"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one called out: "Master Brandon is wanted." So that gentleman rode forward, and I followed him. When we came up with the girls, Mary said: "I fear my girth is loose." ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... usually develop sores in those parts, unless it is your practice to so anoint them. To protect them from wounds from wild beasts we place collars on them, of the kind which we call melium, which is a girth around the neck made from strong leather studded with nails and lined with soft leather to protect the neck from being chafed by the hard iron heads of the nails: for if a wolf or other wild beast is once wounded by these nails all the other dogs are ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... not rest: rose and had a bath; listened at Juliet's door, and hearing no sound, went to the stable. Niger greeted him with a neigh of pleasure. He made haste to saddle him, his hands trembling so that he could hardly get the straps into the girth buckles. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... must be swallowed, and what society will think about it, are the questions that they are agitating. Mother says, that Sybil must and shall come back; father says he will go and see her; and Frank—" he broke off abruptly and bent down to look at his saddle girth. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and spoil sport, when, lying lazily almost on the surface where the backwater met the stream from the meadows, he beheld the great grandfather of all trout, a fellow two feet long and a foot in girth at the shoulders, just moving fin enough to keep him from turning over on to his back. He threw himself flat on the ground and crept away to the other side of the strip; the king fish had not seen him; and the next moment Tom saw him suck in a bee, laden with his morning's load of honey, who touched ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... from the dim distance—graceful antelopes of different kinds, with straight, curved, or lyre-shaped horns; fierce-looking gnus, with theirs stumpy and hooked; ugly quaggas; and farthest off of all, but easily seen from their size, great, well-fed elands, ox-like in girth. ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... in to Salisbury. I had ordered some goods for my farm from England which had at last arrived. I had now to arrange for their conveyance from the town to my plot of land—a portentous matter. Just as I was on the point of leaving Klaas's, and was tightening the saddle-girth on my sturdy little pony, Oom Jan Willem himself sidled up to me with a mysterious air, his broad face all wrinkled with anticipatory pleasure. He placed a sixpence in my palm, glancing about him on every side as he did ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the rocks. They met in their onrush like two bodies hurled from catapults; they struck and grappled and fell and rolled together, one now as they strove, locked in the embrace of death. An embrace in which Brodie's was the greater weight, the greater girth, the greater strength—and Mark King's the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Quaker! Here," and he put back the pistol, crying, as the men laughed, "sergeant, strap this on your back. Quick! fetch out the horses; we will look him over later. Up with him behind Joe! Quick—a girth! We have no time to waste. A darned rebel spy! No doubt Sir William may ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... first is in carriage, but not in gig. My second is in false, but not in wig. My third is in laughter, but not in mirth. My fourth is in girdle, but not in girth. My fifth is in sad, but not in merry. My sixth is in pear, and also in cherry. My ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... dissentient voices. Martin warned us that it would take some time. We should have to shape out all the ribs, and search for birch trees of sufficient girth to afford large sheets of bark. The chief object for consideration was, that it would take us almost as long to build a canoe as to travel to Fort Ross, but then we should be saved the fatigue and dangers of the journey, and we should be ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... light and sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as this ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 'Of a comfortable birth and girth thou art. Yet with thee around my neck I might ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... ceased to be a cub and a pup. They were almost a dog and a bear. Miki's angular legs were getting their shape; his chest had filled out; his neck had grown until it no longer seemed too small for his big head and jaws, and his body had increased in girth and length until he was twice as big as most ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... that the lesser can contain the greater, the snake was but triflingly increased in girth. It was just in that phenomenal condition which entitled it to the honour of preservation in a solution ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... She knew the nearest shop at which ready-made outer clothing for women could be obtained, and nothing was wanted, as a certain guide to an ignorant man, but two pieces of string. With one piece, she measured Simple Sally's height, and with the other she took the slender girth of the girl's waist—while Amelius opened his writing-desk, and supplied himself with the last sum of spare money that he possessed. He had just closed the desk again, when the voice of the merciless landlady was ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... back in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... whose hands he proved to be a most tractable animal—in fact, quite the pick of the bunch, which goes to show that things are not always what they seem, horses and gold bricks being a good deal alike in this respect. Mark Baldwin's mustang proved to be a finished waltzer, and after the saddle-girth had been broken and Mark had been deposited at full length in the roadway, he turned his animal over to Sullivan, who soon ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of arrows, tipped with flint or jasper, and each carried a mushkeemoot upon his back, provided with a small quantity of parched and pounded corn, mixed with a little pemmican or pounded meat. Each was furnished with a kind of stone knife, and a war-club of hard wood, fastened to a girth of deer-skin. In addition to this, some carried the ancient sheemaugun or Indian lance, consisting of a smooth pole above one fathom in length, with a spear of flint firmly tied on with splints ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... seen, for, though the standing height was the same as the others (4 feet 2 inches), the outstretched arms were 7 feet 9 inches, which was six inches more than the previous one, and the immense broad face was 13 1/2 inches wide, whereas the widest I had hitherto seen was only 11 1/2 inches. The girth of the body was 3 feet 7 1/2 inches. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that the length and strength of the arms, and the width of the face continues increasing to a very great age, while the standing height, from the sole of the foot to the crown ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... you," he said, "who, I perceive, will some day come over upon the very ground I now occupy. Our modern ways of thinking have become too free and lax. We cannot draw the rein and tighten the girth." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shape becomes regular and cylindrical, while decreasing slightly in girth in the last two or three segments. Close to the line of separation of the last two rings, I am able to distinguish, not without difficulty, two very small stigmata, just a little darker in color. They belong to the last segment. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zenobia, leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... permanent cover. When stirrups are used, they consist of wood covered with leather; but stirrups and saddles are conveniences reserved for old men and women. The young warriors rarely use any thing except a small leather pad stuffed with hair, and secured by a girth made of a leathern thong. In this way they ride with great expertness, and they have a particular dexterity in catching the horse when he is running at large. If he will not immediately submit when they wish to take him, they make ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... two of the pursuers who had no special duties to take them back to the town agreed to follow the trail of the pursued one for some distance further. The others went back with Jack, temporary mending having been done to the saddle girth. ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... stockings in the coolest room in the house,—a bedroom with a northern exposure. A white shirt-waist gave a puffy look to a body that could ill endure such appearance of enlargement, and a black belt accentuated the amplitude of girth that it encircled. The good lady sat in an armless rocking-chair, or rather on it, for she was by no means contained therein, but bulged over and beyond at all points. Her feet, shod in heelless black slippers, above which puffed white ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... forward again, but this time it could be seen they were held in the hands of two men and a woman. The woman's hands were tied at the wrist to the horse-hair reins of her mule, while a riata, passed around her waist and under the mule's girth, was held by one of the men, who were both armed with rifles and revolvers. Their frightened horses curveted, and it was with difficulty they could be made ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... my happiest hours; a focus, a monument, a diary. It was my humble Odyssey, wrought in coloured paper on pig-skin, and the one work I never, never was weary of. If the distinguished Ithacan had travelled with a hat-box, how finely and minutely Homer would have described it—its depth and girth, its cunningly fashioned lock and fair lining withal! And in how interminable a torrent of hexameters would he have catalogued all the labels on it, including those attractive views of the Hotel Circe, the Hotel Calypso, and other high-class resorts. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... end of the rope is our cinch-band, and the cinch-hook at the other end of the band or girth. It's made out of wood or horn sometimes. Now, Rob, I am going to pass the belly-band under the horse. Catch the hook when it comes through. Are ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... a hog and, as with the carabao, an estimate of its value is shown by representing the size of the girth of the animal by clasping the hands around one's leg. For instance, a small pig is represented by the size of the speaker's ankle, as he clasps both hands around it; a larger one is the size of his calf; a still larger one is the size ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and moribund among the cushions. He had been borne past them like a ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... emissaries of the retail liquor dealers' association were engaged in a trapping enterprise of their own in the Turkish room at Tony's, at this very crucial moment. Fatty Pierson, and two fellow retailers, gentlemen of smooth-shaven face, ample girth, and that peculiar physiognomy which seems fitted to no artistic setting except a background of mirrors and glasses, and a plain foreground of polished wood, were arranging for a police policy to their liking, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... is too kind," she said, as the nosegays, at first intermittent, became things of daily occurrence. They grew bigger, too, every day, attaining such a girth at last that Letty could hardly carry them. "She must not plunder her garden ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... to his horse.) My poor horse!—what to do? Take off the bridle, And loose the girth. Let him ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Scottish calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient "girth" or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... I can chew the girth in two if you don't mind being pinched a little more while I ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... a word, Miles turned and began to saddle. Then suddenly as he pulled at the girth, he stopped. "It's no use," he said. "We can't get away except over the rise, and they'll see us there"; he nodded at the hill which rose beyond the camping ground three hundred yards away, and stretched in a long, level sweep into other hills ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... distinct fauna.[170] The pirarucu, or "redfish" (the Sudis gigas of science), is at once the largest, most common, and most useful fish. The Peruvian Indians call it payshi. It is a powerful fish, often measuring eight feet in length and five in girth, clad in an ornamental coat-of-mail, its large scales being margined with bright red. It ranges from Peru to Para. It is usually taken by the arrow or spear. Salted and dried, the meat will keep for a year, and forms, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Slightly, most wretched of all the children now, for he was in a panic about Peter, bitterly regretted what he had done. Madly addicted to the drinking of water when he was hot, he had swelled in consequence to his present girth, and instead of reducing himself to fit his tree he had, unknown to the others, whittled his tree ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... state girth around waist, circumference of scrotum, and length of same from root of penis to about the middle of ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... was; and how the moonlight gleamed upon his one splendid tusk—for the other was missing—as he stood among the mealies gently moving his enormous ears to and fro, and testing the wind with his trunk. While I was still marvelling at his girth, and speculating upon the weight of that huge tusk, which I swore should be my tusk before very long, out stepped a second bull and stood beside him. He was not quite so tall, but he seemed to me to be almost thicker-set than the first; and even in that ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... is time for this practice of around-the-world humbug and cheatery to stop right now. If it takes our fastest modern globe-trotters a whole year to go around the world by a route equal to or approximating the equatorial girth, then let it take them a year; for the sake of our pride and all that is good and sincere let us do our stunts ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the figures of kangaroos, emus, and fish were drawn. When we were loading our bullocks, a whole mob came up with great noise; and one of them danced and jumped about with incessant vociferations, flourishing his wommerah, crowned with a tuft of opossum's hair, like a Drum-major; I put a broken girth round his waist, which seemed to tranquillize him wonderfully. In drinking water out of my pot, I offered it to my friend; but he hesitated to follow my example, until he applied to an elderly, bearded, serious-looking man, who sipped of it, and then my friend ventured to taste its contents. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... then," resumed Porthos, "at seeing Mouston get fat; and I did all I could, by means of substantial feeding, to make him stout—always in the hope that he would come to equal myself in girth, and could then be measured ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sold his share in his business, Isaiah Granger was leading the choir in the First M. E. Church and Mrs. Granger, a lady of girth and charm, was President of the Jordan Beautiful Society. Their position in Jordan was solid and assured. Long before Roger finally escaped from the large city, Isaiah Granger, and therefore Jordan, had been most ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... all the gods that it was untrue. He had not got very stout, though undeniably he had got stouter. "How well you are looking!" would have been a very ladylike way of saying it, but his girth was best not referred to at all. Those who liked him had learned this long ago, and Grizel always shifted ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... of laughter, for Henry Benson's stout figure bid fair to develop still further along lines of considerable girth, and the very thought of Fat flying was highly humorous ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... no stay; they went up about 14 miles, and then, finding little alteration in the appearance of the country, landed to inspect some large trees of a kind they had previously noticed. One was carefully measured, and was found to be 19 feet 6 inches girth at 6 feet from the ground, and, by means of Cook's quadrant, 89 feet to the lowest branch. It was perfectly straight, and tapered very slightly, and some were seen that were even larger. This was the Black Pine; to the Maoris, Matoi, and to ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... side; and an embroidered saddle and a tasselled bridle, and a pink-nosed white charger that stepped and pranced in the bazar so that Ram Dass himself had to get out of the way. It ought to be said that the horseman's clothes did not fit him very well, that his saddle girth was helped out by a bit of rope, and that his charger was rather tender on his near fore-foot; but these are not things that would be noticed in Rubbulgurh, being lost in the ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... dimples as she smiled a general welcome on the men before her. But her attention was particularly arrested by Schmidt, who, after his first greeting in words, was now bowing stiffly from the hips, a feat of some difficulty by reason of his girth. Cicily watched the formal performance with mingled emotions of amusement and alarm. When, at last, it was successfully accomplished, however, and the pudgy figure straightened, she recognized ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Whitton, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was blown down in 1779. It had attained the height of seventy feet; the branches covered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... among fresh earthy Sweet flowers breaking overhead, Sore needed rest for our frail girth, For our frail ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red hot; She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear in a knot; And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... exasperated, I took the canteens from him, poured out the whisky, and directed Captain Patterson to strap him to a tree until he cooled off somewhat. The Captain failing in his efforts to fasten him securely, I took my saddle girth, backed him up to the tree, buckled him to it, and returned to my quarters. This proved to be the last straw which broke the unfortunate camel's back. It was a high-handed outrage upon the person of a volunteer soldier; the last and worst ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... best of their bows was made of a single piece of fir, four feet eight inches in length, flat on the inner side and rounded on the outer, being five inches in girth about the middle, where, however, it is strengthened on the concave side, when strung, by a piece of bone ten inches long, firmly secured by treenails of the same material. At each end of the bow is a knob of bone, or sometimes of wood covered with leather, with a deep notch for the reception ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... in years his temper became worse, and his girth greater. The violent exertion of his earlier days was exchanged for the ease of a man who had nothing to do but stand about, eat, sleep, and throw things at cabin-boys. He had all the peremptory disposition of an Eastern tyrant; and the notion of being called to account for any one of his doings ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... villa-Crusoe, where he fussed, and furbished, and toiled at his desert island in the Thames, as hard as ever he laboured to make his plum in the counting-house. In due course he recovered his health, and, to use his own expression, "became as alert as any man in all England of his inches in the girth, thanks ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... aperture, and it is through this 'the corpse' makes his exit to the back of the stage. I will show it you. Here it is"—and beckoning to the referees to come quite close, he pointed to a glass screen, in the centre of the base of which was a glass trap-door, corresponding in height and girth to the head of the coffin. "Here, corpse!" Curtis said, "crawl through"—and Hamar, looking as if he by no means appreciated the undignified task of wriggling on his stomach before so many eyes, drew himself as tight together as ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... resolved at once to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... Haversian canals, or in the cancellous spaces and medullary canal, or in all three situations. The new bone on the surface sometimes takes the form of a diffuse encrustation of porous or spongy bone as in secondary syphilis, sometimes as a uniform increase in the girth of the bone—hyperostosis, sometimes as a localised heaping up of bone or node, and sometimes in the form of spicules, spoken of as osteophytes. When the new bone is laid down in the Haversian canals, cancellous spaces and medulla, the bone ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell-out in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration of four limbs,—will depend on the nature of such Architectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... that the grub's pottery is shaped like the legs of our peg-top trousers and is wider inside than at the opening. This excessive girth has its obvious use. It enables the animal to bend and turn when the contents of the cess-pit are needed for a fresh ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... emerge from the primeval swamp of Morua VIII had developed the heavy furs and the hibernation characteristics of bear-like mammals. They towered over Dal, and even Tiger seemed dwarfed by their immense chest girth and ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... were overgrown with thick brushwood. Just as the horsemen were about to ford the river, a hare, startled by the sound of the horses' hoofs, started up from the grass and ran towards the thicket. The young Prince pursued the little creature, and had almost overtaken it, when the girth of his saddle suddenly broke in two and he fell heavily to the ground. No sooner had his foot touched the earth than he disappeared before the eyes ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... divine. If St. Michael had stepped down from a church window, leaving the dragon slain, he would have looked no otherwise than she, all gleaming with steel, and with grey eyes full of promise of victory: the holy sword girdled about her, and a little battle-axe hanging from her saddle-girth. She sprang on her steed, from the mounting-stone beside the door, and so, waving her hand, she cried farewell to Elliot, that stood gazing after her with shining eyes. The people went after the Maid some way, shouting Noel! and striving to kiss ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... up, and very nearly capsized us with the fanning of her wings; however, she went off with a melancholy cry. When it was getting light, we got on to the nest, and found on examination that it was composed like a vast raft of large trees. There were five hundred eggs, larger in girth than a tun of Chian. We could make out the chicks inside and hear them croaking; we hewed open one egg with hatchets, and dug out an unfledged chick ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the steed that his master was not more particular about the girth of his saddle, and that either the strap or buckle was a bad one. Whichever of the two it was, one of them gave way; and the horse, thus freed, was not slow to profit by the fortunate accident. Uttering a neigh of joy, he sprang onward—leaving ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... I crept between the spreading wooden limbs, and, with the expenditure of no small effort, succeeded in wriggling into the narrow hole beyond. It was a cramped passage for a man of my girth, yet, by digging in firmly with both hands and feet, I managed to advance, until I finally emerged, within space of perhaps a yard, into a much larger excavation, resembling the tunnel we ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... met; Within my bosom oft I feel regret; Three children ere my marriage I had got; Have I your father told this secret blot? Have we together been less happy found? The list'ner had no sooner heard the sound, But like a man distracted off he flew; The saddle's girth, which hazard near him threw; He took and fastened tightly 'bout his waist, Then bawled around and round with anxious haste; I'm girth'd! d'ye see, completely taken in; The people stared, an 'gan to laugh and grin. Though each was conscious, if the truth were known; The ridicule ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... looked the more she saw. The very leanness of Alcatraz made it easier to trace his running-muscles; she estimated, too, the ample girth at the cinches where ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... in the cheeks, and pure yellow towards the temples and around the eyes. His abundant hair is a dense black, intermingled with threads of silver; it is an astonishing head of hair. In spite of the amplitude of his dressing-gown, his girth appears enormous." And, further on, he gives us this second sketch: "but at the age of forty-nine M. de Balzac ought to be painted rather than sculptured. His keen black eyes, his powerful growth ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... a tree covered with so dense a foliage that one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It was the king of the garden, the father of the forest, the pride ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... gray-gleaming surface was devoid of wings or other lifting devices. Only a fan-shaped fin projected from the stern like the tail of a fish. The cockpit, if such it could be called, was tiny, just ample enough to accommodate the Mercutian's girth. The sunlight dazzled back from a bewildering jumble of tiny lenses inset in the instrument board. Arranged along the hull, on either side, were larger disks of the ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... me have fruitful gardens of great girth Filled with the strife of birds, With water-springs and beasts ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... sure befall thee, Danger, slaughterous fire— Thou shalt on a charger gallop, Curbing at desire; And a saddle girth all silken Sadly I will sew, Slumber now my wide-eyed ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... my men, from crest to heel Snow-white have no speck; No curb, no bit her mouth must feel, No tightening rein her neck; No saddle-girth drawn with buckle of steel Shall her mighty ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... to his horse, he unfastened the saddle girth, and, hurrying back to where Manuel was floundering in the mud, he threw the saddle outwards, holding the end of the girth. It was just long enough to reach. With the help of the flat surface given by the saddle and a gradual pulling ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Of rein, they dash.—The warriors all their might And skill unite to strike the surest blow. Bucklers beneath the shock are torn and crushed, White hauberks rent in shreds, asunder bursts Each courser's girth, the saddles, turning, fall. One hundred thousand men look ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... of the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at the same time something very significant. ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... sunshine, is more beautiful than these soft winter days, full of snow-feathers and great shadows. I love to watch the young pines take on their holiday attire. How they robe themselves from head to foot in draperies of fleecy white, pin diamonds in their dark branches and wind about their slender girth the strands of evanescent pearl! I love to watch the skies at dawn when they kindle like a flame above the bluffs and scatter sparkles of light as a red rose scatters its petals. Where has the last year fled? It seems but yesterday that I sat by this same window and hatched the ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however, had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost trees, a man on horseback, muffled in a cloak, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... more than half of which are peculiar to the country, have been described and classed. Among the most remarkable is the species of Eucalyptus, or gum tree, that forms some of the largest timber yet discovered, having been seen of the height of one hundred and fifty feet, and thirty to forty in girth near the root. The leafless acacias are also found here, as well as the Nepenthes distillatoria and the Cephalotus follicularis, two remarkable varieties of the monkey-cup or pitcher-plant; while many very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... manoeuvred, and taking care always to have the animal on the opposite side. To have got into a safer situation he would have climbed the tree; but it happened to be a poplar, without a branch for many feet from the ground, and of too great a girth to be "embraced." He could do nothing, therefore, but remain upon the ground, and keep the tree-trunk ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... was only the stir of the spring sap in his veins, but Maria Clementina wore a look of morning brightness that might have made a soberer judgment blink. He turned away to examine her saddle. As he did so, he observed that her girth was not torn, but clean cut, as with sharp scissors. He glanced up in surprise, but she sat with drooping lids, her head thrown back against the lintel; and repressing the question on his lips he busied himself with the adjustment ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Great did not in all respects resemble the hero to whom he was indebted for his name. Alexander the Great, so the school-books say, was small in stature and mighty in mind. Bilk was small in mind and lanky in stature. They called him "Lamp-post" as a pet name, and as regarded his height, his girth, and the lightness of his head, the term conveyed a very fair idea of our hero's chief characteristics. In short, Bilk had very few brains, and such as he had he occupied by no means to the best advantage. He read trashy novels, and believed every word ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... strange sensation to upset while you are sitting properly in the saddle with your feet in the stirrups; it is impossible seeming; and with a woman, who is fastened more tightly to the saddle itself, the sliding of the girth on the horse's barrel is as if she were soon going to be ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... earth saw one thing, one how fair! One grace that grew to its full on earth: Smiles might be sparse on her cheek so spare, And her waist want half a girdle's girth, But she had her great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... been most useful to him in his career, not to say useful to the State. Each rolling year was pricked in his leathern belt with a new hole as his heart grew more peaceful and his body throve. He had a goodly girth and weighed full fifteen stone in his uniform; his mild blue eye had inspired confidence in a maiden of Billingsfield parish and Mrs. Gall was now rearing a numerous family of little Galls, all perhaps destined to become mild-eyed and portly ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... misunderstanding. The man you have sent us is not Fosco. Of Fosco he has only the baldness, the air benevolent, and the girth. The brand on his right arm is no more than the mark of vaccination. Brought before the Commissary of Police, the prisoner, who has not one word of French, was heard through an interpreter. He gives himself the name ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... crept back close to the body of Slade. She waved Lennon to hurry. He ran back for his rifle and the food. Elsie already had packed two pairs of saddlebags with flour, bacon, and dried meat, and was unlashing the broad stiff hair girth from another saddle. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... wrought; When his thin cheek assumed a deadly hue, And all the rose to one small spot withdrew, They call'd it hectic; 'twas a fiery flush, More fix'd and deeper than the maiden blush; His paler lips the pearly teeth disclosed, And lab'ring lungs the length'ning speech opposed. No more his span-girth shanks and quiv'ring thighs Upheld a body of the smaller size; But down he sank upon his dying bed, And gloomy crotchets fill'd his wandering head. 'Spite of my faith, all-saving faith,' he cried, 'I fear of worldly works the wicked pride; Poor as I am, degraded, abject, blind, The good ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... that this of all the men on earth Doth love me well enough to count me great— To think my soul and his of equal girth— O liberal estimate! ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... remained entangled in the stirrup: he was dragged along the stubble a considerable distance, with a broken arm and fearful bruises, till, stunned by a kick from the horse, he became insensible. Probably the saddle-girth at the same moment gave way and released him, for the unconscious animal trotted home, and was discovered with disordered trappings at ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... incomplete cases by well-marked skodaic resonance anteriorly. Loss of vocal resonance, and fremitus; oegophony, tubular respiration over the root of the lung or at the upper limit of the dulness, and more or less extensive displacement of the heart. Obvious increase in girth, fulness of the intercostal spaces, or gravitation ecchymosis was rare. The latter was most common in instances in which multiple fracture of the ribs existed (see fig. 83). I think the rarity of the last sign must ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... that bisected it would allow, finding the elevated ground clothed with thickly growing trees, principally a species of spruce fir called the antarctic beech, which runs to a height of some thirty or forty feet, with a girth of five or six feet. It is a magnificent evergreen, and would look well on an English lawn, for it has a ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... further completed, and the speed raised to the standard of the best English lines, it will probably be accomplished in less than thirty hours. The railway passed for many miles through the original forest, in which I observed very lofty trees, but none of an extraordinary girth. In many places the ground was crowded with fallen trees, in every stage of decay. I found my friends at the Eagle Hotel, at Niagara, where I remained till the twelfth, enjoying with them the views and scenery of "the Falls," ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... all the gleaming girth of stars That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... Ben, dismounting. The horse which the trapper had secured, though not his own, was almost equal to it in point of size and strength. He eyed it with evident satisfaction as he tightened the girth, saying that if it wasn't for the difference in colour he would have thought it was the old one. The others having also seen to their harness mounted, and the cavalcade advanced at a walking pace into the plain. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the lea! Arabs of the whole wide girth Of the wind-encircled earth! In all climes we pitch our tents, Cronies of the elements, With the secret lords ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... I have little but praise for the performance itself, though I think Sir HERBERT TREE'S own lethargy was not wholly to be excused by the hampering rotundity of his girth; and that all this deliberate sword-play, where you wait till your enemy has got his right guard before you arrange a concussion between your weapon and his, fails to impose itself as an image of War. But it was no fault of the actors if we suffered a further loss of actuality by the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... Such was indeed his counsel, and he sore lamented his own evil plight. But ill had it chanced with him; within the castle had they stolen from him his good sword wherewith he should defend himself. God give him shame who stole it! His saddle-girth, his stirrup-leathers, were cut midway through; as he thought to sit upon his steed they brake clean in twain, and left him standing upon his feet. This did Sir Gawain tell them there, even as ye have heard aforetime. If his heart were heavy when ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... Anak will select wives of fairy-like proportions. But Mrs. Stump was even shorter than her husband, and so plump withal, that a tape measure round her shoulders might have given her the prize for girth. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy |
