, and it was my custom—as it had doubtless been ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie's self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... it would 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 tell ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... the squealing of pigs, and the loud acclamations of the grotesque throng, one might have set it down as a fact that Little Barnstable was out on a frolic. As to the figure cut by the major, that may be safely left to the reader's fancy. His short legs scarce reached below old Battle's saddle girth; and, in addition to the slouchy suit of Uxbridge satinet, he wore a shabby white hat, very like that worn by Philosopher Greeley on election days. Never was departure of foreign ambassador attended with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... ceased to be a cub and a pup. They were almost a dog and a bear. Miki's angular legs were getting their shape; his chest had filled out; his neck had grown until it no longer seemed too small for his big head and jaws, and his body had increased in girth and length until he was twice as big as most ordinary dogs ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... lying there, poring upon that streamlet, that a thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! What will have happened then? I may live five years—ten! What will have happened after the five? the ten? ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible to obtain change for a piece of gold anywhere in the interior), and no guard being kept on the tents, I never lost a zwanziger, or any other article than a girth by which the blanket was fastened on my horse when grazing at night; and, as the blanket came back, even that did not ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... she'll be neither to haud nor bin'. There's nae doobt she's waur to haud in whan she's in guid condeetion; but she's nane sae like to tak' a body by the sma' o' the back, an' shak the inside oot o' 'im, as she maist did ae day to the herd laddie at the ferm, only he had an auld girth aboot the mids o' 'im for a belt, an' he ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... forest undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... furbished, and toiled at his desert island in the Thames, as hard as ever he laboured to make his plum in the counting-house. In due course he recovered his health, and, to use his own expression, "became as alert as any man in all England of his inches in the girth, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... may be applied to specimens from the size of a red fox or a bobcat up to a timber wolf. Remove the skin and prepare it in same way as that of a small mammal for mounting. When the carcass is bared in skinning, measure the girth of the neck at middle and at base; of the chest just behind the forelegs; the abdomen at its middle; the upper-arm at middle; the forearm just below elbow; the thigh at middle; the shank just below swell of thigh muscles back ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... of the party had taken their seats in the carriage he examined the saddle-girth; then, putting his foot in the stirrup, he sprang to the saddle. The animal began to curvet and nearly threw ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... degrees 37 minutes N. lat., and 139 degrees 50 minutes W. long., presents many advantages, but also many inconveniences—foremost amongst them the currents of the channel. The climate is much milder than in Hudson's Bay, which is in the same latitude. The vegetation is vigorous; pines six feet in girth, and a hundred and forty in height, are not rare. Celery, sorrel, lupine, wild pea, chicory, and mimulus are met with in every direction, as well as many pot-herbs, the use of which helped to keep the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... 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
... all respects resemble the hero to whom he was indebted for his name. Alexander 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 ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... groom, as Barnabas tested girth and stirrup-leathers, "you done mighty well when you bought 'im—theer ain't another 'oss 'is ekal in London—no, nor nowheers else as I knows on. 'E's won one race for you, and done it noble, and wot's ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... examine the saddle-girth. He looked furtively over the mare's shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air that boded ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... side to respect us, both because we can paint and because we have the things to paint from. With a mountain and river scenery unrivalled on the globe; with rock-bound coasts breaking the full surge of an ocean; with forests of towering trees compared to which in girth and height the trees of all other lands are but toothpicks; with plains ending in films of blue haze and valleys sparkling with myriads of waterfalls; with every type of the human race blended in our own, or distinct as are the woodman of Maine and the soft-eyed mulatto of Louisiana; with a ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... quarry the heart of earth, Till, in the rock's red rise, Its age and birth, through an awful girth Of strata, should show the wonder-worth ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... waist of dullest crimson and a much bespangled skirt of clinging, shimmering black. And that skirt hung clear to the ankles, swinging just high enough to disclose the gleam of silken stockings and satiny, pointed slippers, with heels of absurdly small girth. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... in the depths of the ocean where he usually fed. It has by some authors truly been called the whale of the saurian race, for it is as big and quick in its motions as our king of the seas. This one measures not less than a hundred feet in length, and I can form some idea of his girth when I see him lift his prodigious tail out of the waters. His jaw is of awful size and strength, and according to the best-informed naturalists, it does not contain less than a hundred ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York .. packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. this fin is ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... been used to seeing red cedars built. And when at last a study of the flora compelled me to admit their identity,[1] I turned about and protested that I had never seen red cedars before. One, in St. Augustine, near San Marco Avenue, I had the curiosity to measure. The girth of the trunk at the smallest place was six feet five inches, and the spread of the branches was not less than ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... principal staff officer and myself—paid a visit to the Mudir, whom we found sitting in dignified conclave with his whole Medjlis. The Mudir, a magnificent Albanian, standing about six feet four inches, and of proportionate girth, welcomed us most cordially, and appeared a person of far greater intelligence than most of his class. He bitterly lamented the increase of suffering, resulting from the change in the line of frontier. 'Attacks by the Montenegrins and their friends,' said he, 'are now of daily occurrence, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... The paddle the fishermen use is a sort of mongrel between a spade and a shovel. The fact of there being no boats of any size here, must be attributed to the want of material for constructing them. On the route from Kaze there are no trees of any girth, save the calabash, the wood of which is too soft for boat-building. I hear that the island of Ukerewe has two sultans besides Machunda, and that it is very fertile and populous. Mahaya says, "All the tribes, from the Wasukuma (or Northern Wanyamuezi, Sukuma meaning the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... partook the traits of the hobbledehoy, arrived at man's stature, but not yet possessing the full manly proportions. His extremities were large, his limbs long, his face small, and his thorax very partially developed, especially in girth. An habitual eagerness of mood, thrusting forward his face, made him stoop, with sunken chest and rounded shoulders; and this was even more apparent in the easy costume of the country than in London dress. But in his countenance there was life instead of weariness; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved and two-leaved, grew thereby, Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... way you hold out against odds that are great That proves what your courage is worth, It's the way that you stand to the bruises of fate That shows up your stature and girth. And victory's nothing but proof of your skill, Veneered with a glory that's thin, Unless it is proof of unfaltering will, And unless ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... frum hunger, I answered back, 'Three dozen!' The gal leaped back a step; then she hauled out a bag 'bout the size of a bushel an' begins shovellin' in round, humpy things, most all hole in the centre but considerable sizable as t' girth. I was up t' city ways by then, an' I warn't goin' t' show any surprise if she'd loaded an ister boat full of cakes on me. So I paid up 'thout a word an' went out of the shop shoulderin' the bag. It took me 'bout a week t' get ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... far into 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 ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chance. Short mean usually marry tall women, and your sons of Anak will select wives of fairy-like proportions. But Mrs. Stump was even shorter than her husband, and so plump withal, that a tape measure round her shoulders might have given her the prize for girth. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... in the brown grass, laid his burden down, threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... the slap-jacks—in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... man he is! Calm, powerful face, clear-cut features, large grey eyes, yellow beard and hair — altogether a magnificent specimen of the higher type of humanity. Nor did his form belie his face. I have never seen wider shoulders or a deeper chest. Indeed, Sir Henry's girth is so great that, though he is six feet two high, he does not strike one as a tall man. As I looked at him I could not help thinking what a curious contrast my little dried-up self presented to his grand face and form. Imagine to yourself a small, withered, yellow-faced ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... drowning," 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 the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... people laid their sick, hoping for help from the gods. Beneath the oak boughs, also, warriors took oaths to be faithful to their lords, women made promises, or wives joined hand in hand around its girth, hoping to have beautiful children. Up among its leafy branches the new babies lay, before they were found in the cradle by the other children. To make a young child grow up to be strong and healthy, mothers drew them through a ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... their toes with a suffusion of bitter almonds steeped in water because flies, ticks and fleas usually develop sores in those parts, unless it is your practice to so anoint them. To protect them from wounds from wild beasts we place collars on them, of the kind which we call melium, which is a girth around the neck made from strong leather studded with nails and lined with soft leather to protect the neck from being chafed by the hard iron heads of the nails: for if a wolf or other wild beast is once wounded by these nails all the other ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... from Prague, or the Amtmann's nephew from a Bavarian Dorf, may manage to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... one, and I came down uppermost, but narrowly escaped having my head broken by my animal's hoofs as he struggled to regain his feet. He was somewhat cut and bruised, but not seriously hurt, and tightening the saddle-girth I waded along through the water, leading him after me until I was able to regain the path. Then climbing into the saddle again, with dripping clothes and somewhat shaken nerves, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... relate to me the Odyssey of his terrible night. As he told me the story he pointed to his big leg: "They were as thick as that, Madame. Yes, like that——" And he quaked with fear as he recalled the dreadful girth of the reptiles. I thought that they were about one quarter as thick as his leg, and that would have been enough to justify his fright, for the serpents in question were not inoffensive water-snakes that bite out of pure viciousness, but have ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... it could be. Fearful at first, they gathered around it, as children gather around a live horse; they marvelled at its wondrous height and girth, and were for moving it into the city ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... 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, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... as all the gleaming girth of stars That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... picturesque effect. A few noble stems—however poor their heads—have a fine effect when surrounded by others which have had elbow-room; but a forest of stems, with Lilliputian heads—great though the girth of the stem may be—conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit. The underwood was enlivened by shrubs ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... sooner or later, start to turn,—and it is a strange sensation to upset while you are sitting properly in the saddle with your feet in the stirrups; it is impossible seeming; and with a woman, who is fastened more tightly to the saddle itself, the sliding of the girth on the horse's barrel is as if she were soon going to be ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... riding, but it was no easy task to find a mount of size and strength sufficient to carry so heavy a burden. It was necessary that the poor animal should be progressively trained; and in order to accomplish this the king's equerry fastened round the horse a girth loaded with pieces of lead, increasing the weight daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, if what is said at Stuttgart ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... plunge of the heart, as her own 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. But as she slowly ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... should be so unfortunate as to gain flesh, his attractions would diminish in an inverse ratio, so he starved himself almost to death, and was constantly seen anxiously examining the buckle of his belt, to make sure that he had not increased in girth since his last meal. Voluntary Tantalus, he scarcely allowed himself enough to keep life in his attenuated frame, and if he had but fasted as carefully from motives of piety he would have ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... rude, and rotten contrivance, and as I loitered on the road home, giving myself up to idle fantasy, my friends got on far ahead. Waking from my day-dream I gave the nag the heel, and as it sprang forward at a canter the girth turned completely round, and I was pitched over in unpleasant nearness to a hedge of cactus. The ground was soft, and I was not much bruised; but when I rose the nag had disappeared round a corner, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient "girth" or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... his case still more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger Bacon), ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... much the girth of the tree as its whole bearing that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... thought, "I ought to have a canoe to go out fishing, while the fine weather lasts." As he wandered about, he looked out for a tree to suit his purpose. He found one of sufficient girth and length, with a perfectly straight trunk, though whether the nature of the wood was suitable for a canoe, he could not ascertain, except by cutting it down. He had often felled trees at home, but without an axe he could do nothing. He went back to the carpenter's chest, ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as this ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million metres they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches now go through from pole to pole, So we'll stick to inches, feet, and yards, and our own ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... found him sitting on a block facing the sun, lying against his shield, which was supported by the side of the house. The body was in a terrible state of decomposition. It was swollen to three times its living girth. Great blisters had collected under the epidermis, which broke from time to time, a brownish red fluid escaping. The spear wound in his neck was plugged by a wooden spear-head. In each hand Aliguyen held a wooden spear. No attempt whatever had been made to prevent decomposition ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... disappeared in the gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and moribund ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... down and chests well girthed)—Ver. 314. Ovid, in the Art of Love, B. iii., l. 274, alludes to the "strophium" or "girth" here referred to: "For high shoulders, small pads are suitable; and let the girth encircle the bosom that is too prominent." Becker thinks that the "strophium" was different from the "fascia" or "stomacher," mentioned in the Remedy of Love, l. 338: "Does a swelling ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... glanced at his watch. His manner was a little furtive. He was not dressed as usual—in frock coat, white waistcoat and silk hat, a costume that seemed to render more noticeable his great girth and smooth pink-and-white face—but in a blue serge, double-breasted suit, a bowler hat, and a style of neckgear a little reminiscent of the Bowery. Something in his very appearance seemed to me a confirmation of Mr. Cullen's warning. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the earth was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth; Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving in time and trouble would be immense.—Thus did he ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that caused—is there any harm in saying it?—her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth—if silk it were—was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring. Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Anton, the mischievous, who "shamed his duty" as old Merimee always honored it. As he finished speaking he walked to the tree where the gray mare was fastened, slipped on its saddle, tightened its girth, and called: ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... philosophy by and by;—let me work out this thin mechanical vein.—I have something more to say about trees, I have brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth;—nine feet, where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, about eighteen inches. I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... water-hole on one side, and three or four fine trees of large girth on the other, we unsaddled our horses and made up our fire. We had provisions enough for the evening, but should have to go on short commons the next day, unless we could shoot a ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... for some time among the forest undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... steeds they ride Are swift 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 men look ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... from his thoughts and tossed his head. With both hands he shook the saddle, touched the girth and, as though he could not make up his mind to mount the horse, stood still ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... valley that, with its narrow girth and its towering walls that seemed to topple over. On the farther side from us the great trees that clothed the slope of the mountain over it grew down to the very edge of the rock, so that their spreading branches hung far over the chasm. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... "I think the girth is broken," said she. "The saddle is loose, and I was nigh losing my balance. Thank you, I can sit ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Ben, dismounting. The horse which the trapper had secured, though not his own, was almost equal to it in point of size and strength. He eyed it with evident satisfaction as he tightened the girth, saying that if it wasn't for the difference in colour he would have thought it was the old one. The others having also seen to their harness mounted, and the cavalcade advanced at a walking pace into the plain. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... awaiting the time when he should be old enough to be an equerry, and gave the command of his men to an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. Thus the good man believed he would avoid the horned trappings of cuckoldom, and would still be able to girth, bridle, and curb the factious innocence of his wife, which struggled like a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... funeral honors of royalty it is imperative that the P'hra-mene be constructed of virgin timber. Trunks of teak, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and of proportionate girth, are felled in the forests of Myolonghee, and brought down the Meinam in rafts. These trunks, planted thirty feet deep, one at each corner of a square, serve as pillars, not less than a hundred and seventy feet high, to support a sixty-foot spire, an octagonal pyramid, covered ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... crystal transparency, though dark for reflecting the black bowl of earth in which it lay. Without a ripple it nestled close against the roots of a golden-fig tree—an unfruitful parasitic giant of squat stature and tremendous girth; while, pendant from one gnarled out-reaching branch, and almost touching the mirror-like surface into which it looked, hung a solitary streamer ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... into a park which he described as "the paradise of a small English country gentleman." Well it might be: I have never seen such a collection of oaks. They were of high antiquity and magnificent girth and stature: they were strewn over the grassy levels in extraordinary profusion, and scattered upon and down the slopes in a fashion than which I have seen nothing more charming since I last looked at the chestnut trees on the banks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... come from a distance in the country, mounted upon lank horses ornamented with incrusted hips, and caparisoned with long-straw back-suggauns that reached from the shoulders to the tail, under which ran a crupper of the same material, designed, in addition to a hay girth, to keep this primitive riding gear firm upon the animal's back. Behind the farmer, generally sat either a wife or a daughter, remarkable for their scarlet cloaks and blue petticoats; sometimes with shoes and stockings, and very often without them. Among ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... moment now he slacked his speed, A moment breathed his panting steed; Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band, And loosen'd in the sheath his brand. On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint, Where Barnhills hew'd his bed of flint; Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest, Where falcons hang their giddy nest Mid cliffs, from whence his eagle eye For many a league his ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ring, till it passed the "record." The stubborn rider would not say enough, but the stubborn horse was disposed to shy and refuse to leap. Grant gritted his teeth and spurred at it, but just as the horse gathered for the spring, his swelling body burst the girth and rider and saddle tumbled into the ring. Half stunned, he gathered himself up from the dust only to hear the strident, cynical voice of the riding-master calling out, "Cadet Grant, six demerits ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... laboriously up the other side, over hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes that snatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no more than reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree as wide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and then laughed. After that she frowned ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... wagon, and realized that there would be no more "pickin's" for her, she ran to her room and began sorting and gloating over the mass of cast-off clothing. And so mesmerized was she with pictures of herself adorned in the dresses that were made for the form half her girth that Mrs. Brewster found it impossible to coax her back to ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... metathorax, the shape becomes regular and cylindrical, while decreasing slightly in girth in the last two or three segments. Close to the line of separation of the last two rings, I am able to distinguish, not without difficulty, two very small stigmata, just a little darker in color. They belong to the last segment. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... plough-lands cast! Then shall be roaring and warring And ferment of sea and firth, Ocean, in turmoil upboiling, Confounding each bound of earth. The flow of the Deluge of Noah Were naught by that fell Flood's girth! ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... also many inconveniences—foremost amongst them the currents of the channel. The climate is much milder than in Hudson's Bay, which is in the same latitude. The vegetation is vigorous; pines six feet in girth, and a hundred and forty in height, are not rare. Celery, sorrel, lupine, wild pea, chicory, and mimulus are met with in every direction, as well as many pot-herbs, the use of which helped to keep ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the Earth. Old England proudly stands. Like arteries her Colonies Reach out from sea to sea. She clasps all races in her girth; Her gaze the world commands; And far and wide where strong ships ride, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a changed man. To his surprise, in spite of his white hair, brought on by the horror of what he had seen, he found that he had gained two inches in height, and that he was larger of girth. This, Professor Gurlone told him, was the effect of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... what a tree that was! The hugest English oak would have seemed a stunted bush beside it. Borne up on roots, or rather walls, of twisted board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pretty round pace, when suddenly the girths burst, and the saddle and rider tumbled off together. I arrived without accident at my destination, although I had frequently been in danger of falling from my horse without its being necessary that the girth should break. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load. O the oont, 1 O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... away, the General himself—the host-in-chief of the evening—condemned, despite increasing years and girth, to the Eton jacket of boyhood, pranced and glided with elaborate precision, and took every opportunity of twirling plump little Mrs Mayhew almost off her feet. Both laughed inordinately at each repetition ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... forded might be the upper waters of the Tongue. Their horses stood with heads hanging wearily down, their sides rising and falling; and Hampton, rolling stiffly from the saddle, hastily loosened his girth. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... great wild park with which Colonel Parsons has protected the Natural Bridge in Virginia. I saw there an arbor-vitae said by botanists to be not less than nine hundred years old, a chestnut twenty-six feet in girth at the height of my shoulders, and oaks past praise. But trees are everywhere, and if my observant pupil likes them, let her next note the mode in which the branches spread and their proportion to the trunk. State it all in the fewest words. It is to be only a help to memory. Then she ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... toilet behind the saddle, the haversack with rations slung at his side, to say nothing of such trifles as side-lines and picket-pins, the watering bucket and the wooden basin. The cavalryman's tender heart was stirred by a feeling of compassion, as he tightened up the girth and looked to see that everything was secure ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... a tree covered with so dense a foliage that one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... could not rest: rose and had a bath; listened at 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
... express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was a shrew, and to escape her abuse Rip often took his dog and gun and roamed away to the Catskills, nine miles westward, where he lounged or hunted, as the humor seized him. It was on a September evening, during a jaunt on South Mountain, that he met a stubby, silent man, of goodly girth, his round head topped with a steeple hat, the skirts of his belted coat and flaps of his petticoat trousers meeting at the tops of heavy boots, and the face—ugh!—green and ghastly, with unmoving eyes that glimmered ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... masters appeared. They looked at the girth of the trees, appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest, and wherever swift streams crossed they set mills. The cleared ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning this stone—it was well known to the Chinese from the days of Hwen ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... out, Burly having a brazen blunderbuss charged with several bullets, fired it so near his breast, that his gown, cloaths and shirt were burnt, and he fell flat on his face; they, thinking a window was made through his body, went off, but one staying to tie his horse's girth, heard his daughter call to the coachman for help, for her father was yet alive: which made him call back the rest, (knowing if he was not dead, their case would be worse than ever) Burly (or Balfour) coming to him while yet lying ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... south; and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to Grange-farm, both in this parish. It began with vast drops of rain, which were soon succeeded by round hail, and then by convex pieces of ice, which measured three inches in girth. Had it been as extensive as it was violent, and of any continuance (for it was very short), it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood. In the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm; but Norton, which lay in the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the people 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; ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... guess," 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 ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the firm muscles quivering beneath at the first touch of excitement to the high mettle and finely-strung organization; the head small, lean, racer-like, "blood" all over; with the delicate taper ears, almost transparent in full light; well ribbed-up, fine shoulders, admirable girth and loins; legs clean, slender, firm, promising splendid knee action; sixteen hands high, and up to thirteen stone; clever enough for anything, trained to close and open country, a perfect brook jumper, a clipper at fencing; taking a great deal of riding, as anyone could tell ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... land-creatures to emerge from the primeval swamp of Morua VIII had developed the heavy furs and the hibernation characteristics of bear-like mammals. They towered over Dal, and even Tiger seemed dwarfed by their immense chest girth ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... were changing to roads. The local freight intermittently disgorged tons of harvesting machinery. The sound of the Klaxton was heard in the land. Despite the times and the manners, Bud's girth increased insidiously. His hard-riding days were past. Progress marched steadily onward, leaving an after-guard of homesteaders intrenched behind miles of barbed-wire fence and mazes of irrigating-ditches. The once open range ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... to see how much good was in that gold, how large a fund of blessing was hidden in that crock: Reuben Scott gained health, the family were fed, clad, taught; Susan grew in happiness at least as truly as in girth; and Hagglesfield beheld the goodness of that store, whose ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... with snake fences, which are made in a rough fashion, the rails being placed one upon another in a zigzag form, and secured at the angles by stakes driven into the ground. They were formed by splitting trees into four or five portions, according to their girth, an operation carried on by means of wedges driven ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... hast not seen a loftier head wax hoary, Earth, which hast not shown the sun a nobler birth, Time, that hast not on thy scroll defiled and gory One man's name writ brighter in its whole wide girth, Witness, till the final years fulfil their story, Till the stars break off the music of their mirth, What among the sons of men was this man's glory, What the vesture of his soul revealed ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the pit of my stomach frum hunger, I answered back, 'Three dozen!' The gal leaped back a step; then she hauled out a bag 'bout the size of a bushel an' begins shovellin' in round, humpy things, most all hole in the centre but considerable sizable as t' girth. I was up t' city ways by then, an' I warn't goin' t' show any surprise if she'd loaded an ister boat full of cakes on me. So I paid up 'thout a word an' went out of the shop shoulderin' the bag. It took ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... truth of this narrative, Isaaco brought with him the only relic of Park which he was able to procure—a sword-belt, which the king of Yaour had converted into a girth for his horse. This he obtained through the instrumentality of a Poule, who bribed one of the king's female slaves to steal it ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... 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
... me full opportunity of observing him. A little black cap covered his scalp; his round bullet-head, which bristled with short, thick-set hairs, joined on, by a neck of considerably more than the average girth, to shoulders of Atlantean dimensions. His body was enveloped in a coarse brown mantle, which descended to his calves, and was gathered round his middle with a slender white cord. His naked feet were ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... cedar of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Whitton, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was blown down in 1779. It had attained the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... our suggestion he began practising this simple raising and lowering of the heels. In less than four months he had increased the girth of each calf one whole inch. When asked how many strokes a day he averaged, he said that it was from fifteen hundred to two thousand, varied some days by his holding in each hand, during the process, a twelve-pound dumbbell, and then only doing one thousand or thereabouts. The time he found most ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... to his own prostrate horse, took off its bridle and its saddle-girth, and with both secured his uncle's limbs beyond all possibility of the struggler being able to escape from ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... 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
... as caught in fault she stands, Scarce might he hear her whispered message: "Ask, Lord, and I answer thee." Strung to his task: "Tell me now all," he said, "from that far day Whenas embracing thee, I stood to pray, And poured forth wine unto the thirsty earth To Zeus and to Poseidon, in whose girth Lie sea and land; to Gaia next, their spouse, And next to Here, mistress of my house, Traitress, and thine, for grace upon my faring: For thou wert by to hear me, false arm bearing Upon my shoulder, glowing, lying cheek Next unto mine. Ay, and thou prayedst, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... My poor horse!—what to do? Take off the bridle, And loose the girth. Let him at ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... with a saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow "Boots and Saddles," and in five minutes to sound, "To Horse;" then he turned to me and said, "You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out here." I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I eat pretty hearty, and let my horse fill himself ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... Even in such tragic hours Venice keeps up her old tradition of light-heartedness. The cafes round the great piazza are full in the evenings with a cheerful crowd. Moreover, to go into St. Mark's is to enter a sort of neolithic grotto; the pillars, set about with sand-bags, have the girth of the arcades of a Babylonian temple; bulging poultices of sacks protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel. The Doge's Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... Kingly Bottom, or Kingly Vale, mark a victory of Chichester men over a party of marauding Danes in 900, and that the dead were buried beneath the barrows on the hill. The story ought to be true. The vale is remarkable for its grove of yews, some of enormous girth, which extends along the bottom to the foot of the escarpment. The charge that might be brought against Sussex, that it lacks sombre scenery and the elements of dark romance, that its character is too ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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. The King looked ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... old oak's shade— Himself as rough, and scarce less old, The Ukraine's Hetman, calm and bold; But first, outspent with this long course, The Cossack prince rubbed down his horse, And made for him a leafy bed, And smoothed his fetlocks and his mane, 60 And slacked his girth, and stripped his rein, And joyed to see how well he fed; For until now he had the dread His wearied courser might refuse To browse beneath the midnight dews: But he was hardy as his lord, And little cared for bed and board; But spirited ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... chain; string &c (filament) 205. fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; yoke; band ribband, bandage; brace, roller, fillet; inkle^; with, withe, withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus^, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [U.S.], cinch [U.S.], lariat, legadero^, oxreim^; suspenders. pin, corking pin, nail, brad, tack, skewer, staple, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... no longer any one to hide behind, the fat little priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet when this grip ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... stood before the gate, The ruffians twain astride; And gay with scarlet girth and rein They started, side by side. O, blithe the babies' spirits were, That they could have ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... there ought to be some way of managing it. And in a moment he got the idea. Schmidt was as tired as his horse, or even more so, and by this time he was swaying in his saddle and half asleep, as a trained horseman often does. Fred leaned forward and very quietly cut the saddle girth almost through. He knew that the slightest strain would finish the work. Schmidt was utterly unconscious of what was going on. Fred could tell, from the man's breathing, just what his condition was. He would snore a little and then, with a start, he would arouse himself, breathing normally ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... weight of a full-grown grizzly is over eight hundred pounds, and the girth around the body is about ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of England. Its horticultural advantages seemed to weigh but lightly with her; she dwelt chiefly on the loneliness of the life she had been leading, and deplored bitterly the fact that its inglorious ease was spoiling her figure by increasing her girth. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... 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 building erected after the days of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... 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
... rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia, leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Berry. "It's fatal to brood over your fortune." He sat back in his chair and let the smoke make its own way out of his mouth. "There was once a large king. It wasn't his fault. The girth went with the crown. All the Koppabottemburgs were enormous. Besides, it went very well with his subjects. Looking upon him, they felt they were getting their money's worth. A man of simple tastes, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... 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 ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... dividing, coalescing, but all uniting to form one great lake round Paris. And from this lake there welled out smaller streams—one to the north, one southward, to Orleans, and a third westward to Normandy. Many a German trooper saw the sea for the first time when he rode his horse girth-deep into the waves ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... near Barrie and through all the Penetanguishene country, grows to an enormous size. I measured one near Barrie no less than twenty-six feet in girth, and this was merely a chance one by the path-side. Its height, I think, must have been at least two hundred feet, and it was vigorously healthy. What was its age? It would have made a plank eight feet broad, after the bark ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger Bacon), concluded that six sevenths of this circumference must ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... once to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 against ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... very perceptible slanting of the deck, and the captain piped out to the hands to shift the chain-box. And by this action was resolved for me a riddle with regard to the properties and uses of a prematurely stout man of fabulous girth, who had been dimly revealed to me, once or twice in the course of the voyage, through some long vista of the 'tween-decks, but seemed always to melt into air,—or, more probably, oil,—upon any advance being made ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... fresh earthy Sweet flowers breaking overhead, Sore needed rest for our frail girth, For our frail hearts; ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r—oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 tree ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was to take us to our train. I called him, and begged he would relate to me the Odyssey of his terrible night. As he told me the story he pointed to his big leg: "They were as thick as that, Madame. Yes, like that——" And he quaked with fear as he recalled the dreadful girth of the reptiles. I thought that they were about one quarter as thick as his leg, and that would have been enough to justify his fright, for the serpents in question were not inoffensive water-snakes that bite out of pure viciousness, but have no ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... swim unless it is supported by inflated skins: thus the passage of the broad river Atbara (at this spot about 300 yards wide) is an affair of great difficulty. Two water-skins are inflated, and attached to the camel by a band passed like a girth beneath the belly. Thus arranged, a man sits upon its back, while one or two swim by the side as guides. The current of the Atbara runs at a rapid rate; thus the camel is generally carried at least half a mile down ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Compton. A very intelligent fellow is Bilston: he was present at the marriage, you remember; and a glorious witness, if he had only something of importance to depose to; powdered hair and a pigtail, double chin, and six feet in girth at least; highly respectable—capital witness, very—only, unfortunately, he can only testify that a person calling himself Grainger married Violet Dalston; not ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... horseback riding, but it was no easy task to find a mount of size and strength sufficient to carry so heavy a burden. It was necessary that the poor animal should be progressively trained; and in order to accomplish this the king's equerry fastened round the horse a girth loaded with pieces of lead, increasing the weight daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, if what is said at Stuttgart ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... and spoke to her in an undertone. "What are you wasting time for? See to your work." Vardri raised his head from the adjustment of a girth. ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... Bob was busily engaged with the saddle girth that had been giving him considerable trouble on ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however, had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... sleek and fat—those imprisoned for long terms or for life bearing witness of the good treatment which they receive at the hands of the authorities. One youngish man in particular attracted our attention, a merry laughing fellow whose girth had reached alarming proportions. He was imprisoned for life, and his crime, which sat so lightly upon him, had been a particularly atrocious and dastardly murder for plunder—a crime practically ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... 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
... end of the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... hit was the sperits, but I knowed when they told me that she was a thinkin' o' that ole tree thar. But I never let on. I reckon that's ONE reason made me come here that day." They were close to the big tree now and Hale dismounted to fix his girth ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... on her lips, The woe of cities entered it, the clang of idols' falls, The scream of filthy Caesars stabbed high in their brazen halls, The dim hoarse Hoods of naked men, the worldrealms snapping girth, The trumpets of Apocalypse, the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... result. If punishment has to be resorted to, his rider should be able to form an idea of what defence he will be likely to offer by way of retaliation. If he is inclined to rear, the cuts should be given well behind the girth, and he should be kept on the turn to the right, in order that he may not fix his hind legs, which he would have to do in order to get up. If kicking be his speciality, they should be applied on the shoulder, while ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... a youth in riding coat and breeches, was seated in the deep chair that faced his host. "A man of my own size, and that's not so far under six feet high, and with a good girth about the chest, and but small paunch under it, and muscles like iron, as you've occasion to know; a man of my own size, to drink with me and sup with me and love with me and fight with me, if we happen ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... pigs, and the loud acclamations of the grotesque throng, one might have set it down as a fact that Little Barnstable was out on a frolic. As to the figure cut by the major, that may be safely left to the reader's fancy. His short legs scarce reached below old Battle's saddle girth; and, in addition to the slouchy suit of Uxbridge satinet, he wore a shabby white hat, very like that worn by Philosopher Greeley on election days. Never was departure of foreign ambassador attended with such demonstrations, all of which the major viewed as highly complimentary ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the day there was no chance of getting the fellow apart. But Buck kept his eyes and ears open, and at supper-time Bud's casual remark to Lynch that he "s'posed he'd have to fix that busted saddle-girth before he hit the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this river there grow vast quantities of great canes, some of which are a foot or a foot and a half (in girth), and these the natives employ ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Douglas fir. The tree is often found 300 ft. high and from 8 to 10ft. in diameter. The wood is tough and strong and highly valued for ships' spars as well as for building purposes. Red or giant cedar, which rivals the Douglas fir in girth, is plentiful, and is used for shingles as well as for interior work. The western white spruce is also much employed for various purposes. There are about eighty sawmills, large and small, in the province. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... wretched of all the children now, for he was in a panic about Peter, bitterly regretted what he had done. Madly addicted to the drinking of water when he was hot, he had swelled in consequence to his present girth, and instead of reducing himself to fit his tree he had, unknown to the others, whittled his tree to ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... And became a mighty hero. While his feet the earth were stamping, To the clouds his head he lifted, To his knees his beard was flowing, To his spurs his locks descended. Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which he ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... of the men consists of a narrow piece of cloth, about three yards long. This they wrap twice round their waist, then passing it between their legs, and through the girth behind, leave the end of it to drag after them[6]. The women wear a piece of cloth, commonly of a blue colour, about a foot wide, fastened round their waist, so as to hang down like an apron, reaching not quite to their knees. They pride themselves ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... business to myself was concerned. My first impression of Mr. Rendall was of height, and a certain quiet, formidable quality. He was grey-haired, with a close-clipped grizzled moustache, loose clothes as though he had shrunk a little in girth, and the unmistakable air of a man who had seen considerably more of the world than the island of Ransay. He received me quite politely and hospitably, but with every moment that passed I grew more acutely conscious of something ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... saint or sinner, Tell me if you can— Tho' we may not judge the inner, By the outer man, Yet by girth of broadcloth ample, And by cheeks that shine, Surely you set no ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... be primarily due to the vibratory motion of Aether, what must be the volume and the intensity of the aetherial waves, known as heat waves, generated by the sun? When we remember its ponderous mass, with its volume more than 1,200,000 times that of our earth, its huge girth of more than 2-1/2 millions of miles, and this always aglow with fire the most extensive known—fires so intense that they cover its huge form with a quivering fringe of flames which leap into space a distance ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... was not above six feet, led to a very narrow passage, which seemed to have been constructed for the precise purpose of excluding every one who chanced to be an inch more in girth than was his conductor. A small vaulted room, of about eight feet square, received them at the end of this lane. Here Mr. Trumbull left Fairford alone, and returned for an instant, as he said, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... granted, surrounded the middle of it. Often, beneath this {tree}, did the Dryads lead up the festive dance; often, too, with hands joined in order, did they go round the compass of its trunk; and the girth of the oak made up three times five ells. The rest of the wood, too, lay as much under this oak as the grass lay beneath the whole of the wood. Yet not on that account {even} did the son of Triopas[93] withhold the axe from it; and he ordered his servants to cut ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... he from the cloud, and green from earth, And from a human breast the fire he drew, And life and death were blended in one dew. A sunbeam golden with the morning's mirth, A wan, salt phantom from the sea, a girth Of silver from the moon, shot colour through The soul invisible, until it grew To fulness, and the Opal ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... and sage, When writing of the past stone age, Tell us man once was clothed in skins And tattooed patterns on his shins. Rough bearded and with shaggy locks He lived in dug-outs in the rocks. Was often scared and run to earth By creatures of abnormal girth: Mammoths and monsters; truth to tell We find their names too long to spell. He joined in little feuds no doubt; And with his weapons fashioned out Of flint, went boldly to the fray; And cracked a skull ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... two grooms trotted by, peering warily from side to side, and disappeared in the gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and moribund among the cushions. He had been borne past them like a wounded Bacchanal. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... skirt, an old short-gown, a print apron, and a sun-bonnet, with a flap coming down to her waist, and looked as careworn and clean as she always does. The inside horn of her saddle was broken; to the outside one hung a saucepan and a bundle of clothes. The one girth was nearly at the breaking point ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... cactus hedges, planted for defence, were now aflame with blood-red flowers, became a girdle of beauty as well as strength. The khalifa rode a swiftly-ambling mule, a beast of price, his yellow slippers were ostentatiously new, and his ample girth proclaimed the wealthy man in a land where all the poor are thin. "Peace," was his salutation to M'Barak, who led the way, and when he reached us he again invoked the Peace of Allah upon Our Lord Mohammed and the Faithful of the Prophet's House, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... up. It seemed to his crew that he actually gained in girth and height. The soul, in certain great moments, seems to have power to expand the body and inform it with the quality of immortality; Ajax, in his magnificent gesture of defiance, is all spirit. Cleggett, with his hand on his ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... ordered some goods for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land—a portentous matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm, glancing about him on every side as he did so, like ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... standing below; and Comedy, her gray pony, with a creel and a couple of fishing rods strapped to his canvas girth. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with the Prince, living in a tent, on the pole of which hung my dispatch-bag containing my store of small money (it being impossible to obtain change for a piece of gold anywhere in the interior), and no guard being kept on the tents, I never lost a zwanziger, or any other article than a girth by which the blanket was fastened on my horse when grazing at night; and, as the blanket came back, even that did not look like ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in Color! From ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... his master's death I made him to be host in the tavern of "The Blue Sky," and whereas his wife was an active soul, and his tales of the strange adventures he had known among the Godless heathen brought much custom to his little tavern parlor, he throve to be a man of great girth and presence. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse, Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak, helpless, blind, hollow-cheeked, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... forth. So behold me on the veldt, leaning against my saddle in my shirt sleeves, taking things easy, after having dined well on a loaf of bread well covered with tinned butter obtained at a store some miles back owing to my having to fall out of the ranks on account of a broken girth (hem!) on our march hither. The bread a Scotch farmer, and tenant of Sammy Marks, gave me yesterday. Of course you must have noted how the principal topic with us is grub, and probably felt contempt ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... directly on to an extensive lawn, set out, immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds. Away on the right a couple of grey-stemmed ilex trees—the largest in height and girth Tom had ever seen—cast finely vandyked and platted shadow upon the smooth turf. Beneath them, garden chairs were stationed and a tea-table spread, at which four ladies sat—one, the elder, dressed in crude purple, the other ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... She crossed the deep gulch and climbed laboriously up the other side, over hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes that snatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no more than reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree as wide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and then laughed. After that ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... he has conformed in some respects to unmeaning traditions inherited from an earlier period, and further that his work incorporates the remnants of an older, simpler structure. Here are pillars of massive girth altogether disproportionate to the delicate arches which they carry; there an old tower has been buttressed to make it capable of supporting a new spire. For all the builder's cunning, we can yet distinguish between the new and the renovated. So it ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 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 ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... among them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and again under the canopy of the commoner redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In their development they may, perhaps, lead us up to ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... his shoes, tightened the girth of his trousers, flung his cap on the grass, and clasped the trunk ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Mr. Chamberlain was Mayor of Birmingham, the late Mr. George Dawson at a little dinner proposed his health, and in doing so indulged in some characteristic banter and chaff. Mr. Chamberlain, then as now, was not a man of Aldermanic girth, and Mr. Dawson in the course of his humorous remarks took occasion to allude to his slight and slender proportions, and said he wished there was more of the Mayor to look at, and that he should like to see him ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... soil the family of trees Spring up, and, like a band of brothers, grow In the same sun, while from their leafy lips Comes not the faintest whisper of dissent Because of various girth and grain and hue. The oak flings not his acorns at the elm; The white birch shrinks not from the swarthy ash; The green plume of the pine nods to the shrub; The loftiest monarch of the realm of wood Spares not his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... arter you I came; I'm your gret-gran they multiplied by three." "My wut?" sez I.—your gret-gret-gret," sez he: "You wouldn't ha' never ben here but for me. Two hundred an' three year ago this May, The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; I'd been a cunnle in our Civil War,— But wut on girth hev ,you gut up one for? Coz we du things in England, 'tain't for you To git a notion you can du 'em tu: I'm told you write in public prints: ef true, It's nateral you should know a thing or two."— "Thet air's an argymunt I can't endorse,— 'Twould prove, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... I may do one good thing before I die. That fine fellow's life is worth a hundred of my wasted one! Here! some of you fellows help me with Hector. We must take him from the cart and get a girth on him instead of the saddle. We shall want something to hold on to without pulling his head down by using ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... esplanade and little wall, there grows an enormous oak, not very tall, but with an immense girth of trunk, and such a spread of branches that it completely overshadows the summer-house, and overhangs the whole surface of the small pool in front of it. Thenceforth, the tall and tangled hedge runs ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the road about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and we waited expectantly, while Whistling Jim, with a cunning for which I did not give him credit, pretended to be fixing his saddle-girth. As we waited a top-buggy rounded the bend in the road and came bowling toward us. It was surprising to see a buggy, but I was more surprised when its occupant turned out to be a woman—a woman in a top-buggy, ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... hath heard the gold growing, but hath heard not the light winds tell That the Gods with the world have been dealing and have fashioned men for the earth? Where is he that hath ridden the cloud-horse and measured the ocean's girth, But seen nought of the building of God-home nor the forging of the sword: Where then is the maker of nothing, the earless and eyeless lord? In the pouch of my net he lieth, with his head ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... earth saw one thing, one how fair! One grace that grew to its full on earth: Smiles might be sparse on her cheek so spare, And her waist want half a girdle's girth, But she had her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... Now, surrounded by a curious crowd, he seemed to be dazed, and to be frightened also. Henry saw at once that his fear was of his officers, and that it had not been caused by any suffering in captivity. In truth, Private Doran looked very well, having suffered no diminution of either girth or ruddiness. His fears in regard to his officers were justified, as he was taken at once before Colonel de Peyster, who examined him with ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the time when he should be old enough to be an equerry, and gave the command of his men to an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. Thus the good man believed he would avoid the horned trappings of cuckoldom, and would still be able to girth, bridle, and curb the factious innocence of his wife, which struggled like a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... accompany 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
... Henry had been marked by the British and the Indians. The last runner from Ft. Pitt had informed him that the description of Miller tallied with that of one of the ten men who had deserted from Ft. Pitt in 1778 with the tories Girth, McKee, and Elliott. Col. Zane was now satisfied that Miller was an agent of Girty and therefore of the British. So since all the weaknesses of the Fort, the number of the garrison, and the favorable ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... guilty, and four days after the murder, on the 5th of July, was taken to the Girth Cross of Holyrood, at the foot of the Canongate, and there decapitated by that machine which rather anticipated the inventiveness of Dr Guillotin—"the Maiden.'' At the same time, four o'clock in the morning, Janet Murdo, the nurse, and one of the serving-women accused with her ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... as thou Could hear the name and live; but on the earth. With strange melodious stories of my birth, Phoebus men call me, and Latona's son. "And now my servitude with thee is done, And I shall leave thee toiling on thine earth, This handful, that within its little girth Holds that which moves you so, O men that die; Behold, to-day thou hast felicity, But the times change, and I can see a day When all thine happiness shall fade away; And yet be merry, strive not with the end, Thou canst not change it; for the rest, a friend ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—I am very much in the condition of the gentleman who, being about to be married and having had his wedding suit brought home a day before the event, returned it to the tailor with instructions to increase the girth just two inches. His explanation was that not enough room had been left to accommodate the wedding breakfast he had to eat or for the emotion that was ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... little breeze stirred the foliage of the white birches to a sea of tremulous gold; and at the same moment a rider appeared in the marsh beyond, galloping through the blanched swale-grass, which rose high as the horse's girth. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... wood-house, with broad branches free Yet close above the roof, an apple-tree Known as "The Prince's Harvest"—Magic phrase! That was a boy's own tree, in many ways!— Its girth and height meet both for the caress Of his bare legs and his ambitiousness: And then its apples, humoring his whim, Seemed just to fairly hurry ripe for him— Even in June, impetuous as he, They dropped to meet him, halfway up the ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 of the actors if we suffered a further loss ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... young wife and a pretty baby out at the brick house, began to be 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
... the Institution of the Garter (Vol. viii., p. 182.).—A. B. R. says, "as also from the proverbial expression used in Scotland, and to be found in Scott's Works, of 'casting a leggin girth,' as synonymous with a female 'faux pas.'" I may mention to your correspondent (if he is not already aware) that the expression is taken from Allan Ramsay's continuation of Christ's Kirk on the Green (edit. Leith, 1814, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... on his monster bracelet. "That," he said, "does not altogether do me credit, for it shows the difference in girth between me and Edmund Ironside. When we set the peace between us, we exchanged ornaments and weapons. Think if we had followed the custom in every ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Just then the girth of one of the baggage camels, evidently not well fastened, came loose. Part of the load slipped ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... shields by the inner straps. They both had fine arms, and 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, and said it cost him dear to joust with such a ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the shafts of thy quiver!" So did he speak; and Apollo gave ear to the prayer of his servant. He from the peaks of Olympus descended, his bosom in anger, Bearing on shoulder the bow and the well-fenc'd girth of his quiver. Rattled the arrows therein on the back of the Deity wrathful, Step upon step as he moved; but he came like the darkness of Nightfall. Then did he seat him apart from the ships, and discharging an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... liking for Squire Pettijohn which had caused Montgomery to vanish when called to meet him. Quite the reverse. The name of that man of mighty girth and stature struck terror into the soul of every young Marsdenite. He was a person of fierce temper and a propensity for managing his neighbors' affairs, especially the affairs of his youthful neighbors. Report said that ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... no dissentient voices. Martin warned us that it would take some time. We should have to shape out all the ribs, and search for birch trees of sufficient girth to afford large sheets of bark. The chief object for consideration was, that it would take us almost as long to build a canoe as to travel to Fort Ross, but then we should be saved the fatigue and dangers of the journey, and we should be more likely to fall in with any of the people whom our friends ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... if he was sure nothing had been found in the canoe after its capture; he said that nothing remained in the canoe but himself and a sword-belt. I asked him where the sword-belt was; he said the King took it, and had made a girth ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... interview; and when, after a moment's converse, Tony put his hand in his pocket, and drew forth something which he gave to Theodore, the florist darted from his shop, and rushed across the street with an agility which was hardly to be expected from one of his years and girth. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... 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 to ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... By a general order he made him parade outside the gate of the station every morning at ten o'clock. He then marched from the front door with a majestic mien and inspected the horse, the rider, and accoutrements. He walked slowly round, examining with eagle eye the saddle, the bridle, the bits, the girth, the sword, pistols, spurs, and buckles. If he could find no fault with anything, he gave in brief the word of command, "Patrol the forest road," or any other road on which an enemy might be likely to appear. I never saw the ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... five inches of straight stature, and a foot, perhaps, of chest-girth, he was a second edition of the Cunnigan-bahadur who had raised and led a regiment and licked peace into a warring countryside; and though he was that much bigger than his father had been, they dubbed him "Chota" Cunnigan on the instant. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the sorrows of a poor "Old Man," Whose pouch is emptied of its golden store; Whose girth seems dwindling to its shortest span, Who needs relief, and needs ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... land, she still was content. For twenty years the massive, straight-limbed Jean had stood to her for all things since the heavens and the earth were created. Once, when she had burnt her hand in cooking supper for him, his arm made a trial of her girth, and he kissed her. The kiss was nearer her ear than her lips, but to her mind it was the most solemn proof of her connubial happiness and of Jean's devotion. She was a Catholic, unlike Jean and most people of her class in Jersey, and ever since ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rubber blankets with brass eyelets set in along the edges? Then imagine a piece of stout canvas, some four and one-half feet in length, with large and heavy brass eyelets running down both edges. The width of this canvas is never the full girth of the human body it is to surround. The width is also irregular—broadest at the shoulders, next broadest at the hips, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... 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 to know, he kept the habits of ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... comes every five years—a handful of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead bullock in muddy water with cross-currents. But the season I think of, the river was low, smooth, and even, and, as the Gavial had warned me, the dead English came down, touching each other. I got my girth in that season—my girth and my depth. From Agra, by Etawah and the broad waters ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... seven, I set off after the lost sheep. I could have no horse; all that could be mounted—we have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment—were due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush; missed it; came ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in a clear sky and hot sunshine, its brother, the sempervirens, prefers a cool sea-coast climate, offering frequent baths of fog. There is also a difference in the size of these trees; the redwood is often three hundred feet high, but is less in girth than its relative in the Sierras. There is not much underbrush and little sunshine in the cool, green redwood forests, each tree rising tall and stately for a hundred feet without branches, while the green tops seem almost to touch the sky as one looks up. Through the woods one ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... gardens of great girth Fill'd with the strife of birds, With water-springs, and beasts that house i' ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... it was the especial symbol of sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning this stone—it was well known to the Chinese from the days of ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... now he slacked his speed, A moment breathed his panting steed; Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band, And loosen'd in the sheath his brand. On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint, Where Barnhills hew'd his bed of flint; Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest, Where falcons hang their giddy nest Mid cliffs, from whence his eagle eye For many a league his prey could spy; Cliffs, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... yesterday in an accident which occurred in the main street of Carlisle. Part of the harness of a heavily-laden cart broke, and the horse was becoming restive, when the Bishop, who was passing, prevented further danger by buckling up the girth while the carter held up the cart shafts, which would otherwise have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... columns stood as sentinels the entire length of the high, one-storied facade, and on the heavy double doors he found a knocker. Visitors were infrequent there, but at last a surprised barefoot mozo answered the rapping, and in turn brought a short man of burly girth and charro tightness of breeches. This chubby person bowed many times and assured Their Mercies over and over again that here they had their house. Driscoll replied with thanks that in that case he thought that he ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... branches of which descended numerous slight stalks, apparently supporting them as they spread out on every side over the ground. I now recognised a magnificent specimen of the baobab-tree, of immense girth, and with numerous branches and almost countless offshoots. On one side was a Guinea-palm, its graceful fan-like branches rising from a centre stalk—a mere liliputian plant it looked in comparison to its lofty ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... neck—that thrill of generous sympathy which passes between horse and rider. He lost ground steadily and more and more rapidly. Now the outstretched black head was at his tail, now at his flank, now at his girth, now at his shoulder, now they raced nose and nose. Whistling Dan shifted in the saddle. His left foot took the opposite stirrup. His ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... for weeks, she told him; she was tired. He was amused at that. She had been born in the saddle; he remembered her as a little girl on a Shetland pony and he did not believe she could ever tire. 'Must be something wrong somewhere,' he said, examining girth and pommels. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. "Others may sing of the wine and the wealth, and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust, and the ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... closed down, dark and moonless, with a heaviness in the air which was oppressive. Campbell had to grant men and horses a breathing period. He put out pickets, leaving the rest of them to lie with their mounts saddled and to hand. Drew loosened the girth, stripped off saddle and blanket, and wiped down the sweaty back of his new mount. But he dared not leave the gelding free. So, against all good practice, he re-equipped the tired beast. No mount was going to be able to take that kind of treatment for long. They had ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... love to watch the young pines take on their holiday attire. How they robe themselves from head to foot in draperies of fleecy white, pin diamonds in their dark branches and wind about their slender girth the strands of evanescent pearl! I love to watch the skies at dawn when they kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scatter sparkles of light as a red rose scatters its petals. Where has the last year fled? It seems but yesterday ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... an accident," said she, breathing quickly. "My girth is broke and I have lost the rest ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... than in others — except that the Punans make it up with a longer femur. Women and young people have longer legs than men. The Punans have the fattest calves approximating to the Tenggerese, the other Bornean tribes are more like the Gorontalese. The chest girth of Ulu Ayars and Tenggerese is almost the same, despite the difference in the breadth of the chest, in which the Ulu Ayars resemble the inhabitants of Atchin measured by Lubbers. The proportion of the length of the foot to the stature is 16 : 100 in Kayans of both sexes, 154 : 100 in Ulu Ayars, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... word, Miles turned and began to saddle. Then suddenly as he pulled at the girth, he stopped. "It's no use," he said. "We can't get away except over the rise, and they'll see us there"; he nodded at the hill which rose beyond the camping ground three hundred yards away, and stretched in a long, level ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Sauderkrok, where there are hot springs. The road was very bad, and it took us nearly three hours to accomplish the distance, but this may be partly accounted for by our stopping every half-hour to mend some one's broken harness. My only girth, a dilapidated old thing, was mended with string, and when trotting along soon after starting, the saddle and I both rolled off together, the only fall I have ever had in my life, and from a little Icelandic pony too! I was thoroughly disgusted at ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the rope is our cinch-band, and the cinch-hook at the other end of the band or girth. It's made out of wood or horn sometimes. Now, Rob, I am going to pass the belly-band under the horse. Catch the hook when it comes through. Are you ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... consisting of two light side slats and a girth and neck strap in such a way that the cow cannot reach her udder. Unless she is particularly valuable for milk, it will save you a lot of worry to ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... must be to the books themselves. Exclusive of short story, sketch and tale, they include a dozen novels of generous girth—for Meredith is old-fashioned in his demand for elbow-room. They are preeminently novels of character and more than any novelist of the day the view of the world embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does not mean that they are wanting in emotional force or interest: merely, that ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... violet-eyed Anita? Mrs. Fortescue, in a beautiful ball gown, looked quite as handsome as her daughter. The regimental tailor had been busy all day letting out Colonel Fortescue's full dress uniform and the Colonel fondly hoped that a couple of inches he had gained in girth were concealed by the tailor's art. But Mrs. Fortescue's quick ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... is ruined," said the Laird of Broken-girth-flow, a territory which, since the days of Adam, had borne ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... each of these the too confiding Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. The hounds had just entered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... Kentucky, and the untouched soil was luxuriant with fertility. As a pioneer himself said: "All they had to do was to tickle it with a hoe, and it laughed into a harvest." There was the proof of its strength in the grass and the trees. Never before had the travelers seen oaks and beeches of such girth or elms and hickories of such height. The grass was high and thick and the canebrake was so dense that passage through it seemed impossible. Down the center of the valley, which was but one of many, separated from each other ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... along the side of a hill on the right. Keeping under the shelter of the thicket on the top of the same hill, Surrey and Richmond followed, and saw him direct his steps towards another beech-tree of almost double the girth of that he had just visited. Arrived at this mighty tree, he struck it with his spear, while a large owl, seated on a leafless branch, began to hoot; a bat circled the tree; and two large snakes, glistening ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
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