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More "Knickerbockers" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Maxwell could be found revising his morning's work, or lying at his wife's feet on the rocks, and now and then irrelevantly bringing up a knotty point in the character or action for her criticism. For these excursions Godolphin had equipped himself with a gray corduroy sack and knickerbockers, and a stick which he cut from the alder thicket; he wore russet shoes of ample tread, and very thick-ribbed stockings, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Mirah. While that thought was glancing through his mind, the boy had run forward into the shop with an energetic stamp, and setting himself about four feet from Deronda, with his hands in the pockets of his miniature knickerbockers, looked at him with a precocious air of survey. Perhaps it was chiefly with a diplomatic design to linger and ingratiate himself that Deronda patted the boy's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Leaving him with grapes and oranges, I stepped back to Pompey, and taught him how to untie parcels so as to save the string. Leaving him winding the string neatly, I went back to Julius, and gave him ginger-cakes. The dear boys grew from year to year. They outgrew their knickerbockers, and had trousers. They outgrew their jackets, and became men; and I felt that I had not lived in vain. I had conquered nature. Pompey, the little spendthrift, was the honored cashier of a savings-bank, till he ran away with the capital. Julius, the miser, became the chief ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... him to Munich to have some singing lessons. After the war came on we had to get from Munich to Naples in order to sail at all. We were told that we could take only hand luggage on the railways, but I took nine trunks and Peppo. I dressed Peppo in knickerbockers, made him brush his curls down over his ears like doughnuts, and carry a little violin-case. It took us eleven days to reach Naples. I got my trunks through purely by personal persuasion. Once at Naples, I had a frightful time getting Peppo on the boat. I declared him as hand-luggage; ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... in knickerbockers beside her, felt the animal charm of her as he had never felt it in London. She had thrust her gloves away in some hidden pocket. Her right hand grasped a stick firmly. The white showed at the knuckles. He felt through her silence that she was giving herself heart and soul to the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... said both boys; and then they joined in a fervent appeal to her not to turn their knickerbockers upside down. "'Cause all the things in your ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... elegant and stately, some ugly and squat, some plain and whitewashed, and some painted and decorated; women in silk gowns, and women in divided skirts, and women in widows' weeds, and women in knickerbockers, and women in ulsters, and women in furs, and women in crinolines, and women in tights, and women in rags; but every woman of them all in tears. The great chamber was full of a mighty babel; shouts and ululations, groans and moans, weeping and wailing and gnashing of false ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... lay open and inviting children to healthful play; but instead of marbles or leap-frog or ball, he found little boys in ragged knickerbockers huddled together on the ground, "shooting craps" with precocious avidity and quarreling over the pennies that made the pitiful wagers. He heard glib profanity rolling from the lips of children who should ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... governess disappeared, also the velvet and furs, and they began moving. There was a period when to move was a feature of their existence, each habitat showing a decrease in size and splendor. Lothar was nine, a lanky boy with his hair worn en brosse, in baggy knickerbockers and turn-over white collars, when they were up on the West Side in six half-lighted rooms, with a sloppy Hungarian servant to do all the work. That was the time when his father taught languages and his mother dancing. But he went to a private school. Captain ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... herb and bush is more or less armed with lances, swords, daggers, bayonets, knives, spikes, needles, pins, fish-hooks, hay-forks, harpoons, and every abomination in the shape of points which render a leather suit indispensable to a sportsman, even in this hot climate. My knickerbockers are made of the coarse but strong Arab cotton cloth, that I have dyed brown with the fruit of the Acacia Arabica; but after a walk of a few minutes, I am one mass of horrible points from the spear grass, for about a foot from the upper part of my gaiters; the barbed points ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... seems, indeed, that in days gone by Mr. Jerrold's father had spent many years in France and Spain, once as his country's representative near the throne. Though the father died long before the boy was out of his knickerbockers, he had left the impress of his grand manner, and Jerrold, to women of any age, was at once a courtier and a knight. But the colonel never saw how her eyes followed the tall young officer time and again. There were women who soon noted it, and one of them said it was such a yearning, longing ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... pants up, but they keep coming down." Everyone laughed as Jack stooped and once more tried to turn up the loose trousers which enveloped his slim legs. Left to themselves, they reached half way to his ankles, so Jack, who was used to knickerbockers, had carefully rolled them to his knee. The result was that most of the time one leg or the other hung dismally down its full length. His jacket was a short roundabout, something like an Eton jacket, and his shirt was soft ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... gay—an elderly man in knickerbockers and evening coat, a sort of English Court costume. The handkerchief, which was tied around his eyes in the game, has slipped, and lies about his neck.] Well, Fred, what's the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... the girl had escaped through her stepmother. In which case the business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed. Then abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again, and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged the ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... grinning row while a snap-shot is taken; now they recline again; now they scamper down to see the hydroplane come in; now they return, drop to the sand, and idly watch women bathers tripping past them toward the water. Here comes a girl in silken knickerbockers, with cuffs buttoning over her stockings like the cuffs of riding breeches. Heads turn simultaneously as she goes by. Here is a tomboy in a jockey cap; here two women wearing over their bathing suits brilliant colored satin wraps which ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... procurable"? He scarcely seems to possess ordinary intelligence. I had the honour of being inadvertently presented to him, and he asked me, should I write anything about Bayreuth, to say that he objected very much to the Englishmen who came in knickerbockers—in bicycle costume. When I mildly suggested that if they came without knickerbockers or the customary alternative he would have better reason to complain, he asserted that he and his family had a great respect for the theatre, and it shocked ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... office, suggested little more than a vigorous and somewhat radical editor of an increasingly prosperous Democratic newspaper. There was nothing of the Fringed Gentian or Yellow Violet about him. Like so many of the Knickerbockers, Bryant was an immigrant to New York; in fact, none of her adopted men of letters have represented so perfectly the inherited traits of the New England Puritan. To understand his long, and honorable public life it is ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... less because they did not assume to be of the local sort, but let their difference stand, if it would. There was nothing countrified in her dress, which was frankly conventional; the short walking-skirt had as sharp a slant in front as her dinner-gown would have had, and he wore his knickerbockers—it was then the now-faded hour of knickerbockers—with an air of going out golfing in the suburbs. They stood on ceremony in addressing the natives, who might have been Jim or Liza to each other, but were always Mr. Donald or Mrs. Moody, with the Alderlings. They said they would not like ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... string, the Sharp-eyed Sister looked over the top of her book, the Father put on his glasses, and the lid was lifted. Yes, it was a suit. A blue cloth suit, quite bright in color but of very fine material and good make. It consisted of a pair of knickerbockers and a tight jacket, and it was most extraordinary how the tailor had ever been able to put on so many buttons. The jacket was double-breasted and there were three rows down the front, a dozen in each, the size of a copper penny. There were some fancy slits in the back; buttons ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened, and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... white house with the big fuchsia, by the turn of the road over the bridge that crossed the glen. This was Philip Christian, half a year older than himself, although several inches shorter, with long yellow hair and rosy cheeks, and dressed in a velvet suit of knickerbockers. Pete worshipped him in his simple way, hung about him, fetched and carried for him, and looked up to him as a marvel of wisdom and goodness ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... pay particular attention to the other of the two individuals in question. He beheld a stumpy and pompous-looking personage, flushed in the face, with a moth-eaten grey beard and shifty grey eyes, clothed in a flannel shirt, tweed knickerbockers, brown stockings, white spats and shoes. Such was the Commissioner's invariable get-up, save that in winter he wore a cap instead of a panama. He was smoking a briar pipe and looking blatantly British, as if he had just spent an unwashed night in a ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... well gotten up according to their idea of proper garb for outdoor people. The man wore knickerbockers with gold stockings, riding habit and stock, the girl a beautifully tailored, fine-textured lady's riding habit. Both were immediately conscious of the guide's stare, and Virginia was aware of a distinct embarrassment. Something, somewhere, had evidently ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... carried this suit with me to Bernard Shaw's (on a week-end visit), I was not called upon to wear it, for he met me in snuff-colored knickerbockers and did not change to any other suit during my stay. Sunday dinner at Conan Doyle's was a midday meal, and Barrie and Hardy and other of my literary friends I met at teas or luncheons. I took my newly-acquired uniform to Paris but as my meetings with my French friends were either ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of hers, Derry hopping on one foot, twisting, and leaping; Jim leaning affectionately against her, and holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons! What man would not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in faded galatea now, soon to be introduced to linen knickerbockers, busy with their first toiling capitals now, some day to be growling Latin verbs. They would be interested in the Zoo this winter, and then in skating, and then in football—Warren loved football. He had thrown ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... whom she appealed was a rotund, florid old gentleman, with the briefest, most wiry of sandy whiskers upon his chops, a jolly double chin, a sunburned nose, kindly blue eyes forever opened in mild wonder (and a bit bleared by the wind), the fat figure clad in broadly checked tweed knickerbockers and a rakish cap to match, like the mad tourists who sometimes strayed our way. 'Twas this complacent, benevolent Deity that she made haste to interrogate in my behalf, unabashed by the spats and binocular, the corpulent ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... would probably have admitted that there was but one man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and writers of equal skill in narrative, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... over when there came a sudden shout away to the right. Turning my head as I ran, I saw through the thin mist a figure in knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket vaulting over the low gate that separated the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... in expression; his tall figure was curiously dressed in a fashion which yet did not seem quite unfamiliar to the little girl—a sort of doublet or jacket of rich crimson velvet, with lace at the collar and cuffs, short trousers fastened in at the knees, "very like Ralph's knickerbockers," said Sylvia to herself, long pointed-toed shoes, like canoes, and on the head a little cap edged with gold, half coronet, half smoking cap, it seemed to her. Where had she ever seen this old-world figure before? She gazed ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... his eyes blue and wide and clear, his face broad and good-humoured. He was something of a small dandy, too, as the two porters and the two trunks might have explained. The cut of his coat, the knot in his cravat, the polish on his boots, the set of his knickerbockers, were always matters of deep concern to him. But this did not interfere with his friendship with Billy Topsail, the outport boy. That friendship had been formed in times of peril and hardship, ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... displaying the cords of his throat to advantage. He was well bronzed by the sun, and the heavy crop of hair, on which he wore a visorless round cap, was crisp and of a dull gold color. He really was a good-looking young man, and in his knickerbockers and golf stockings Janice thought he seemed very ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... as she liked them, and when he next stole into the room in his stocking soles to look at her, he thought she was asleep. But she was not. I dare say she saw at that moment Gavin in his first frock, and Gavin in knickerbockers, and Gavin as he used to walk into the Glasgow room from college, all still as real to her as the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by a donkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in the hills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode down the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master and announced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small, foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily deprived ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... fellow in knickerbockers, by name Harry Rawdon, the son of an officer in the English army, had attained a peculiar kind of notoriety in the school, by catching flies ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... city youth, "you did bore it into him fine! And he didn't dare put a hand on you, either. That was queer, for, my word! he's strong as Sandow. He handled me as easy as if I wasn't out of knickerbockers." ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... about the Dragon—I'll do it. But I wish you would put another character into the piece. It is for Clinton. He says he will act with us. He says he can do anything if it is a leading part. He has got black velvet knickerbockers and scarlet stockings, and he can have the tunic and cloak I wore last year, and the flap hat; and you must lend him your white ostrich feather. Make him some kind of a grandee. If you can't, he must be the Prince, and Charles can do some of the Travellers. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... into the brisk sunshine of his living-room, where he found breakfast waiting for him and Percy, gorgeous in white kid knickerbockers, smoking in ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... doll made of cloth, in quite a perfect imitation of a real woodchuck. It was stuffed with something soft to make it round and fat, and its eyes were two glass beads sewn upon the face. A big boy woodchuck wore knickerbockers and a Tam o' Shanter cap and rolled a hoop; and there were several smaller boy and girl woodchucks, dressed quite as absurdly, who followed after their mother ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... after a whole week had passed I was still rather like myself. He had such a cheery way of whistling, she had told me, it had always brightened her at her work to hear him whistling, and when he whistled he stood with his legs apart, and his hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers. I decided to trust to this, so one day after I had learned his whistle (every boy of enterprise invents a whistle of his own) from boys who had been his comrades, I secretly put on a suit of his clothes, dark grey they were, with little spots, and they fitted me ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the south bank of the Charles, when the sun was gilding the dome of the State House, when the bridges were beginning to deck themselves with necklaces of lights. They had known her since they wore knickerbockers; and they shared many interests and friends in common; they talked the same language. Latimer could talk to her only in letters, for with her he shared no friends or interests, and he was forced to choose between telling her of his lawsuits and his efforts in ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... had come. Greystock brought with him two guns, two fishing-rods, a man-servant, and a huge hamper from Fortnum and Mason's. Arthur Herriot, whom the attorneys had not yet loved, brought some very thick boots, a pair of knickerbockers, together with Stone and Toddy's "Digest of the Common Law." The best of the legal profession consists in this;—that when you get fairly at work you may give over working. An aspirant must learn ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... of today. Fenimore Cooper filled his romances, not with the people about him, but with the Indians beyond the sky-line, and made them half-fabulous to boot. Irving told fairy tales about the forgotten Knickerbockers; Hawthorne turned backward to the Puritans of Plymouth Rock; Longfellow to the Acadians and the prehistoric Indians; Emerson took flight from earth altogether; even Poe sought refuge in a land of fantasy. It was only the frank second-raters—e.g., Whittier and Lowell—who ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... a girl on the sofa facing the fireplace. Before her was a tea wagon and she was at present pouring a cup for a slightly stiff person in knickerbockers. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... strolled the streets, but we did disturb the chat or gossip of two delightful, apple cheeked old ladies in white caps, who became dumb with astonishment at the sight of two foreigners who walked about gazing up at the roofs and windows of the houses, and at the mynheer in knickerbockers who was always looking about him and writing ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... bridegroom wore a red swallow tailed coat, with a green silk sash tied in front. He had black knickerbockers and white woollen socks, and black dressing slippers, and he carried ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... expression or utter blankness of expression! Purely animal the most of that legion of despair and desperation looked, and sallow and sickly of complexion. They were a blot on the fresh sunshine. How hideous their coarse garb of pied jackets branded with the broad arrow, their knickerbockers and clumsy shoes! Wistfully they moved along, hardly daring to glance at me, through fear of the turnkeys with loaded rifles marching at their sides. I almost felt that, if I had the power, I would demand their release, as did the Knight of La Mancha that of the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... and caught hold of the shaggy fellow by the shoulder. A crack, a rip, and the whole silly disguise came away in one piece, fur suit, teeth, claws, and green glass eyes. The terrible King of the Bad Dreams was just a big naughty boy in knickerbockers who kicked and cried and begged to be let go! The children had to laugh, they could not help it, to hear him blubber and whine and promise over and over again that he'd never, no, never frighten ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... they did not seem at all disturbed at seeing her, but came up and ranged themselves in a row before her and bowed to the ground. They were all dressed alike in green knickerbockers and tunics, edged with scarlet, and tiny green caps, and one, the handsomest of the lot, had a beautiful red waving feather at one side of his. They stood and looked at Anne and smiled, and Anne, not at all frightened now, but pleased, smiled back at them. ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... many races the access of puberty leads to the adoption of clothing and to a refinement of dress and personal adornment. A relic of this remains, as Dr. Schurtz points out, in the leaving off of knickerbockers and the adoption of "long dresses," by the young people in our civilized ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... burning, painted head; eyes which spread out, astonished at the sight of me, and peered and winked and grinned from the big wrinkles above the gaiters of Zouaves, from the red breeches of the gendarmes, the knickerbockers of the cyclists, the white ducks of sergents de ville, and the knees of the boulevardiers, bagged with sitting cross-legged at the little tables. I could not escape these eyes;—how scornfully they twinkled at me from the spurred and ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... and trash from his clothes, and then turned to the children with a good-humored smile. He was not above four inches high. He had on a dress-coat. Drusilla afterward described it as a claw-hammer coat, velveteen knickerbockers, and silver buckles on his shoes. His hat was shaped like a thimble, and he had a tiny feather stuck in the ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... who was next to him, wore brown knickerbockers and long stockings, a red and blue plaid, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... have been most curious to English eyes. They wore wide straw hats, with a white scarf wound round the top to keep off the heat. Their dresses were very short, and made of brown holland, with a garibaldi of blue-coloured flannel. They wore red flannel knickerbockers, and gaiters coming up above the knee, of a very soft, flexible leather, made of deers' skin. These gaiters were an absolute necessity, for the place literally swarmed with snakes, and they constantly found them in the garden when going out to gather ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... weren't like it, we wouldn't be any good as officers. This Artillery School had a violent way of sifting out a man's moral worth; you hadn't much conceit left by the end of it. I had not felt myself so paltry since the day when I was left at my first boarding-school in knickerbockers. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... and casually looking over it saw a dark figure lying therein. The grave was half in the shadow of the church, half lit by the moon, so that I could not see very distinctly, but as I bent over it I thought I recognised—with a sudden start of horror—the knickerbockers of my ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... but stood three inches taller, and his brow was fuller and loftier. His expression in repose appeared frank and receptive; but to-day his face wore a look half anxious, half ferocious. He was clad in tweed knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket, of different pattern but similar material. His tie was light blue and fastened with a gold pin modelled in the shape of a hunting-horn. He bore no mark of ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... said every one. But no one meant the little French boy, with the velvety short knickerbockers and ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... heart of the German sportsman. The guns all looked like the chorus in the Freischutz, and I expected them to break at any moment into the "Huntsmen's Chorus." Young Vieweg was greatly pained at my unorthodox costume, for I wore ordinary homespun knickerbockers, and sported neither a green Tyrolese hat with a blackcock's tail in it, nor high boots; my gun had no green sling attached to it, nor did I carry a game-bag covered with green tassels, all of which, it appeared, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... water side of the town. Just as the train pulled out he jerked up his pole, flinging a perch high in air and catching it with a yell of delight. Archie sighed with relief as the fisherman, now standing erect to unhook the perch, turned toward them. It was the Governor, rakishly trigged out in knickerbockers, with a cap smartly tilted over one ear and a scarf snapping about his face in ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... and promised that he would come over that evening and hear all about it. Then Frank took his way to Jermyn Street, and went with Mr. Goodenough to Silver's, where an outfit suited for the climate of Central Africa was ordered. The clothes were simple. Shirts made of thin soft flannel, knickerbockers and Norfolk jackets of tough New Zealand flax, with ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... my goodness! won't mother be in a fuss! She pays us periodical visits to set us all straight. Isn't she a cure, Hilda? I'm always expecting to see her walk in rigged out in a sporting costume—knickerbockers and all. She wears a greatcoat in ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... Ellen's hat seemed larger than ever, and was ornate with violent-colored flowers. Her face was hidden behind a violet veil, and she wore a white feather boa, fragments of which reposed upon the lift man's shoulder and little Alfred's knickerbockers. Her dress was of black velveteen, fitting a little tightly over her corsets, and showing several imperfectly removed stains and creases. She wore tan shoes, one of which was down at the heel, and primrose-colored gloves. Alfred wore his usual black Sunday suit, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Chief Constable of Sussex, who was seated near him. Captain Stanhill was a short stout man, with a round, fresh-coloured face, and short sturdy legs and arms. He wore a tweed coat of the kind known to tailors as "a sporting lounge," and his little legs were encased in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, which were spattered with mud, as though he had ridden some distance that morning. He was a very different type from Superintendent Merrington—a gentleman by birth and education, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... been much above twenty years of age. I have never seen any human being who appeared to be in such a pitiable fright, for his teeth were visibly chattering and he was shaking in every limb. He was dressed like a gentleman, in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap upon his head. We watched him staring round with frightened eyes. Then he laid the candle-end upon the table and disappeared from our view into one of the corners. He returned with a large book, one of the log-books which formed a line upon the shelves. Leaning on the table ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... picking wild flowers from one of them? She looks just as though she were posing for a picture for an illustrated paper. She couldn't pick flowers from a barbed-wire fence, could she? And there would probably be a tramp along the road somewhere to frighten her; and see—the chap in knickerbockers farther down the road leaning on the stile. I am sure he is waiting for her; and here comes a coach," he ran on. "Don't the red wheels look well against the hedges? It's a pretty little country, England, isn't it?—like a private ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... Biddy questioned, without answering. "Were they wearing light tweed knickerbockers ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... now," continued the Imp; and thrusting a hand into the pocket of his knickerbockers he drew forth six inches or so of slimy worm and held it out to me upon his ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... "He's in knickerbockers," said the other, doubtfully. "What does that mean? Ah, I see! They've got the broad arrow on them, and he is pointing to a jail. It's all ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... worse, a ring at the front-door bell followed almost immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing appearance in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers who apologetically but firmly insisted on playing his ball where it lay, and, what with the shock of the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon's session had to be classed as a complete ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... a weed and before I knew it he was five years old. Until he began to walk and talk I didn't think of him as a possible man. He didn't seem like anything in particular. He was just soft and round and warm. But when he began to wear knickerbockers he set me to thinking hard. He wasn't going to remain always a baby; he was going to grow into a boy and then a young man and before I knew it he would be facing the very same problem that now confronted me. And that problem was ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... divested of the priest's dress, revealing himself clothed in a suit of brown tweed—hunting-coat, knickerbockers, stockings, laced boots, etc. He then took from his coat pocket a travelling-cap with a visor, which he put upon ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... past—the first soul I had seen on the road that morning. He was a man with the loose-knit air of a shop assistant, badly got up in a rather loud and obtrusive tourist suit of brown homespun, with baggy knickerbockers and thin thread stockings. I judged him a gentleman on the cheap at sight. "Very Stylish; this Suit Complete, only thirty-seven and sixpence!" The landlady glanced out at him with a friendly nod. He turned and smiled at her, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... gold. They were now both in a state of unprecedented physical fitness. And such skirts as Ann Veronica had had when she entered the valley of Saas were safely packed away in the hotel, and she wore a leather belt and loose knickerbockers and puttees—a costume that suited the fine, long lines of her limbs far better than any feminine walking-dress could do. Her complexion had resisted the snow-glare wonderfully; her skin had only deepened its ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... to dance. There was a particularly painstaking little boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited her actions to her words by the uplifting ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... a corner of the road which was overshaded by a huge chestnut-tree, he suddenly came face to face with the Reverend Putwood Leveson, who, squatted on the hank by the roadside, with his grand-pianoforte legs well exposed to view in tight brown knickerbockers and grey worsted stockings, was bending perspiringly over his recumbent bicycle, mending something which had, as ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to the right and then to the left, and finally, with a roar of laughter, over the whole table. In his outward appearance, too, he sought to create a sensation. He was not dressed, he was costumed. He wore long stockings, knickerbockers and a tight-fitting jacket, and when he stood up, tried to produce effects with his calves, spread his legs wide apart as if, like the Colossus of Rhodes, ships were to pass beneath, and affected sporting and athletic attitudes generally. He was accompanied ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... by the St. Ledger sisters who, fluttering uncertainly upon the outermost rim of the circle immediately surrounding society's innermost shrine, realized that the linking of the Manton name with the newer name of St. Ledger, would prove an open sesame to the half-closed doors of the Knickerbockers. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Paris, which was useful, for they came back another year for a longer stay, the general character of which in Pemberton's memory to-day mixes pitiably and confusedly with that of the first. He sees Morgan's shabby knickerbockers—the everlasting pair that didn't match his blouse and that as he grew longer could only grow faded. He remembers the particular holes in his three or four pair ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... hopeful. You fellows, with your Tam o' Shanters and aggressive neckties and knickerbockers and calves, would frighten the devil. I'm shy myself. If she's natural, then we ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... that a namesake of mine was the contractor for the Thames Embankment, which was built when I was in knickerbockers. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... impetuous, and Mort is always lecturing me for it, and it's always my way to rush head-first into anything that comes along, and here I've been making love, in the regular, orthodox fashion, to a girl I've known ever since I wore knickerbockers, and playing propriety and all that to my prospective father-in-law; and now see Mort! the most precise, deliberate fellow you ever saw, never says or does anything that isn't exactly suited to the occasion, you know; and here he goes and tumbles head over heels in love with a pretty girl ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Fernleigh. Apparently some prosaic adviser had represented to the Archbishop that his usual costume would make him undesirably conspicuous in America, for during his tour of this country the Primate of all England abandoned the picturesque every-day dress of an English bishop, with its knickerbockers and gaiters, in favor of the international hideousness of pantaloons. At the time of the photograph Bishop Potter was wearing leggings, having just returned from riding, so that the two bishops appeared to ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Year's Day the betes of her menagerie received two yards of velvet, to make knickerbockers to be worn at her receptions; this custom was observed up to the last year of the existence of her salon. Her receptions were among the first of the kind in France. Like the majority of salon leaders, she was an authoress of no mean ability. Her novels were widely read at the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... points in her mind. She looked at them as a mother's eyes rest fondly on the shining faces, the well-brushed hair, the clean pinafores of her brood. And her heart swelled with pride. They lay on their tables, the artful knickerbockers, the gleaming petticoats, the pink and blue pajamas, the bifurcated skirts. Emma McChesney ran one hand lightly over the navy blue ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... were white. We should say now they looked very queer, and unmistakably Dutch. You sometimes see this attire among the new immigrants. But there were no little Fauntleroy boys at that period with their velvet jackets and knickerbockers, flowing ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... to put yourself into knickerbockers and a golfing attitude and be photographed. Judging by their present contents, there is not a paper in the country that would not be glad to print the picture, and then you could show it to the lady ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... men in corduroys, with straps below their knees, and a boy in flannel shorts, all working seven hours and a half per day for a week, can plant five thousand potatoes on an acre of land, how many girls in knickerbockers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... of her half-mourning and accompanying him through a cyclonic diplomatic career that carried them to Japan, China, Persia; to Berlin, Paris, and London. In these imaginings Monica appeared in pongee and a sun-hat riding an elephant, in pearls and satin receiving royalty, in tweed knickerbockers and a woollen jersey coasting around the hairpin ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... times in this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and 'comes a man to-day,' as my little Jim used to say. When they're cooking something at home that he likes. When the 'sandy-blight' or measles breaks out amongst the children, or the teacher or his wife falls dangerously ill—or dies, it doesn't matter which—'and there ain't no ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... beheld a boy of about his own age and size in a pair of worn corduroy knickerbockers and a guernsey, who was regarding him from fierce blue eyes under a ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... attention afterwards. It wasn't fair. If Johnny married and had a baby it wouldn't get in his way, only in its mamma's. It was a handicap, like your frock (however short it was) when you were climbing. You had got round that by taking it off and climbing in knickerbockers, but you couldn't get round a baby. And Jane wanted the ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the High Priest at the door of the Sanctum Sanctorum. Then Martin mounted his horse, and rode away; and presently the tribesman, Jerry, brought a buggy and pair to the front door. Montgomery and Folkestone—the latter in knickerbockers—took their seats in the buggy, and whirled away down the horse-paddock fence. Then all was still, save for the faint pling-plong of a piano in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... moorhen. Nevertheless some ambitious young gentleman of aesthetic tastes might do worse than get himself up in this bird's livery. An open coat of olive-brown silk, with an oblique white band at the side; waistcoat or cummerbund, and knickerbockers, slaty grey; stockings and shoes of olive green; and, for a touch of bright colour, an orange and scarlet tie. It would be pleasant to meet him in Piccadilly. But he would never, never be able to get that quaint pretty carriage. The "Buzzard ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... stopped a four-wheeler, and the ancient driver looked round from his box with morose scorn at our efforts to get her in. Twice during the drive I felt her collapse on my shoulder in a half faint. Facing us, the youth in knickerbockers remained as mute as a fish, and, till he jumped out with the latch-key, sat more still than I would ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Pipchin's charge;" and, similarly, the obscure writer of these papers was once under Miss Leech's. Her school supplied the originals of all the little boys, whether greedy or gracious, grave or gay, on foot or on pony-back, in knickerbockers or in nightshirts, who figure so frequently in Punch between 1850 and 1864; and one of the pleasantest recollections of those distant days is the kindness with which the great artist used to receive us when, as ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... said Hugh, as a neighboring boy, a city boarder, came through the gate, attired in base-ball cap and knickerbockers, "we can't go to Duck Inlet to-day. Father says the girls must have a good time, too, and that we must devote one day ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... routed her from her sewing with the request: "Go see if you can be mother, sister, and friend to Miss Sally, Joanna—there's an angel!" Which intimate form of address may be comprehended if it is added that Joanna had been in the Burnside family since Jarvis himself was a small lad in knickerbockers—and the good woman's especial pride—and that therefore a warm friendship ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... master of ceremonies of her regular court, always offering the use of a telescope and accepting that of a cigar, the other was a personage I had not yet encountered, a small pale youth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the glued points of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted and sustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and for something of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of the motive I felt in the stare he fixed on ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... filled his pipe, assuming, as he did so, a judicial aspect. I filled mine, and our young friend followed suit by taking a silver cigarette-case from his pocket, and striking a match on the leg of his khaki knickerbockers with a ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... years of age, five feet nine or ten inches high, fair complexion rather sunburnt, blue eyes, straight nose, fair hair, tooth-brush moustache, clean-cut features, well-shaped hands and feet, white, even teeth. Was attired in grey Norfolk or sporting lounge jacket, knickerbockers and stockings to match, with soft grey hat of same material. Wore a gold signet-ring on little finger of left hand. Distinguishing marks, a small star-shaped scar on left cheek, slightly drags left foot in walking. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... we let him play with us sometimes, because his father is dead, and you must not be unkind to orphans, even if their mothers are alive. Albert is always very tidy. He wears frilly collars and velvet knickerbockers. I can't think how he can ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... Lady Jane lavished all her care, but did not squander the wealth of her affection. Perhaps her capacity for loving had died with her husband. She had been proud and fond of him, but she was not proud of the little boy in velvet knickerbockers, whose good looks were his only merit, and who was continually being guilty of some new piece of mischief; laming ponies, smashing orchids, glass, china, and generally disturbing the perfect order which was Briarwood's ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the House of Commons, or the more privileged seats "under the Gallery," from my days of knickerbockers, I often heard Palmerston speak. I remember his abrupt, jerky, rather "bow-wow"-like style, full of "hums" and "hahs"; and the sort of good-tempered but unyielding banter with which he fobbed off an inconvenient enquiry, or repressed ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... she vitalize the infants who had encountered an epidemic on the prairie frontier and had succumbed more than three score years ago. If she thought of any child at all, she thought doubtless of little Albert (now romping about in his first tweed knickerbockers), who would not die for many years, perhaps, and who was like enough to be buried in ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... socks; I like mine of thick wool. A khaki-colored shirt should be worn, or, as a better substitute, a khaki jacket with many pockets. Very light underclothes are good. If one's knees and legs are unfortunately tender, knickerbockers with long stockings and leggings should be worn; ordinary trousers tend to bind the knee. Better still, if one's legs will stand the exposure, are shorts, not coming down to the knee. A kilt would probably be best of all. Kermit ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... be as well to mention that folk assured me I was the first English-speaking lady ever seen at Mende. A short time before no little excitement had been created by the appearance of six young Englishmen in knickerbockers, footing it with knapsack on shoulder. But lady- tourists from the other side of La Manche? Never! Be this as it may, it is as well for my country-women, if any follow me hither, to avoid insular eccentricities of dress. The best plan, before exploring ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... reached the mature age of three and was about to discard petticoats for the more manly raiment of knickerbockers. The mother had determined to make the occasion a memorable one. The breakfast table was laden with good things when the newly breeched infant was led into ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... objections to it had I been the stockbroker. The house was one of a row, though a goodly row, and an army-crammer had established himself next door. There is a type of such institutions in the suburbs; the youths go about in knickerbockers, smoking pipes, except on Saturday nights, when they lead each other home from the last train. It was none of our business to spy upon these boys, but their manners and customs fell within the field of observation. And we did ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... came out strong on these occasions, with ''ampers of 'am-sandwiches, bottled porter and so on, don't you know?' all in fine style. Even the stout doctor donned his knickerbockers and grey hose, unfurled his Japanese umbrella, and, with a pretty niece on either arm, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... cigarette. Presently a small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached—the flowerbeds, the garden benches, the trains of the ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Chinese Shan officers on horseback, dressed in Chinese fashion, and immediately behind them were six soldiers on foot, who I saw were Burmese or Burmese Shans. They were smart men, clad in loose jerseys and knickerbockers, with sun-hats and bare legs, and they marched like soldiers. Cartridge-belts were over their left shoulders, and Martini-Henry rifles, carried muzzle foremost, on their right. I took particular note of them because they were stepping in admirable order, and, though small of stature, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... to the day, and the labor involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them into knickerbockers. Bear's grease had turned his ordinary curling brown hair into a damp, shining mass that dripped in tiny rills, from time to time, down on his coat collar, but Hi was happy. Beau Brummel, at the height of his sartorial fame, never achieved a ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... the earl carelessly and if we decide for you to gallopp by the royal viacle you must be mesured for some plush knickerbockers at once. ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... concerning a very simple and harmless matter. For a time it seemed as though the "Ayes" would win; but eventually appearances carried the day, and women still use side saddles when on horseback, though the knickerbockers and short skirts (only far shorter) I advocated for rough country riding are now constantly worn by the many female equestrians who within the last couple of years ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Pontresina looked decidedly sleepy and misty at five o'clock on an August morning, when two sturdy British holiday-seekers, in knickerbockers and regular Alpine climbing rig, sat drinking their parting cup of coffee in the salle-a-manger, before starting to make the ascent of the Piz Margatsch, one of the tallest and by far the most difficult among the peaks of the Bernina range. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... if it is in the afternoon, you may see an artist there painting water-colors of the scenery. Even if he were not painting, you could not help knowing him for an artist, because he wears a black velvet jacket and knickerbockers, and a soft slouch hat, and has a curled black mustache and pointed beard; there is no mistaking him; and at a given moment, after he has been working long enough, he puts above his sketch the sign, "For Sale," as artists always do, and then, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the heroine, "spare my aunt and I will give you all my jewels." The convict, for such it is, staggers back. "Lucy!" he cries. "Harold!" she gasps. The aunt says nothing, for she has swooned. At this point the story stops to explain how Harold came to be in knickerbockers. He had either been falsely accused or else he had been a solicitor. Anyhow, he had by this time more than paid for his folly, and Lucy still loved him. "Get in," she says, and drives him home. Next day he leaves ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... of shaking himself to let the sand sift down through the legs of his knickerbockers. "But ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... fifty of them, picked; all attired in black stockings, in dark-blue knickerbockers, and in tunics that reached to the knee, red-belted and trimmed with red. Stunning, he called them; so much so that they fair took ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... salon, with his usual unceremoniousness, and beheld an odd spectacle. The prim chairs had been piled on the couch by the wall, the table pushed into a corner, and on the vacant space, Elodie, in her old dancer's practising kit, bodice and knickerbockers, once loose but now skin tight to grotesqueness, and Andrew in under vest and old grey flannels, were perspiringly engaged with pith balls in the elementary art of the juggler. Elodie, on beholding him, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... to me seem the skies at home. Not lightly do I say it, for I have known the toil of rough-hewing it on the pioneer line that turns men's hair gray; but I have seen also the reward of the toil. New York is the youngest of the world's great cities, barely yet out of knickerbockers. It may be that our century will yet see it as the greatest of them all. The task that is set it, the problem it has to solve and which it may not shirk, is the problem of civilization, of human progress, of a people's fitness for self-government, that is on trial ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... jaunting-car, on which ten people can ride, sitting back to back, isolated by the pile of luggage between. There was but one tourist for the Lakes besides themselves, a large, military-looking young man, with muttonchop whiskers and an eye-glass, a knapsack and knickerbockers. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... apparent. The hedges were bright with the pure flowers of the eglantine. In the shade of the bronze-leaved oak-trees there were rows of little tables. At one of these tables were seated three bicyclists: a painted woman, in knickerbockers, with black socks: and two men in flannels, who were stupefied by the heat, and every now and then gave out growls and grunts as though they ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... none so ill. Moreover, he had youth on his side and a sound chest, while nature had not given him a pair of well-formed calves for nothing; so that he faced the steep hillsides or got over the rough ground with comparative ease, rejoicing the while in the unwonted freedom of knickerbockers. It was Sir Hugh, with his bulky habit of body, who got blown now and again; as for Captain Waveney, he was a pretty tough subject and wiry. So they fought bravely on, to atone for the inhuman detention ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... which had once been black, but now, from stress of wear and weather, had turned a sickly green. From the scrimpy legs of the knickerbockers his knees shone bare and brown. Out of the sleeves, that reached only half-way below the elbows, his arms stuck freely, showing a broad band of untanned wrist between the button-less cuffs and the chubby, sunburnt hand. A pair of sadly-scuffed shoes, which originally had ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... with Irving in the Salmagundi essays and whose historical novels, such as The Dutchman's Fireside (1831), are still mildly interesting. [Footnote: Irving, Cooper and Bryant are sometimes classed among the Knickerbockers; but the work of these major writers is national rather than local or sectional, and will be ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... as fresh a pair of morning children as anyone could wish to see, with rosy cheeks, and smooth hair, and clean print frocks—for Olly was still in frocks—though when the winter came mother said she was going to put him into knickerbockers. ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... susceptibility, roused by those slighting remarks from Captain Thorn's correspondence, to which Mr. Irving as an historian gives currency, has somewhat blinded my excellent friend to the tone of banter, so characteristic of the chronicler of the Knickerbockers, in which all these particulars are given, more as traits of the character of the stern old sea-captain, with his hearty contempt for land-lubbers and literary clerks, than as a dependable account of the persons on board his ship, some of whom might have been, and as we see by the present ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... Berlin. These army corps commanders were not at all bashful about the use of the power thus transferred to them. Some of them even prescribed the length of the dresses to be worn by the women; and many women, having followed the German sport custom of wearing knickerbockers in the winter sports resorts of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Generalkommando, or Headquarters for Bavaria issued in January, 1917, the following order: "The appearance of many women in Garmisch-Partenkirchen has excited lively anger and indignation ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit of the night still upon him. "I've been having adventures." He laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and stockings. "I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and tried to find my way back alone, and ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that sudden changes were prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide, reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries, sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil principles and fought hard in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... that we will walk to church together to-morrow, but come down to breakfast in knickerbockers or something to put them off, and I'll do the same—I mean I'll dress as if I were going to golf. We can turn into Christians later. If we don't—dress like that, I mean—they'll guess and all want to come to ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... foot, twisting, and leaping; Jim leaning affectionately against her, and holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons! What man would not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in faded galatea now, soon to be introduced to linen knickerbockers, busy with their first toiling capitals now, some day to be growling Latin verbs. They would be interested in the Zoo this winter, and then in skating, and then in football—Warren loved football. He had ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... turn. Westby had got himself up for the occasion, in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and leggings; he was always scrupulous about appearing in costumes that were extravagantly correct. He saw Irving and ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... of the road which was overshaded by a huge chestnut-tree, he suddenly came face to face with the Reverend Putwood Leveson, who, squatted on the hank by the roadside, with his grand-pianoforte legs well exposed to view in tight brown knickerbockers and grey worsted stockings, was bending perspiringly over his recumbent bicycle, mending something which had, as ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... all, that the girl had escaped through her stepmother. In which case the business might be hushed up yet, and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely postponed. Then abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again, and he reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a gusty frenzy with a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down again with a concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged the arms ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... morning's work, or lying at his wife's feet on the rocks, and now and then irrelevantly bringing up a knotty point in the character or action for her criticism. For these excursions Godolphin had equipped himself with a gray corduroy sack and knickerbockers, and a stick which he cut from the alder thicket; he wore russet shoes of ample tread, and very thick-ribbed stockings, which ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of the French windows under the verandah opened, and a man in a panama hat, Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, came out and raised his hat as he ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... swung over one shoulder like a sack, and under the other arm a wooden cage containing a grey squirrel. It was a December night in London, and the Southern lad had nothing to shelter his little body from the Northern cold but his short velveteen jacket, red waistcoat, and knickerbockers. He was going home after a long day in Chelsea, and, conscious of something fantastic in his appearance, and of doubtful legality in his calling, he was dipping into side streets in order to escape the laughter of the London boys and the attentions ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... hand. Such a comparison would have been an insult to the moorhen. Nevertheless some ambitious young gentleman of aesthetic tastes might do worse than get himself up in this bird's livery. An open coat of olive-brown silk, with an oblique white band at the side; waistcoat or cummerbund, and knickerbockers, slaty grey; stockings and shoes of olive green; and, for a touch of bright colour, an orange and scarlet tie. It would be pleasant to meet him in Piccadilly. But he would never, never be able to get that quaint pretty carriage. The "Buzzard lope" and the crane's stately stride are ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... above twenty years of age. I have never seen any human being who appeared to be in such a pitiable fright, for his teeth were visibly chattering and he was shaking in every limb. He was dressed like a gentleman, in Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with a cloth cap upon his head. We watched him staring round with frightened eyes. Then he laid the candle-end upon the table and disappeared from our view into one of the corners. He returned with ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that thought was glancing through his mind, the boy had run forward into the shop with an energetic stamp, and setting himself about four feet from Deronda, with his hands in the pockets of his miniature knickerbockers, looked at him with a precocious air of survey. Perhaps it was chiefly with a diplomatic design to linger and ingratiate himself that Deronda patted the boy's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... apparently well-to-do. The "lower orders" were represented by a bright fringe of coolies and Kafirs, sleek, grinning and as fat as ortolans, especially the babies. Most of the Kafirs were dressed in snow-white knickerbockers and shirts bordered by gay bands of color, with fillets of scarlet ribbon tied round their heads, while as for the coolies, they shone out like a shifting bed of tulips, so bright were the women's chuddahs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... strong on these occasions, with ''ampers of 'am-sandwiches, bottled porter and so on, don't you know?' all in fine style. Even the stout doctor donned his knickerbockers and grey hose, unfurled his Japanese umbrella, and, with a pretty niece on either arm, disported himself like ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the bridge that crossed the glen. This was Philip Christian, half a year older than himself, although several inches shorter, with long yellow hair and rosy cheeks, and dressed in a velvet suit of knickerbockers. Pete worshipped him in his simple way, hung about him, fetched and carried for him, and looked up to him as a marvel of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... stand for New France. They have vanished as completely as the Indian. In Detroit, in St. Louis, French ancestry can be traced in families of high position and honorable lineage. Such families are to those cities what the Knickerbockers are to New York. They give a gracious flavor to society; they are a link between the dim and heroic past and the dashing, eager, practical present; they add a dreamy fascination to the social landscape, like the lingering haze of morning illumined ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... passed, elaborately unconscious of the attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-knobbed stick; and sometimes, looking as though he had come from a day's shooting, he strolled in knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and a tweed hat on the back of his head. The sun shone on the blue sea, and the blue sea ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... slim, shapely fellow, with laughing black eyes and thick black curls. Early in the season as it was, he was barefooted. His attire consisted of a faded, gingham shirt and a scanty pair of corduroy knickerbockers; but he wore it with such an unconscious air of purple and fine linen that he seemed to be much better ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a boy, two years older than myself. He wore a grey Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, but the peculiarity of his dress was a white felt hat of enormous size, which, being soiled and turned down in the brim, and having a hole in the crown with a crop of his brown hair sticking through it, gave him the appearance of a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... after him. His mother, who was an extravagant woman on the emotional and spiritual plane, made the poor little boy wear his hair curled in long ringlets down his back, and clad him in a fancy costume of black velvet, with knickerbockers and black silk stockings; he was homely of face, and looked "soft," as normal boys would say. But his parents were determined to make an ideal dream-child of him, and, of course, he had to submit. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the Battery a few days ago, one of the park-keepers (himself looking in his bright new uniform somewhat like a blue-jay) expressed his conviction that, next spring, that time-honored pleasure-garden of the old Knickerbockers will be a paradise for song-birds such as it has not been since the original Swedish Nightingale warbled her "woodnotes wild" there a score of years ago, more or less. The sea-gulls, he thought (will Judge HILTON have the goodness to provide these park officers with manuals of ornithology?), ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... base their demand upon their descent from the original Dutch settlers, and style themselves "the old Knickerbockers." The majority of these are very wealthy, and have inherited their fortunes from their ancestors. They are owners of valuable real estate, much of which is located in the very heart of the city. The incomes derived from such property are large and certain. They are frequently ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... at the end of a path. Accompanying him was a specimen of the creature known on tennis lawns as "a fourth." He was almost nameless, tall, very young, with the seedlings of a moustache and a space of nude calf between his knickerbockers and his socks. He was very ceremonious, shy, ungainly and blushful. He played a fair-to-middling game; and nothing more need be ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... begun to succumb to the day, and the labor involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them into knickerbockers. Bear's grease had turned his ordinary curling brown hair into a damp, shining mass that dripped in tiny rills, from time to time, down on his coat collar, but Hi was happy. Beau Brummel, at the height of his sartorial fame, never ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... something in the world; I was sure that he had. He has a little income of his own, but he is too proud and ambitious to be an idler. He looked so manly when he talked about it, standing up straight and strong in his knickerbockers. I like men in knickerbockers. Aunt Celia doesn't. She says she doesn't see how a well-brought-up Copley can go about with his legs in that condition. I would give worlds to know how aunt Celia ever unbent sufficiently ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... little face quivering with emotion, and his usually pale cheek flushed a deep crimson, whilst his small determined mouth and chin looked more resolute and daring than ever. His hands thrust deep in the pockets of his knickerbockers he looked straight before him and repeated ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... a perch high in air and catching it with a yell of delight. Archie sighed with relief as the fisherman, now standing erect to unhook the perch, turned toward them. It was the Governor, rakishly trigged out in knickerbockers, with a cap smartly tilted over one ear and a scarf snapping about his face in ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... evening ablutions removing a Joseph's coat of dust and paint; and came forth from my pavilion, hoping that Professor Keredec and his friend would not mind eating in the same garden with a man in a corduroy jacket and knickerbockers; but the gentlemen continued invisible to the public eye, and mine was the only table set for dinner in the garden. Up-stairs the curtains were carefully drawn across all the windows of the east wing; little ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... look back, to think how completely he won us all. He was young—not more than twenty-six, I think—and dressed for a walking tour, in knickerbockers, with a blue flannel shirt, heavy low shoes and a soft hat. His hands were quite white. He kept running them over his chin, which was bluish, as if a day or ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bank and fighting over his clothes. Back he dashed in haste to rescue his property, but by the time he reached the spot they had finished dividing the spoil, and jumping up they ran away and scattered in all directions, one wearing his jacket, another his knickerbockers, another his shirt and one sock, another his cap and shoes, and the last the one remaining sock only. In vain he pursued and called after them; and at last he was compelled to follow them unclothed to the camping ground, where he presented himself crying piteously; but the women who had ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... melt the belly out of my fiddle," said Johnny Mears to his wife, who sat on a three-legged stool by the rough table in the little whitewashed "end-room", putting a patch of patches over the seat of a pair of moleskin knickerbockers. He lit his pipe, moved a stool to the side of the great empty fireplace, where it looked cooler—might have been cooler on account of a possible draught suggested by the presence of the chimney, and where, therefore, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... you to put yourself into knickerbockers and a golfing attitude and be photographed. Judging by their present contents, there is not a paper in the country that would not be glad to print the picture, and then you could show it to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... mother at last suddenly when the rice pudding had been finished. George rose, clean and red-cheeked, looking more than ever like a large edition of Baby, in spite of his jacket and knickerbockers, as he stepped over to his father with a new dignity and handed him a folded ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting
... which had carried me, on the night of the coronation, back from the hunting-lodge to Strelsau. I carried a revolver in the saddle and my sword. I was covered with a large cloak, and under this I wore a warm, tight-fitting woollen jersey, a pair of knickerbockers, thick stockings, and light canvas shoes. I had rubbed myself thoroughly with oil, and I carried a large flask of whisky. The night was warm, but I might probably be immersed a long while, and it was necessary to take every precaution against cold: for cold not only ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... in socks; I like mine of thick wool. A khaki-colored shirt should be worn, or, as a better substitute, a khaki jacket with many pockets. Very light underclothes are good. If one's knees and legs are unfortunately tender, knickerbockers with long stockings and leggings should be worn; ordinary trousers tend to bind the knee. Better still, if one's legs will stand the exposure, are shorts, not coming down to the knee. A kilt would probably be best ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... itself as a piece of specimen writing, stiff with boyish effort, decorated in ambitious and faltering flourishes and still betraying the pencil rulings his rubber should have erased. Already your writing is better than that. And I found a daguerreotype portrait of him in knickerbockers against a photographer's stile. His face then was not unlike yours. I stood with that in my hand at the little bureau in his bedroom, and looked ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... baggage, the dock labourers in the sheds pile grain sacks on to waggons, and strings of stout horses stand resting beside them. On the edge of the quay are flower girls in black, selling big bunches of violets, and a Strong-man in pink tights and sky-blue knickerbockers—a festive piece of colour taken with his two white chairs and bright carpet. He plays with silver balls and does balancing feats with his little girl, and puts his arms round her and strokes her hair after each turn, in a delicate appeal to the sympathies ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... acquitting himself none so ill. Moreover, he had youth on his side and a sound chest, while nature had not given him a pair of well-formed calves for nothing; so that he faced the steep hillsides or got over the rough ground with comparative ease, rejoicing the while in the unwonted freedom of knickerbockers. It was Sir Hugh, with his bulky habit of body, who got blown now and again; as for Captain Waveney, he was a pretty tough subject and wiry. So they fought bravely on, to atone for the inhuman detention of the morning; and by the time it was necessary to make for the appointed ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... arrived, appeared on the streets one day in knickerbockers and stockings. Kit was in town and was observed watching the tenderfoot. To the average cowboy a silk top hat was like a red flag to a bull, so much like it in fact that the hat was usually lucky to escape with less than half a dozen holes through it. But here in these knee-breeches and ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... many of them, reflecting the gentle faith of the owner. On mantel and table and walls were photographs of her children in long clothes and short, and then once more in long ones; there was Barry in wide collars and knickerbockers, and Constance and Mary in ermine caps and capes; there was Barry again in the military uniform of his preparatory school; Constance in her graduation frock, and Mary with her hair up for the first time. There was a picture of their father on porcelain in a blue velvet case, ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... adviser had represented to the Archbishop that his usual costume would make him undesirably conspicuous in America, for during his tour of this country the Primate of all England abandoned the picturesque every-day dress of an English bishop, with its knickerbockers and gaiters, in favor of the international hideousness of pantaloons. At the time of the photograph Bishop Potter was wearing leggings, having just returned from riding, so that the two bishops appeared to ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... home. Not lightly do I say it, for I have known the toil of rough-hewing it on the pioneer line that turns men's hair gray; but I have seen also the reward of the toil. New York is the youngest of the world's great cities, barely yet out of knickerbockers. It may be that our century will yet see it as the greatest of them all. The task that is set it, the problem it has to solve and which it may not shirk, is the problem of civilization, of human progress, of a people's fitness for self-government, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... bills, or drives a pack-mule, or walks a tow-path, the muscles of the thigh are hauled taut like cables, the knee-muscles keep their place, the calves are full of knots—one big one in a bunch just below the strap of his knickerbockers, should ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with the briefest, most wiry of sandy whiskers upon his chops, a jolly double chin, a sunburned nose, kindly blue eyes forever opened in mild wonder (and a bit bleared by the wind), the fat figure clad in broadly checked tweed knickerbockers and a rakish cap to match, like the mad tourists who sometimes strayed our way. 'Twas this complacent, benevolent Deity that she made haste to interrogate in my behalf, unabashed by the spats and binocular, the corpulent plaid stockings and cigar, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... travellers were obliged to sail directly below some high overhanging rocks, from the top of one of which a particularly odious little boy, dressed in rose-colored knickerbockers, and with a pewter plate upon his head, threw an enormous pumpkin at the boat, by which it ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... our town, and was able to find six men to join his fifteen young ladies in the ancient sport. Two preachers, a young dentist and three college professors were the only male creatures who dared walk across our town in plaid stockings and knickerbockers, and certainly it hurt their standing at the banks, for the town frowned on golf, and confined its sport to baseball in the summer, football in the autumn, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... and his skin had become a skin of red copper shot with gold. They were now both in a state of unprecedented physical fitness. And such skirts as Ann Veronica had had when she entered the valley of Saas were safely packed away in the hotel, and she wore a leather belt and loose knickerbockers and puttees—a costume that suited the fine, long lines of her limbs far better than any feminine walking-dress could do. Her complexion had resisted the snow-glare wonderfully; her skin had only ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... as well to mention that folk assured me I was the first English-speaking lady ever seen at Mende. A short time before no little excitement had been created by the appearance of six young Englishmen in knickerbockers, footing it with knapsack on shoulder. But lady- tourists from the other side of La Manche? Never! Be this as it may, it is as well for my country-women, if any follow me hither, to avoid insular eccentricities of ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... cuckoo? Does you know?" were the first words he uttered, as soon as he had fairly shaken himself, though not by any means all his clothes, free of the bushes (for ever so many pieces of jacket and knickerbockers, not to speak of one boot and half his hat, had been left behind on the way), and found breath to ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... forward, and in a moment Joe was surrounded by his friends and fellow townsmen, most of whom had known him when he was in knickerbockers and now were more proud of him than they had ever been, even when he returned to Riverside crowned with the laurels of his last great season. Joe was mauled and pounded until he was almost out of breath, and ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Tom. "Why, auntie, they are all girls except Hugh, and he not even in knickerbockers! And they ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... lessons. After the war came on we had to get from Munich to Naples in order to sail at all. We were told that we could take only hand luggage on the railways, but I took nine trunks and Peppo. I dressed Peppo in knickerbockers, made him brush his curls down over his ears like doughnuts, and carry a little violin-case. It took us eleven days to reach Naples. I got my trunks through purely by personal persuasion. Once at Naples, I had a frightful ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... we are ourselves in this age from such conviction of the poetry of our own life and manners may easily be conceived by anyone who chooses to imagine a picture of Alfred the Great toasting the cakes dressed in tourist's knickerbockers, or a performance of 'Hamlet' in which the Prince appeared in a frock-coat, with a crape band round his hat. But this instinct of the age to look back, like Lot's wife, could not go on for ever. A rude, popular literature of the romantic possibilities of the modern city was bound to arise. It ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... two delightful, apple cheeked old ladies in white caps, who became dumb with astonishment at the sight of two foreigners who walked about gazing up at the roofs and windows of the houses, and at the mynheer in knickerbockers who was always looking about him and ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... the time he was emerging from knickerbockers, he had been madly in love with this golden-haired, hazel-eyed cousin of his, and the lady, who had the advantage of him in years, being unresponsive, he had haunted a very large and very deep ornamental pond in his grandmother's park ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... foaming rapids and eddying pools, along the four miles of the Branch, brought him into a state of mind that was thoroughly cheerful, not to say exhilarated. There was Brackett's Camp on the point above the Forks; and there was the veteran painter-angler himself, with his white beard and his knickerbockers, standing on the shore to wave a salutation as the canoe shot by the point. There was the main river, rushing down with full waters from the northwest, and roaring past the island. There was the club-house among the white birches ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... of white duck trousers, clean, but still damp from recent washing, a thick leather apron, a short duck blouse, something like those worn by bakers, and a cap. The trousers, being all the same size and same length, came to Bee's ankles, were knickerbockers for me and tights ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... wore a red swallow tailed coat, with a green silk sash tied in front. He had black knickerbockers and white woollen socks, and black dressing slippers, and he carried ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... upon the words that Maria Angelina was beginning to frame and left her looking helplessly at a pair of corduroy knickerbockers, a blue flannel shirt, a strange undergarment, plaid golf stockings and ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to oppose him. Wherefore nurse is propitiated, failing the protection of the glorified creature just gone to her grand dinner in a cloud of lace and a blaze of jewels; and the first lesson taught the youthful Christian in short frocks or knickerbockers is not to carry tales down stairs, and by no means to let mamma know what nurse desires should ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... younger, to eighty. The links of St. Andrews are probably cleared just now of the little lads and the veterans, they make room for the heroes, the medalists, the great players—Mr. Mackay, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Leslie Balfour, and the rest. But at ordinary times there are always dozens of tiny boys in knickerbockers and scarlet stockings, who "drive out" the first hole in some twenty strokes of their little clubs, and who pass much of their time in fishing for their lost balls in the muddy burn. As for the veterans "on the threshold of old age," it is pleasant to watch ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... stranger: an indulgence touching which I felt the less compunction, in that he had (it was a fair inference) got himself up with a deliberate view to attracting just such notice. Else why the sombrero and knickerbockers, the flowing locks and eccentric yellow cloak? Nay, I think it may have been in part this very note of undisguised vanity in the man that made it difficult to keep one's eyes off him: it tickled the sense of humour, and challenged the curiosity. What would his state of mind be, who, in the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... boots. It was in no sweet mood that he strode up Hoe Terrace, eyeing the numbers above the doors, and halted at length to knock out his pipe before a house with an unpainted area-railing, to which a small boy in ragged knickerbockers was engaged in attaching with a string the tail of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... listless expression and manner. She did not await their arrival, but turned, disappointed, within. It was already time to dress for dinner, the ladies habitually observing this formality, although Briscoe often went in knickerbockers till midnight. Lillian paused on the veranda and gazed down the road, winding away into the dusky red flare of the fading west, for the drive must needs be short in this season of early nightfall. There was no sign of approach along its smooth and shadowy ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... were well gotten up according to their idea of proper garb for outdoor people. The man wore knickerbockers with gold stockings, riding habit and stock, the girl a beautifully tailored, fine-textured lady's riding habit. Both were immediately conscious of the guide's stare, and Virginia was aware of a distinct embarrassment. Something, ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... your son and heir invested with the full dignity of knickerbockers than he begins to celebrate this rise in the social scale by "playing at being papa." The author of "Vice Versa" has drawn an amusing picture of the discomforts to papa which an exchange of environment with his school-boy son might involve. But there is another ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of thing seems to be given up ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... Russian female, who ran down passages and round corners like a wet hen, trying to find a man-servant. The place seemed deserted, but presently she came on her quarry in the back yard, and a very small boy in a tarboosh and knickerbockers carried the card on a tray into a room on the left. Through the open door I could hear one quiet question and a high-pitched disclaimer of all knowledge; then an order, sounding like a grumble, and the small boy returned to the hall to invite me in, in reasonably good ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw down ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... can near the door to a warder, who laid it on the bench, Hogarth undressed slowly; got off his boots; and now had on only knickerbockers and stockings: he got ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... staff was still on duty when he reached Scotland Yard the next morning. The detective-inspector in charge stared at a corpulent man clad in a Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers of brown tweed, whose heavy boots clanged along the corridor. The hair, moustache, and eyebrows of the intruder were a shiny black, and a little trimming with scissors and a judicious use of a comb and brush had altered the appearance of the superintendent's ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... long talk one day with his father, as they sauntered hand in hand down a shady country road, with Gyp sporting and playing alongside, he decided to face the trouble bravely, and wear knickerbockers like other boys of his age. And, instead of sulking or fretting about what he could not help, he set himself to ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... another in the warmest manner. The doors of the houses seemed to open of themselves; men were going in, men were coming out. The negroes looked more lustrous and light-hearted than ever; the Paddies, cleaner and more bothered; the regular Knickerbockers, to the manner born, were, of course, in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... within twenty yards, but invisible beyond the crowded undergrowth. The new arrival was perfectly attired, and handsome, in a supercilious, brainless way. He wore a Norfolk Jacket and knickerbockers, and his tanned boots were polished till they shone like glass. For a while he poked about the tent and its neighbourhood, and, having satisfied his curiosity, drew out a cigar-case from one pocket, a silver matchbox from another, and a paper-clad novel from a third. Then he disposed himself ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... He sent a note along with it and told me what a clever lad I am and more or less hinted that when I've grown up, I can send him another play. I suppose he thinks I'm a kid in knickerbockers. The result of this business is that I'm going to try and get a job as a dramatic critic. If I do, God help the next play he produces. I'm a hurt man, and I shall let the world know about it. I'm half-way through ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... gather wild blackberries. She had been thinking of a certain blackberry pie, which thought naturally induced reflection on Bryce Cardigan and reminded Shirley of her first visit to the Giants under the escort of a boy in knickerbockers. She had a very vivid remembrance of that little amphitheatre with the sunbeams falling like a halo on the plain tombstone; she wondered if the years had changed it all and decided that there could not possibly be any harm in indulging ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Lyric Dance Arcade and Indian Palace of Asiatic Mystery. And I found myself close to the platform, listening to the cry of a man in gilt knickerbockers. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... at once. In the moment needed to regain her self-possession she could only regard him with mute gratitude. She saw that he was young and well-built, though lean of features, but with frank, healthy eyes. He was not at all bad-looking. Also she observed that he was neatly garbed in puttees and knickerbockers, and she quickly appraised him as the usual type of Easterner come into the valley to spend the winter. Then she suddenly remembered her hair. Woman-like, she hastily gathered it up into a knot at the back of her head before she ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... not that I shall shoot much, or anything that takes me away from my Nell. But you must come out with us. There is no such fun as stumping over the moors—the Jew has got all the turn-out for that sort of thing—short frocks and knickerbockers, and a duck of a little breech-loader. She thinks she's a great shot, poor thing, and men are civil and let her imagine that she's knocked over a pheasant or a hare, now and then. As for the partridges, she lets fly, of course, but ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... expression! Purely animal the most of that legion of despair and desperation looked, and sallow and sickly of complexion. They were a blot on the fresh sunshine. How hideous their coarse garb of pied jackets branded with the broad arrow, their knickerbockers and clumsy shoes! Wistfully they moved along, hardly daring to glance at me, through fear of the turnkeys with loaded rifles marching at their sides. I almost felt that, if I had the power, I would demand their release, as ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... course, dressed up in bath-towels and a sheet as the ghost of Mrs. S., but Noel and H. O. screamed, and would not be calm till he tore off the sheet and showed his knickerbockers and braces as a guarantee of good faith. Alice put her hair up, and got a skirt, and a large handkerchief to cry in, and was a hapless maiden imprisoned in a tower because she would not marry the wicked Baron. ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... There was a particularly painstaking little boy in a white silk shirt and black velvet knickerbockers, very tight in places, who danced assiduously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. "Right leg, To-mus, left leg, To-mus!" came in stentorian tones from a Fraulein in the corner, who suited ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... knickerbockers beside her, felt the animal charm of her as he had never felt it in London. She had thrust her gloves away in some hidden pocket. Her right hand grasped a stick firmly. The white showed at the knuckles. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... have admitted that there was but one man then living who could have created and peopled the vast and humorous world of the Knickerbockers; that all the learning of Oxford and Cambridge together would not enable a man to draw the whimsical portrait of Ichabod Crane, or to outline the fascinating legend of Rip Van Winkle; while Europe was full of scholars of more learning than Irving, and writers ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... down again after the nurse had taken possession I found a strange gentleman hanging about the hall and pacing to and fro by the closed door of the drawing-room. This personage was florid and bald; he had a big red moustache and wore showy knickerbockers—characteristics all that fitted to my conception of the identity of Dora Forbes. In a moment I saw what had happened: the author of "The Other Way Round" had just alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to restrain him from penetrating ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... followed the dogs, galloping so wildly that when his rider halted him his hoofs tore up the turf as he slid. A girl rode him. She was mounted astride, and Presson had to look twice at her to make sure she was a girl, for she wore knickerbockers and gaiters, and her copper-red hair curled so crisply that it seemed ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... the more hopeful. You fellows, with your Tam o' Shanters and aggressive neckties and knickerbockers and calves, would frighten the devil. I'm shy myself. If she's natural, then we shall possibly ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... in her life seen any one in knickerbockers and leggins before, and the memory of his amused her somewhat, yet she admitted to herself that they had seemed quite "peart" as she peered at ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... and waved his arm. Then they settled down to the business of walking. They dropped into their place as a familiar part of the open road of only a very few years ago, for they were dressed in the orthodox style: knickerbockers; woolen stockings; heavy footwear; short jackets; packs, such as once the schoolboy used for books; and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... think I will put you next him." Mr. Bowring touched a button on his desk and presently an office boy—a mop of auburn curls, a pert face and gangling legs in knickerbockers—hurried ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... a long coat and full bloomers. No one is wearing that style, now. Everything is mannish coats and tight knickerbockers," ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... steep hill, his heart will grow stout in just proportion to its steepness. Yes, and if the call to martyrdom came, I should not despair of finding men who would show themselves equal to it, even in this commonplace age, and among people who wear Highland cloaks and knickerbockers. The martyr's strength would come with the martyr's day. It is because there is no call for it now, that people ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... thoroughly practical cycling costume is known as the "Londonderry," and is made in gray-green hopsack, a soft fabric which lends itself admirably to the full folds of the ample knickerbockers, which form a most important part of this costume. The "Londonderry" coat is made with long and very full basques, which form a kind of skirt when on the machine, and which, nevertheless, do not interfere ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... stumping on his wooden leg; greasy adipose Buck Walker, who ran the meat market; Slim Simpson, from the eating joint opposite, pale as the tucked-in apron around his waist; last of all the stranger, tall, smooth-shaven, alien in knickerbockers and blouse, his lips compressed, at his throat the arteries pounding visibly through his fair skin. Up they came at the word of command, like children with ill-learned lessons to recite, like sheep with a collie at their heels. Humorous at another time and another ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... similarly, the obscure writer of these papers was once under Miss Leech's. Her school supplied the originals of all the little boys, whether greedy or gracious, grave or gay, on foot or on pony-back, in knickerbockers or in nightshirts, who figure so frequently in Punch between 1850 and 1864; and one of the pleasantest recollections of those distant days is the kindness with which the great artist used to receive us when, as the supreme reward of exceptionally good conduct, we were ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... instant, the solitude was broken by the apparition of a dusty wayfarer in knickerbockers and soft felt hat, coming towards them up the road. He was a man of middle height and rather slim. He appeared about five-and-thirty years of age. He had fair hair, and a strange, whimsical face, irregular of feature, with a small moustache covering ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... learn to be careful how you talk before them. Now, I would not go so far as to say that "Sunday" is what you might call exactly rowdy, but er... but... er... Let me illustrate. If a man says, "It's a beautiful Sunday morning," like enough he has on red-and-green stockings, baggy knickerbockers, a violet-and-purple sweater, a cap shaped like a milk-roll, and is smoking a pipe. He very likely carries a bagful of golf-sticks, or is pumping up his bicycle. But if a man says, "This beautiful Sabbath morn," you know for a certainty that he ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... knees, and bent on either side as if a wind was rushing through them. A bennet slipped up his knickerbockers and tickled his leg. His toes only touched the ground, neither his heels nor the hollow of his foot; and from so light a pressure the grass, bowed but not crushed, rose up, leaving no more mark of his passage than if a grasshopper ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... this world when a healthy boy is happy. When he is put into knickerbockers, for instance, and 'comes a man to-day,' as my little Jim used to say. When they're cooking something at home that he likes. When the 'sandy-blight' or measles breaks out amongst the children, or the teacher or his wife falls ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to efface the first bad impression I had made and win his confidence to the pitch of voluntary speech. In that endeavour I had a social advantage. Being a person of affability and no apparent employment, and wearing tweeds and knickerbockers, I was naturally classed as an artist in Bignor, and in the remarkable code of social precedence prevalent in Bignor an artist ranks considerably higher than a grocer's assistant. Skelmersdale, like too many of his class, is something of a snob; he had told ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... and lit a cigarette. Presently a small boy came walking along the path—an urchin of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp little features. He was dressed in knickerbockers, with red stockings, which displayed his poor little spindle-shanks; he also wore a brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached—the flowerbeds, ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... friends to Jessica's care. She was a sort of social tyrant wherever she was, and I knew one word from her would insure the popularity of our friends—not that they needed the intervention of any one. Leroy had been a sort of drawing-room pet since before he stopped wearing knickerbockers. ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... as Bud left it, bedraggled and dusty, did not interest him. He brushed himself as he went. The band was playing madly, and the young woman in the stiff skirts was standing by her horse ready to mount. The crowd did not stop laughing; Bud inclined his head to dust his knickerbockers, and then in a tragic instant he saw what was convulsing the multitude with laughter. The outer seam of the right leg of his velveteen breeches was gone, and a brown leg was winking in and out from the flapping garment as he walked. Wildly he gathered the parted garment, and it seemed ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... in September, 1813. My father was a New Englander, who married three times, and I was the eldest son of his third wife, a woman of Dutch descent, or, as she would have boosted if she had been rich, one of the old Knickerbockers of New York. My parents were simply honest, hard—working, worthy people, who earned a good livelihood, brought up their children to work, behaved themselves, and were respected by their neighbors. They had a homestead and a small farm of thirty acres, and on the place was a blacksmith shop in which ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... and mamma decided the question by lifting the lesser ones into the fly, Rachel counted heads. Her mission exceeded her expectations. Here was a pair of boys in knickerbockers, a pair in petticoats, a pair in pelisses, besides the thing in arms. When the fly had been nearly crammed, the two knickerbockers and one pelisse remained for the carriage, quite against Rachel's opinion, but ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... urn, and Ruth and Mollie in serge skirts and spick and span white blouses looked as fresh as paint, and a great many times as pretty. They were laughing and chatting with Victor Druce, who had donned Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, and was quite the country gentleman both in appearance and in his manner ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... age which were upon him. Yet even these signs were modified by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction of his carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a dandy in his day, and even now his Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and flowing tie gave him an air half ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... great public square of the ancient city of Liege, in Belgium, a troop of Belgian Boy Scouts stood at attention. Staffs in hand, clad in the short knickerbockers, the khaki shirts and the wide campaign hats that mark the Boy Scout all over the world, they were enough of a spectacle to draw the attention of the busy citizens of Liege, who stopped to watch them admiringly. Their scoutmaster, Armand Van Verde, ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and shirt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... to take a promenade with him this afternoon at three. I arrived at the White House punctually, in afternoon dress and silk hat, as if we were to stroll in the Tuileries Garden or in the Champs Elysees. To my surprise, the President soon joined me in a tramping suit, with knickerbockers and thick boots, and soft felt hat, much worn. Two or three other gentlemen came, and we started off at what seemed to me a breakneck pace, which soon brought us out of the city. On reaching the country, the President went pell-mell over the fields, following neither road nor path, always ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... bungalow, not very far from Northport, stood a young man of pleasing aspect, knickerbockers, and unusually symmetrical legs. His hands reposed in his pockets, his eyes behind their eyeglasses were fixed dreamily upon the skies. Somebody over beyond that screen of woods was singing very beautifully, and he ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... not bother about the Dragon—I'll do it. But I wish you would put another character into the piece. It is for Clinton. He says he will act with us. He says he can do anything if it is a leading part. He has got black velvet knickerbockers and scarlet stockings, and he can have the tunic and cloak I wore last year, and the flap hat; and you must lend him your white ostrich feather. Make him some kind of a grandee. If you can't, he must be the Prince, and Charles can do some of the Travellers. ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... she liked them, and when he next stole into the room in his stocking soles to look at her, he thought she was asleep. But she was not. I dare say she saw at that moment Gavin in his first frock, and Gavin in knickerbockers, and Gavin as he used to walk into the Glasgow room from college, all still as real to her as the Gavin who had ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... people, walking along the road in the same direction as myself. There was an elderly man, a younger man, red- haired, walking very lightly, in knickerbockers, and two boys whom I took to be the sons of the younger man. I recognised the elder man as a friend, though I cannot now remember who he appeared to be. He nodded and smiled to me, and I joined the party. Just as I did so, the younger ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
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