"Breast-high" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other. He immediately crawled in this way till he came to a secure spot. The men who had not attempted this passage were ordered to return and wade the river at the foot of the bluff, where they found the water breast-high. This adventure taught them the danger of crossing the slippery heights of the river; but as the plains were intersected by deep ravines, almost as difficult to pass, they continued down the river, sometimes in the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... the old Ridge across the sweet, blooming clover-fields, with the darkened house behind her, again the waters of despair rose breast-high and heart-high, beat against her aching throat and were just about to dash over her head as she stretched out one arm to the hills and with a broken cry bent her white forehead in the curve of the other, but suddenly bent head, tear-blinded eyes, quivering breast and supplicating ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of furniture, while preserving their original purpose, have varied more widely in form. In the beginning the buffet was a tiny apartment, or recess, little larger than a cupboard, separated from the room which it served either by a breast-high balustrade or by pillars. It developed into a definite piece of furniture, varying from simplicity to splendour, but always provided with one or more flat spaces, or broad shelves, for the reception of such necessaries of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... summoning me to take my place in the stable where the lessons are given. It is a small room, empty and bare, with peat-moss litter bedding and white-washed walls. The horse is separated from the people present by breast-high wooden partitions. Opposite the four-legged scholar is a black-board, nailed to the wall; and on one side a corn-bin which forms a seat for the spectators. Muhamed is led in. Krall, who is a little nervous, makes no secret of his uneasiness. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... distance the roll of wheels and click of hoofs. The esplanade was a broad walk extending the entire width of the building, and conforming to it. It was bottomed with marble squares, and bordered with a splendid wall, breast-high on one side, and by the final terrace running to the basement wall on the other. Here and there along the wall gigantic brazen pots sat, filled with evergreens, whose color seemed to have gradually dropped down and entered into the marble beneath them. The bronze had stained with rich, dull ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... our being washed off. The anchors were then to be taken up on the rail, which kept all hands on the forecastle for an hour, though every now and then the seas broke over it, washing the rigging off to leeward, filling the lee scuppers breast-high, and washing chock aft to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... grasped his wrists. A white-haired man appeared on the other side of the parapet. He took a good, solid grip, and heaved. He drew Hoddan over the breast-high top of the wall and let him down ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... isles of the siren, your Galli; No ages can sever 200 The Three, nor enable their sister To join them,—halfway On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses— No farther to-day, Tho' the small one, just launched in the wave, Watches breast-high and steady From under the rock, her bold sister Swum halfway already. Fortu, shall we sail there together And see from the sides 210 Quite new rocks show their faces, new haunts Where the siren abides? Shall we sail round and round them, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Ferriss, and the chief engineer did not repeat the question. The day's march began; almost at once breast-high snowdrifts were encountered, and when these had been left behind the expedition involved itself upon the precipitate slopes of a huge talus of ice and bare, black slabs of basalt. Fully two hours were spent in clambering over this obstacle, ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... sixpence. Sweetland extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required it, in the simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was fastened round the tooth, and the other end round the anvil's nose, then the sturdy blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which was about breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a strong push of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like a well-thrown fly. When John Pike had suffered this very bravely, "Ah, Master Pike," said the blacksmith, with a grin, "I reckon you won't ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... he shouted to his wife, who came in to meet him. "The best run o' the year, lass! Thirty miles before he earthed, the dogs running breast-high every yard of it, and the very devil of a dig-out! There was only me and parson and young Bob Eld o' Seighford in at the death. Dinner, dinner, my lass! I could eat the side of a house. Hallo, damme! What art ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... man undoubled his knees and descended the stool. He stood breast-high behind the counter. He dropped a lack-luster eye to the box. "Velly nice," he ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... up to look at him for a minute. I got down and went to the wall, knowing that it afforded perfect security. Black Jack came up slowly, as if he meant no mischief. I leant over the wall, which was breast-high, and poked fun at him. In an instant, like a flash of light, he came at me. I saw his great claw over my head, and almost before I could jump back, a couple of heavy stones were driven violently off the top of the wall. To bolt and jump into the cart was almost an involuntary and instantaneous ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... Corinth's sea; when ocean sudden heav'd; "A mighty heap of waters bent appear'd, "Like an huge hill, and increase seem'd to gain; "Then roaring loud was at its summit cleft. "Thence, from the bursting waves a horned bull "Rush'd forth, breast-high uprearing in the air; "Spouting the waves through his capacious mouth "And nostrils. Terror seiz'd my comrades' breasts: "Fill'd with the thoughts of exile, mine alone "Unmov'd remain'd. While my impatient steeds, "Turn'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... the church, after I had left the good sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it, ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast-high, over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air and all about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of taste keeps in his mind as a picture. The church was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... me was to see what they had done to the great timber bridge itself, for they had made that also into a fortress. The old railing along the roadway was gone, and in its place were breast-high bulwarks of strong timber, and on each span of the bridge was a high wooden tower whose upper works overhung the water, looking downstream, as if they feared ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... While they labored at the body of the defence, the Dyaks surrounded it by an outer work, made of slight sticks run into the ground with cross binding of split bamboo, and bristling with a chevaux de frise (if it may be so styled) of sharpened bamboos about breast-high. The fastenings of the entire work were of rattan, which is found in plenty. It was commenced at 7 A.M. and finished about 3 P.M., showing how the fellows can get through business when they choose. This stockade, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... more than cheers, however, and the miners hurried to the mouth of the notch. To pack it breast-high with fragments of wood and stone was no great matter, and the breastwork was finished in time for a ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... forever. Hold on." Payne had stepped off into the breast-high mud. "What are you going ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... running him now on a breast-high scent, But he leaves us standing still; When we swing round by Westland Pound He's far up Challacombe Hill. The pack are a string of struggling ants, The quarry's a dancing midge, They're trying their reins on the edge of the Chains While he's on ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... received from a friend, who took interest in the subject, a sketch of something almost identical from the disused chapel at Chillon in the Canton Vaud. Of this I have not the measurements, but it stands about breast-high. It is there called a "prie-dieu," and is said to have belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, but the size is very unusual for such a use. I send sketches of each of the subjects of my Query, {102} and hope that, if this ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... breast-high bushes and crawled into their thin shade and lay down; before him he spread out the Quigley storekeeper's map. This he studied with thoughtful eyes. The storekeeper had said it would be no trick at all for a man like ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... gun-barrel thrust out of a thicket straight at his own chest, looks on a stretch of smooth ground, with nothing on it to intercept his view, as a kind of oasis. After this burned maquis came a number of cultivated fields, inclosed, according to the fashion of that country, with breast-high walls, built of dry stones. The path ran between these fields, producing, from a distance, the effect of ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... the gunwale could be seen the iron-bound lid of the massive sea-chest. Those in the pirogue desired to behold nothing else. They were suddenly diverted by a tremendous yell which came booming out of the tall grass where it waved breast-high on the shore of the stream. A pistol barked and the ball clipped a straggling lock of Trimble ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... large-looming from his wave, Out leaned, chin hand-propped, pensive on the ledge, A sea-worn face, sad as mortality, Divine with yearning after fellowship. He rose but breast-high. So much god she saw; So much she sees ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... brush, not twenty yards across in any direction. The leading troopers reached the edge almost as the bear tumbled in. One of them, a tall and powerful man named Miller, instantly dismounted and prepared to force his way in among the dwarfed willows, which were but breast-high. Among the men who had ridden up were Moore and Bates, and also the two famous scouts, Buffalo Bill—long a companion of Captain Moore,—and California Joe, Custer's faithful follower. California Joe had spent almost all his life on the plains and in the mountains, as a hunter and Indian fighter; ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... stage was easier still, and he crept on in this way from tree to tree, six, eight, and ten feet at a time, till, to his great delight, he found the water waist instead of breast-high. Ten minutes later it was not more than half-way up this height, and in another five he left the rafter still pressed against two trunks, and waded through the rushing stream, holding on by bough after ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... rose breast-high and fingers curled lovingly round triggers, every knife but that of Ross-Ellison disappeared as by magic, and the Corporal beheld a little crowd of innocent men endeavouring to secure a dangerous lunatic at the risk of their lives—terrible risk, as the bodies of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... rooftree was blocked ahead by the cupola, to which Jack earlier had referred. It was a square, truncated tower with a breast-high wooden balustrade around it. Jack climbed up this balustrade, and Captain Folsom, with Bob aiding him from the rear and Jack giving him a hand ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... be one secret of his popularity, but it is the truth—that Morris's heart is at the level of most other people's, and his poetry flows out by that door. He stands breast-high in the common stream of sympathy, and the fine oil of his poetic feeling goes from him upon an element it is its nature to float upon, and which carries it safe to other bosoms, with little need of deep diving or high flying. His sentiments are simple, honest, truthful, and familiar; ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... subjects has proved their safeguard, and they were too strong to be pillaged by any petty marauder, as any one who has seen a Banjari encampment will be convinced. They encamp in a square, and their grain-bags piled over each other breast-high, with interstices left for their matchlocks, make no contemptible fortification. Even the ruthless Turk, Jamshid Khan, set up a protecting tablet in favour of the Charans of Murlah, recording their exemption from dind contributions, and that there should be no increase ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... glancing through the hoary boles, he saw, Strange as to some old prophet might have seemed A vision hovering on a sea of fire, Damsels in divers colours like the cloud Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them On horses, and the horses richly trapt Breast-high in that bright line of bracken stood: And all the damsels talked confusedly, And one was pointing this way, and one that, Because the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... from the grass got up, and so, With a caw and flap, away they went; When the grey mare made up her mind to go At the tail of the bounds on a breast-high scent, The best of the startled rooks might fail To match her flight over ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... Romans were suddenly roused by the attack of the Carthaginian horsemen, and, without waiting for food, moved out of camp, chasing the horsemen toward the river. Into its icy waters the Romans waded breast-high, and when they came up on the opposite bank they were benumbed with cold. As soon as Hannibal knew that the Romans had crossed the river he attacked them fiercely with all his troops. Two thousand men whom he had placed in ambush fell upon ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... grass, springing from a wet soil, rose under her feet. A little rill trickled alongside the trail. Mossy, soft-cushioned stones lay imbedded here and there. Young maples and hickories grew breast-high on either side, and the way wound in and out under the ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... fond enough of you," she said. "Fond enough to say that I wish every man was like you. But there are others to be considered." She was thinking, as a matter of fact, of poor Maisie. She picked a little piece of pellitory out of the breast-high wall in front of us. She chafed it for a long minute between her finger and thumb, then she threw it over ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... out of the water, and in time, for a small avalanche of cakes rattled down upon the place he had just left. The rising water had forced the ice up till it stood breast-high above the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... unbounded meads, Where, wading on breast-high in yellow bloom, Untamed of man, the shy white lama feeds— There would I journey and forget my doom; Or far, O far as sunrise I would see The level prairie stretch ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... is humiliation, but to retreat as this luckless army did was agony. Deep mud clogged their weary feet; when a halt was called they could but rest on their halberts, to lie down was to be suffocated in filth; mountain torrents swollen breast-high had to be crossed, the wading men were washed away till they built a rude bridge—O crowning humiliation!—out of the wreckage of their own ships. Hasan and a multitude of Turks and Arabs hung forever on their flanks. The dejected Italians, who had no stomach for this sort ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... or pike covered with taffeta of the bridegroom's colours, all but the head, which was silver, worth about twenty crowns; he stood by the bride, holding the spear in the middle, both ends of it about breast-high, and the bridegroom was brought and placed by his bride. Then Senator Bundt made a solemn speech to the Queen, which (according to the interpretation made to Whitelocke) was to thank her Majesty for the favour ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... the pack at length hit off the chase. At some distance a farmer made a signal with much vehemence to the company, who, upon coming up to him, were informed that they were very far behind the fox, for that a single hound, very bloody about the head, had passed a field from him, and was running breast-high, and that there was little chance of getting up to him. The pack, however, at her coming to a check, did at length get up, and, after some cold hunting, the bitch again hit off the scent, and the fox was ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Montijo, as already stated, is terrace-topped, that style of roof in Spanish countries termed azotea. This, surrounded by a parapet breast-high—beset with plants and flowering shrubs in boxes and pots, thus forming a sort of aerial garden—is reached by a stone stair, the escalera, which leads up out of the inner court, called patio. During certain hours of the day, the azotea ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... part of my boat's crew. We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give it you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of times) had been consumed by fire. As we were making our way, cautiously and toilsomely, over the pulverised embers, one of my people sank into the earth breast-high. He turned pale, and 'Haul me out smart, shipmates,' says he, 'for my feet are among bones.' We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot, and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had been among bones. More ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... marks of violence and bloodshed. There was an open space in front, where the shattered fragments of the engine lay scattered; and here the rails had been torn up by violence, and there stretched across, breast-high, a rudely piled rampart of stone. A human skeleton lay atop, whitened by the winds; there was a broken pike beside it; and, stuck fast in the naked skull, which had rolled to the bottom of the rampart, the rusty fragment of a sword. The space behind resembled the floor of a charnel-house—bindwood ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... paved with marble, and the walls lined breast-high with the same material. A niche in the cabinet nearest the triclinium contained a small image, a gold vase, a gold coin, and twelve bronze medals of the reign of Vespasian; and near this spot were found eight ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the pass the snow lay very deep, and we followed the course of a small stream which cut through it, the walls of snow being breast-high on each side; the path was still frequented by yaks, of which we overtook a small party going to Tibet, laden with planks. All the party appeared alike overcome by lassitude, shortness and difficulty of breathing, a sense of weight on the stomach, giddiness ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... sash-window to the corner of the room and then returned. When he came to the first window in his return (the bottom of which was nearly breast-high), he rested his elbow on the bottom of the window, and the side of his face upon the palm of his hand, and stood in that leaning posture for some time, with his side partly towards her. She looked at him earnestly to see if she knew him, but, though from her frequent intercourse with them, she ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen |
