"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... far into a dense wood, deserted because all people feared the fierce beast it protected. On he went till after many days he sighted the lion at rest near the cave which was its den. Standing behind a tree of great girth, Hercules fitted and let fly an arrow. It struck and glanced, leaving the animal unharmed. Then he tried another shot, aiming at the heart. Again the arrow failed. But the lion was by this time roused, and his eyes ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... chance. Short mean usually marry tall women, and your sons of Anak will select wives of fairy-like proportions. But Mrs. Stump was even shorter than her husband, and so plump withal, that a tape measure round her shoulders might have given her the prize for girth. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... in the brown grass, laid his burden down, threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... The largest actual girth I have ever found at five feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my points of compass are right) in Springfield. But this has much the appearance of having been formed by the union of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the slap-jacks—in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... man he is! Calm, powerful face, clear-cut features, large grey eyes, yellow beard and hair — altogether a magnificent specimen of the higher type of humanity. Nor did his form belie his face. I have never seen wider shoulders or a deeper chest. Indeed, Sir Henry's girth is so great that, though he is six feet two high, he does not strike one as a tall man. As I looked at him I could not help thinking what a curious contrast my little dried-up self presented to his grand face and form. Imagine to yourself a small, withered, yellow-faced ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... drowning," replied Fran Christine laughing: "It's lucky it happened, because I was just going to take a bath!" But it pleased her to have her husband's companionship, and she did not approach her horse until he had examined the saddle-girth and the bridle with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... people laid their sick, hoping for help from the gods. Beneath the oak boughs, also, warriors took oaths to be faithful to their lords, women made promises, or wives joined hand in hand around its girth, hoping to have beautiful children. Up among its leafy branches the new babies lay, before they were found in the cradle by the other children. To make a young child grow up to be strong and healthy, mothers drew them through a ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... their toes with a suffusion of bitter almonds steeped in water because flies, ticks and fleas usually develop sores in those parts, unless it is your practice to so anoint them. To protect them from wounds from wild beasts we place collars on them, of the kind which we call melium, which is a girth around the neck made from strong leather studded with nails and lined with soft leather to protect the neck from being chafed by the hard iron heads of the nails: for if a wolf or other wild beast is once wounded by these nails all the other ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... from Prague, or the Amtmann's nephew from a Bavarian Dorf, may manage to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... not cut his coat according to his cloth; he asks for more cloth. The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions, he denounces the conditions as unfit. History is like some deeply planted tree which, though gigantic in girth, tapers away at last into tiny twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... one, and I came down uppermost, but narrowly escaped having my head broken by my animal's hoofs as he struggled to regain his feet. He was somewhat cut and bruised, but not seriously hurt, and tightening the saddle-girth I waded along through the water, leading him after me until I was able to regain the path. Then climbing into the saddle again, with dripping clothes and somewhat shaken nerves, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... relate to me the Odyssey of his terrible night. As he told me the story he pointed to his big leg: "They were as thick as that, Madame. Yes, like that——" And he quaked with fear as he recalled the dreadful girth of the reptiles. I thought that they were about one quarter as thick as his leg, and that would have been enough to justify his fright, for the serpents in question were not inoffensive water-snakes that bite out of pure viciousness, but have ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Circus and Menagerie Combination Company. The ground leading up to the front of the canvas was garnished in the usual way. There were two small parasitic tents near the great one, on which primitive pictures hung of the woman of enormous girth and the calf with six legs. A man stood at the flap entrance of each, inviting people to enter and see these wonders of nature for a moderate sum. Near by was the lemonade wagon, whose proprietor was handing out glasses of his fluid with a briskness that ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... it could be. Fearful at first, they gathered around it, as children gather around a live horse; they marvelled at its wondrous height and girth, and were for moving it into the city ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... specimen of the natural man than that presented by the chief of the People of the Mist, as he stood before her in her rock prison. The light of the candles fell full upon him, revealing his great girth and stature, beside which those of the finest men of her own race would have seemed insignificant. It shone upon the ivory torques, emblems of royalty, which were about his neck, wrists, and ankles, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... as all the gleaming girth of stars That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys Life strews along her passing to the grave Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp Of passion-strings unnumbered, ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... picturesque effect. A few noble stems—however poor their heads—have a fine effect when surrounded by others which have had elbow-room; but a forest of stems, with Lilliputian heads—great though the girth of the stem may be—conveys rather the idea of Brobdingnagian piles driven in by giants, and exhibiting the last flickerings of vitality in a few puny sprouts at their summit. The underwood was enlivened by shrubs ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... sooner or later, start to turn,—and it is a strange sensation to upset while you are sitting properly in the saddle with your feet in the stirrups; it is impossible seeming; and with a woman, who is fastened more tightly to the saddle itself, the sliding of the girth on the horse's barrel is as if she were soon going to be ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... riding, but it was no easy task to find a mount of size and strength sufficient to carry so heavy a burden. It was necessary that the poor animal should be progressively trained; and in order to accomplish this the king's equerry fastened round the horse a girth loaded with pieces of lead, increasing the weight daily till it equalled that of his Majesty. The king was despotic, hard, and even cruel, ever ready to sign the sentence of the condemned, and in almost all cases, if what is said at Stuttgart ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... plunge of the heart, as her own sunbonnet. She drew back in dismay; she would have no more of this weird mirror of the rocks and woods, and looked up again at the shining of the star amidst the darkening shadows of the scarlet oak. How tall that tree was, how broad of girth! And how curiously this stranger talked! What was there to do with all these trees! Would he cut down all the trees on the mountain? A sudden doubt of his sanity crossed her mind. It was the first, and her heart stood still for a moment. But as she slowly ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... should be so unfortunate as to gain flesh, his attractions would diminish in an inverse ratio, so he starved himself almost to death, and was constantly seen anxiously examining the buckle of his belt, to make sure that he had not increased in girth since his last meal. Voluntary Tantalus, he scarcely allowed himself enough to keep life in his attenuated frame, and if he had but fasted as carefully from motives of piety he would have ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... rude, and rotten contrivance, and as I loitered on the road home, giving myself up to idle fantasy, my friends got on far ahead. Waking from my day-dream I gave the nag the heel, and as it sprang forward at a canter the girth turned completely round, and I was pitched over in unpleasant nearness to a hedge of cactus. The ground was soft, and I was not much bruised; but when I rose the nag had disappeared round a corner, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... calendar; here and there a few lay families possessing the church lands as the custodiers of the pastoral staff or other relics of the founder of the church, and exercising a jurisdiction over the ancient "girth" or sanctuary boundary such as the early missionaries instituted in the days when might was right, and they nobly witnessed to the right against ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... his case still more hopeful. Columbus was not enough of an astronomer to adopt Toscanelli's improved measurement of the size of the earth. He accepted Ptolemy's figure of 20,400 geographical miles for the equatorial girth,[463] which would make the circumference in the latitude of the Canaries about 18,000; and Columbus, on the strength of sundry passages from ancient authors which he found in Alliacus (cribbed from Roger Bacon), ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... much the girth of the tree as its whole bearing that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... thought, "I ought to have a canoe to go out fishing, while the fine weather lasts." As he wandered about, he looked out for a tree to suit his purpose. He found one of sufficient girth and length, with a perfectly straight trunk, though whether the nature of the wood was suitable for a canoe, he could not ascertain, except by cutting it down. He had often felled trees at home, but without an axe he could do nothing. He went back to the carpenter's chest, ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... bole being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first branch, fifty-eight feet from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... sound of things on earth Requickening, all within our green sea's girth; A time of passage or a time of birth Fourscore years since as this ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of astronomers went measuring of the earth, And forty million metres they took to be its girth; Five hundred million inches now go through from pole to pole, So we'll stick to inches, feet, and yards, and our own ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... found him sitting on a block facing the sun, lying against his shield, which was supported by the side of the house. The body was in a terrible state of decomposition. It was swollen to three times its living girth. Great blisters had collected under the epidermis, which broke from time to time, a brownish red fluid escaping. The spear wound in his neck was plugged by a wooden spear-head. In each hand Aliguyen held a wooden spear. No attempt whatever had been made to prevent decomposition ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... disappeared in the gloom. The conspirators in the tree held their breath, till they caught the distant sound of wheels. Nearer and louder came the sound, and soon they saw a white, postillioned pony, a chaise and, yes, girth immensurate among the cushions, a weary monarch, whose face, crimson above the dark accumulation of his stock, was like some ominous sunset.... He had passed them and they had seen him, monstrous and moribund ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... down and chests well girthed)—Ver. 314. Ovid, in the Art of Love, B. iii., l. 274, alludes to the "strophium" or "girth" here referred to: "For high shoulders, small pads are suitable; and let the girth encircle the bosom that is too prominent." Becker thinks that the "strophium" was different from the "fascia" or "stomacher," mentioned in the Remedy of Love, l. 338: "Does a swelling ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... glanced at his watch. His manner was a little furtive. He was not dressed as usual—in frock coat, white waistcoat and silk hat, a costume that seemed to render more noticeable his great girth and smooth pink-and-white face—but in a blue serge, double-breasted suit, a bowler hat, and a style of neckgear a little reminiscent of the Bowery. Something in his very appearance seemed to me a confirmation of Mr. Cullen's warning. ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the earth was not flat, but round. Therefore the quickest route to the extreme East must be in exactly the opposite direction; the globe, he estimated, could not be much over fifteen thousand miles in girth; Cathay, by the land route, was twelve thousand miles or so east of Europe; consequently the distance west could not be more than three thousand. This could be sailed over in a month or two, and the saving in time and trouble would be immense.—Thus did he ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... along with a tripping pace which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that caused—is there any harm in saying it?—her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth—if silk it were—was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring. Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of Anton, the mischievous, who "shamed his duty" as old Merimee always honored it. As he finished speaking he walked to the tree where the gray mare was fastened, slipped on its saddle, tightened its girth, and called: ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... philosophy by and by;—let me work out this thin mechanical vein.—I have something more to say about trees, I have brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth;—nine feet, where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, about eighteen inches. I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Here and there slender plants had sprung up through the ashes, and the omnipresent small-leaved creepers were beginning to throw their pale green embroidery over the blackened trunks. I looked long at the vast funeral tree that had a buttressed girth of not less than fifty feet, and rose straight as a ship's mast, with its top about a hundred and fifty feet from the earth. What a distance to fall, through burning leaves and smoke, like a white bird shot dead with a poisoned arrow, swift and straight into that sea of flame below! How cruel ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... water-hole on one side, and three or four fine trees of large girth on the other, we unsaddled our horses and made up our fire. We had provisions enough for the evening, but should have to go on short commons the next day, unless we could shoot a ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... for some time among the forest undergrowth. Four panting dogs by the speaker's side likewise watched the progress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout; his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; the dried corn-stalks underfoot added not a little to the difficulties of his passage, and to add to his discomforts, ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... steeds they ride Are swift and stout; with spurs in flanks, and freed Of rein, they dash.—The warriors all their might And skill unite to strike the surest blow. Bucklers beneath the shock are torn and crushed, White hauberks rent in shreds, asunder bursts Each courser's girth, the saddles, turning, fall. One hundred thousand men look ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... from his thoughts and tossed his head. With both hands he shook the saddle, touched the girth and, as though he could not make up his mind to mount the horse, stood still ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... valley that, with its narrow girth and its towering walls that seemed to topple over. On the farther side from us the great trees that clothed the slope of the mountain over it grew down to the very edge of the rock, so that their spreading branches hung far over the chasm. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... "I think the girth is broken," said she. "The saddle is loose, and I was nigh losing my balance. Thank you, I can sit ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Ben, dismounting. The horse which the trapper had secured, though not his own, was almost equal to it in point of size and strength. He eyed it with evident satisfaction as he tightened the girth, saying that if it wasn't for the difference in colour he would have thought it was the old one. The others having also seen to their harness mounted, and the cavalcade advanced at a walking pace into the plain. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... awaiting the time when he should be old enough to be an equerry, and gave the command of his men to an old cripple, with whom he had knocked about a great deal in Palestine and other places. Thus the good man believed he would avoid the horned trappings of cuckoldom, and would still be able to girth, bridle, and curb the factious innocence of his wife, which struggled like a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... funeral honors of royalty it is imperative that the P'hra-mene be constructed of virgin timber. Trunks of teak, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and of proportionate girth, are felled in the forests of Myolonghee, and brought down the Meinam in rafts. These trunks, planted thirty feet deep, one at each corner of a square, serve as pillars, not less than a hundred and seventy feet high, to support a sixty-foot spire, an octagonal pyramid, covered ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... crystal transparency, though dark for reflecting the black bowl of earth in which it lay. Without a ripple it nestled close against the roots of a golden-fig tree—an unfruitful parasitic giant of squat stature and tremendous girth; while, pendant from one gnarled out-reaching branch, and almost touching the mirror-like surface into which it looked, hung a solitary streamer ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... beautiful ball gown, looked quite as handsome as her daughter. The regimental tailor had been busy all day letting out Colonel Fortescue's full dress uniform and the Colonel fondly hoped that a couple of inches he had gained in girth were concealed by the tailor's art. But Mrs. ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... Cologne counted its illustrious citizen something more than man. The burghers doffed when he passed; and scampish leather-draggled urchins gazed after him with praeternatural respect on their hanging chins, as if a gold-mine of great girth had walked through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into a park which he described as "the paradise of a small English country gentleman." Well it might be: I have never seen such a collection of oaks. They were of high antiquity and magnificent girth and stature: they were strewn over the grassy levels in extraordinary profusion, and scattered upon and down the slopes in a fashion than which I have seen nothing more charming since I last looked at the chestnut trees on the banks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... come from a distance in the country, mounted upon lank horses ornamented with incrusted hips, and caparisoned with long-straw back-suggauns that reached from the shoulders to the tail, under which ran a crupper of the same material, designed, in addition to a hay girth, to keep this primitive riding gear firm upon the animal's back. Behind the farmer, generally sat either a wife or a daughter, remarkable for their scarlet cloaks and blue petticoats; sometimes with shoes and stockings, and very often without them. Among ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... moment now he slacked his speed, A moment breathed his panting steed; Drew saddle-girth and corslet-band, And loosen'd in the sheath his brand. On Minto-crags the moonbeams glint, Where Barnhills hew'd his bed of flint; Who flung his outlaw'd limbs to rest, Where falcons hang their giddy nest Mid cliffs, from whence his eagle eye For many a league his ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... ring, till it passed the "record." The stubborn rider would not say enough, but the stubborn horse was disposed to shy and refuse to leap. Grant gritted his teeth and spurred at it, but just as the horse gathered for the spring, his swelling body burst the girth and rider and saddle tumbled into the ring. Half stunned, he gathered himself up from the dust only to hear the strident, cynical voice of the riding-master calling out, "Cadet Grant, six demerits ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... laboriously up the other side, over hidden shale rock and through clumps of bushes that snatched at her clothing like a witch's bony fingers. She had no more than reached the top when Jack stepped out from behind a pine tree as wide of girth as a hogshead. Marion gave a little scream, and then laughed. After that she frowned ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... wagon, and realized that there would be no more "pickin's" for her, she ran to her room and began sorting and gloating over the mass of cast-off clothing. And so mesmerized was she with pictures of herself adorned in the dresses that were made for the form half her girth that Mrs. Brewster found it impossible to coax her back to ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... metathorax, the shape becomes regular and cylindrical, while decreasing slightly in girth in the last two or three segments. Close to the line of separation of the last two rings, I am able to distinguish, not without difficulty, two very small stigmata, just a little darker in color. They belong to the last segment. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... plough-lands cast! Then shall be roaring and warring And ferment of sea and firth, Ocean, in turmoil upboiling, Confounding each bound of earth. The flow of the Deluge of Noah Were naught by that fell Flood's girth! ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... the throng in the court-room, jovial, lusty, bright of eye, loitered our easy-going chief of constabulary. His was no common girth at any time, but belted with a particularly large-sized and vicious-looking revolver, he seemed to be at least sixty inches around the waist. There was something casual about that revolver, and at the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... also many inconveniences—foremost amongst them the currents of the channel. The climate is much milder than in Hudson's Bay, which is in the same latitude. The vegetation is vigorous; pines six feet in girth, and a hundred and forty in height, are not rare. Celery, sorrel, lupine, wild pea, chicory, and mimulus are met with in every direction, as well as many pot-herbs, the use of which helped to keep ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the Earth. Old England proudly stands. Like arteries her Colonies Reach out from sea to sea. She clasps all races in her girth; Her gaze the world commands; And far and wide where strong ships ride, ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a changed man. To his surprise, in spite of his white hair, brought on by the horror of what he had seen, he found that he had gained two inches in height, and that he was larger of girth. This, Professor Gurlone told him, was the effect of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... what a tree that was! The hugest English oak would have seemed a stunted bush beside it. Borne up on roots, or rather walls, of twisted board, some twelve feet high, between which the whole crew, their ammunitions, and provisions, were housed roomily, rose the enormous trunk full forty feet in girth, towering like some tall lighthouse, smooth for a hundred feet, then crowned with boughs, each of which was a stately tree, whose topmost twigs were full two hundred and fifty feet from the ground. And yet it was easy for the sailors to ascend; so many natural ropes had kind Nature lowered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pretty round pace, when suddenly the girths burst, and the saddle and rider tumbled off together. I arrived without accident at my destination, although I had frequently been in danger of falling from my horse without its being necessary that the girth should break. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... chests, longer legs than the average for their height, the lower leg being especially long, with small calf, ankle, and feet, small arms, narrow hips, with great power of thoracic inflation, and thighs of small girth. Every player must be studied by trainers for ever finer individual adjustments. His dosage of work must be kept well within the limits of his vitality, and be carefully adjusted to his recuperative power. His personal nascent periods ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... commissariat camel an' 'is commissariat load. O the oont, 1 O the oont, O the commissariat oont! With 'is silly neck a-bobbin' like a basket full o' snakes; We packs 'im like an idol, an' you ought to 'ear 'im grunt, An' when we gets 'im loaded up 'is blessed girth-rope breaks. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... away, the General himself—the host-in-chief of the evening—condemned, despite increasing years and girth, to the Eton jacket of boyhood, pranced and glided with elaborate precision, and took every opportunity of twirling plump little Mrs Mayhew almost off her feet. Both laughed inordinately at each repetition ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... forded might be the upper waters of the Tongue. Their horses stood with heads hanging wearily down, their sides rising and falling; and Hampton, rolling stiffly from the saddle, hastily loosened his girth. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... great wild park with which Colonel Parsons has protected the Natural Bridge in Virginia. I saw there an arbor-vitae said by botanists to be not less than nine hundred years old, a chestnut twenty-six feet in girth at the height of my shoulders, and oaks past praise. But trees are everywhere, and if my observant pupil likes them, let her next note the mode in which the branches spread and their proportion to the trunk. State it all in the fewest words. It is to be only a help to memory. Then she ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... toilet behind the saddle, the haversack with rations slung at his side, to say nothing of such trifles as side-lines and picket-pins, the watering bucket and the wooden basin. The cavalryman's tender heart was stirred by a feeling of compassion, as he tightened up the girth and looked to see that everything was secure ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... a tree covered with so dense a foliage that one could not recognise its species. It was of giant girth, with a trunk that seemed to breathe like a living breast, and far-reaching boughs that stretched like protecting arms around it. It towered up there beautiful, strong, virile, and fruitful. It ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... could not rest: rose and had a bath; listened at Juliet's door, and hearing no sound, went to the stable. Niger greeted him with a neigh of pleasure. He made haste to saddle him, his hands trembling so that he could hardly get the straps into the girth buckles. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was a shrew, and to escape her abuse Rip often took his dog and gun and roamed away to the Catskills, nine miles westward, where he lounged or hunted, as the humor seized him. It was on a September evening, during a jaunt on South Mountain, that he met a stubby, silent man, of goodly girth, his round head topped with a steeple hat, the skirts of his belted coat and flaps of his petticoat trousers meeting at the tops of heavy boots, and the face—ugh!—green and ghastly, with unmoving eyes that glimmered ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... in less than that time, what's left o' us won't be worth seekin' for," said Joe, tightening the girth of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... masters appeared. They looked at the girth of the trees, appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest, and wherever swift streams crossed they set mills. The cleared ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... girth and height and wherever was room so spreading, so rich of grain, so full, I knew, of strange virtues! We found one that I thought was cinnamon, and broke twigs and bark and put in our great pouch for the Admiral. Only time might tell the wealth of this green multitude. I thought, "Here ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of sovereignty, and when held in the hand of the newly-chosen king, enforced the recognition of his majesty. But, whereas Hayton simply calls it the greatest and finest Ruby in existence, Maundevile puts it at afoot in length and five fingers in girth. Also—for I have made much inquiry concerning this stone—it was well known to the Chinese from the days of Hwen ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... out, Burly having a brazen blunderbuss charged with several bullets, fired it so near his breast, that his gown, cloaths and shirt were burnt, and he fell flat on his face; they, thinking a window was made through his body, went off, but one staying to tie his horse's girth, heard his daughter call to the coachman for help, for her father was yet alive: which made him call back the rest, (knowing if he was not dead, their case would be worse than ever) Burly (or Balfour) coming to him while yet lying ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... A heavy step sounded in the little hall, the door was pushed open, and a man entered. He was a young man, big and broad-shouldered, and Ravenslee's keen eyes were quick to heed the length and ponderous carriage of the arms, the girth of chest, and firm, heavy poise of the feet; lastly he looked at the face, aggressively handsome with its dominating nose and chin, and blue eyes shaded by thick lashes, that looked out beneath heavy brows—a comely-seeming face from the dark, close-cropped ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... south; and from thence it came over Norton-farm, and so to Grange-farm, both in this parish. It began with vast drops of rain, which were soon succeeded by round hail, and then by convex pieces of ice, which measured three inches in girth. Had it been as extensive as it was violent, and of any continuance (for it was very short), it must have ravaged all the neighbourhood. In the parish of Hartley it did some damage to one farm; but Norton, which lay in the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... the people of Euboea accustom their horses to carry sacks which they can at pleasure fill with air, and which in case of need they carry instead of the girth of the saddle above and at the side, and they are well covered with plates of cuir bouilli, in order that they may not be perforated by flights of arrows. Thus they have not on their minds their security in flight, when the victory is uncertain; ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... guess," answered De Bracy, "nor did I think there had been within the four seas that girth Britain a champion that could bear down these five knights in one day's jousting. By my faith, I shall never forget the force with which he shocked De Vipont. The poor Hospitaller was hurled from his saddle like a stone ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the firm muscles quivering beneath at the first touch of excitement to the high mettle and finely-strung organization; the head small, lean, racer-like, "blood" all over; with the delicate taper ears, almost transparent in full light; well ribbed-up, fine shoulders, admirable girth and loins; legs clean, slender, firm, promising splendid knee action; sixteen hands high, and up to thirteen stone; clever enough for anything, trained to close and open country, a perfect brook jumper, a clipper at fencing; taking a great deal of riding, as anyone could tell ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... and most voluptuously I savoured it. I had Mistress Nelly on her biscuit-coloured knees to me before I finally reached the cabin floor on my hands, my toes still clinging to the port-hole. Poor Fred could not possibly equal this feat. His girth would not ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... built of stone; its top came scarcely to the top of the surrounding trees, and it was in fact not more than two stories high; it appeared, with its wide girth, low and squat. Its sides were pierced here and there with deep and narrow slits, for windows, and on one side was a heavy oaken door, with great iron hinges and an iron lock. Through two or three of the upper slits in the wall glimmered a light from within. ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... land-creatures to emerge from the primeval swamp of Morua VIII had developed the heavy furs and the hibernation characteristics of bear-like mammals. They towered over Dal, and even Tiger seemed dwarfed by their immense chest girth ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... were changing to roads. The local freight intermittently disgorged tons of harvesting machinery. The sound of the Klaxton was heard in the land. Despite the times and the manners, Bud's girth increased insidiously. His hard-riding days were past. Progress marched steadily onward, leaving an after-guard of homesteaders intrenched behind miles of barbed-wire fence and mazes of irrigating-ditches. The once open range ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... panic, when he saw the walking bear still drawing nearer, poor Bumpus managed to push his legs under the lower rim of the tightly stretched canvas. Only the lower half of him could find admittance; the balance was of such larger girth that in spite of his frantic labor he could not ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... to see how much good was in that gold, how large a fund of blessing was hidden in that crock: Reuben Scott gained health, the family were fed, clad, taught; Susan grew in happiness at least as truly as in girth; and Hagglesfield beheld the goodness of that store, whose ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... with snake fences, which are made in a rough fashion, the rails being placed one upon another in a zigzag form, and secured at the angles by stakes driven into the ground. They were formed by splitting trees into four or five portions, according to their girth, an operation carried on by means of wedges driven ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... hast not seen a loftier head wax hoary, Earth, which hast not shown the sun a nobler birth, Time, that hast not on thy scroll defiled and gory One man's name writ brighter in its whole wide girth, Witness, till the final years fulfil their story, Till the stars break off the music of their mirth, What among the sons of men was this man's glory, What the vesture of his soul revealed ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the pit of my stomach frum hunger, I answered back, 'Three dozen!' The gal leaped back a step; then she hauled out a bag 'bout the size of a bushel an' begins shovellin' in round, humpy things, most all hole in the centre but considerable sizable as t' girth. I was up t' city ways by then, an' I warn't goin' t' show any surprise if she'd loaded an ister boat full of cakes on me. So I paid up 'thout a word an' went out of the shop shoulderin' the bag. It took ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... truth of this narrative, Isaaco brought with him the only relic of Park which he was able to procure—a sword-belt, which the king of Yaour had converted into a girth for his horse. This he obtained through the instrumentality of a Poule, who bribed one of the king's female slaves to steal it ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the more she saw. The very leanness of Alcatraz made it easier to trace his running-muscles; she estimated, too, the ample girth at the cinches where ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... me full opportunity of observing him. A little black cap covered his scalp; his round bullet-head, which bristled with short, thick-set hairs, joined on, by a neck of considerably more than the average girth, to shoulders of Atlantean dimensions. His body was enveloped in a coarse brown mantle, which descended to his calves, and was gathered round his middle with a slender white cord. His naked feet were ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... awake and in my bed, and by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie's self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... cedar of Lebanon are mentioned as having attained a very great size in England. One planted by Dr. Uvedale, in the garden of the manor-house at Enfield, about the middle of the seventeenth century, had a girth of fourteen feet in 1789; eight feet of the top of it had been blown down by the great hurricane in 1703, but still it was forty feet in height. At Whitton, in Middlesex, a remarkable cedar was blown down in 1779. It had attained the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... our suggestion he began practising this simple raising and lowering of the heels. In less than four months he had increased the girth of each calf one whole inch. When asked how many strokes a day he averaged, he said that it was from fifteen hundred to two thousand, varied some days by his holding in each hand, during the process, a twelve-pound dumbbell, and then only doing one thousand or thereabouts. The time he found most ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... to his own prostrate horse, took off its bridle and its saddle-girth, and with both secured his uncle's limbs beyond all possibility of the struggler being able to escape from ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... should vanish from my brow, My girth, in time, to great dimensions grow— If youth's sweet-scented "Buds" should pass me by, ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... as caught in fault she stands, Scarce might he hear her whispered message: "Ask, Lord, and I answer thee." Strung to his task: "Tell me now all," he said, "from that far day Whenas embracing thee, I stood to pray, And poured forth wine unto the thirsty earth To Zeus and to Poseidon, in whose girth Lie sea and land; to Gaia next, their spouse, And next to Here, mistress of my house, Traitress, and thine, for grace upon my faring: For thou wert by to hear me, false arm bearing Upon my shoulder, glowing, lying cheek Next unto mine. Ay, and thou prayedst, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... My poor horse!—what to do? Take off the bridle, And loose the girth. Let him at ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... with a saber. He called the bugler, and told him to blow "Boots and Saddles," and in five minutes to sound, "To Horse;" then he turned to me and said, "You will be my orderly tonight, and you will have the liveliest ride you ever experienced. Buckle up your saddle girth and lead my horse out here." I told the colonel I should have to buckle up my own belt a few holes, as I hadn't had any supper, when he told his servant to bring me out what was left of his supper, which he did, one small hard tack. I eat pretty hearty, and let my horse fill himself ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... Even in such tragic hours Venice keeps up her old tradition of light-heartedness. The cafes round the great piazza are full in the evenings with a cheerful crowd. Moreover, to go into St. Mark's is to enter a sort of neolithic grotto; the pillars, set about with sand-bags, have the girth of the arcades of a Babylonian temple; bulging poultices of sacks protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel. The Doge's Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... Kingly Bottom, or Kingly Vale, mark a victory of Chichester men over a party of marauding Danes in 900, and that the dead were buried beneath the barrows on the hill. The story ought to be true. The vale is remarkable for its grove of yews, some of enormous girth, which extends along the bottom to the foot of the escarpment. The charge that might be brought against Sussex, that it lacks sombre scenery and the elements of dark romance, that its character is too ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... adorned with things more splendid than ever his eyes had seen, and stood before the King. With him came Skallagrim, driving the two captive viking chiefs before him with his axe, as a flesher drives lambs. Now, during these many months Brighteyes had grown yet more great in girth and glorious to look on than he was before. Moreover, his hair was now so long that it flowed like a flood of gold down towards his girdle, for since Gudruda trimmed it no shears had come near his head, and his locks grew fast as a woman's. The King looked ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... old oak's shade— Himself as rough, and scarce less old, The Ukraine's Hetman, calm and bold; But first, outspent with this long course, The Cossack prince rubbed down his horse, And made for him a leafy bed, And smoothed his fetlocks and his mane, 60 And slacked his girth, and stripped his rein, And joyed to see how well he fed; For until now he had the dread His wearied courser might refuse To browse beneath the midnight dews: But he was hardy as his lord, And little cared for bed and board; But spirited ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... chain; string &c (filament) 205. fastener, fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; yoke; band ribband, bandage; brace, roller, fillet; inkle^; with, withe, withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus^, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [U.S.], cinch [U.S.], lariat, legadero^, oxreim^; suspenders. pin, corking pin, nail, brad, tack, skewer, staple, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... no longer any one to hide behind, the fat little priest evidently realized that his only hope of salvation lay in making an effort, truly heroic in one of his height and girth and woful shortness of wind, to clamber up the face of the wall; and to this wellnigh impossible task he most resolutely set himself. It was only by jumping that he was able to get a grip over the top of the wall; yet when this grip ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... stood before the gate, The ruffians twain astride; And gay with scarlet girth and rein They started, side by side. O, blithe the babies' spirits were, That they could have ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... there ought to be some way of managing it. And in a moment he got the idea. Schmidt was as tired as his horse, or even more so, and by this time he was swaying in his saddle and half asleep, as a trained horseman often does. Fred leaned forward and very quietly cut the saddle girth almost through. He knew that the slightest strain would finish the work. Schmidt was utterly unconscious of what was going on. Fred could tell, from the man's breathing, just what his condition was. He would snore a little and then, with a start, he would arouse himself, breathing normally ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... weight of a full-grown grizzly is over eight hundred pounds, and the girth around the body is about ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of England. Its horticultural advantages seemed to weigh but lightly with her; she dwelt chiefly on the loneliness of the life she had been leading, and deplored bitterly the fact that its inglorious ease was spoiling her figure by increasing her girth. ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... castle would look crushed by the redundancy of its upper protuberances if it were not for the enormous girth of its round towers, which appear to give it a robust lateral development. These towers, however, fine as they are in their way, struck me as a little stupid; they are the exaggeration of an exaggeration. In a building erected after the days of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... likely to forget that long and arduous night. It was impossible to force the horse out of a walk, for the drifts were in some places to the creature's girth. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd |
