"Girding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purpose of harassing said March, Lacy is to do whatever he with safety can (which we see is not much: "a few Uhlans and Hussars"); at lowest, is to keep it constantly in sight; and always encamp as near it as he dare; [Tempelhof, iv. 54.]—Daun himself girding up his loins; and preparing, by a short-cut, to get ahead of it in a day or two. Lacy was alert enough, but could not do much with safety: a few Uhlans and Hussars, that was all; and he is now encamped somewhere to rearward, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to make, or whether her perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which Rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say. Probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, girding himself ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had disappeared from home and from the neighbourhood. The darkest stories were afloat. She had taken some money with her, and all trace of her was lost. The father had a period of gloomy taciturnity, during which his principal relief was got out of jeering and girding at his elder brother, the noodle's eyes wandered and glittered more; his shrunken frame seemed more shrunken as he sat dangling his spindle legs from the shaft of the carrier's cart; his absence of mind was for a time more marked, and excused with less buoyancy and inventiveness ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... notables. Beyond them were gathered the men in battalions. At one side were the massed bands. It was a wonderful sight. The sun was shining. Autumn tints coloured the maple trees on the sides of the ancient mountains. Here was Canada quickening into national life and girding on the sword to take her place among the independent nations of the world. It had been my privilege, fifteen years before, to preach at the farewell service in Quebec Cathedral for the Canadian Contingent ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... elsewhere upon Exmoor. Let that pass: what odds to any how tall or wide I be? There is no Doone's door at Plover's Barrows and if there were I could never go through it. They vexed me so much about my size, long before I had completed it, girding at me with paltry jokes whose wit was good only to stay at home, that I grew shame-faced about the matter, and feared to encounter a looking-glass. But mother was very proud, and said she never could have too much ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the case of so quick a pupil, to frame a "chaffing" account of Oxford examinations and degrees; to describe the rush of an Honour man's first year before the mods' gate is leaped; the loitering and "slacking" of the second year and part of the third; and then the setting of teeth and girding of loins, when a man realises that some of the lost time is gone forever, and that the last ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lively bustling traffic, the exchange of such values as were not for him to handle. She hated, he knew, at the French play, anything but a box—just as she hated at the English anything but a stall; and a box was what he was already in this phase girding himself to press upon her. But she had for that matter her community with little Bilham: she too always, on the great issues, showed as having known in time. It made her constantly beforehand with him and gave him mainly the chance to ask himself how on the day of their ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... responsibility, if they make duty ever prominent and call to self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, leaving small space for play, it is because life itself is really most serious, and because we must meet it seriously, recognizing its sacred meaning and girding ourselves for it with ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... loins of your mind. Here Peter speaks of a spiritual girding of the mind, just as one girds his sword to the loins of his body. This girding has Christ also enforced, Luke xii., where he says, "Let your loins be girt about." In some places the Scriptures speak of the loins with reference to bodily lust; but ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... demigods enjoy the shade of clouds Girding his lower crests, but often seek, When startled by the sudden rain that shrouds His waist, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... its silent depths, and dropped, in solitude and shadow, among the recluse ferns and mosses which are so seldom disturbed by passing feet. Son of freedom and opportunity that he was, he touched the heart by going to nature's peacefulness like the saints, and girding upon his American sovereignty the hair-shirt of service to self-denial. He was happy in his intense discipline of the flesh, as all men are when they have once tasted power—if it is the power which awakens perception of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... not at all understand our ascending Bhomtso a second time; they ran after Campbell, who was ahead on a stout pony, girding up their long garments, bracing their matchlocks tight over their shoulders, and gasping for breath at every step, the long horns of their muskets bobbing up and down as they toiled amongst the rocks. When I reached the top I found Campbell seated behind a little stone ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... and its end was a noble one. Of the twenty-five years between the Revolution and the Peace of Utrecht all but five were years of war, and the five were a mere breathing-space in which the combatants on either side were girding themselves for fresh hostilities. That the twenty-five years which followed were for Europe as a whole a time of peace was due in great measure to the zeal with which England watched over the settlement that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... stone, molten by mystical passion. He can build, by way of amusement, a Chinese pagoda; but when he is in earnest, only a Roman temple. He has a keen eye for truth; but he is one of those people who like, as the saying goes, to put down the truth in black and white. He is always girding and jeering at romantics and idealists because they will not put down the truth in black and white. But black and white are not the only two colours in the world. The modern man of science who writes down a fact in black and white is not more but ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Premier seems to take it with perfect coolness. And yet, I say, what a strange feeling, to find himself Chief Governor of England; girding on, upon his moderately sized new soul, the old battle-harness of an Oliver Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, a William Conqueror. "I, then, am the Ablest of English attainable Men? This English People, which has spread itself over all lands ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... and it all followed entirely; but the wall was stripped away from above, and he formed a way for many. Then Ajax and Teucer aiming at him together, the one smote him with an arrow in the splendid belt of his mortal-girding shield, around his breast; but Jove averted the fate from his son, that he might not be slain at the sterns of the ships. But Ajax, springing upon him, struck his shield, and pierced him quite through with his spear, and forcibly checked him eager. And then he fell back for a little from the buttress, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... his verse behold, there came up to him a rare show and a fair, more than twenty maidens like crescents encompassing the young lady, who shone in their midst as the full moon among the constellations guarding and girding her. She was clad in brocades befitting Kings; her breasts were like twin pomegranates, a woven zone set with all kinds of jewels tightly clasped her waist which expanded below into jutting hips; and her hinder cheeks stood out as a mound of crystal[FN185] supporting ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... dim the triumph of the 'Church' the fact remained that the baker had lost his loaf and had not been compensated. The loaf was worth money; no money had passed. It was hard to be victorious and yet reduced to silence and dark looks at girding adversaries. The nearer they came to home, the more angry with 'Chapel' did they grow. Then the bell-ringer had his inspiration. Assembling his three assistants, he hurried to the belfry, and in two minutes the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... that Paul here has haunting his memory our Lord's words which we have just quoted; and, in any case, he is in beautiful accord with his brother Peter, who begins all the exhortations of his epistle with the words, 'Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober, and set your minds perfectly upon the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Peter, indeed, is not thinking of the soldier's belt, but he is, no doubt, remembering many a time ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... contributed—as few of his confederates would have been permitted— to the Edinburgh; but he was Literary Editor to Blackwood from October, 1817, to September, 1852. Originally a disciple of the Lake School, at whom he was frequently girding, he migrated to Edinburgh (where he became Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1820), and attracted to himself many brilliant men of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Fiend's name, what then is the cause of your distemper?" Father Ingulph inquired impatiently, as he finished the girding-up of his robes and picked up his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of the floods, and at once their arms were about each other. But in a second he remembered that she was to be another man's wife, and the thought came over him like the drawing down of the black cap over the head of a condemned man. With a fierce girding of his will he put both his hands upon her shoulders and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... He thought, "Girding! Sneering! Can't I get out of this?" Then he thought, "Dash it, man, it's only just her way. What is there in it?" He said, "Yes, but look here, Mabel, we started at my riding home in the dark—or rather at old Low Jinks's muffin knee. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... hour of respite before battle was joined, and Atta spent it by the edge of the sea. He had been given arms, and in girding himself for the fight he had found Apollo's offering in his breastfold. He was done with the gods of the Hellenes. His offering should go to the gods of his own people. So, calling upon Poseidon, he flung the little gold cup far out to sea. It flashed ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... and cloak; and he is as great an enemy to an hat-band, as fortune. He quarrels at the time and up-starts, and sighs at the neglect of men of parts, that is, such as himself. His life is a perpetual satyr, and he is still girding[16] the age's vanity, when this very anger shews he too much esteems it. He is much displeased to see men merry, and wonders what they can find to laugh at. He never draws his own lips higher than a smile, and frowns wrinkle him before forty. He at last ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... republic of the Quirites, for the army, legions, auxiliaries of the Roman people, the Quirites." Having uttered this prayer, he orders the lictors to go to Titus Manlius, and without delay to announce to his colleague that he had devoted himself for the army. He, girding himself in a Gabine cincture, and fully armed, mounted his horse, and rushed into the midst of the enemy. He was observed by both armies to present a more majestic appearance than human, as one sent from heaven as an expiation of all the wrath of ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... imprisonment to be silent. Then the judge placed on his head the black cap, and it was with trembling hands that he did so; the blood had entirely left his face, and his lips were purple with the struggle to contend with and suppress his emotion. He paused, as though he were girding himself up to the most terrible of duties, and when he spoke his voice was hollow, as ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... King Christopher to council: but while they were amidst of their talk came the word that the foe was anigh and come close to the river-bank; whereat was none abashed; but to all it seemed wisdom to abide them on the vantage-ground. So then there was girding of swords and doing on of helms; as for ordering of the folk, it was already done, for all the host was ranked on the bent-side, with the banner of Oakenrealm in the midst; on its left hand the banner of the Tofts, and on the right ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. Especially to be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft—in H.M.S. Pinafore at the swapping of children in the cradle, and in Tricoche et Cacolet at the "portrait de ma mere" which has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halevy, having made one success, did not further attempt the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... springing up, and, without a moment's delay, taking down and girding on the armour which ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... '15," and 'twas not to be expected that so hardened an offender would again receive mercy. But at the least he might have been given courtesy, and that neither he nor his two fellows, Kilmarnock and Cromartie, did at all receive. The crown lawyers to the contrary took an unmanly delight in girding and snapping at the captives whom the fortune of war had put in their power. Monstrous charges were trumped up that could not be substantiated, even the Lord High Steward descending ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... neighborhood, and it aroused him to earnest and open opposition; nor did that opposition cease till years afterward, when freedom of conscience was established by law in Virginia, largely by his labors and influence. Even in 1774, when all the colonies were girding themselves for the coming revolutionary conflict, he turned aside from a discussion of the momentous question of the hour, in a letter to his friend[3] in Philadelphia, and ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... a sweet thing in a flower-bed hat, Or her best fellow with your tie tucked in, Don't squander love's bright springtime girding at An old chimpanzee with an Irish chin: There may be ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... descent has gained notable recognition. Instead of being led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes are gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals. Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of the world's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight in the van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for the ideals of the greater world in which they live: the emancipation of women, universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... with here and there a waving field of silken-tufted Indian corn; at his feet lay the hamlet, built in the form of a circle, and fortified in Indian fashion by three graduated rows of palisades, and to crown the whole, girding the island like a broad silver belt, as far as the eye could reach, shone the sunlit river. Enchanted with the beauty of the scene, and delighted too with the courteous greeting of the savages, their simplicity, their generosity and their ardour for instruction, he breathed ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... ship, so as to have the advantage of manoeuvring. A regular engagement now took place between this small cruiser and four dows, all armed with great guns, and full of men. In the contest Lieut. Carruthers, the commanding officer, was once wounded by a ball in the loins; but after girding a handkerchief round his waist, he still kept the deck, till a ball entering his forehead, he fell. Mr. Salter, the midshipman on whom the command devolved, continued the fight with determined bravery, and after a stout resistance, beat them off, chased them some ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Delaware, it became necessary to appoint for the three a distant place of meeting, out of the usual cruising grounds of the enemy, in order that the ships, whose first object was to escape crippling, could pass rapidly through the belt of British cruisers then girding the coast of the United States. The brilliant record made by United States ships in their single combats with the enemy during this war should not be allowed to blind our people to the fact that, from their numerical inferiority, they were practically prisoners ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... Hooligan. London, the battlefield of the literary aspirant since Caxton invented the printing press. It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge, that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that a species of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... with Great Britain. The people of Old England were girding their loins for that gigantic struggle, when nearly all the powers of Europe were leagued with those enemies who strove to overwhelm her. Right noble was the struggle, and right brave and gallant were the soldiers and sailors who then fought for the safety and honour of their well-loved ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... statesman to put back a bird that had fallen out of its nest. Such a heart was trained to be a leader of men, and to be crucified for a cause. The conscience that runs to the call of an animal in distress is girding itself with power to do ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... the tumult was not subsiding, I too rose from the table, and girding on my sword-for everybody wore one then-I went to the bridge of Sant' Agnolo, where I saw a group of several men assembled. On my coming up and being recognised by some of them, they gave way before me, and showed me what I least of all things wished to see, albeit I made mighty ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... not too far off to lose the sympathy for the religious chivalry which inspired the Holy War. Earlier, in the intensely prosaic period that immediately succeeded, the romance of the Crusades was gone; later, Europe was girding itself for the sterner task of reformation. Before the time of Tasso, Peter the Hermit would have been deemed a foolish enthusiast; later, he would have been sent to a lunatic asylum. But just at the time ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... could not refuse to comply with their request. He therefore arranged to leave Norah with Mrs Massey, to whom, though her own heart was well-nigh broken, she could afford comfort and sympathy during his absence. Packing up his valise, girding his sword to his side, and sticking a brace of pistols in his belt under his cloak, he set off by the stage, fully expecting to have to fight his way through half a score of highwaymen and footpads at the least. Still, thinking it possible that the Ouzel Galley ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... Girding up the heavy brown gown, I ascended the tree as directed. A half moon was shining brightly, and the line of roof stood out dark and hard against the purple, starry sky. The tree was in the ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... out of conversational language, by pregnant, which comes to us from the Latins, who also used gravidus,—a word we now apply only to animals, especially dogs and ants,—and enceinte, borrowed from French, and referring to the ancient custom of girding a woman who was with child. Similarly barren of direct reference to the child are accouchement, which we have borrowed from French, and ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... preferred "the accurate Burckhardt." He read with delight Boswell's Johnson, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands, Renan's Life of Jesus, Gibbon, whom he calls "our great historian" [512] and the poems of Coleridge. At Cowper he never lost an opportunity of girding, both on account of his Slave Ballads ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... honor, and cheerful courage in his character; the genuine piety with which he accepted the "dispensation," and wrote "Blessed be the name of the Lord;" the unexampled steadiness with which he comforted his wife and daughters while girding himself to the daily work of intellectual production amidst his many distresses; the sweetness of heart with which he acknowledged the sympathy and declined the offers of help that poured in upon him ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... have turned Lizzy out of the church. I do not know. But her Friend, the world's Christ, they could not make dead to her by shutting him up in formula or church. He never was dead. From the girding sepulchre he passed to save the spirits long in prison; and from the visible church now he lives and works out from every soul that has learned, like Lizzy, the truths of life,—to love, to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... however was soon settled, and he buttoned his coat tightly, pulled his hat firmly on his head, drew on a pair of shabby gloves, and performed a number of those little acts which in ancient times were known under the head of 'girding up the loins,' preparatory to setting out to his next point of destination, which was the girl's former home, the place where Rust had committed the murder. It was many miles off; and the distance which Rust, under the whip and spur of fierce passions, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... suggested it might have been hit and fallen into the river. One of the men was ordered to dive down, and ascertain if the tiger was at the bottom. The river water is generally muddy, so that the bottom cannot be seen. Divesting himself of puggree, and girding up his loins, the diver sank gently to the bottom, but presently reappeared in a palpable funk, puffing and blowing, and declaring that the tiger was certainly at the bottom. The foolish fellow thought it might be still alive. We soon disabused ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... she had looked in his face she knew he would not die, and that her work was before her; and while poor weak Hugh panted out words of passionate longing and despair, she was girding up her strength for what she had to say, and praying for help that she might be ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... entertaining as a ground of condemning Jesus. If this enigmatical prisoner had had a sword, there would have been some substance in the charge against Him, but He was plainly an idea-monger, and therefore quite harmless, and His kingship only fit to be made a jest of and a means of girding at the rulers. 'Practical men' always under-estimate the power of ideas. The Title shows the same contempt for 'mere theorisers' as animated his question, 'What is truth?' How little he knew that this 'King,' at whom he thought that he could launch clumsy jests, had lodged in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... wing Or cleave the azure tide, content to be, What the great frame provides,—freedom and grace. Thee, simple child, do the swift winds obey, And the white waterfalls with their bold leaps Follow thy movements. Tenderly the light Thee watches, girding with a zone of radiance, And all the swinging herbs ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... signifies little to inquire whether my obedience to the mandates of the Church has saved the life of my nephew, or whether I have not fallen, as laymen are wont to fall, whenever there is an encounter of wits betwixt them and those of the spirituality. I would to God it may prove otherwise, since, girding on my sword as Heaven's champion, I might the better expect Heaven's protection for her whom I must ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of the fair, Sigurd Erikson entered the room in which Olaf slept. The boy was dressing himself in his fine clothes, and girding on his leather belt with its small war axe, which Sigurd had had made for his ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... frantic desire is taking possession of me to get away, and investigate these charges; and when, finally, I am released from torture, I fly to my good friend, the mirror; and, having obtained from it the blissful reassurance that these charges are without foundation in my features, I feel like girding on my armor and confronting my disagreeable ex-callers and all their kind with a few pertinent (or ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Chester came forth, her cheeks all in a glow of blushes, for she was rather shy of appearing before her children in that pretty, white-muslin dress, fastened over the bosom with bows of pink ribbon, and with a belt of the same color girding her waist. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... that subtle and delicate sweetness which belongs to a refined and comely decadence; just as its earliest phases have the freshness which belongs to all periods of growth in art, the charm of ascesis, of the austere and serious girding of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... she may, to spy that fearful thing All down the dusky walls in circlets wound; Alas! for what rare prize, with many a ring Girding the marble casket round and round? His folded tail, lost in the gloom profound, Terribly darkeneth the rocky base; But on the top his monstrous head is crown'd With prickly spears, and on his doubtful face Gleam his unwearied eyes, red ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... within the mystery Girding God's blessed Eucharist: The organ and the chaunt had ceased: A few words paused against his ear, Said from the altar: drawn round him, The silence was at rest and dim. He could not pray. The bell shook clear And ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... in a full, heavy girding of stone, had a grated peephole, a heavy knocker, a large lock, hinges thick and knotted, a bristling of nails, an armour of plates, and hinges, so that altogether it was more of iron than ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... side, I addressed myself in good earnest to my repose, but could obtain none; and in about half an hour's time my gentleman waked again, and turning towards me, I feigned a sound sleep, which he did not long respect; but girding himself again to renew the onset, he began to kiss and caress me, when now making as if I just waked, I complained of the disturbance, and of the cruel pain that this little rest had stole my senses from. Eager, however, for the pleasure, as well of consummating an entire triumph ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... he gone than the King repented him of sending one man alone into a night so dark that a bodkin might pierce a hole in it, and girding on his scimitar, he followed his guard beyond the city gates. When Vira-vara had gone thus far he encountered a beautiful and splendidly dressed lady who was weeping bitterly; and accosting her, he requested to know her name, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in the election of nine knights-extraordinary, gives at once the commission, and takes security in a balance, added to the Council of War, though securer before by the tribunes of the people than that of Venice, which yet never incurred jealousy; for if the younger nobility have been often girding at it, that happened not so much through the apprehension of danger in it to the commonwealth, as through the awe of it upon themselves. Wherefore the graver have doubtlessly shown their prudence in the law whereby the magistracy of these councillors ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... difficulty and danger one reason why the drama is more interesting than prose-fiction. A true artist cannot but tire of a form that is too facile; and he is ever yearning for a grapple with stubborn resistance. He delights in technic for its own sake, girding himself joyfully to vanquish its necessities. He is aware that an art which does not demand a severe apprenticeship for the slow mastery of its secrets will fail to call forth his full strength. He knows that it is bad for the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... gods' to accept his devotion, to save the Roman legions, and strike terror into his enemies. This done, he commanded his lictors to carry word to his colleague that the sacrifice was accomplished, and then girding his robe round him in the manner adopted in sacrificing to the gods, he mounted his white horse, and rushed like lightning into the thickest of the Latins. At first they fell away on all sides as if some heavenly apparition had come down on them; then, as some recognized him, they closed in on ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hill and stood at last beneath the gallows, and, glancing up, Beltane beheld noisome shapes, black and shrivelled, that once had lived and laughed. Forthwith he drew his sword and fell to cutting down the brush, whereat friar Martin, girding up his frock, took Walkyn's sword and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Next girding screws the ponderous beam, With heft immense, drew down; The gushing whey from every seam Flowed through the streets a rapid stream, And shad ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... possible way of escaping the hanging that his comrades had so often humorously prophesied for him. Being a strong and vigorous villain, however, he clung tenaciously to his oar, and even unbuckling his leather belt, passed it round the slip of wood that was his salvation, girding himself to it as firmly as he was able. In this condition, plus a swoon from exhaustion, he was descried by the helmsman of the Pretty Mary, a few miles from Cape Surville, at daylight next morning. Blunt, with a wild hope that this waif and stray might be the lover of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... large; and display his own pretensions. Asked my opinion of Gray as a poet, and wished me to subscribe an attestation of his own merits for the purpose of getting him scholars. As I hinted my want of acquaintance with his qualifications, I found I had nearly landed myself in a proof, for he was girding up his loins to repeated thundering translations by himself into German, Hebrew, until, thinking it superfluous to stand on very much ceremony with one who used so little with me, hinted at letters to write, and got him ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... there came a fox which would plant himself facing him and which, by mimicking his movements, distracted him from his devotions. Now when this became longsome to him, one day he doffed his shirt and set it upon a cane and shook out the sleeves; then placing his turband on the top and girding its middle with a shawl, he stuck it up in the place where he used to pray. Presently up trotted the fox according to his custom and stood over against the figure, whereupon Shurayh came behind him, and took him. Hence the sayer saith, 'Shurayh foxier than the fox.'" When the Sultan heard Badr ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... prepared to defend himself, whatever might happen. A terrible groaning was heard during the night, and at dawn of day, Thor went out and observed lying near him a man of enormous bulk, who slept and snored pretty loudly. Thor could now account for the noise they had heard over night, and girding on his Belt of Prowess, increased that divine strength which he now stood in need of. The giant awakening, rose up, and it is said that for once in his life Thor was afraid to make use of his mallet, and contented himself by simply ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... in the very centre of the great church, played solemnly at ball. Vespers being sung, instead of conducting the bishop to his palace, they proceeded in order into the nave, the people standing in two long rows to watch. Girding up their skirts a little way, the whole body of clerics awaited their turn in silence, while the captain of the singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as [58] high as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught by any boy who could, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... chariot races—therefore it was that the King his father made him but a General of the Foot Soldiers—and in guessing riddles, which our people love, she delighted to conquer him. The victory was easy enough, for the divine Prince is heavy-witted; but Meriamun was never tired of girding at him. Plainly, even as a little child she grudged that he should come to wield the scourge of power, and wear the double crown, while she should live in idleness, and ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... conciliation, in the visionary hope that the seceders would follow the scriptural precedent of the prodigal son. On April 9 the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Mr. Phillips said:[132] "Here are a series of States, girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or me.... Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... leisurely finishing his glass, and smacking his lips, with the air of a man girding up his loins for a mighty effort, 'I'll tell ye—well, ye see the way he has is this,'—here Mr. Peel's expectation rose to the highest degree of interest,—'the way he has is this—he first butthers them up, and then slithers ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... and not being able to bear up against the wind, we gave up, and were borne along. [27:16]And running a little under the island called Clauda, we with difficulty became masters of the boat, [27:17]and taking it out they used helps, under-girding the ship; and fearing lest they should fall on the shoal, letting down the mast they were driven in that condition. [27:18]And we being exceedingly pressed with the storm, on the next day they cast the cargo overboard, [27:19]and ...
— The New Testament • Various
... crossed the grave, placid countenance of the pastor, and he clasped his hands firmly behind him, as if girding himself to deny the eloquent pleading ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the beaten drum and the voice, In the shine of many torches must the sleepless clan rejoice; And Taheia the well-descended, the daughter of chief and priest, Taheia must sit in her place in the crowded bench of the feast." So it was spoken; and she, girding her garment high, Fled and was swallowed of woods, swift as the ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... victory,—as His sorrow for Lazarus with the consciousness of His power to restore him; but it had to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at His side. When, in the desert, He was girding Himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered to Him; now in the fair world, when He is girding Himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to Him from the grave. But, from the grave, conquered. One from that tomb ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... foreheads in the dust were conspiring against him. They were no less terrible than he toward their inferiors. There never could be anything but anarchy in Russia so long as this aristocracy of cruel slave-masters existed. Ivan (like Louis XI.) was girding himself for the destruction of the power of his nobility, and, as one conspiracy after another was revealed, faster and faster flowed the torrent ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... much. They would flit round my head, emitting the two strongly contrasted sounds with which they express solicitude—the clear, thin, plaintive, or wailing note, and the low, jarring sound—an alternate lamenting and girding. One day when I approached the nest, they displayed more anxiety than usual, fluttering close to me, wailing and croaking more vehemently than ever, when all at once the male, at the height of his excitement, burst ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... rear, or even twenty miles, is really a better place to be if you are seeking to fix in your mind a reasonably full picture of the scope and effect and consequences of the hideous thing called war. Back there you see the new troops going in, girding themselves for the grapple as they go; you see the re-enforcements coming up; you see the supplies hurrying forward, and the spare guns and the extra equipment, and all the rest of it; you see, and can, after a dim fashion, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... I was girding up my loins to deliver a crushing reply, when Nikhil came back. Chandranath Babu rose, and looking towards Bee, said: "Let me go now, my little mother, I have some ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... then, in nasal voice, well-trained to Latin intonation, giving a quite medieval amplitude to the poet's sonorities of rhythm and vocabulary, the Sub-prior was bidden to sing, after the notation of Goudimel, the "Elegy of the Rose"; the author girding cheerily at the clerkly man's ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... few—the very few—still determined to die rather than yield, sitting in the cafes on the boulevard, which is to be, I presume, their "last ditch." Many correspondents, "special," "our own," and "occasional," had arrived, and were girding up their loins for the benefit of the British public. Baron Rothschild had been kind enough to give me a pass which enabled me to take the Amiens train at the goods station within the walls of the city, instead of driving, as those less fortunate were obliged ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... wise suffer the lordly wooers to abstain from biting scorn, that the pain might sink yet the deeper into the heart of Odysseus, son of Laertes. So Eurymachus, son of Polybus, began to speak among them, girding at Odysseus, and so ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... each bird has his, Across the girding city's hum. How green under the boughs it is! How thick the tremulous ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... Spaniards call Brefsos, together with the powder of pumice stone. Then they let the body remain till it was perfectly dry, when the relatives of the deceased came and swaddled it in sheep or goat skins dressed. Girding all tight with long leather thongs, they put it in the cave which had been set apart by the deceased for his burying place, without any covering. There were particular persons set apart for this office of embalming, each sex performing it for those of their own. During the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... most common among women, some foolish members of the other sex are adopting customs of dress, in girding the central portion of the body, that tend ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... existence as it had been slowly completing its circuits around the sun, obedient to the same laws as the other planets of the solar system, and awaiting the hour when the unfailing eve of Herschel should introduce it as the faint and far-off planet girding our system within ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... with every deep, true soul: 'Tis neither kill nor cure, But a strong sorrow held in strong control, A girding to endure. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... adjust himself to the Arangi's roll. Yet with the first glimmerings of consciousness persisted the one idea that he must gain to Skipper. Blacks? In his anxiety and solicitude and love they did not count. He ignored the chuckling, grinning, girding black boys, who, but for the fact that he was under the terrible aegis of the big fella white marster, would have delighted to kill and eat the puppy who, in the process of training, was proving a most capable nigger-chaser. Without a turn of head or roll of eye, aristocratically positing their ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... it foul, with blood of man to stain Unarmed and of so base a sort, her brand; For well, without his death, she may obtain The costly ring; and so suspends her hand. Brunello, off his guard, with little pain, She seized, and strongly bound with girding band: Then to a lofty fir made fast the string; But from his ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... two entire months; but at the end of that time a ray of hope flashed across the gloom of his meditations. The nature of the hope we do not know; we can only tell what was the course of action on which it determined him. He arose suddenly from his depression, and, girding up his loins, began to travel. He went first to Rome; then to Spain; then to Turkey; then to Greece. He passed into Egypt; then into Barbary; then visited Rhodes; and then traversed a portion of Palestine and Persia. He then returned to France, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... and the British public, with its accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has never ceased girding at him because forty-two years ago he published at his own charges a little book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them as were then able to read ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... hunchback. His bare arms were grotesquely tattooed, clear sign that he was a Thracian. His eyes twinkled keenly, uneasily, as in token of an almost sinister intelligence. What he whispered to Democrates escaped the rest, but the latter began girding up ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... shrieking, like a live fiend. The archers and slingers In the boats cowered before it; and fell, scorched corpses, as it swept on. It reached the causeway, surged up, recoiled from the mass of human beings, then sprang over their heads and passed onwards, girding them with flame. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... diamonded light, The echo, feeble child of sound, The heavy thunder's girding might, The herald lightning's starry bound, The vocal spring of bursting bloom, The naked summer's glowing birth, The troublous autumn's sallow gloom, The hoarhead winter paving earth With sheeny white, are full of ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... diligence, knowledge, skill, sensibility, a strong will, or a high aim,—he may have all these, and never paint anything so truly good and effective as the rugged woodcut we must all remember, of Apollyon bestriding the whole breadth of the way, and Christian girding at him like a man, in the old sixpenny Pilgrim's Progress; and a young medical student may have zeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a steady hand—he may be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and analyst; and yet, with all this, and all the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... mind, this forge of ores; Quarry of spars in mountain pores; Old cradle, hunting-ground and bier Of wolf and otter, bear and deer; Well-built abode of many a race; Tower of observance searching space; Factory of river and of rain; Link in the Alps' globe-girding chain; By million changes skilled to tell What in the Eternal standeth well, And what obedient Nature can;— Is this colossal talisman Kindly to plant and blood and kind, But speechless to the master's mind? I thought to find the patriots In whom the stock of freedom roots; To myself I oft recount ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sound economic principles spreading much more widely among the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and, which will be better than all—the churches of the United Kingdom—the churches of Britain awaking, as it were, from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the prophecy, but labor earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come a time—a blessed time—a time which shall last forever—when "nation shall ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... speaketh first To Opis of the holy band, the maiden fellowship, And words of grief most sorrowful Latonia's mouth let slip: "Unto the bitter-cruel war the maid Camilla wends, O maid: and all for nought indeed that dearest of my friends Is girding her with arms ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... bushes toward the dim light, they stood on a massive shoulder of the mountain, the river girding it far below, and the afternoon shadows at their feet. Both carried guns-the tall mountaineer, a Winchester; the boy, a squirrel rifle longer than himself. Climbing about the rocky spur, they kept the same level over log ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... generally understood in its comprehensive acceptation, has been well defined to be "a distinction of rank amongst freemen, depending not upon birth or property, but simply upon the admission of the person so distinguished, by the girding of a sword or other similar solemnity, into an order of men having by law or usage certain social or political privileges," and also a certain appropriate title. It is evident, therefore, from this definition that Knighthood implies the existence of these two conditions: ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... crook-backed old woman remarked as she attempted to straighten herself, "that though my husband was not without enemies, he also had a particular friend named Andrei, and that when failing strength was beginning to make life difficult for us in our old home on the Don, and folk took to reviling and girding at my husband, Andrei came to us one day, and said: 'Yakov, let not your hands fail you, for the earth is large, and in all parts has been given to men for their use. If folk be cruel, they are so through stupidity and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... did not care a whiff of tobacco for either; that they might go home and go to bed like old women, for he was determined to defend the colony himself without the assistance of them or their adherents! So saying, he tucked his sword under his arm, cocked his hat upon his head, and girding up his loins, stumped indignantly out of the council chamber, everybody making room for ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... to his master's orders; and Wallace, girding on his sword, and taking his hunting-spear (with which the care of his venerable domestic had provided him), he pressed the faithful hand that presented it, and again enjoining him to be watchful of the tranquillity of his lady, and to send ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his appearance might cause dissension. Antar listened to this advice, but was unable to rest quiet in the tents. The interest he felt in Cais, and the deep distrust with which the falseness of the Fazareans—who were always ready for treason—inspired him, induced him to show himself. Girding on his sword Dhami, and mounting his famous charger, Abjer, he took with him his brother Shidoub, and reached the spot fixed upon for the race, in order that he might watch over the safety of King Zoheir's sons. On his arrival he seemed to excel all that crowd, like a lion clad in ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... Thomas," began Mr. Trigger, as it were girding his loins for the task before him, "we think that your seat wouldn't stand the brunt. We've been putting two and two together and that's what we think." A very black cloud came over the brow of Sir Thomas Underwood, but ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... if the town did not entirely realize the seriousness of the challenge, at least the minister found himself summoned by Market Street to a meeting to discuss the wisdom of his invitation. Whereupon John Dexter accepted the invitation and, girding up his loins, went as a strong man rejoicing to ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and sometimes ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... must be noted in Holy Willie that the poet is not letting himself out in a burst of personal spleen. He is again girding at the rigidity of a lopped and maimed Calvinism, and attacking the creed through the man. The poem is a living presentment of the undiluted, puritanic doctrine of the Auld Light party, to whom Calvinism meant only a belief in hell and an assurance of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... lived, as it were, in a glass house with a score of curious eyes watching everything he did and with as many ears pricked for every word he said; but this foul accusation was never even suggested by any of his rivals. In especial Ben Jonson was always girding at Shakespeare, now satirically, now good-humouredly. Is it not manifest that if any such sin had ever been attributed to him, Ben Jonson would have given the suspicion utterance? There is a passage in his "Bartholomew Fair" which ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... dreamy day Under the sea Where the sea-maidens play, Twining foam-garlands fair, Girding their golden hair, Clad in her moss-robe green Veiled in her bright locks' sheen— Where the dim seaweeds sway, Trackless her white feet stray All thro' the dreamy ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... honor at home, where he was looked upon as a ne'er-do-well and a disgrace to the reputation of a fine old military family. As a last resort he applied for reinstatement in the army, it being a time when Prussia seemed to be girding herself for another struggle with Napoleon. But the attempt to borrow enough money for his military equipment failed, and he found no sympathy or support on a final visit to his family in Frankfort. In October, 1811, the patriotic ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... from this zenith of history, look out upon the world. Behold! the American idea is everywhere prominent. The world itself is preparing to take an American holiday. The wise men, not only of the Orient, but everywhere, are girding up their loins, and will follow the star of empire until it rests above this city of Chicago—this civic Hercules; this miracle of accomplishment; the throbbing heart of all the teeming life and activity of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... to keep your soul perpetually in the unwholesome region of remorse. It was needful for you to pass through that dark valley, but it is infinitely dangerous to linger there too long; there is poison in the atmosphere, when we sit down and brood in it, instead of girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency, not slothful anguish, is what you now require,—but effort! Has there been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity for better things ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and less exposed work, when he was set to running a planer, said, however, to be a very hard machine to run, though subsequently made easier by rollers attached. Here he grew no better, but had severe attacks. One day, in his distress, he fell on his knees, girding his arms about him and groaning repeatedly. The deputy took him from the shop and returned him relieved. But soon he wholly failed, was taken away for the last time and kept in his cell, part of the time quiet and then groaning more or less intensely. ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... sley separates the warp, the woof is inserted in the middle with sharp shuttles, which the fingers hurry along, and, being drawn within the warp, the teeth notched in the moving sley strike it. Both hasten on, and girding up their garments to their breasts, they move their skilful arms, their eagerness beguiling their fatigue. There both the purple is being woven, which is subjected to the Tyrian brazen vessel, and fine shades of minute difference; just as the rainbow, with its mighty arch, is wont ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... the Black Papuan as the very plague, washing himself continuously and boiling his blankets once a week; Captain Doane doing the navigating and worrying about his flat-building in San Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his colossal knees and girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the adventure as he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon Nishikanta wiping his sweaty neck with the greasy silk handkerchief and painting endless water-colours; the mate patiently stealing the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... of fairness and fitness which Greek wisdom praised in the conduct of life were characteristic of Pitt's life. In its zealous, patient preparation for public life, its noble girding of the loins against great issues, its wistful renunciation of human hopes, its early consciousness of terrible disease, its fortitude in the face of catastrophes so unexpected and so cruel; in its pensive isolation, in the richness of those early successes that seemed as if in anticipation to offer ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... refused to take notice of the insult which had been offered to himself, no sooner heard of the distress of the ladies than he started up, huddled on his clothes, and girding his sword to his loins, advanced with a deliberate pace to the kitchen, where he perceived Thomas Clarke warmly engaged in altercation with a couple of young men dressed in regimentals, who, with a peculiar ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... was girding for the contest, South Carolina, ever the avant courier in the march of freedom, seceded; and if doubt had existed before, it vanished now from every mind—for all felt that the gallant State must be sustained. Soon after, Russell and Mr. Huntingdon ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... acceptable manner to Jupiter, and withal make the pomp of it delightful to the eye of the city, cut down a tall oak which he saw growing in the camp, which he trimmed to the shape of a trophy, and fastened on it Acron's whole suit of armor disposed in proper form; then he himself, girding his clothes about him, and crowning his head with a laurel-garland, his hair gracefully flowing, carried the trophy resting erect upon his right shoulder, and so marched on, singing songs of triumph, and his ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... in the passage of the weeks, the mother and daughter were at home again, with Carlisle finding that memory still had power to stab, and Mrs. Heth stoutly girding herself for the great fight of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a golden helmet upon his head, on which was engraven the figure of a dragon; and on his shoulders his shield, called Priwen, upon which the picture of the blessed Mary, mother of God, was painted; then, girding on his Caliburn, which was an excellent sword, made in the isle of Avallon; he took in his right hand his lance, Ron, which was hard, broad, and fit for slaughter.—Geoffrey, British History, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... country has institutions more deserving of patriotic love. Turning the pages of our nation's history, the young citizen sees Columbus, serene in the faith of his dream; the Mayflower, bearing the lofty soul of the Puritan; Washington girding on his holy sword; Lincoln, striking the shackles from the helpless slave; the constitution, organizing the farthest west with north and south and east into one great Republic; the tremendous energy of free life trained in free schools, ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... animated by one sentiment, and without the least previous concert have prevented it. Every man in the Commonwealth, waiving all distinctions of condition or age, would have been seen, without consulting his neighbour or considering consequences, putting a new flint in his musket and girding on his sword. Thank God! our feelings and love of order and obedience to proper authority can never be put to such a trial; for the moment we became free, and created our own political institutions, we made it a fundamental ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... awoke again just before dawn he heard the wolves still howling, but much nearer, and he thought it possible that they had been driven ahead by the Indian forces. If so, it betokened a pursuit rather swifter than he had expected, and, girding himself afresh, he fled once more before the sun ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and drank some sparkling water from a spring called Hippocrene, Pegasus held out his head, of his own accord, so that his master might put on the bridle. Then, with a great many playful leaps and airy caperings, he showed his impatience to be gone; while Bellerophon was girding on his sword, and hanging his shield about his neck, and preparing himself for battle. When everything was ready, the rider mounted, and (as was his custom when going a long distance) ascended five miles perpendicularly, so as the better to see whither he ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... he applied. As for the priest aforesaid, he had a different purpose, and that purpose did not lead him to make any effort to procure lodgings. He refreshed himself with a repast at the nearest hosteria, after which, girding up his loins, he left ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... unusual warmth. The smile that had only haunted his sad face during four years of struggle, defeat, and uncertainty had now burst into joy that made his powerful head radiate light. Victory had lifted the veil from his soul, and he was girding himself for the task of healing the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... a princely compliment. She received it curtseying, and disarmed the intended irony. In reply, she called him "Great Britain." I regret to say that he stood less proudly for his nation. Indeed, he flushed. He remembered articles girding at the policy of peace at any price, and half felt that Mrs. Lovell had meant to crown him with a Quaker's hat. His title fell speedily into disuse; but, "Yes, France," and "No, France," continued, his effort being to fix the epithet to frivolous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but the day after Margaret had passed from out my door, girding it as she went with crape, invisible to other eyes, that I was called to Archie McCormack's house. The day was bright and clear, but I knew it not—for in this doth sorrow make us like to God, that then the darkness and the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... war-words,— 'Few are ye, strangers, And many are we: Pay us now toll and fee, Cloth-yarn, and rings, and beeves: Else at the raven's meal Bide the sharp bill's doom.' Clutching the dwarfs work then, Clutching the bullock's shell, Girding gray iron on, Forth fared the Winils all, Fared the Alruna's sons, Ayo and Ibor. Mad at heart stalked they: Loud wept the women all, Loud the Alruna wife; Sore was their need. Out of the morning land, Over the snow-drifts, Beautiful Freya came, Tripping to Scoring. White were the moorlands, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... dear lady"—it was the gentleman with the crumpled collar—"you novelists are always girding at the precious quality of conformity. The sadness of our times lies in this questioning spirit. Never was there more revolt, especially among the young. To find the individual judging for himself is a grave symptom ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and others of penetrating mind discovered the moral cause of the troubles and trembled for their country. The Lord was meting out judgment against sin. Divine wrath was falling upon the people. Judgment had already begun at the House of God. The King of Righteousness was girding His sword on His thigh for action. Who will be able to stand when He arises in wrath to vindicate His own royal rights? These men feared God ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... There was girding forth of guns, with many great stones; Archers uttered out their arrows and eagerly they shotten; They proched us with spears and put many over; That the blood outbrast at their broken harness. There was swinging out ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... concerned would submit to this under-girding of the European fabric did not trouble them. They saw only the statics of territories; they had no conception of the dynamics of nations. A future in which Nationality, triumphant in Italy and Germany, would bring about a Balance of Power far ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... against him in the club; the perspicacity with which he detected them, the odious repartees he made, the effective counter-checks he applied. "I was always a combatant," he says, with a leering gaiety. Then the next moment he is girding at the whole crew for their stupidity, their ingratitude, their malignity; and it never seems to cross his mind that he can be, or has been in the smallest degree, to blame. It distressed me profoundly, and my mind and heart seemed to ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on a first visit. Thus it was that Mrs. Willoughby had been observant and silent from the moment the captain informed her that they had passed the line of his estate, and were approaching the spot where they were to dwell. The stream was so small, and the girding of the forest so close, that there was little range for the sight; but the anxious wife and mother could perceive that the hills drew together, at this point, the valley narrowing essentially, that rocks began to appear in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... There be many bachelors, as yet men unmarried, which seem to be girt with the girdle of continence, and yet it is not in truth, it is but feignedly. And some religious persons make a profession of continence or chastity, and yet not in truth, their hearts be not truly chaste. Such feigned girding of the loins cannot make a man strong to resist the assaults of the great captain or enemy in the evil day. Yet some get them girdles with great knots, as though they would be surely girt, and as though they would break the devil's head with their knotted girdles. Nay, he will ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... tempting indeed to students, and as the two sat down before the glowing grate, and Mr. Leigh glanced at the warm, rich curtains sweeping from ceiling to carpet, the black-walnut book- cases girding the walls on all sides, and the sentinel bronze busts keeping watch over the musty tombs within, he rubbed his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... must take it and apply it in and of themselves, and use it as if it were their own; yet never forgetting that it is the gift of God, and never ceasing to acknowledge and thank Him for His infinite goodness and mercy in teaching their "hands to war;" in "girding" them "with strength unto the battle," and in giving them a "lamp unto their feet and a light unto their path," so that they may ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... travels of Marco Polo had only lately revealed the wonders of the golden East, and in the West the Pillars of Hercules marked earth's furthest bound. Beyond lay the mare tenebrosum, the Mysterious Sea, girding the level world. England was not then one of the first nations of the earth. She was not yet a maritime power, she had not begun the work of colonisation and empire: the fulcrum of Europe lay further south. But as our Tudor sovereigns were ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... writhed odd the eyebrows of the cynic, one beyond the other: for not with foot alone he danced, but his wrung belly laboured in that travail of Orient dancing; and she turned and smiled to Margaret Loveday a turned-down smile, implying shrug, implying girding, her eyelids lowered, yet indulgent of ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... both consternation and anger in the odd tongue of these people as they appeared to be girding for battle. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... then girding round his waist, Forth rushed the swain with hospitable haste, Straight to the lodgements of his herd he run, Where the fat porkers slept beneath the sun; Of two his cutlass launched the spouting blood; These quartered, singed, and fixed on forks of wood, All hasty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... left, there had been nothing but submission hitherto. No resistance was expected here either, for there was not hope in any; only that Browne had been here; industrious to create delay till Neisse were got fully ready. He is, by every means, girding up the loins of Neisse for a tight defence; has put 1,600 men into it, with proper stores for them, with a resolute skilful Captain at the top of them: assiduous Browne had been at Ottmachau, as the outpost of Neisse, a day or two before; and, they say, had admonished them "Not to yield ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... beats my bosom with alarms: I tremble while I'm in thy arms! What will impassioned lovers do? What have I done—to follow you? I leave a father torn with fears; I leave a mother bathed in tears; A brother, girding on his sword, Against ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... and obtained a judgment of 2000 pounds; and when he failed to pay, had his cargo seized and sold, and with the proceeds equipped three vessels to aid her outlawed husband. So the whole of 1646 passed, each side girding ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... there is another thing suggested, which is the consequence of these two. The girding up of the loins is not only the symbol of concentration and detachment, but of that for which the concentration and the detachment are needful—viz. alert readiness for service. The servant who stands ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the breath of life into all things. And that sigh thrilled through the empty spaces of the illimitable: it breathed the breath of promise over the frozen hills of the outside planets where the night-frost had lasted without beginning: and the waters of ten thousand nameless oceans, girding nameless planets, were stirred, trembling into their depth. It crossed the illimitable spaces where the herding aerolites swirl forever through space in the wake of careering world, and all their whistling wings answered to it. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... warrior already attired for the ceremony, and girding on a most magnificent sword, which he only used on solemn occasions. After the first salutations had passed, Gomez Arias remained for a few seconds pondering within himself the best means of breaking to Aguilar ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... eastern horizon, was a narrow, filmy band of cloud. And by some subtle reflection of which we do not know, the whole had caught the golden sheen of the hidden sun, and glowed, pale gold and pink and saffron. The sky was clear but for this encircling cloud-band, and my fancy saw it as a ring girding the earth with celestial glory,—a fitting path for spirit feet when they tread the upward heights. I watched it pale, with upturned face, its changing tints in themselves a miracle, and thought of the wonders which lay beyond it, which we are taught to ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... only the noise of the katydids, backgrounded and enfolded by the deep silence of the great mountains. Then someone broke out into what was evidently a forced laugh, a long-drawn, girding, mirthless haw-haw, the laboured insult of which stung Creed into ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan |
