"Girth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both from large timber of from two to six feet girth, and from small underwood of about the thickness of a man's thumb. The timber, which is chiefly beech, is first sawed into battens of about three feet in length and as many inches in width; and from each of ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Punchard, who is now at this moment, I warrant, smoking his pipe in the lodge at my park gates. I was eleven years old, a thin slip of a boy, small for my age, and giving no promise, to be sure, of my present stature and girth. The neighbors shook their heads sometimes as they looked at me, and wondered why Mr. John Ellery, if he must adopt a boy—a strange thing, they thought, for a bachelor to do—did not choose one of a sturdier make ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the greater number in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away—their hair and beard entirely; the rain had come too late to save their nails. Some were swollen to double girth; others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin. Faugh! I cannot ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... he. 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 Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... they use for their large canoes, is that of the apple-tree, which grows very tall and straight. Several of them that were measured, were near eight feet in the girth, and from twenty to forty to the branches, with very little diminution in the size. Our carpenter said, that in other respects it was not a good wood for the purpose, being very light. The small canoes are nothing more than the hollow trunk of the bread-fruit tree, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in laughing confusion from this later benefactor, when he had made plain one day the service he sought to do her soul. A moment later he had stood before her father in all his years of patriarchal dignity, hale, ruddy, and vast of girth. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... sailors were in use to fill our water casks, not far from the banks of the river, there grew an exceedingly large tree, but its height was by no means proportional to its thickness; for, though it measured seventeen cubits in girth near the ground, its height, by estimation, was only twenty paces. This tree was hollow, but the branches were very large, avid extended to a great distance, forming a thick and ample shade. But there were many other trees much larger than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... all but the smaller fish from ascending the river. The salmon, swimming near the surface, as is their custom, run their heads through these meshes, and are prevented from going on through by their larger girth of body, and from going back because of their gills, which catch in the mesh. It requires two fishermen to set such a net,—one to row the boat, while the other, standing in the stern, carefully pays out the ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... 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
... then must be to the books themselves. Exclusive of short story, sketch and tale, they include a dozen novels of generous girth—for Meredith is old-fashioned in his demand for elbow-room. They are preeminently novels of character and more than any novelist of the day the view of the world embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does not mean that they are wanting in emotional force or interest: ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... tell Pollyooly about Devonshire, the wet garden 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
... first, the German struck him upon the visor, but without breaking it or harming Zbyszko. At the same time, Zbyszko, instead of giving stroke for stroke, grasped the knight by the middle, but, in the attempt to take him alive, engaged in a close struggle, during which the girth of his horse gave way from the intense strain of the contest, and both fell to the ground. For a while they wrestled; but the extraordinary strength of the young man soon prevailed against his antagonist; he pressed his knees against his stomach, holding him ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... a familiar voice, "the secret place alluded to should chance to be a hollow cedar-tree of inadequate girth, the unfortunate spirit in question ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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 be true, increased the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the spacing produced seedlings of larger girth and shorter height—a desirable characteristic in black walnut budding stocks. The most desirable spacing appeared to be 6 x 7 inches. Even though the number of seedlings resulting from this spacing was approximately half the number produced at 4 x 4 inches spacing, more usable seedlings were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... 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
... romance readers and minds of sensibility. Amongst other things which our conductor showed us was an immense onen or ash; it stood in one of the courts and measured, as she said, pedwar y haner o ladd yn ei gwmpas, or four yards and a half in girth. As I gazed on the mighty tree I thought of the Ash Yggdrasill mentioned in the Voluspa, or prophecy of Vola, that venerable poem which contains so much relating to the mythology ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... hundred feet long, by sixty feet diameter at the point of her greatest girth," quietly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... no reply; but as he entered the court-yard of his house, he muttered uneasily,—"And if Lysander is right, and Sparta is too small for Pausanias, do not we bring back a giant who will widen it to his own girth, and rase the old foundations to make room for the buildings ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... Riding girth high through the lovely natural grass, from which the ripe seed scattered as they passed, or camping at night surrounded by it, the horses and camels improved in condition each day, and were never at a loss for water. Sometimes they found a sufficiency in a natural well or claypan; or again ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... scarred her a little—put some lines into the corners of her eyes and straightened the curling corners of her mouth, but it had also heightened the rich healthy colour on her cheeks, enlarged her fine girth, her strength of shoulder and depth of bosom. She did not look any older, because she was so superbly healthy and superbly proud. She knew that the neighbours were impressed by Ansdore's thriving, when they had foretold its downfall under her sway.... She had vindicated her place in her father's ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... which are the arboreal gems of the place. Major Budden informs us that they are about one hundred and twenty-eight years old, and were planted in their present position when they had attained about twenty years' growth. Some idea of their luxuriance may be formed when it is mentioned that the girth of each tree exceeds sixteen feet, and the longest branch of one of them measures eighty-four feet in length. In consequence of the habit of these trees "fastigiating" at the base, a very numerous series of lateral ramifying branches is the result. These branches spread out in terraces, and ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Master Dupe—Droop," said the knight, his face brightening mightily. "Five yards are a mile for a man of my girth, Master Droop, but praise God such words as these of yours cheer my heart to still greater deeds ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... set it down as a fact that Little Barnstable was out on a frolic. As to the figure cut by the major, that may be safely left to the reader's fancy. His short legs scarce reached below old Battle's saddle girth; and, in addition to the slouchy suit of Uxbridge satinet, he wore a shabby white hat, very like that worn by Philosopher Greeley on election days. Never was departure of foreign ambassador attended with such demonstrations, all of which the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... likened to A desert ship. (This is not new.) He is a most ungainly craft, With frowning turrets fore and aft We little realize on earth, How much we owe to his great girth, For should he ever shrink so small As through the needle's eye to crawl, Rich men might climb the golden stairs And so ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... on the commons, determined to catch one for me. They found an old passing one which could not run away, and brought him in, rigged a rope from the boat into a bridle, and borrowed a saddle without either stirrup, girth, or crupper. Thus accoutred they pursued me, and found me at the house where I had stopped. The rain ceasing, I mounted; my legs hung down the sides of the horse, and I was obliged to steady the saddle by holding by the mane. In this ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... organ, the forenoon service being near conclusion. If I had never seen the interior of York Cathedral, I should have been quite satisfied, no doubt, with the spaciousness of this nave and these side aisles, and the height of their arches, and the girth of these pillars; but with that recollection in my mind they fell a little short of grandeur. The interior is seen to disadvantage, and in a way the builder never meant it to be seen; because there is little or no painted glass, nor any ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... said Big 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 ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 than it could have been when it was being built; each of those delicate ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... her as hard as she could with her hands; but, even when the mare raised her head and walked about, the little girl could not get at the reins because she was tightly fastened to the girth. So the pinto went where she pleased, paying no attention to angry commands, or to the pounding inflicted upon her flanks by the fists ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... dazed, and to be frightened also. Henry saw at once that his fear was of his officers, and that it had not been caused by any suffering in captivity. In truth, Private Doran looked very well, having suffered no diminution of either girth or ruddiness. His fears in regard to his officers were justified, as he was taken at once before Colonel de Peyster, who examined ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were 20 per cent. taller than the smokers, 25 per cent. heavier, and had 62 per cent. more lung capacity. In the graduating class of Amherst College of the present year, those not using tobacco have in weight gained 24 per cent. over those using tobacco, in height 37 per cent., in chest girth 42 per cent., while they have a greater average lung capacity by ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... glove," he answered. "I was only figuring that it's a bit too ornamental for its present purpose. I see the girth has been broken and mended—mended with a doubtful piece of string. Why wasn't it sent to the saddler t' be properly fixed up? I've half a notion ter chuck it right away and ride bare-backed. But there ain't time to fool around ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... swollen and all congested with purple spots. They thought he was about to have a stroke or a seizure of some sort. But they were wrong. This merely was Nature's warning to a man with a size seventeen neckband and a forty-six-inch girth measurement. The stroke he was to have on the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... stamping, To the clouds his head he lifted, To his knees his beard was flowing, To his spurs his locks descended. Fathom-wide his eyes were parted, Fathom-wide his trousers measured; Round his knee the girth was greater, And around his hip 'twas doubled. 160 Then he sharpened keen the axe-blade, Brought the polished blade to sharpness; Six the stones on which he ground it, Seven the stones on which he ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... A noble instance is the 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. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... the ground, take the pummel with the right hand, place the side of the left foot against the girth, the toe between the horse's elbows, bring the back of the right leg on to the top of the saddle, and let yourself down to the full stretch of your right arm; this is very easy at the halt, still easier on the move, if your horse is quiet. If you fail, you only dismount on your hands instead of ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... claim of Nature's worth. Though I forget the forms of earth, Of gilded cloud and circling planet, I know His fire lives within their girth. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... increased immensely, since last year, in stature and girth. He is remarkably neat in his person, wisping himself all over with hay for hours at a time. Whether he does this for cleanliness or to obtain a flavor of elephant for the hay is doubtful, however, for he always eats it after having made use of it as a flesh-brush ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... a yellow group Was creeping on her bosom, like a troop Of stars, far up amid the galaxy, Pale, pale, as snowy showers; and two or three Were mocking the cold finger, round and round, With likeness of a ring; and, as they wound About its bony girth, they had the hue Of pearly jewels glistering in dew. That deathly stare! it is an awful thing To gaze upon; and sickly thoughts will spring Before it to the heart: it telleth how There must be waste where ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... as he noticed the increasing heaviness at his girth. "Fat and soft," he added, as a huge muscle yielded under the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... great girth—crinkled and a little mossed, but not yet hollow—he would speculate on the passage of time. That tree had seen, perhaps, all real English history; it dated, he shouldn't wonder, from the days of Elizabeth at least. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... can be, he canted, to remedy the error, but the impetus of his ten-foot bulk was still upon him; it carried him by. You cannot stop ten feet of bulk and five-feet-seven of girth of flesh and bone and muscle and armor-plates, going at Old Nick may know how many knots, in half-a-yard, you know; and it was the half-a-yard that did ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... open, so that we had no difficulty in holding on our course. To the westward we saw some icebergs of incredible size, and in the afternoon passed very near one whose summit could not have been less than four hundred fathoms from the surface of the ocean. Its girth was probably, at the base, three-quarters of a league, and several streams of water were running from crevices in its sides. We remained in sight of this island two days, and then only lost ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... limb; with a countenance extremely winning, not only from the comeliness of its features, but its frankness, manliness, and good nature. His was the bronzed, rich complexion, the inclination towards embonpoint, the athletic girth of chest, which denote redundant health, and mirthful temper, and sanguine blood. Robert, who had lived the life of cities, was a year younger than his brother; nearly as tall, but pale, meagre, stooping, and with a careworn, anxious, hungry ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... the harbor was as a fairy-land. Snow still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,—of enormous growth, broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,—cypress with twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming their spring song ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... near and leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse, Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak, helpless, ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... girth, but who sat his horse easily despite his size, grinned down at Jack. He was white-haired and under the brim of his sombrero little eyes twinkled genially and shrewdly ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... 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; ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... unexpectedly given, and so suddenly executed by those of the party who had gradually closed behind and around Morton, that he was overpowered, disarmed, and a horse-girth passed round his arms, before he could offer any effectual resistance. When this was accomplished, a dead and stern silence took place. The fanatics ranged themselves around a large oaken table, placing Morton amongst ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for "Little Sorrel," the companion of so many marches, was lost for some days after the passage of the Potomac; but the Confederacy was near paying a heavy price for the "good grey mare." When Jackson first mounted her a band struck up close by, and as she reared the girth broke, throwing her rider to the ground. Fortunately, though stunned and severely bruised, the general was only temporarily disabled, and, if he appeared but little in public during his stay in ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the river we saw numbers of white whales which frequent it at this season of the year, and many of which are harpooned from a boat that is employed, and usually carries three or four of the Company's servants. The harpooner killed one to-day, which measured fourteen feet long, and eight in girth, and weighed it was supposed a ton weight. The blubber is boiled at the Fort, and the oil sent to England as an article of the Company's trade. When the Esquimaux visit us from the tent, they generally ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... which the Fire King laughed As he his bowl of frantic pleasure quaffed, Whilst the doomed structure tottered in the girth Of his wild, ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... about me, they were attracted by a great tree that grew near by, a tree of vast girth and bigness. And, as I looked, I saw that it was an oak-tree, near the root of which there was a jagged, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... mouse-coloured mule that emerged at length to view and it looked even smaller than it was because the man who straddled it dwarfed it with his own ponderous stature and a girth which was almost an anomaly in a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... to hear people talk about losing flesh—unless, of course, the decrease in weight is due to illness. No healthy person, predisposed to fat, ever lost any flesh. If that person gets rid of any weight, or girth, or fat, it isn't lost—it is fought off, beaten off. The victim struggles with it, goes to the mat with it, and does not debonairly drop it. He eliminates it with stern effort and much travail of the spirit. It is a job of work, a grueling combat to the finish, ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... the girth of my saddle. My spirit was taking swift counsel with itself at the brink of the precipice. It was then that I seemed to see the angry face of old Kate—the Silent Woman—at my elbow, and it counseled me to speak out. Again ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... news for you," he said, approaching and testing the girth of her saddle. "Sit still and ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... support millions of people. Its lakes and rivers all abound in fish, its forests have all kinds of trees, some of them growing to a size which, but for the force of testimony, would be incredible. One of these is stated by Humboldt as of one hundred and eighteen feet in girth. "But this is a walking-stick compared with another at Bodega, as described to Sir George by Governor Etholine, of Sitka." It is thirty-six Russian fathoms (seven feet each) in span, and seventy-five in height; so that, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... on, 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... now worn on the stage, appear different from anything which is to be met with elsewhere. Are these figures meant for the Lares themselves? On each side are represented different sorts of eatables. On the left a bunch of small birds, a string of fish, a boar with a girth about his body, and a magnificently curling tail, and a few loaves, or rather cakes, of the precise pattern of some which have been found in Pompeii: on the right, an eel spitted on a wire, a ham, a boar's head, and a joint ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... 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
... monotonous. The canal population, so long distinct, will be merged in the rest of the community. The tug will displace the tow-rope. The pullers will be housed on land, mastering the three R's instead of learning to strain at the girth. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... It 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
... was a log until he struck it with the stirrup iron; we then saw that it was an immense snake, larger than any I have ever before seen in a wild state. It measured eight feet four inches in length and seven inches in girth round the belly; it was nearly the same thickness from the head to within twenty inches of the tail; it then tapered rapidly. The weight was 11 1/2 pounds. From the tip of the nose to five inches back, the neck was black, both above and below; throughout ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... 'ranges 'at steed." The Wildcat loosened the saddle girth. Unseen by Honey Tone, he removed a small horseshoe from between the saddle blanket and the mule's epidermis. "Sho' brings de luck. Some boy got de luck hunch figgered wrong. Git aboa'd, Honey Tone.—Blanket got wrinkled. He done ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... and it was not till the stranger had looked twice at her, that he forgot her great chuckle head, greyhound-flanks, and drooping hind-quarters, and began to see the great length of those same quarters,—the thighs let down into the hocks, the arched loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the sloping shoulder, the long arms, the flat knees, the large, well-set hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and speed, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... climbers. The cocoa-palm grows here in small numbers, usually several together, overtopping the other trees among which one of the Bombaceae (silk-cotton trees) and Pisonia grandis attain the greatest dimensions, having frequently a girth of twelve or fifteen feet, with a height of sixty or seventy. A large-leaved Calophyllum is the prevailing tree of the island, and among the others I may mention a Myristica and a Caryophyllum, neither of which, however, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... in Nature in both the living and the non-living worlds tend to correct themselves. When Nature cannot make both ends meet, she diminishes her girth. If there is not food enough for her creatures, she lessens the number of mouths to be fed. A surplus of food, on the other hand, tends ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... it is 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
... than I reckoned; for so it was that I presently became aware of a companion in my solitudes. This was a Capuchin of great girth and capacity, who sat under a chestnut tree, secluded from observation, and was at that time engaged ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... harder. "Oh, it's awful funny!" she cried, rocking herself to and fro—and steadily increasing her girth. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride, On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed on the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly lie watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and somber and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... of the branches twelve feet, in circumference. The age of this prodigy of the forest cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The oak viewed by the present King, in Oxfordshire, and some years ago felled in the domains of one of the Colleges, though only twenty-five feet in girth, is said to have been six hundred years old. Fairlop oak having been nearly thrice as large, is supposed to be ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... and reached the cave without incident. Another fire was lighted, and whilst Iris attended to the kitchen the sailor felled several young trees. He wanted poles, and these were the right size and shape. He soon cleared a considerable space. The timber was soft and so small in girth that three cuts with the axe usually sufficed. He dragged from the beach the smallest tarpaulin he could find, and propped it against the rock in such manner that it effectually screened the mouth of the cave, though admitting ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... girth of his saddle two holes tighter, threw away his pistols, coat and hat, and rode away, on a gentle patter. After two miles this was increased to a stiff gallop. He knew his horse—he was turning off each mile in just five ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... best Well is a man's purse better at home Than open where folk go and come." "Come ye carles of the south country, Now shall we go our kin to see! For the lambs are bleating in the south, And the salmon swims towards Olfus mouth, Girth and graithe and gather your gear! And ho for the other Whitewater!" Bright was the moon as bright might be, And Snbiorn rode to the north country. And Odd to Reykholt is gone forth, To see if his mares be ought of worth. But Hallbiorn into the bower is gone And there sat Hallgerd all alone. ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... 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 three or ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... party of artists and students drank and talked and smoked. A great live peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a heavy wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in arm-chairs of ample girth, had its loggia windows and doors open to the air. There were singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary, iris, and arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge vase filled to overflowing with oranges and lemons, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... in every limb, It can't be they are saddling him! It is! his back the pig-skin strides And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; With look of mingled scorn and mirth They buckle round the saddle-girth; With horsey wink and saucy toss A youngster throws his leg across, And so, his rider on his back, They lead him, limping, to the track, Far up behind the starting-point, To ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with this resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom or two in girth." ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... and was getting as fat as a pig. Did I not think so? Voila! In her artless way she guided my finger into her waistband and then swelled herself out like the frog in the fable to prove the increase in her girth. She spoke in awestricken whispers of the Master himself. Save that he was utterly kind, impulsive, generous, boastful, and according to her untrained ear a violinist of the first quality, she knew not what manner of man he was. She had enough imagination to feel vaguely that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... cool elm-trees floats the distant stream, Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream, A liquid cool elixir—all its girth Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency, Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills The utmost valleys and the thin last hills, Nor mars one whit their ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... if he could," insisted John, with a humorous glance at his old friend, who was much too heavy and huge of girth for quick transit over rough ground. John York himself had grown lighter ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... very upright old man that he saw in the chair before him, of medium height and girth, with hands clasping the bosses of his chair-arms, and an appearance of great and deliberate dignity. But it was at the face chiefly that he looked, dropping his gaze three or four times, as the Pope's blue eyes turned on him. They were extraordinary ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mathias," Judas muttered, and got to his feet. The man hurried to them. He was broad of shoulder and of girth, the jaw lank and earnest. His eyes were small, and the lids twitched nervously. He was out of breath, and his garments ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... 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 of the girth by ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... them. Crimmins darted into the underbrush bordering the pike. The horse came fast. It flashed past Garrison. Its rider was swaying in the saddle; swaying with white, tense face and sawing hands. The eyes were fixed straight ahead, vacant. A broken saddle-girth flapped raggedly. Garrison recognized the fact that it was a runaway, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... which should have given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its barrier, despite of himself,—and washed it away. He was a fine wreck, a little prematurely broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less interesting on that account; tall, and somewhat of the jovial old English girth, with a face where good-nature and good living mingled their smiles and glow. He wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously particular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, he was not a little ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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, ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... inches in girth at a point eighteen inches from the ground, they are ready for tapping. This growth is usually attained when the trees ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... everything, and he will stay converted probably. If you convert him at twelve, he probably will fall from grace before he is fifteen. It is rather interesting to notice that those periods when his experiences are likely to be very deep and very strong, are the years when his chest girth is expanding the most rapidly. A very good bit of physiology or psychology or of anything else you choose to call it, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... at this juncture that a slight accident occurred to Frau von Wallmoden; her saddle girth broke, and she would have had a disagreeable fall had she not had the presence of mind to slip at once from her saddle to the ground. To follow the riders was now an impossibility, for her groom could not ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... to mount and ride, Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill, Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! He springs to the saddle, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... direction. The little white house had been built close to the grand old oak which was the pride of Milford. It was indeed a giant of its kind; there was something wonderfully fine about its vigorous spread of branches and its enormous girth. Close by was a peaceful-looking river, flowing between green banks fringed with willow and marestail and pink river-herb. The house itself had a nice little garden, gay with geraniums and gladiolus, and bounded by a hedge of sunflowers which would have gladdened the heart of an aesthete. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... troops were resting on the march; mass had just been celebrated, and the men were at breakfast, when the outposts suddenly saw young Mansana galloping towards them, carry a lady before him and with two riderless horses secured to his saddle-girth. The lady was a spy from the enemy's camp; her two attendants—officers of the enemy's force—were lying wounded in the forest. The lady was promptly recognised, and Mansana's "evviva" was echoed and re-echoed by a thousand voices. The camp was immediately broken up, as it was more than ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... postponed suddenly weighed him down. Ossian, released from fairyland after three hundred years dalliance there, rode back to his own country on horseback. He saw men imprisoned under a block of marble and others trying to lift the stone. As he leaned over to aid them the girth broke. With the touch of earth "straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian became ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... back from the steepest brae in Thrums and hidden by high garden walls, to the top of which another boy's shoulders were, for apple-lovers, but one step up. Jargonelle trees grew against the house, stretching their arms round it as if to measure its girth, and it was also remarkable for several "dumb" windows with the most artful blinds painted on them. Miss Ailie's fruit was famous, but she loved her flowers best, and for long a notice board in her garden said, appealingly: ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... 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
... the shadow of the lodge, he thrust his arm in at the door, and stealthily possessed himself of the enchanted moccasins. He would have taken away Onwee's war-club too, if he could have carried it; but although he was twice the size and girth of Onwee, he had not the strength to lift it; so he borrowed a club from an old chief, who was purblind, and mistook Ko-ko for his brother who was a brave man; and raising a terrible tumult with his voice, and a great dust with his heels, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... 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 ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... master of ceremonies, tall, erect, wide of girth, serious, his face framed in white whiskers, approached the newcomers, asking with a short and haughty bow: "Whom shall ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... his years, from five to fifteen pounds under weight, and from one to three grades behind his proper school position. Very often, also, his chest is inclined to be narrow, the tip of his breastbone to be sunken, and his abdomen larger in girth than his chest. Is it possible that the mere inhaling of air directly into the lungs, even though it be imperfectly warmed, moistened, and filtered, as compared with what it would be if drawn through the elaborate "steam-coils" in the nostrils for this purpose, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... and when, after a moment's converse, Tony put his hand in his pocket, and drew forth something which he gave to Theodore, the florist darted from his shop, and rushed across the street with an agility which was hardly to be expected from one of his years and girth. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... for hot applications when our horses were sick. He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly diminish in girth. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Scorn your grim power—till we glimpse the flare Of burning Death 'mid holiness of Birth. What is our godliness and wisdom worth Against your strength embattled unaware? You are the Master, ever, everywhere, Deadly and gentle o'er the wide World's girth. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... chanced to dismount to tighten the girth of Mrs. Norton's horse, when a fresh boar broke from cover and was instantly pursued by all the others of the hunt. The subaltern ruefully accepted the lady's apologies and hurriedly swung himself up into the saddle again to follow, when ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... 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 ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... fresh-water gudgeon," replied the traveller, "that never in your life sailed farther than the Isle of Dogs, do you pretend to play a sailor, and not know the bridle of the bow-line, and the saddle of the boltsprit, and the bit for the cable, and the girth to hoist the rigging, and the whip to serve for small tackle?—There is a trick for you to find out an Abram-man, and save sixpence when he begs of you as a disbanded seaman.—Get along with you! or the constable shall be charged with the whole ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... head is rounded at the front, while its jaw is not long and straight, but bowed. It is as frolicsome as the porpoise, gambolling about in schools of from twenty to fifty or more, as if really delighted to be alive. Its average size is from ten to twenty feet long, and seven or eight feet in girth, weight from one to three tons. Blubber about three inches thick, while the head is almost all oil, so that a good rich specimen will make between one and two barrels of oil ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... weighing-machines, the owners of which cried out continually and amain,—"Come, know your weight! Come, come, know your weight to-day! Come, know your weight!"—and a multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were moved by this vociferation to sit down in the machines. I know not whether they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their standing as members of society at so much a pound; but I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the prevalence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... admire thce, master of the tides, Of the Yore-flood, of the year's fall; The recurb and the recovery of the gulfs sides, The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall; Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind; Ground of being, and granite of it: past all Grasp God, throned behind Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... of something more than average girth, always took her time in ascending to that fifth storey where she and her husband shared a tenement with the Hewett family. This afternoon her pause on each landing was longer than usual, for a yellow fog, which mocked the pale glimmer of gas-jets on the staircase, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... or ridges, over the temporal muscles, which has been mis-termed 'callosities', as they are perfectly soft, smooth, and flexible. Five of this form, measured by me, varied only from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 2 inches in height, from the heel to the crown of the head, the girth of the body from 3 feet to 3 feet 7 1/2 inches, and the extent of the outstretched arms from 7 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 6 inches; the width of the face from 10 to 13 1/4 inches. The colour and length of the hair varied in different individuals, and in different parts of the same individual; some possessed ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... demonstrated 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 ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... may help themselves freely from time to time, as occasion demands. The tribe to which he belongs lives underground, in a dome-roofed vault, and only one particular caste among the workers, known as rotunds from their expansive girth, is told off for this special duty of storing honey within their own bodies. Clinging to the top of their nest, with their round, transparent abdomens hanging down loosely, mere globules of skin enclosing the pale amber-coloured ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... with a touch of bonhomie in his voice in keeping with his ample girth, "you mustn't give way like this, my child! What's amiss? Come, sit down here and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... which, by way of reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle, robbed probably from a Mexican, had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear's skin laid over it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups attached, and in the absence of girth, a thong of hide passing around the horse's belly. The rider's dark features and keen snaky eyes were unequivocally Indian. He wore a buckskin frock, which, like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... black turret-girth Suppressed the multiplied steep chasm of fathoms, So that immediately the fields far down Lay to their heaving distance for the eyes, Satisfied with one gaze unconsciously, To pass to glory of heaven, and to know light. Here was no need of thinking:—merely sense Was found sufficient: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Constellations of mounds and animals, Effigies of unnamable things, Monsters, and hybrids unnatural, Bred of grotesque fancies; and man-forms. These last, none of your pigmies A span long in the womb, And six feet, at full growth, out of it— But bigger in chest and paunch, In the girth of his muscular shackle-bones, Round his colossal shoulders, Round his Memnonian countenance, Over the dome of his skull-crypts— From crown to foot of his body— Than grimmest of old Welsh giants, Grimmest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... them to-day I found that only seven real prisoners of war are left here, the others being suspects or possible traitors, arrested on suspicion of signalling or sending messages to the enemy. Among them is the French deserter I mentioned weeks ago. The little man is much reduced in girth, and terribly lonely among the Dutch, but he appears to grow no wiser for solitude and ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... 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 ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... measurements made by Doctor Seaver showed that the boys who did not use tobacco gained in four years one twentieth more in weight and one fourth more in girth and height than the users of tobacco. These boys were between sixteen and twenty-two years of age. It is likely that tobacco will have a more harmful ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... switch off at the holler thet heads near the trail a few miles down," Nels was saying, as he tightened his saddle-girth. "Thet holler heads into a big canyon. Once in thet, it'll be every man fer hisself. I reckon there won't be anythin' ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... not want a standard ball, So many to the pound; Whether its girth is trim and svelte Or built to take an out-size belt, I hardly seem to care at all So long as it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... variety, coarsened through much mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were good, and he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three times his size, and a tail which I never saw equalled—indeed it was a tail per se; it was of immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was of great power, and acted in a way, as far as I have been able to discover, quite original. We called it ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... far as the ridge 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
... coolly dismounted from his horse, and unbuckling the girth, proceeded to deposit the saddle, with the valise attached to it, within the hut the door of ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... He had a new bridle of polished leather with brass buckles and studs, and two white camelias in his ears. His mane was divided and curled, and each curl was tied with bows of colored ribbon. He had a girth of gold and silver round his body, and his tail was plaited with amaranth and blue velvet ribbons. He was, in fact, a little donkey to ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... north end of the Common in Old Cambridge stands the famous Washington Elm, which has been oftener visited, measured, sketched, and written up for the press, than any other tree in America. It is of goodly proportions, but, as far as girth of trunk and spread of branches constitute the claim upon our respect, there are many nobler specimens of the American elm in ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... come 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
... Cyprus (the ancient Chittim), was probably a species of cypress at that time composing the forests which ornamented a considerable portion of the surface. There are two varieties of cypress in the island: that which would have been celebrated grows upon the high mountains, and attains a girth of from seven to nine feet, the wood being highly aromatic, emitting a perfume resembling a mixture of sandal-wood and cedar; the other cypress is a dwarf variety that seldom exceeds twenty feet in height, with a maximum circumference ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the man himself seemed to have little enough sentiment about him. His shoulders were broad and his head massive. A short-cut beard concealed his chin, but his mouth was of iron and his eyes were hard and keen. He was of no more than the average stature by reason of his breadth and girth; he seemed even to fall short of it, which was not however the case. A man not easily led or controlled, a man of passions and prejudices, emphatically not a man to be ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... their front and so bring them to. Being mounted on a young full-blooded charger, fresh and strong from the stable, I bid fair to gain my point too, for I was coming up with them hand over hand. — But, in that very juncture of time, as the Lord was pleased to order it, my girth gave way, my saddle turned, and my charger fetching a ground start, threw me, saddle, holsters, and all, full ten feet over his head, and then ran off. I received no harm, God be praised for it, but recovering my ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... had a weak voice, stood slouched over and inerect, was troubled with catarrh, and knew too well what it was to have the stomach and bowels work imperfectly. Most people can not inflate the chest so as to increase its girth over two inches. By steady practice at his little pipe, he in about a year got so that he could inflate five whole inches. But now his chest is noticeably round and full, and he is as straight a man as any in a dozen. His weak voice has gone; indeed, he says he has the strongest ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... vulgarly upstairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not altogether unlike that demanded by a home-exerciser to reduce the abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they never have been advised to shine their own shoes—twenty-five times in the morning and twenty-five times just ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... a hose-pipe; and this astoundingly thirsty man drank with such rapidity that the water, with huge boats floating on it, subsided at the rate of about a foot a second, and the drinker waxed enormously in girth. The laughter grew uproarious. Rachel herself gave a quick, uncontrolled, joyous laugh, and it was as if the laugh had been drawn out of her violently unawares. Louis Fores ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... sooner out of his mouth than he dwindled down to his usual height, and spread out in girth till he exactly resembled, in appearance, what one looks like in a concave mirror—that is, he was about twice as ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... point of it south south-east half east, and the south point of Norfolk Isle north-east. The pine trees on this island are of an immense size, measuring from twenty to twenty-seven and even thirty feet in girth, and so tall that it was not easy to form any exact judgment of their height. This place affords vast numbers of cabbage trees, and amazing quantities of fish may be procured on the banks that ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... intention of sharing that privilege even with you; I merely desire you to inspect the accoutrements, to examine reins, and girth, and stirrup. I lend my hobby to no one, and it is far too mettlesome to 'carry double'. Uncle Mitchell, I feel so unhappy about that poor girl, that I must do something to comfort her, and only one avenue presents itself. I want ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... been waiting since nine in the morning, and it was now well past noon. He was a placid gentleman of curvilinear type, short of limb and large of girth. His trousers, of that morose hue termed by the country people "plum," reached to his armpits, and his hat, large and felt and weather-beaten, was only prevented from eclipsing his head by the stubborn resistance of two small, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... 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
... the party had taken their seats in the carriage he examined the saddle-girth; then, putting his foot in the stirrup, he sprang to the saddle. The animal began to curvet and nearly ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... daughters on board. The lady was almost twice the height of her better half, and the daughters promised to grow into the same proportions. The major was undoubtedly a short man, although not a small one either in girth or in his own estimation. He had a rubicund countenance, huge mustachios, and small, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... his fleet horse, who seemed to him, in his impetuous haste, to be creeping like a snail. He drove his spurs deep into the sides of the frightened animal, which almost leaped through his girth. A less expert horseman would have been unseated; but an earthquake could not have thrown this ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... ants, magpies in every meadow, and coffee-cups without handles, but of great girth, are some of the objects that soon become familiar to strangers who wander in that part of France which was at one time as much part of England as any of the counties of this island. The ants and the coffee-cups certainly give one a sense of being in a foreign land, ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... and unable to leave the towns, we shall probably find that they nearly always lose weight in hot weather. Some support is given to this idea by the following very curious facts. Very many years ago I was engaged for certain purposes in determining the weight, height, and girth of all the members of our city police force. The examination was made in April and repeated in the beginning of October. Every care was taken to avoid errors, but to my surprise I found that a large majority of the men had lost weight during the summer. The sum total of loss was enormous. ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... began to dance round the room. He caught March about his stalwart girth and tried to make him waltz; the office- boy came to the door and looked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 curse had startled ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden inferior—Oh how inferior!—to me in charms, wit, beauty, intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... girth as tight as you can, and when you have mounted hold fast to my mane and press your feet close to my neck, that you may not hinder me." The prince mounted, and in a moment they were ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... at about seven, I set off after the lost sheep. I could have no horse; all that could be mounted—we have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment—were due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush; missed it; came forth in a great oblong patch of taro ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exceptions to this rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few words from foreign languages c is soft before other vowels, though in such cases it should always be written with a ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... man in a half-apologetic tone. Then in brisker accents, "The very thing I want! I say, can you give me a bit of it? The ring of my saddle girth has fetched loose. I ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree, which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... on; there was a brief struggle, but he was no match in size or strength for his opponent, who was thick-set and of considerable girth. He fell backwards, overborne by the man's weight. His head struck on the road; dazed by the blow he loosened his clutch, and lay for a moment in semi-consciousness while the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the Zoological Society of London, was brought up in confinement since its early existence, when it was about 4 feet 6 inches high. That elephant was carefully weighed and measured before it left England, with the result, of height at shoulder, 11 feet; weight, six tons and a half. The girth of the fore-foot when the pressure of the animal's weight was exerted, was exactly half the perpendicular height of the elephant. I have seen very much larger animals in Africa, but there is nothing in India to approach the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... saint's day in the 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
... of the mighty girth—a man like a soda-water bottle, from my one glimpse of him on his feet—seemed sobered rather than stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice no more, but we could feel him straining every thew against the trap-door upon which Raffles and I stood side ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung |
