"Breeches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... read, with your own eyes, to-night. Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches- pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and the hams that were in it. But August was not frightened; he was close to Hirschvogel, and presently he meant to be closer still; for he meant to do nothing less than get inside Hirschvogel itself. Being a shrewd little boy, and having had by great luck two silver groschen in his breeches-pocket, which he had earned the day before by chopping wood, he had bought some bread and sausage at the station of a woman there who knew him, and who thought he was going out to his uncle Joachim's chalet above Jenbach. This he had with him, and this he ate in the darkness and the lumbering, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Getting to the corner again I peered cautiously around, and there but seventy or eighty feet from where I lay three strapping fellows were raising a heavy log. They had pulled off their red and black tunics, and were only in their baggy breeches and the curious little stomach apron the Northern Chinaman affects to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... people; to us they are simply annoying. We cling to a long-accepted theory, just as we cling to an old suit of clothes. A new theory, like a new pair of breeches (the Atlantic still affects the older type of nether garment), is sure to have hard-fitting places; or, even when no particular fault can be found with the article, it oppresses with a sense of general discomfort. New notions and new styles ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... kerchiefs for headgear, cross and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy large-limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark blue nightcaps (for a contrast to their saffron-coloured shirts, white breeches, and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on the parapets. On either side of this same molo stretches a miniature beach of sand and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen are always mending, and where the big ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... colossal size; he lies on his left arm extended by his side, and his head rests on his right hand, and his legs drawn up as if, finding escape impossible, he had laid himself down to meet death like a brave man. His dress consists of a short coat or jerkin and tight-fitting breeches of some coarse stuff, perhaps leather. On one finger is seen his iron ring. His features are strongly marked the mouth open, as in death. Some of the teeth still remain, and even part of the moustache ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Word of Advice to him that is a Lover (or would be so) of this Royal-Sport: and then have done: Come not to the Pit without Money in your Breeches, and a Judgment of Matches; Done and Done is Cock-Pit Law, and if you venture beyond your Pocket, you must look well to it, or you may lose an Eye ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... disclosed it to a captain, and this captain to a captain, and the captains to some of the soldiers, saying always, "Say nothing." And it was just so much hid, that next day early in the morning there was seen the greater part of the soldiers with their boots and breeches cut loose at the knee for the better mounting of the breach. The King was told of this rumour that ran through the camp, that the attack was to be made; whereat he was astonished, seeing there were but three in ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... eye Your late denuded bindings lie, Subsiding slowly where they fell, A disinvested citadel; The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe, The Dutchman's breeches frilled below. Those that the lover notes to note, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expositions of late years, the service has been represented by a model station and a crew which went daily through all the operations of shooting a line over a stranded ship, bringing a sailor ashore in the breeches-buoy or the life-car, and drilling in the non-sinkable, self-righting surf-boat. Along the Atlantic coast the stations are so thickly distributed that practically the whole coast from Sandy Hook to Hatteras is continually under patrol by watchful sentries. Night and day, if the weather ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... and thrown negligently on one side. His doublet was grey, with slit sleeves; the arm parts, towards the shoulder, wide and slashed;—but who shall convey an adequate idea of the brilliant green breeches, tied far below the knee with yellow ribbands, red cloth hose, and great shoe-roses? For ourselves we own our incompetence, and proceed, glancing next at his goodly person. In size he was not tall nor ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is it yesterday, in these times of sudden changes?—and when they were cut off square at the knee and shirred or gathered or reefed in at the waist, they looked singularly like the typical "Dutchman's breeches." I might have worn them as one of Hendrik Hudson's crew in "Rip Van Winkle"—which was, even in those days, the most popular play in which Joseph Jefferson appeared. You can see how long ago ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dismayed my father as much as that the other should have a watch, and look as if he had just broken out of Bedlam, or as King Dagobert must have looked if he had worn all his clothes as he is said to have worn his breeches. Both wore their clothes so easily—for he who wore them reversed had evidently been measured with a view to this absurd fashion—that it was plain ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... sitting up to beg, and singing a deplorable psalm-tune in brisk jig time. The men without their coats, in their shirt-sleeves, with their lank hair hanging on their shoulders, and a sort of loose knee-breeches—knickerbockers—have a grotesque air of stage Swiss peasantry. The women without a single hair escaping from beneath their hideous caps, mounted upon very high-heeled shoes, and every one of them with a white handkerchief ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... pressed forward and looked down into the hole. Huddled in a heap at the bottom was a man in hunting kit—white breeches, top boots and "pink" coat. Sitting along the floor, he was bent almost double, so that we could not ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... say I's one hundred and eight, an' dat is eight years for another hundred, ain't it? Dey name me Esther Jane. I was sole at sheriff's sale for debt to Massa Sparks. In de ole war Massa George Washington was a mighty kind man. He boarded wid Massa Sparks four or five weeks. He wore short breeches an' knee-buckles an' a cocked hat I ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... three-cornered cap braided with gold, his curly white wig came down on to his shoulders, he had a chocolate-colored waistcoat with diamond buttons, and two large pockets to contain the bones that his mistress gave him at dinner. He had, besides, a pair of short crimson velvet breeches, silk stockings, cut-down shoes, and hanging behind him a species of umbrella case made of blue satin, to put his tail into when the weather ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... being built Washington was advised that Dubois's regiment was unfit to be ordered on duty, there being "not one blanket in the regiment. Very few have either a shoe or a shirt, and most of them have neither stockings, breeches, or overalls. Several companies of inlisted artificers are in the same situation, and unable to work in ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... peak, or tuft of pointed feathers, on its head! while other derivations proposed or allowed by him and others are so far more absurd than this, that when Swift, in ridicule of the whole band of philologers, suggests that 'ostler' is only a contraction of oat-stealer, and 'breeches' of bear-riches, these etymologies are scarcely more ridiculous than many which have in sober earnest, and by men of no inconsiderable reputation, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... went with a whoop! stripped off their clothes, and into their swimming breeches with a perfect riot ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... it was a transformed Euphrosyne. The kilt, knee breeches, and gaiters were gone; in their place was the white linen garment with flowing sleeves and the loose jacket over it, the national dress of the Greek woman; but Euphrosyne's was ornamented with a rare profusion of delicate embroidery, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of that, Mr Butters, sir," said his wet companion, dragging out a box with some difficulty, for his wet hand would hardly go into his tight breeches-pocket, and when he had forced it in, declined ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... in his person, ripe in council, continent in his actions, an enemy to avarice, liberal and grateful for services, and obliging in his carriage. In his ordinary dress, he wore a black coat, instead of the cloak now used, a doublet of crimson satin of which the sleeves were seen, and black breeches reaching from the waist to the feet. He is represented in his portrait as carrying a truncheon in his right hand, while the left rests on the guard of his sword, which hangs ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... from Worcester, where it made me ready to weep to hear the stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet, that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company, that took them for rogues. His sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house, that had not ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... a personage of peaceable disposition; but then he had the proper pride of a host and a clerk. His feeling were exceedingly wounded at this cavalier treatment—before the very eyes of his wife too—what an example! He thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and strutting with a ferocious swagger towards ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to. But I shall not so easily convert Trade Union orators, Members of Parliament, Mr. Sidney Webb, or the Times. To them a wages is a wage, and an alms an alm, a man's riches his rich, and his breeches his—at least I suppose so. I wish that we could call a man's speeches his speech, and find it was perfectly true. It is a terrible thought, "a terrible ghastly thought" indeed, that we have not so long ago chosen over seven hundred persons of both sexes, each of whom will conceive ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... of cobblers' wax on Mr O'Gallagher's throne, and he had the pleasure of finding himself stuck fast by the breeches when he rose up to punish. I anointed the handle of the ferrule and rod with bird-lime; put dead cats under the claret cases, which composed his seat of authority, so that the smell would drive him distracted before he found it out. I drew up with a squirt, all the ink which was in the inkstands ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... we had trained for the part. Stripped for action, we were dressed in hunting breeches, light high-topped shoes spiked on the soles, in light cotton shirts, and carried only our bows, quivers of arrows, and hunting knives. Tom was a seasoned mountain climber, born on the crags, and had knees like a goat. So we ran. Up the side ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Grecian side are Juno, Minerva, and Neptune. Juno, as you will shortly see, is a scolding wife, who in spite of all Jove's bluster wears the breeches, or tries exceedingly hard to do so. Minerva is an angry termagant—mean, mischief-making, and vindictive. She begins by pulling Achilles' hair, and later on she knocks the helmet from off the head of Mars. She hates Venus, and tells the Grecian hero Diomede ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... With the rest may come in, And take their places again; For the House is made sweet For those members to meet, Though part of the Rump yet remain; Nor need they to fear, Though his breeches be there, Which were wrong'd both behind and before; For he saith 'twas a chance, And forgive him this once, And he swears he will do so no more, And ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... double-quick time. It was quite a surprise, he says, and he can't imagine how the fellow was so close upon him before he was aware. He was an immense tall fellow—Bagg thinks at least two inches taller than himself—very well dressed in a blue coat and buff breeches, for all the world like a squire when going out hunting. Bagg, however, saw at once that he had a roguish air, and he was on his guard in a moment. "Good evening to ye, sodger," says the fellow, stepping close up to Bagg, and staring him in the face. "Good evening to you, sir! ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... of another sacrifice, from which, however, they were diverted by the influence and remonstrances of their captain, who prevailed upon them to be satisfied with a miserable allowance to each per diem, cut from a pair of leather breeches found in the cabin. Upon this calamitous pittance, reinforced with the grass which grew plentifully upon the deck, these poor objects made shift to subsist for twenty days, at the expiration of which they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... last; "not in my breeches pocket!—well, it must be in my waistcoat. No. Well, 'tis a strange thing—demme it is! Gentlemen, I have had the misfortune to leave my purse behind me: add to your other favours by lending me wherewithal to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Perino del Vaga paint his bathroom with scenes from the life of Venus in the manner of Giulio Romano. But the Council of Trent made severe regulations against nude pictures, in pursuance of which Daniel da Volterra was appointed to paint breeches on all the naked figures of Michelangelo's Last Judgment and on similar paintings. Sixtus V, who could hardly endure the Laocoon and Apollo Belvidere, was bent on destroying the monuments of heathendom. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... been noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... infinite source of anxiety; there must be only one slash on each sleeve and one in the back. Men also must be prohibited from shoulderbands of undue width, double ruffs and cuffs, and "immoderate great breeches." Part of the solicitude was for modesty, part for gravity, part for economy: none must dress above their condition. In 1652, three men and a woman were fined ten shillings each and costs for wearing silver-lace, another for broad bone-lace, another for tiffany, and another for a silk ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... admired contrast to this bewildered drove of half-starved Paddies stood the two immense, broad-shouldered, high-fed Yorkshiremen, dressed in long-tailed coats, corduroy breeches, and yellow-topped boots, each accompanied by a chest of clothes not much less than a pianoforte, and a huge pile of spades, pick-axes, and other implements of husbandry. They possessed money also, and letters of credit, and described themselves as being persons ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... connected with clothes is Chaucer, Old Fr. chaussier, a hosier (Lat. calceus, boot), while Admiral Hozier's Ghost reminds us of the native word. The oldest meaning of hose seems to have been gaiters. It ascended in Tudor times to the dignity of breeches (cf. trunk-hose), the meaning it has in modern German. Now it has become a tradesman's euphemism for the improper word stocking, a fact which led a friend of the writer's, imperfectly acquainted ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... time chatting and laughing. After a while I looked out. It had stopped raining. Therefore I emerged and set some of the men collecting firewood. Shortly I had a fine little blaze going under the veranda roof of the station. F. and I hung out our breeches to dry, and spread the tails of our shirts over the heat. F. was actually the human chimney, for the smoke was pouring in clouds from the breast and collar of his shirt. We were fine figures for the public platform of ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... two-footed, with whom he could be in contact for a whole day without coming to hard rubs. If a deer-skin proved, upon dressing, an uncommonly nice piece of buckskin, fine, fair and soft, straight, it was cut up and made into moccasins, breeches and hunting shirt for Sprigg; and should a fat raccoon take a fancy to quarter himself for the night in "Pap's" trap, its fresh, sleek skin would be seen in less than a fortnight thence on Sprigg's head, in the form of a cap, with the ringed tail left on behind, as ornamental ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... became pervious to attacks which would otherwise have altogether failed in reaching him. Lady Eardham would never have prevailed against him as she did,—conquering by a quick repetition of small blows,—had not all his strength been annihilated for the time by the persecutions of the breeches-maker. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... turned in through the iron gate which led up to one of the finest of them. The moon had broken out and shone upon the high-peaked roof, and upon the gables at each corner. When he knocked it was opened by a footman with red plush knee-breeches. I began to perceive that my friend's success must have ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... are the better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the oddest figures in nature: upon a head of lank hair he wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribbon; no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well-clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or make love. But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite! Why she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders lace: and for every ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... apology—as if he would have said, "I am sorry my way is not yours, for I see very well how wrong you must think it." He wore large strong shoes—I think a description should begin with the feet rather than the head—fit for boggy land; blue, ribbed, woollen stockings; knee-breeches of some home-made stuff: all the coarser cloth they wore, and they wore little else, was shorn from their own sheep, and spun, woven, and made at home; an old blue dress coat with bright buttons; a drab waistcoat which had once been yellow; and to crown all, a red woollen nightcap, hanging down ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... hardly able to govern his own kingdom, assumed the title "king of Denmark," and laid claim to Norway, too; and when she blamed him for it he had answered her disdainfully. In a letter he had used foul and abusive language, calling her "a king without breeches," and the "abbot's concubine" (abbedfrillen), on account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... most valuable find of all was a leather bag in the breeches of the uniform, containing the sum of the honest gains of the leader of the party, which he had preferred to keep in his own company even on his travels. On examination this bag was found to hold something over a hundred English sovereigns and ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... set at a rakish angle over a wig of white curls that dropped down to his waist. He wore a jaunty coat of chocolate-colored velvet, with diamond buttons, and with two huge pockets which were always filled with bones, dropped there at dinner by his loving mistress. Breeches of crimson velvet, silk stockings, and low, silver-buckled slippers completed his costume. His tail was encased in a blue silk covering, which was to ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... shirt with a broad turndown collar and a flowing colored tie—blue; a cartridge belt that fitted snugly around his waist, yellow with newness, so that the man on the mesa almost imagined he could hear it creak when its owner moved; corduroy riding-breeches, tight at the knees, and glistening boots with stiff tops. And—here the observer's eyes gleamed with derision—as the buckboard passed, he had caught a glimpse of a nickeled spur, with long rowels, on one of ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... D'Artagnan found himself quite alone, he reflected profoundly upon what had just taken place. "Upon my word," he said, "this looks very much like what is called a false position. To keep such a secret as that is to keep a burning coal in one's breeches pocket, and trust that it may not burn the stuff. And yet, not to keep it when I have sworn to do so, is dishonorable. It generally happens that some bright idea or other occurs to me as I am going along; but I am very much mistaken if I shall not now have to go a long ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... rode down the street in silence; as they turned into the Barclay driveway Lycurgus chuckled, "Well—well—Susan B. Wants to put breeches on that child before she gets her eyes open." Then he turned on Barclay with a broad grin of fellowship, as he pinched the young man's leg and laughed, "Say—John—honest, ain't that just ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... good-natured about it, for they were all very hot and the salt water felt very pleasant to them. And, of course, the clothes that they had on were all wet through, but nobody had on anything much besides his breeches, and it didn't matter. And Captain Sol and the mate stood on the quarter ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... though the double glasses which are held swinging from his hand, unless when fixed upon his nose, show that time has told upon his sight; his hands are delicately white, and both hands and feet are small; he always wears a black frock coat, black knee-breeches, and black gaiters, and somewhat scandalises some of his more hyperclerical brethren by a ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... course is he that weds a Shrew; One that will talk, and wear the Breeches too; Governs, insults, do's what e'er she thinks fit, And he good Man, must to her Will submit; Mannages all Affairs at home, abroad, While he a Cypher seems, and stands for naught; When e'er he speaks, she snaps him, and crys, Pray ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... sea-hunter or pirate, as the Buccaneer was a land-hunter, but ready also for pillaging expeditions, in which they cooeperated. And their pursuits were interchangeable: the Buccaneer sometimes went to sea, and the Flibustier, in times of marine scarcity, would don the hog-skin breeches, and run down cows or hunt fugitive negroes with packs of dogs. The Buccaneers, however, slowly acquired a tendency to settle, while the Flibustiers preferred to keep the seas, till Europe began to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... are upward of eighteen thousand. There have been many editions of the Bible; Wiclif was the first to introduce it into England about the year 1300. The 'Paragraph Bible,' as it is called, is a well-known edition, and is so called because it is divided into paragraphs. The 'Breeches Bible' is another well-known instance, and gets its name either because it was printed by one Breeches, or because the place of publication ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well be a hundred miles away in the heart of the Apennines, for any signs of human culture or habitation that you perceive within the horizon. There is no traffic on the road; and only at rare intervals do you meet with a solitary peasant, looking like a satyr in shaggy goat-skin breeches, and glaring wildly at you from his great black eyes as he crosses the waste. Far as the eye can see there is nothing but a melancholy plain, studded here and there with a ruin, and populous only with the visionary ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... known that on motion of Peyton Randolph the fifth resolution was that day erased from the record. Mr. Henry was not then present. He had been seen, on the afternoon before, "passing along the street, on his way to his home in Louisa, clad in a pair of leather breeches, his saddle-bags on his arm, leading a lean horse." The four resolutions thus adopted as the deliberate and formal protest of the Old Dominion were as mild and harmless as could well be. They asserted no more ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... "Looking at this inventory," said the curate, "I should imagine the articles to be of no great value. One fur cap, one round hat, one pair of plush breeches, one—; they are not worth a couple of pounds altogether," continued he, stuffing the tobacco into his pipe, which he relighted, and no more was said. Nicholas was the third in, or rather out. "It appears ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... will meet the French expression sans-culottes again and again in Taine's or any other book about the French revolution. The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the knee while tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their calves. The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as it was to be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other hand, wore crude long trousers, mostly without a crease, often ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... starlings (idle birds that they are!), and they scattered and carried away from his thin thatched house, forty or fifty of the best straws. And, to make him completely unhappy, after all these afflictions, another day, that he had a pair of breeches on, coming over a perverse stile, he suffered very much, in carelessly lifting ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... given only for one instant to Osterhaut and his friend. Her gaze became fixed on Tekewani who, silent, and with immobile face, stole towards her. In spite of the civilization which controlled him, he wore Indian moccasins and deerskin breeches, though his coat was rather like a shortened workman's blouse. He did not belong to the life about him; he was a being apart, the spirit of vanished ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... interest. Much had been heard of the Mount Nelson Light Horse, which had been specially raised against Lord Kitchener's demand for more mounted men. The Mount Nelson Light Horse rode into camp. The gunners, who had turned out en masse to welcome their comrades, just put their hands in their breeches pockets and turned away with the single interjection, "Good heavens!" The dragoons, who were younger soldiers and less versed in veldt lore than the gunners, essayed a cheer. A fitful answer came back ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... of the word: he was always emphatically a gentleman and a man of culture, sincere and truthful. Although he labored strenuously for the "rights" of the proletariat, he never catered to their tastes; to the last day of his life he retained the knee-breeches and silk stockings of the old society and wore his ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... look like soldiers. They wear a dark gray cloth jacket ornamented with two rows of buttons which are in general medals, or ancient coins, handed down from father to son. This jacket is tucked into the waistband of a pair of breeches of the same color, very wide about the hips and tight around the leg, fastening below the knee; a felt hat or a fur cap, according to the season; a red cravat, black stockings, white wooden shoes, or a sort of slipper, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... coloured servant, in a girl's pinafore and a boy's breeches, came to the door, and whispered that the old people were demanding a snack ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Very shortly after breakfast an ex-champion sculler the admirable Bill East, would arrive from Richmond, and he and Sir Charles would row in a racing skiff a measured mile or more of the river. One summer at least he changed from rowing kit to boots and breeches after his rowing, and rode till luncheon. At four o'clock there would be a second bout with East, and thereafter, having changed from his rowing kit into flannels and his Hall cap, he would take Lady Dilke ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... him conspicuous even in an age of ruffled shirts and silver knee-buckles. One of his biographers describes him as arriving at a friend's house where he was to dine, "with his new wig, with his coat of Tyrian bloom and blue silk breeches, with a smart sword at his side, his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his hat under his elbow." But while he had more than his share of weaknesses, it must be granted that "e'en his failings leaned to Virtue's side." He was sensitive, open-hearted, generous, and kindly—always ready to help ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... represented among the regiments forming or in transit. The 79th Highlanders, it is true, discarded kilt and bagpipe on the eve of departure, marching in blouse and cap and breeks of army blue; but the 14th. Brooklyn departed in red cap and red breeches, the 1st and 2d Fire Zouaves discarded the Turkish fez only; the 5th, 9th, 10th Zouaves marched wearing fez and turban; and bizarre voltigeurs, foot chasseurs, hussars, lancers, rocket batteries in costume de fantasie poured ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to the door to obey my wife, and find myself confronted by a stranger who has stolen on us unawares. The stranger is a tiny, sleepy, rosy old man, with a vacant pudding-face, and a shining bald head. He wears drab breeches and gaiters, and a respectable square-tailed ancient black coat. I feel instinctively that here is ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... to me quietly. I can't bear my life at Galloway's. I can't do the work. If I stopped at it, I'm not sure but I should do something desperate. You wouldn't like to see your son turn jockey, and ride in a pink silk jacket and yellow breeches on the race-course; and you wouldn't like to see him enlist for a soldier, or run away for a sailor! Well, worse than that might come, if I stopped at Galloway's. Taking it at the very best, I should only be worked into ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Fisher, "but he doesn't see me." The first two rows of seats at the right of the aisle were crammed with generals, two-star and three-star. From our lowly station we could see a grand panorama of mahogany leather boots and the flaring curves of riding breeches. It was a great day for Sam Browne. The thought came to us that has reached us before. The higher you go in the A. E. F. the more the officers are tailored after the English manner. It is the finest proof of international ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... particular occasion, pertained to the style of the costume which would most become him as the lover of Mrs. Slapman, in an original play to be enacted at her house toward the close of the week. The question was chiefly of knee breeches. Overtop was mentally debating whether he ought not, in justice to his thin legs, to substitute ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... had rather a red face and long nose, that he resolved never again to shoot a monkey. This ape was clothed in long brown fur, while his legs were encased in much shorter hair of a tan colour, which gave the idea of leather breeches. I once saw a monkey's nest in a high tree. The tree was very bare of leaf or the nest might have escaped notice. It was formed of big sticks laid in a strong fork of the branches; and whether it was lined with anything softer could not be seen from below, but the sticks stuck out, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... is my protectress!' the boy laughed, 'there is!' He stuck his hands into his breeches pocket and pulled out a big fistful of crowns that he had won over-night at dice, and a long and thin Flemish chain of gold. 'I have enow to last me till the thaw,' he said. 'I came to beg my grandfather's blessing on the first ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the islands. Thirteenth: there will be made here a supply of sandals of anabo, which is an herb like hemp, of which rigging is made for ships. There is also a great deal of cotton. Fourteenth: linen cloth for shirts, doublets, breeches, hose, and other things wrought of linen, is very common and cheap here, both of domestic and Chinese make. Fifteenth: in Cagayan there is abundance of wood for all kinds of vessels that may be built; this is true as well of all the other islands; and nearly all, or at any rate the greater ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... and limber human combatants. The man-at-arms, whether Knight or Squire, was almost invariably mounted; his war-horse was usually led, while he rode a hackney, to spare the destrier. The body armour was a hauberk of netted iron or steel, to which were joined a hood, sleeves, breeches, hose and sabatons, or shoes, of the same material. Under the hauberk was worn a quilted gambeson of silk or cotton, reaching to the knees; over armour, except when actually engaged, all men of family wore costly coats of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the girl's hand and led her gently to the veranda and closed the door upon her. Then he came down the room and regarded his prospective father-in-law with an expression of amused exasperation. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his riding-breeches and nodded his head. "Well," he exclaimed, "you've made a damned pretty mess of it, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... due to the universal use of these aprons by the women. The men also affect an unusually large amount of bright color in their costume. The waistcoat is almost always scarlet; the velveteen jacket or short coat generally blue; the breeches sometimes the same, but often of bright yellow leather, and the stockings a lighter blue. The men often wear a long cloak reaching to the heels, always hanging open in front, and generally lined with bright green baize. They generally, too, have some bright-colored ribbons around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... were being landed from the transports, teamsters were loading up their waggons, officers were superintending the operations, the men of the Virginia corps, who wore no uniform, but were attired in the costume used by hunters and backwoodsmen; namely, a loose hunting shirt, short trousers or breeches, and gaiters; were moving about unconcernedly, while a few of them, musket on shoulder, were on guard ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... a short jacket of goatskin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of the thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin of an old goat, and the hair hung down such a length on either side that it reached to the middle of ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... October 18, 1785. She was one of the most admired actresses of her time. Genest, who saw her, writes of her, "As an actress she never had a superior in her proper line Mrs. Jordan's Country Girl, Romp, Miss Hoyden, and all characters of that description were exquisite—in breeches parts no actress can be put in competition with her but Mrs. Woffington, and to Mrs. Woffington she was as superior in point of voice as Mrs. Woffington was superior to her in beauty" (viii. p. 430). Mrs. Jordan died at St. Cloud, July 5, 1816, aged ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... left you his off-cast clothes? May I ask if your jacket was intended to serve also as a looking-glass? and is it the custom in your part of the country not to wear breeches ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... son, Major Thomas Melville, was a leader in the famous 'Boston Tea Party' of 1773 and afterwards became an officer in the Continental Army. He is reported to have been a Conservative in all matters except his opposition to unjust taxation, and he wore the old-fashioned cocked hat and knee-breeches until his death, in 1832, thus becoming the original of Doctor Holmes's poem, 'The Last Leaf'. Major Melville's son Allan, the father of Herman, was an importing merchant,—first in Boston, and later in New York. He was a man of much culture, and was an extensive traveller ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... was a motley crowd of men. Each had secured for his outfit what he could get, and no two were equipped alike. Buckskin breeches prevailed. There was a sprinkling of coon-skin caps, and the blankets were of the coarsest texture. Flintlock rifles were the usual arm, though here and there a man had a Cramer. Over the shoulder of each was slung a powder-horn. The men ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... folded on her rake, when, on the other side of her conflagration, she perceived a man. He was steadily regarding her, and when her eyes fell upon him, he smiled and stepped forward—a tall, broad, very fair young man in a shooting coat, khaki riding-breeches, and puttees. He had a wide brow, clear, blue eyes and an eager, sensitive, clean-shaven mouth and chin. He held out a big ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... arned three-and-six here at brickmaking easy; that's what I wuld. How's a poor man to live that way? They'll not cotch me at Barchester 'Sizes at that price; they may be sure of that. Look there,—that's what I've got for my day." And he put his hand into his breeches-pocket and fetched out a sixpence. "How's a man to fill his ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... slight, and horsey. His stiff, tight choker, his horse-shoe pin, the cut of his breeches, his alert and wary air of a man of the world, all betrayed the racing-lad. From the corner of his mouth hung a cigarette waggishly a-rake; and his billycock had just the correct and knowing cock. He kept well under the lee of the tent; and if he was brazen, it was clear that ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... to see his cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle stops at the door leading to his chambers. The horse flings froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the shining bit. The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering white—the luster of that equipage makes a sunshine in that ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a young chap's saddle and breeches! Before George, I would rather be a Hottentot or a Highlander. We laugh at poor Jocko, the monkey, dancing in uniform; or at poor Jeames, the flunkey, with his quivering calves and plush tights; or at the nigger Marquis of Marmalade, dressed out with sabre and epaulets, and giving ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was subject to frequent fits of abstraction. One day, having dressed himself to go to church, he forgot nothing but his breeches. This was in the winter; when he entered the church, he said, "Mon Dieu, it is very cold to-day." The persons present said, "Not colder than usual!"—"Then I am in a fever," he said. Some one suggested that he ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, Johnson said to a friend, 'Hurd, Sir, is one of a set of men who account for every thing systematically; for instance, it has been a fashion to wear scarlet breeches; these men would tell you, that according to causes and effects, no other wear could at that time have been chosen.' He, however, said of him at another time to the same gentleman, 'Hurd, Sir, is a man whose acquaintance ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... challenge of his authority and prowess to be issued before his scholars and to go unanswered. Without another word, he took the man by the coat-collar with one hand, by the most convenient part of his breeches with the other hand, carried him to the door, gave him a half-a-dozen admonitory shakings, and chucked him down outside. Then he returned and made this cool entry in the school log-book: 'Father of the boy —— came into the school to-day, and was very disorderly. I ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... kid gloves and white reins, and nature had by this time decorated him with a considerable tuft on the chin. A very small cab-boy, vice Stoopid retired, swung on behind Foker's vehicle; knock-kneed and in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the dusty coach, and the smoking horses of the 'Alacrity' by which he had made journeys in former times. "What, Foker!" cried out Pendennis—"Hullo! Pen, my boy!" said the other, and he waved his whip by way of amity ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who boasted himself to be a man of the people,—he could tell them that the days of their thraldom were coming to an end, and that their enfranchisement was near at hand. That friend of the people, Mr. Turnbull, had a clause in his breeches-pocket which he would either force down the unwilling throat of Mr. Mildmay, or else drive the imbecile Premier from office by carrying it in his teeth. Loughton, as Loughton, must be destroyed, but it should be born again in a better ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... at a robust gait. He was clad in moleskin riding-breeches, much stained with clay, as though he had been digging; a soft shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up above the elbow; his Stetson hat was adjusted at the correct angle upon his head; and he wore a pair ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... made the long, desperate journey from the mountains to save him from Joe Lorey's bullet, as, for his sake, shrinking and dismayed, conscious that in doing it she might very well be sacrificing his respect for her, she had donned the blouse and breeches of a jockey, yesterday, to ride his mare to victory when none other had been there to save the day for him. That had been a sacrifice almost beyond the power of words to tell—a sacrifice of modesty; now came an ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the State. There was no change particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new-fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner's breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... grey, in a tub of cold water; from which his face, which was "cremsin dyed ingrayne" by the weather, emerged glowing. He sat down at the table in his usual rough blue coat and plain brass buttons; with his breeches of broad-striped corduroy, his blue-ribbed stockings, and leather gaiters, or cuiticans, disposed under the table, and his shoes, with five rows of broad-headed nails in the soles, projecting from beneath it on the other ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... handkerchiefs. The king is dressed in a white robe of a similar fashion, but covered with white and yellow gold and silver plates, that glitter in the sun. He has also many other shining ornaments of shells and stones hanging about him, he wears a pair of breeches like the Moors and Barbary Jews, and has a kind of white turban on his head, pointing up, and strung with different kinds of ornaments. His feet are covered with red morocco shoes. He has no other weapon about him than ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... breeches ... ah! those require attention: all proper: everything in its place. Magnificent. The stockings rolled up, neither too loosely nor too negligently. A picture! The buckles in the shoes ... all but one ... soon set to rights ... well thought of! And now ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... leather, or the skin of some fish. His drab coat was in shape between a frock and a close-body—close-body, indeed, it was; for the buttons, which were in size about equal to an old-fashioned China saucer, were buttoned to the very throat, thereby setting off his shape to peculiar advantage; his breeches were buckskin, and much soiled; his stockings blue yarn, although it was midsummer; and his shoes were provided with buckles of dimensions proportionate to the aforesaid buttons; his age might have ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... is pronouncing sentence on an assassin who had stabbed a soldier: "You did not only maliciously, wickedly, and feloniously stab or cut his person, thereby depriving him of his life, but did also sever the band of his military breeches, which are her Majesty's." ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... him perfect glory; and strengthened him with rich garments, with breeches, with a long robe, and ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... height. I had curly dark hair, cut rather short, and brown eyes. My face was tanned through exposure to the weather and regular exercise had made my muscles hard as iron. Like my companions, I wore a short woollen jacket, dark in colour, and breeches open at the knees, and caught up with strips of coloured cotton. My cap was of wool gorgeously embroidered; dark woollen stockings without feet covered my legs, and in place of boots I had a pair of goatskin sandals. Thrown over my left shoulder was a small poncho, which ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... breeches made of skins. The rich often line their garments with silk shag, which is exceedingly soft, light, and warm. The poor line theirs with cotton cloth, wadded with the finest wool which they can sort out from their fleeces; and of the coarser wool they make felts for covering ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... fisherman was admitted by special favour to look upon the magnificent clothing which Father Anthony had worn as a colonel of French Horse. The things were laid by in lavender as a bride might keep her wedding-dress. There were the gold-laced coat and the breeches with the sword-slash in them, the sash, the belt, the plumed hat, the high boots, the pistols, and glittering among them all, the sword. That chest of Father Anthony's and its contents were something of a fairy tale to the boys ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... philosopher, evidently Bacon, but without the roses on his shoes. He is holding the shaft of a spear with which he seems to stop the wheel. By his side stands what appears to be a Knight or Esquire, but the man's sword is girt on the wrong side, he wears a lace collar and lace trimming to his breeches, and he wears actor's boots (see Plate 28, Page 118, and ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... the villains, for I think both would break their necks in the first charge; my father's godly desire of saving blood would be attained; and we should have the pleasure of seeing such a combat between two savage knights, for the first time in their lives wearing breeches and mounted on horses, as has not been heard of since the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... starting a new party. A hundred names will probably suggest themselves to any intelligent Democrat, the loss of which would almost insure success. Some one has said that a tailor in Boston made a fortune by advertising that he did not cut the breeches of Webster's statue. A new party by advertising that certain men would not belong to it, would have an ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... trio was an old, alert-looking little man, writing at the table as if for very life. He wore a tattered black robe, shortened at the knees to facilitate walking, a frizzled wig, looking as if it had been dressed with a currycomb, a pair of black breeches, well-patched with various colors; and gamaches of brown leather, such as the habitans wore, completed his odd attire, and formed the professional costume of Master Pothier dit Robin, the travelling notary, one of that not unuseful ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... through the big blackboard in the class-room. Jim always ran to muscle and bone, and even then he was square and tall, short of speech and long in the arm, much given to lounging with his broad back against walls, and his hands deep in his breeches pockets. I can even recall that he had a trick of keeping a straw in the corner of his mouth, just where he used afterwards to hold his pipe. Jim was always the same for good and for bad since first ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... journey, and after a time he saw at a distance a man in his shirt, who was jumping down from a tree. He drew near, and saw a woman under the same tree, holding a pair of breeches. He asked them what they were doing, and they said that they had been there a long time, and that the man was trying on those breeches and did not know how to get into them. "I have jumped and jumped," said the man, "until I am tired out, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... Virtue hope to fix a friend? Slaves that with serious impudence beguile, And lie without a blush, without a smile, Exalt each trifle, every vice adore, Your taste in snuff, your judgment in a whore, Can Balbo's eloquence applaud, and swear 150 He gropes his breeches with a monarch's air. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... a silk scarf and Lou a pair of stockings and a box of candy, as a partial atonement for the wrong he was doing them in not visiting home, Evan bought a pair of corduroy breeches and heavy boots, subscribed for a farm magazine, and set out, with big A. P., for the far-away fields. They say those fields always look green; sometimes, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... signal for widening our view and for conceiving the object, not only vividly and with pause, but in an adequate historic setting. Macbeth tells us that his dagger was "unmannerly breeched in gore." Achilles would not have amused himself with such a metaphor, even if breeches had existed in his day, but would rather have told us whose blood, on other occasions, had stained the same blade, and perhaps what father or mother had grieved for the slaughtered hero, or what brave children remained to continue his race. Shakespeare's ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... brave red cloak—alack!—as was presently seen when they dismounted, that gentleman was in a sorry plight. He wore a leather jerkin, so cut and soiled that any groom might have disdained it; a pair of green breeches, frayed to their utmost; and coarse boots of untanned ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... near morning, and then he arose and dressed himself. He put on the coat of one brother, and the breeches of another, and the shoes of a third, and so on, for his own clothes were nothing but rags. He felt in the right-hand pocket of his father's coat, and there, sure enough, he found the dried windpipe of a goose. He took that and ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... feet they sometimes wear pumps of their own manufacture, but generally Indian moccossons, of their own construction also, which are made of strong elk's, or buck's skin, dressed soft as for gloves or breeches, drawn together in regular plaits over the toe, and lacing from thence round to the fore part of the middle of the ancle, without a seam in them, yet fitting close to the feet, and are indeed perfectly ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... in the road, at the further end of which there was a feeble yellow glimmer. As they came abreast of it they saw that the light came through an open door, in the centre of which a burly Afrikaner was standing with his hands in his breeches pockets and his ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strange things, he had the fantastical notion to have made for her several suits of boy's clothes: pink and blue satin coats, little white, or amber, or blue satin breeches, ruffles of lace, and waistcoats embroidered with colours and silver or gold. There was also a small scarlet-coated hunting costume and all the paraphernalia of the chase. It was Sir Jeoffry's finest joke to bid her woman dress her as a boy, and then he would have her brought to the ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... then black anger took possession of him. The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki hat which some vanished Tommy would never wear ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
