"Breeches" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foremost said to Susan, seeing a woman with fears to be allayed. He was tall and angular with a frank, copper-tanned face, overtopped by a wide spread of hat, and bearded to the eyes. He wore a loose hickory shirt and buckskin breeches tucked into long boots, already broken from the soles. The other was a small and comical figure with an upstanding crest of sunburned blond hair, tight curled and thick as a sheep's fleece. When he saw Susan he delayed his advance to put on a ragged army overcoat that hung to his ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... afar is heard the hum of the threshing machine. BERND and AUGUST KEIL come from, the right. They are worn out from labour and from the heat. The men are clad only in their shirts, breeches, boots and caps. Each carries a hoe across his shoulder, a scythe in his hand, and carries at his belt a cowherd's horn ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the O'Maleys, the O'Flahertys, the Frenches, the Fitzgeralds, the Burkes, the Geraldines, and the members of numerous other families began to arrive, and Larry, habited in a sky-blue coat, a huge frill to his shirt, pink breeches and green stockings, with four or five other musicians, similarly attired, playing various instruments, took their places on a raised platform ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... into small wares and merchandise such as travelling traders used to deal in; and the rest, excepting some shillings which I carried home for my immediate expenses, I sewed carefully in the lining of my breeches waistband, hoping that the sale of my commodities might easily supply me ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat, And the breeches, and all that, Are ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... blue, and full of animation; his aspect fierce; hair light; long whiskers; lips pale; broad back; swift of foot; and particularly animated in his action. He wore a jerkin lined with red, a dark yellow waistcoat, blue breeches, a breast-pouch with fifty cartridges, four pistols, and a small hanger by his side. In his breeches-pocket he kept a small stiletto. He also bore a long gun. On his head he wore continually a net, and upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... the flocks, carded and spun by hand, and knit into stockings, or woven into blankets or rugs, or into flannel, to be fulled for men's wear; or into linsey-woolsey, for the women and children. To the material for men's garments must be added buckskin for breeches and leggins. Shoes were often made of untanned hide, moccasin fashion, a method borrowed from the Indians. Thorns took the place of pins in woman's gear, and thongs did duty for buttons, with men. If the maiden did have "genuine bear's oil" for her hair, for lack of a mirror her head must be ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... have to ride, too.' Moran and Wall got up and fetched their horses. Mr. Knightley's was led up by one of his men. He was a big handsome roan, in top condition, and the man was riding a black horse with a tan muzzle that looked a trifle better, if anything. Mr. Knightley turned out in boots and breeches, with a gold fox's head on his scarf, swell hunting fashion, as they do it at ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... generally powdered and very neatly dressed in livery, in the swell carriages, but the coachmen are not so highly gotten up as formerly. Occasionally one sees a very grand fat old coachman in wig and knee- breeches, but Jeames Yellowplush is growing a thing of the past even ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Jowler seemed to have taken all of a sudden to such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him out of doors, and his rhubarb-colored wife (I believe that her skin gave the first idea of our regimental breeches), who before had been gadding ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose into every menage in the cantonment, stopped faithfully at home with her spouse. My only chance was to beard the old couple in their den, and ask them at once ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distinct type known as "the bodie." "What does he do, that man?" you may ask, and the answer will be, "Really, I could hardly tell ye what he does—he's juist a bodie!" The "bodie" may be a gentleman of independent means (a hundred a year from the Funds), fussing about in spats and light check breeches; or he may be a jobbing gardener; but he is equally a "bodie." The chief occupation of his idle hours (and his hours are chiefly idle) is the discussion of his neighbour's affairs. He is generally an "auld residenter;" great, therefore, at the redding up of ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... on the heads of judges and barristers. The Beefeaters at the Tower wear the costume of Henry VIIth's bodyguard. The University dress of the present year varies but little from that worn soon after the Reformation. The claret-coloured coat, knee-breeches, lace shirt frills, ruffles, white silk stockings, and buckled shoes, which once formed the usual attire of a gentleman, still survive as the court-dress. And it need scarcely be said that at levees and drawing-rooms, the ceremonies are prescribed with an exactness, and enforced ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... intent that the churchwardens and overseers of the poor there should apply the rents and profits of the same in providing so much coarse woollen cloth as would make ten suits yearly to be given to ten poor people of Louth, the men to have coats and breeches, and the women to have waistcoats and ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... which weren't all imaginations, an' I says to him to go along, but it would be the hardest thing in this world for me to imagine any fun in smokin'. He laughed an' went back, while I walked on, a-makin'-believe a page, in blue puffed breeches, was a-holdin' up my train, which was of light-green velvet trimmed with silver lace. Pretty soon, turnin' a little corner, I meets the Count and Countess of Milwaukee. She was a small lady, dressed in black, an' he was a big fat man about fifty years ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... his granddaughter, regarded the president with sympathy. He looked bedraggled and crushed. He mopped his forehead. He did not raise his eyes to her. It was bad enough to be president of a planetary government that couldn't even pay his salary, so there were patches in his breeches that Moira must have noticed. It was worse that the colony was, as a whole, entirely too much like the remaining shanty areas in Eire back on Earth. But it was tragic that it was ridiculous for any man on Eire to ask a girl from Earth to join him ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... call civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit; and a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous in our small world for gallantry, knee breeches, and dry and pregnant sayings. He, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of the French, whom I confess I somewhat imitated, branded me as "a cultivator of restaurant fat." And I believe he had his finger on the dangerous spot; I believe, if things had gone smooth with me, I should be ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... drawn over the knees, unless the rank and fortune require diamond buckles. Paste or Bristol stones should never approach a gentleman of any age. Roomy shoes, not of varnished leather. Broad shoe-buckles, well polished. Cleanliness is an ornament to youth, but an indispensable necessity to old age. Breeches, velvet or velveteen, or some other solid stuff. There may be serious objections to reviving the trunk breeches of our ancestors. I am afraid that hoops would follow in their train. But the flapped waistcoat, the deep ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their regal robes—the dress of American gentlemen; but were required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed. "Evening coat with plain metal buttons, white vest, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments"—such was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle Sam by the royal seneschal. They "obeyed with alacrity." Of course they did. Had they been ordered to appear in their shirt- tails, one flap dyed green and the other yellow, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... widening our view and for conceiving the object, not only vividly and with pause, but in an adequate historic setting. Macbeth tells us that his dagger was "unmannerly breeched in gore." Achilles would not have amused himself with such a metaphor, even if breeches had existed in his day, but would rather have told us whose blood, on other occasions, had stained the same blade, and perhaps what father or mother had grieved for the slaughtered hero, or what brave children remained to continue his race. Shakespeare's phrase is ingenious ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... once reigning, Who had a big black flea, And loved him past explaining, As his own son were he. He called his man of stitches, The tailor came straightway, 'Here, measure the lad for breeches, And measure his ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... reminiscences with which he made up his repentance tales and stories, Greene as an observer of human nature is seen at his best in his curious, and at the time famous, dialogue "between velvet breeches and cloth breeches."[145] It is in fact a disputation between old England and new England; the England that built the strong houses praised by Harrison, and the England that adorned itself with the Burghley House paper work; traditional England and italianate England. Velvet breeches is "richly daubde ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Thro' sleet and snow, Mrs. Bloomer's all the go. Twenty tailors take the stitches, Plenty of women wear the breeches, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... know, I've got it, I know," cried Jack, excitedly; "he looks (except that he hasn't got on knee-breeches and lace ruffles) just like that picture Max gave you, Felix,—don't you remember?—with a lace handkerchief in one hand and a snuff-box in the other. Oh, you know,—the ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... look strange, but between 1811 and 1820 it astonished no one. The old man wore shoes with cut-steel buckles, silk stockings with stripes round the leg, alternately blue and white, corded silk knee-breeches with oval buckles cut to match those on his shoes. A white embroidered waistcoat, an old coat of olive-brown with metal buttons, and a shirt with a flat-pleated frill completed his costume. In the middle ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... remained: that when he went to visit the villages of his dependence, they planed him paths through the thick of their woods, by which he might pass at his ease. All this does not sound very ill, and the last was not at all amiss, for they wear no breeches. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... stature, more corpulent through his cloathes then in his body, yet fat enough, his cloathes ever being made large and easie, the Doublets quilted for steletto proofe, his Breeches in great pleites and full stuffed: Hee was naturally of a timorous disposition, which was the reason of his quilted Doublets: His eyes large, ever rowling after any stranger came in his presence, insomuch, as many for shame have left the roome, as being out of countenance: His Beard was very ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... called Statistical Fellows - A prying, spying, inquisitive clan, Who have gone upon much of the self-same plan, Jotting the labouring class's riches; And after poking in pot and pan, And routing garments in want of stitches, Have ascertained that a working man Wears a pair and a quarter of average breeches! ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the glass, he turned the mouth of it down upon his corduroy breeches, as an intimation that he might probably find it necessary to ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... stories that he told of his difficulties that he had passed through, as his travelling four days and three nights on foot, every step up to his knees in dirt, with nothing but a green coat and a pair of country breeches on, and a pair of country shoes that made him so sore all over his feet, that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced to run away from a miller and other company, that took them for rogues. His sitting at table at one place, where the master of the house, that had not seen ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... come to me upon two legs, and joy was the hind-most of my thoughts. It is to be considered, however, that even if the weight of the future were lifted off me by the man's arrival, the present heaved up the more black and menacing; so that, as I first stood before him in my shirt and breeches, I believe I took a leaping step backward like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... building something, and now was my chance. Getting to the corner again I peered cautiously around, and there but seventy or eighty feet from where I lay three strapping fellows were raising a heavy log. They had pulled off their red and black tunics, and were only in their baggy breeches and the curious little stomach apron the Northern Chinaman affects to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... spirit. In all this there were one or two of the London brigade who stood fast to him. "Cock your tail, Tifto," said one hard-riding supporter, "and show 'em you aren't afraid of nothing." So Tifto cocked his tail and went to the meeting in his best new scarlet coat, with his whitest breeches, his pinkest boots, and his neatest little bows at his knees. He entered the room with his horn in his hand, as a symbol of authority, and took off his hunting-cap to salute the assembly with a jaunty air. He had taken two glasses of cherry brandy, and as long as the stimulant ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... looking very quaint and queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, and one bottle of claret, all very good; but ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... laughed, and she rode up close and dropped off her horse. She was attired in a soft white waist and white riding breeches, but there was about her none of the tomboy so easily suggested by such togs. In spite of the masculinity of her attire the long, supple lines of her body were exquisitely feminine. And she was as relieved at the sight of him as he was glad to ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... gentlemen. His snow-white hair was tied in a long queue, he had a high forehead, aquiline nose, wide mouth, and dark eyes, which gleamed thorough his glasses. Respecting the body of which he was a member, he used to appear in a black coat and knee-breeches, with a ruffled shirt, white waistcoat, and white silk stockings. He was the Chairman of the Whig Senatorial caucus, and on the last night of the extra session Mr. Clay had complimented him, in rather equivocal language, on the ability with ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... himself vigorously. He tells his master that "war-parties are necessary, but very expensive. We rarely pay money; but we must give presents to our Indians, and fit out the Canadians with provisions, arms, ammunition, moccasons, snow-shoes, sledges, canoes, capotes, breeches, stockings, and blankets. This costs a great deal, but without it we should have to abandon Canada." The king complained that, while the great sums he was spending in the colony turned to the profit of the inhabitants, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... headstrong. The Catholic religion! 'Tis no more than fine manners; as we say in Hebrew, derech eretz, the way of the country. Why do I wear breeches and a cocked hat—when I am abroad, videlicet? Why does little Ianthe trip it in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... an' he 'lowed immejate thet he'd buy pink ones. Sonny always was death on pink—showed it from the time he could snatch a pink rose—an' wife she ain't never dressed him in nothin' else. Ever' pair o' little breeches he's got is ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... were not homogeneously dressed. Some of the men were in dinner clothes; some were in full evening dress; some wore dinner coats above riding breeches and boots; some had come bareheaded, some with hats which they did not propose to remove. Half the women were in low neck and short sleeves; one with short curly hair was breeched and booted like a man; others wore what I suppose ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... will be the influence of our armies bent to the tropics, upon the dress of Americans? It is a question that may be important. The "wheel" has introduced knickerbockers and promises to result in knee breeches. On the transports that have traversed the Pacific the soldiers were fond of taking exercise in undershirts and drawers only and they swarmed from their bunks at night, to sleep on deck, sometimes condescending to spread blankets to take the edge off the cruelty of the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... we had trained for the part. Stripped for action, we were dressed in hunting breeches, light high-topped shoes spiked on the soles, in light cotton shirts, and carried only our bows, quivers of arrows, and hunting knives. Tom was a seasoned mountain climber, born on the crags, and had knees like a goat. So we ran. Up the side and over the crest we sped. The bay of the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... isn't cut out for. There were six or eight of the old Coll. at base-camp (we're always in force for a frontier row), but I'd heard of Tertius as a steady old hack, and I told him he had to shake off his D.A.Q.M.G. breeches and help me. Tertius volunteered like a shot, and we settled it with the authorities, and out we went—forty Pathans, Tertius, and me, looking up the road-parties. Macnamara's—'member old Mac, the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... tree-butter, seeds, fruits, firewood, cotton in the seeds, spun cotton, domestic cloth, imported cloth, as calico, shirting, velvets, &c., gun-powder, guns, flints, knives, swords, paper, raw silk, Turkey-red thread, needles, ready-made clothing, as trowsers, caps, breeches shirts without sleeves, baskets, brooms, and no ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... after a delightful passage, that the steamer made its way into the port of Smyrna, where everything around seemed to be full of novelty—strange craft manned by strange-looking crews, Turks with white turbans, Turks with scarlet fezzes and baggy breeches, and Turks with green turbans to show their reputation among their compatriots. Greeks, too—small, lithe, dark men, with keen faces and dark eyes, differing wonderfully from the calm, dignified, handsome Turks, but handsome in their way if it had not ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Still and deep | boys who will turn out as men in the German heart must live | to be fine citizens, and who the joy of battle and the | will if their country needs longing for it. Let us | them make better soldiers for ridicule to the utmost the | having been scouts. No one old women in breeches who | can be a good American unless fear war and deplore it as | he is a good citizen, and cruel and revolting. No; war | every boy ought to train is beautiful. Its august | himself so that as a man he sublimity elevates the human | will be able to do his full heart beyond the earthly and | duty ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... anywhere," Harry asserted. "I'll bet Rowdy has eaten him up body, boots and breeches. Serve him ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... doubt you can. The wild and dismal state forest is now full of detectives, amateur and professional; it's full of hotel keepers, trout fishermen, and private camps which are provided with elevators, electric light, squash courts, modern plumbing, and footmen in knee-breeches; and all of these dinky ginks are hunting for four young and wealthy men who have, at regular intervals of one week each, suddenly and completely disappeared from the face of nature and the awful solitudes of the Adirondacks. I take it for granted ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... kingdom, assumed the title "king of Denmark," and laid claim to Norway, too; and when she blamed him for it he had answered her disdainfully. In a letter he had used foul and abusive language, calling her "a king without breeches," and the "abbot's concubine" (abbedfrillen), on account of her particular attachment to a certain abbot of Soro, who was her spiritual director. It is, however, true, that her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... girls she drilled at the University wore regulation field service uniform, khaki breeches, coat, heavy shoes and puttees, and a large hat ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... will probably suggest themselves to any intelligent Democrat, the loss of which would almost insure success. Some one has said that a tailor in Boston made a fortune by advertising that he did not cut the breeches of Webster's statue. A new party by advertising that certain men would not belong to it, would have an advantage in the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... servant was appointed—the High Imperial Hair-cutter. He displayed his uniform in the streets around the palace, a sight for the gods. He strutted along in white breeches, voluminous white frock-coat, white shoes, and black silk hat, the centre ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cor-nered hat, And the breeches, and ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... his degree in 1749. He then lounged at home for a while in his widowed mother's cottage at Ballymahon, until he was persuaded to take orders, but spoiled his already sufficiently poor chances of ordination by appearing before the bishop of Elphin in scarlet breeches. After other adventures in search of a profession, he went to Edinburgh in 1752 to study medicine, and two years later transferred himself to Leyden for the same purpose. It was from Leyden that, with one guinea in his pocket, one shirt on his ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Ballad of the Book-Hunter, Andrew Lang describes how, in breeches baggy at the knees, the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... matter, was standing on guard between him and the door to the stairway, which they had left open when they came down. The man smiled as he saw the lad push his sister back and come a step or two forward. He made a pretty picture in his white shirt, brown knee-breeches, and little bare legs, the yellow locks about his shoulders, the rapier in his hand, ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... his face slightly projecting like a monkey's. He was four feet nine inches in height, broad-shouldered, with tiny hands and delicate little feet, which had never worn shoes nor been put to their natural use, for the soles were as soft as a baby's. He was dressed in grey riding-breeches, a round jacket, which had been made out of a frock-coat by cutting off the skirts, and wore a round felt hat bound with red leather. In his pockets were some rags, some tracts, a rosary, and ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... queer mixture of roughness and intelligence, recklessness, and conservatism. One swears at women who want to wear the breeches; another wonders whether we ever heard of a fellow named Paul; a third is not going to put women on an equality with niggers. One woman told Lucy that no decent woman would be running over the country talking nigger and woman. Her brother told Lucy that "he had had a woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ample size, and formerly embroidered with foliage that had been as brightly golden as the maple-leaves in October, but which had now quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of scarlet breeches once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand.[176-1] The Frenchman had given these small-clothes to an Indian pow-wow, who parted with them to the old witch ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... summer night. Below him lay the garden, wherein Mr. Basket's statuary showed here and there a glimmer in the velvet darkness. The Major turned back to the room and began to undress slowly; removing his wig, his coat, his waistcoat, and laying them on a chair. Next he turned out his breeches pockets and tossed his purse, with a handful of loose silver, upon the bed. With it there jingled the spare latchkey with which Mrs. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nobody could put him out. Runciman was not the man to allow such a challenge of his authority and prowess to be issued before his scholars and to go unanswered. Without another word, he took the man by the coat-collar with one hand, by the most convenient part of his breeches with the other hand, carried him to the door, gave him a half-a-dozen admonitory shakings, and chucked him down outside. Then he returned and made this cool entry in the school log-book: 'Father of the boy —— came into the school to-day, and was very disorderly. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... afternoon, as we lay in the woods, an old man, a shepherd, came with a flock of white sheep which followed close behind him. The old man wore a velvet cloak, knee breeches, and buckles on his shoes, and he had a sheep dog with him—a small-sized tricolored, rough-haired collie. It was exactly like a picture! We were not in any mood to enjoy the beauty of it, for some of the sheep wandered through ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... angry. The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused in her regrets which were despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of the long salons fatted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o'clock ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... with spectacles and sunshades, mounted on their tall mules; the strollers in costume bound for the next village; the barber with his basin on his head, on his way to bleed a patient; the recruit with his breeches in his bundle, tramping along the road singing; the reapers gathered in the venta gateway listening to "Felixmarte of Hircania" read out to them; and those little Hogarthian touches that he so well knew how to bring in, the ox-tail hanging up ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... noted as a droll. A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a man of different kidney from ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... her rake, when, on the other side of her conflagration, she perceived a man. He was steadily regarding her, and when her eyes fell upon him, he smiled and stepped forward—a tall, broad, very fair young man in a shooting coat, khaki riding-breeches, and puttees. He had a wide brow, clear, blue eyes and an eager, sensitive, clean-shaven mouth and chin. He held out ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... glossy beaver with enormous brim, high curved; his blue coat with brass buttons; his white waistcoat, gray breeches, and top-boots; and marched up to the chateau of Beaurepaire, and sent in his card with his name ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... knee breeches and powdered wigs who signed the Declaration of Independence and framed the Constitution—the soldiers in blue-and-buff, top-boots and epaulets who led the armies of the Revolution—were what we are wont to describe as gentlemen. They were English gentlemen. They were not all, nor even generally, ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... threw off his clothes and got ready to go into the water. He went in a cloak and breeches of coarse stuff. He tucked up the cloak, tied a cord of bast round his waist, and took a barrel with him. Then he jumped overboard, swam across the channel and reached the land on the other side. There he saw a house standing and heard sounds of talking and merriment issuing from it. So he ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... their nakedness, and then anon they understood that they had trespassed. And thus they knew that they were naked, and they took fig leaves and sewed them together for to cover their members in manner of breeches. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... puerility. Besides, we find from Max's "Memoirs," that Charles was not so coarse in his dress as is usually represented, for his clothes were made of fine materials. He always wore a plain blue coat with gilt buttons, buff waistcoat and breeches, a black crape cravat, and a cocked hat; a waist-belt, and a long cut-and-thrust sword. He never disfigured himself by the full-bottomed wig of the period, but always wore his own brown hair, combed back from his forehead. His camp-bed consisted of a blue silk mattress, pillow and coverlid; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... off by the soldiers, and fleeing at full speed. The procession came out through the Via di Vescovato. First came the guilds of merchants and craftsmen, the hatters, weavers, bakers, butchers, cutlers, and goldsmiths. They wore the prescribed dress: black coats, knee breeches, low shoes and silver buckles. As the countenances of these gentlemen offered nothing very interesting to the multitude, whisperings arose, little by little, among the spectators, then some bold spirits ventured a jest or two upon the fattest or the baldest ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him. His back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an absolute-insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a schoolboy with a tough pair of leather breeches on." Lamb also quotes the following passage from a tract printed in 1595, entitled "The Noblenesse of the Asse; a Work Rare, Learned, and Excellent": "He refuseth no burden; he goes whither he is sent, without any contradiction. He lifts not his ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... "Hat, boots, tie and breeches. All you have on! Good-night!" And walking out of the room, he leaped into the air, and flew downstairs. But though Hamar listened attentively, he could not hear him leave the building—there was no sound of ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... either of the weapons got hot while he was holding Baggara horsemen at bay, there was always one cooling, ready to hand. He also, which I believe is a phenomenal record with any campaigner, took with him thirteen pairs of riding breeches, a half dozen razors and an ice machine. Even our commander-in-chief, when campaigning, denies himself more than two shirts and never travels with ice machines. But the thirteen pairs impressed me considerably. Why thirteen, more than fifteen, or any other number? I came to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... costume was no less elegant than that of Teresa. He wore a vest of garnet-colored velvet, with buttons of cut gold; a silk waistcoat covered with embroidery; a Roman scarf tied round his neck; a cartridge-box worked with gold, and red and green silk; sky-blue velvet breeches, fastened above the knee with diamond buckles; garters of deerskin, worked with a thousand arabesques, and a hat whereon hung ribbons of all colors; two watches hung from his girdle, and a splendid poniard was in his belt. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath out-lived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.[3] He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity without a burden, and exchanged ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the next thing that had to be done. In fact, the Canadian people, regarded collectively, felt and acted in this case with as much ingenuousness as did those Tyrolese mountaineers, bred, according to Heine, to know nothing of politics save that they had an Emperor who wore a white coat and red breeches. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Colombian officer in ragged uniform, plentifully supplied with gilt, who was in the habit of commanding his tiny antediluvian gunboat from the door of a harbor saloon, came on board the Barry and ordered the breeches of the guns and the engine-valves to be removed, at the same time depriving the crew of their arms. The Japanese waiting outside the harbor had categorically demanded this action of the government in Bogota. This humiliating degradation before all ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... can't describe it. All its lilt and rhythm and color and humanness as well. And ladies walking along with huge white balloons from the White House as though they had been blowing bubbles from some great clay pipes. And a plump, rosy Chinese woman so dainty in her breeches with her shiny, black hair bound in a head dress of jade and ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... in Covent Garden about seven o'clock, surrounded by cabs, cabbages, carrots, ducks, dollys, and drabs of all sorts, waiting for his horse and the appearance of the friend who had seduced him into the extraordinary predicament of attiring himself in top-boots and breeches in London. After pacing up and down some minutes, the sound of a horse's hoofs were heard turning down from Long Acre, and reaching the lamp-post at the corner of James Street, his astonished eyes were struck with the sight of a man in a capacious, long, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Revolution and some have done good work. The trend of modern effort, however, is to straighten out the details but to avoid the large issues; to establish beyond question the precise shade of the colour of Robespierre's breeches, but to give up as unattainable having any opinion whatever on the French Revolution as a whole. Not but that, here and there, excellent work is being done. Aulard has published an important history of the Revolution which is a good corrective to Taine's; the Ministry of Public Instruction ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... flowing colored tie—blue; a cartridge belt that fitted snugly around his waist, yellow with newness, so that the man on the mesa almost imagined he could hear it creak when its owner moved; corduroy riding-breeches, tight at the knees, and glistening boots with stiff tops. And—here the observer's eyes gleamed with derision—as the buckboard passed, he had caught a glimpse of a nickeled spur, with long rowels, on one ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "pubescent," as the botanical term goes. Quite rakishly pointed are the tips, and the whole effect, in connection with the balls,—which are first crowded clusters of flowers, and then just as crowded clusters of seeds—is that of a gentleman of the old school, dignified in his knee-breeches and cocked hat, fully aware that he ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... in the field it consists of the service hat, with cord sewed on, service coat or sweater, service breeches, olive-drab flannel shirt, leggings, russet-leather shoes, and identification tag. In cold weather olive-drab woolen gloves are worn; at ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... officer of the Navy and No. 18 achieved imperishable fame and popular renown. The pay of the Captains was sixty dollars a month. The uniform was: Blue cloth with red lapels, slash cuff, stand-up collar, flat yellow buttons, blue breeches, red waistcoat with ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... this hall where the iguana lurked and the ants laboured at their commonwealth, the redoubtable "Blackbeard"—known in private life as Edward Teach—had held his famous "Satanic" revels, decked out in the absurd finery of crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, and a diamond cross hanging from a gold chain at his neck? There, perhaps, glass in hand, and "doxy on his knee," he had roared out many a blood-curdling ditty in the choice society of ruffians only less ruffianly ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... in a field of ripe corn, brought a sudden stir among the sleepers. Alec had described to her so minutely the changing scene that she was able to bring it vividly before her eyes. She saw him come out of his tent, in heavy boots, buckling on his belt. He wore knee-breeches and a pith helmet, and he was more bronzed than when she had bidden him farewell. He gave the order to the headman of the caravan to take up the loads. At the word there was a rush from all parts of the camp; ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the room; and likewise they had all the trappings of snobbery—Montague took that fact in at a glance. There were knee-breeches and scarlet facings and gold braid—marble balconies and fireplaces and fountains—French masters and real Flemish tapestry. The staircase of their palace was a winding one, and there was a white velvet carpet which had been specially woven for it, and ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... our costume bore no resemblance to the beribboned doublets, silk breeches and stockings, and slippers fastened with artificial roses, that distinguish the pastoral people of poetry and the stage. In outward show, I humbly conceive, we looked rather like a gang of beggars, or banditti, than either a company of honest laboring-men, or a conclave of philosophers. Whatever ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... if some one were staring at him fixedly. But no one was. There was a Dutchman in the gate who had not been there just before. "He must have sprung up out of the ground," thought Nick, "or else he is a very sudden Dutchman!" He had on breeches like two great meal-sacks, and a Flemish sea-cloth jacket full of wrinkles, as if it had been lying in a chest. His back was turned, and Nick could not help smiling, for the fellow's shanks came out of his breeches' bottoms like the legs of a letter ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... in a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple, and a kettle, came boldly aboard us, one of them appareled with a waistcoat and breeches of black serge, made after our sea fashion, hose and shoes on his feet: all the rest (saving one that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... remember them. The letter alluded to in the enclosed, 'to the Cardinal,' was in answer to some queries of the government, about a poor devil of a Neapolitan, arrested at Sinigaglia on suspicion, who came to beg of me here; being without breeches, and consequently without pockets for halfpence, I relieved and forwarded him to his country, and they arrested him at Pesaro on suspicion, and have since interrogated me (civilly and politely, however,) about him. I sent them the poor man's petition, and such information ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... every man with a nose and eyes of his own, she gave him a character of his own too; and yet we, O foolish race! must try our very best to ape some one or two of our neighbors, whose ideas fit us no more than their breeches! It is the study of nature, surely, that profits us, and not of these imitations of her. A man, as a man, from a dustman up to AEschylus, is God's work, and good to read, as all works of Nature are: but ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they were not yet married! On the ground lay the rib, out of which Eve, who stood a head higher than Adam, had been formed: both of them were very respectably clothed in the ancient Saxon costume; even the angel wore breeches, which, being blue, contrasted well with ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting his eyes, or getting off his knees. "You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... pressed forward and looked down into the hole. Huddled in a heap at the bottom was a man in hunting kit—white breeches, top boots and "pink" coat. Sitting along the floor, he was bent almost double, so that we ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess," he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet I believe you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women are usually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough to wear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. I wonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or women that are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. If there be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Bull-Frog consists of a green coat with yellow vest and brownish breeches, and when he requires a change of uniform, he pulls off the old one and swallows it. This fact has been doubted; but why should It be deemed incredible? Are there not parallel cases in the human family? GOLDSMITH tells us that he once ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... fear that some puppy may fancy that you are letting them come out to fascinate him; do not condemn yourself to live only by halves, because if you showed too much animation some pragmatical thing in breeches might take it into his pate to imagine that you designed to dedicate your life to his inanity. Still, a composed, decent, equable deportment is a capital treasure to a woman, and that you possess. Write again soon, for I feel rather ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... throughout with blue silk, and thrown negligently on one side. His doublet was grey, with slit sleeves; the arm parts, towards the shoulder, wide and slashed;—but who shall convey an adequate idea of the brilliant green breeches, tied far below the knee with yellow ribbands, red cloth hose, and great shoe-roses? For ourselves we own our incompetence, and proceed, glancing next at his goodly person. In size he was not tall nor unwieldy, but of a reasonable stature, such as denotes health, activity, and a frame capable ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... which the intellect seemed to play little part. He was startled by the strength of her attractiveness, amazed to learn how pleasing it was to be in her company. She was very young and brisk: wore clothes of a smart sporting cut, and was (he thought) quite divine in her riding breeches. But she was also completely devoted to the chapel, where she played the music on Sundays. She was a volatile creature, full of mischievous surprise: at their first music practice, after playing over some hymns on the pipe-organ, she burst into jazz, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... he been in and out within the circumference of a minute. But I won't stay here no longer—I'll go and try if I can't find out where Doll lives, my old sweetheart; I an't so poor, but what I can buy her a ribbon or so; and, if all comes to all, I can get a new pair o' breeches too; for, to be sure, this one doesn't look quite so decent, and if that doesn't fetch her, the devil shall, as the old saying is. I'm cursedly afraid, I sha'n't be able to find out ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... cockchafer, would have been an advantageous foil to the Bailli de Ferrette. As he walked, the little vine-owner's leg-pads often twisted round on to his shins, so little did he make a secret of them, and he would thank any one who warned him of this little mishap. He wore knee-breeches, black silk stockings, and a white waistcoat till 1824. After his marriage he adopted blue trousers and boots with heels, which made Sancerre declare that he had added two inches to his stature that he might come up to his wife's chin. For ten years he was always seen in the same ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... been described as a tall, ungainly, fast-growing, long-legged lad, clad in the garb of the frontier. This consisted of a shirt of linsey-woolsey, a coarse homespun material made of linen and wool, a pair of home-made moccasins, deerskin leggings or breeches, and a hunting shirt of the same material. This costume was completed by a coonskin cap, the tail of the animal being left to hang down the wearer's back as ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... ship bound for China, he set sail with the proverbial light heart and light pair of breeches, to which we may add light pockets. His heart soon became somewhat heavier when he discovered that his captain was a tyrant, whose chief joy appeared to consist in making other people miserable. Bill Bowls's nature, however was adaptable, so that although his spirits were a little subdued, ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... more of a blight than he could help. So Paul, vagabond and self-reliant from his babyhood, turned up at the Sunday-school treat, hatless and coatless, his dirty little toes visible through the holes in his boots, and his shapeless and tattered breeches secured to his person by a single brace. The better-dressed urchins moved away from him and made rude remarks, after the generous manner of their kind; but Paul did not care. Pariahdom was his accustomed ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... visage and frame; with a rough provincial accent and an uncouth way of speaking which would be set down for absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre.' Lamb is described by Carlyle as 'the leanest of mankind; tiny black breeches buttoned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle legs also in black, face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew type rather'; and Talfourd says that the best portrait of him is his own description of Braham—'a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... great laughter and applause as he came forward. It was Aleck, in powdered wig, velvet coat, knee breeches, silk stockings, and shining shoe-buckles. In one hand he carried a small hatchet. The occasion was almost too much for him, and he spoke his ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... little used; but generally a married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion: his behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married,—and, if we could look within his breeches, we should ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned towards ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... journey to Paris. Men of title lately have made the pleasing discovery that they may drink champagne and still be good Mussulmans. The red slipper has been succeeded by the tan gaiter. The voluminous breeches now acknowledge the superior graces of intimate English trousers. Frock-coats are more conventional than beaded jackets. The fez remains as a part of the insignia of the old faith and hereditary devotion to the ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... sure enough; yet, he is a respectable person—I can take it upon myself to say, with confidence, a very respectable person in Great Breeches. I dare say he owns no small portion of the island himself. How much, now, Sir John, if ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... himself good enough for it." However, he yielded to their persuasions, and presented himself to his bishop. But the bishop would not ordain him—why is not known, but it was said that he was offended with Goldsmith for coming to be ordained dressed in scarlet breeches. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... alarmed, started from his bed, and running to the window, beheld a cavalcade of persons well mounted, and distinguished by blue cockades. They were generally attired like jockies, with gold-laced hats and buckskin breeches, and one of them bore a standard of blue silk, inscribed in white letters, LIBERTY AND THE LANDED INTEREST. He who rode at their head was a jolly figure, of a florid complexion and round belly, seemingly turned of fifty, and, in all appearance, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... reader will meet the French expression sans-culottes again and again in Taine's or any other book about the French revolution. The nobles wore a kind of breeches terminating under the knee while tight long stockings, fastened to the trousers, exposed their calves. The male leg was as important an adornment for the nobles as it was to be for the women in the 20th Century. The poor, on the other hand, wore crude long trousers, mostly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... what he would do with this big piece of furniture—he could never get it in through his door. But do you know what a speculation he had? It was not such a bad one, after all. See! the rain runs so beautifully off the painted canvas, he would have a pair of breeches made out of it, to wear in rainy weather behind the plough; they would keep the rain off! I thought, however, I ought to prevent the portrait of the highly honorable Mrs. Ellen Marsviin being so profaned. I bought it: now she hangs there, and looks ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches-pocket, and, having ordered the Corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep. The sun looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but to Le Fevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death prest heavy upon his eyelids; and hardly could ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... do," said the man who was the last of the party to quit them, "ye'll wish ye hadn't—that's all. Take my advice, and keep yer kooriosity in yer breeches pockets." ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... Boolba in knee-breeches and white silk stockings before; she knew the coat of green and gold which the retainers of the house of Yaroslav wore on state occasions. Boolba was marrying her in his butler's livery—a ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... close-fitting yellow jacket, heavily trimmed with black, white and yellow frogs and crossed cords, in the hussar fashion, and finished at the neck in the military manner with a stiff high collar. His legs were encased in tight breeches of white leather, and long polished boots with riding flaps were drawn above the knee. The long straight rapier hung in its gleaming sheath by his side, the colours of the Korps being done in velvet upon the basket-hilt. Over his right shoulder he wore a heavy silk scarf of the three colours, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... and at about nine we heard a galloping towards the door, and then a loud knocking; it was opened, and in rushed a wild-looking man mounted on a donkey; he wore a ragged jacket of sheepskin, called in Spanish zamarra, with breeches of the same as far down as his knees; his legs were bare. Around his sombrero, or shadowy hat, was tied a large quantity of the herb which in English is called rosemary, in Spanish romero, and in the rustic language of Portugal, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... his breast; and a blue coat with wide skirts, and fleur-de-lys on the flaps, which were turned back—an odd costume which the King had adopted. But the Marquis could not bring himself to give up the Frenchman's knee-breeches nor yet the white silk stockings or the buckles at the knees. After six o'clock in the evening ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... illustrious Ex-Chancellor of our day. No less a personage, too, than Fitz-Stephen, son of Stephen Earl of Ammerle in 1095, grandson of Od, Earl of Bloys and Lord of Holderness, was the progenitor gravely assigned to Chatterton's relative, Mr Stephens, leather-breeches-maker of Salisbury. Evidence of all sorts was ever ready among the treasures in the Redcliff muniment room, the Blue-Coat ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... leather, cut in a semi-military fashion. Slashes of dark-red material across the sleeves were repeated about the collar, while the cap, a jaunty affair with a bell crown, matched the suit. The lower ends of the breeches, much like ordinary riding trousers, were tucked into high lace-up boots of ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... were mighty strange, and every darned nigger of them looked so pleased like. To show them manners, I said, ‘How are you?’ and I went to bow, but chaw my last tobacco if I could, my breeches was so tight—the heat way back in the cañon had shrunk them. They were too polite to notice it, and I felt for my knife to rip the dog-goned things, but recollecting the scalp-taker was stolen, I straightens up and bowed my head. A kind-looking, smallish old gentleman, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... these occasions everybody is expected to be in court dress, but my host told me I might present myself in ordinary evening dress. I thought that I might feel awkwardly among so many guests, all in the wedding garments, knee-breeches and the rest, without which I ventured among them. I never passed an easier evening in any company than among these official personages. Sir William took me under the shield of his ample presence, and answered all my questions about ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... buckles; and gracefully managing their ostrich feather fans as they curtsy to their partners; the latter wearing wigs also powdered white, long coats of brocade, elaborately embroidered waistcoats with lace jabots, satin knee breeches, silk stockings and a garter with jewelled buckle on the right leg, and helping themselves to snuff out of gold or silver boxes during brief pauses in the dance. Such is the picture that can be conjured up in imagination while playing ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... magnificent court of Louis XIV began to make itself felt in the matter of dress, and both gentlemen and ladies affected gay attire. The hoop-petticoat came into fashion, and the dress was looped up at intervals to show the richly-coloured skirt below. The gentlemen wore knee-breeches and silk stockings, the former ornamented with knots of ribbon; the scarf was very full and rich, and often fell in folds over the front of the waistcoat; the coat was usually gaily coloured. Swords were worn by the gallants, and the periwig was seen everywhere in high ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... est! You can see by his face what sort of a case he is! His alibi betrays him, body and bones. But it is also certain that he did not set the thing going. He was only the stupid hired tool. You agree? And the humble Psyekoff was not without some slight share in the matter. His dark blue breeches, his agitation, his lying behind the stove in terror after the murder, his ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... priest did also go up with them; not always indeed, but on the seventh days and new moons, and if any festivals belonging to our nation, which we celebrate every year, happened. When he officiated, he had on a pair of breeches that reached beneath his privy parts to his thighs, and had on an inner garment of linen, together with a blue garment, round, without seam, with fringe work, and reaching to the feet. There were also golden bells that hung upon the fringes, and pomegranates ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... saw no great resemblance to the Jewish Hercules in the little, dapper, bustling-mannered man in a blue coat with bright brass buttons, pepper-and-salt knee-breeches, and long gaiters, who thus proclaimed his relationship to the lady of the castle. He hurried down from the wall to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... elevation!—and at the bell the whole long double line of soldiers, from the Pope's chair at the western end to the eastern door, with a rattle of arms that ran from end to end of the church, dropped on one knee—saluted. Then, crac!—and as they had dropped, they rose, the stiff white breeches and towering helmets of the Guardia Nobile, the red and yellow of the Swiss, the red and blue of the Papal guards—all motionless as before. It was like the movement of some gigantic toy. And who or what else took any notice? Lucy looked round amazed. Even the Irish priest behind her ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... years past. But in his outer garments he was very unlike that description. He wore a black, swallow-tailed coat, made, however, to set very loose upon his back, a black waistcoat, and black pantaloons. He carried, moreover, in his hands a black chimney-pot hat. Not only have the top-boots and breeches vanished from the costume of innkeepers, but also the long, particoloured waistcoat, and the birds'-eye fogle round their necks. They get themselves up to look like Dissenting ministers or undertakers, except that ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... suits of clothes, cut in the popular Munchkin fashion, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, and low shoes with jeweled buckles. The hats to match these costumes had pointed tops and wide brims with small gold bells around the edges. His shirts were of fine linen with frilled bosoms, and his vests were richly embroidered ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... writing at the table as if for very life. He wore a tattered black robe, shortened at the knees to facilitate walking, a frizzled wig, looking as if it had been dressed with a currycomb, a pair of black breeches, well-patched with various colors; and gamaches of brown leather, such as the habitans wore, completed his odd attire, and formed the professional costume of Master Pothier dit Robin, the travelling notary, one of that not unuseful order of itinerants of the law which flourished under ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and vest; the diamond buckles of the right and left garters were unfastened respectively by the first valet de chambre and the first valet of the wardrobe, and the valets of the Chamber withdrew with the kingly shoes and breeches while the pages of the Chamber presented slippers and dressing-gown. The latter was held as a screen while the shirt was removed, and the night-dress was accepted from the hands of a royal ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... the room, her eyes fell upon the carpenter, who was standing near its centre, clad in green woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees, and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which protruded; it was as proper a mark of the artisan's calling as Mr. Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's aristocratic pretensions. A glow ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mass of colour gleamed at the farther end of the village as he looked down the winding road;—scarlet coats, white vests and buckskin breeches showed bravely against the satiny brown and greys of a fine group of gaily prancing steeds that came following after the huntsmen, the hounds and the whippers-in, and a cheery murmur of pleasant voices, broken with an occasional musical ring of laughter, dispersed for a time the heaviness of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... careful as his wife to follow the latest vogue at Versailles. His hair was curled, powdered, and tied in a queue, his headgear was the ceremonious three-cornered hat. A stately, coloured frockcoat, an embroidered waistcoat, knee-breeches, silk stockings, and high-heeled buckled shoes completed the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... I say. Where on earth did they all come from in such a sudden fashion last spring? Everybody had them. Who would suspect that a man drawing a salary of ten thousand a year was keeping in reserve a pair of pepper-and-salt breeches, four sizes too large for him, just in case a war should break out against Germany! Talk of German mobilization! I doubt whether the organizing power was all on their side after all. At any rate it is estimated that fifty ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... men and other creatures. As long as he can recollect, he had always lived in a hole, (a small, low apartment, which he sometimes calls a cage,) where he had always sat upon the ground, with bare feet, and clothed only with a shirt and a pair of breeches. In his apartment, he never heard a sound, whether produced by a man, by an animal, or by anything else. He never saw the heavens, nor did there ever appear a brightening (daylight) such as at Nuremberg, he never perceived any difference between day and night, and much less did he ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Let me tell another story, this time in connection with that Old Meeting which has so much to attract the visitor at Norwich. It had a grand old man, William Youngman, amongst its supporters; I see him now, with his choleric face, his full fat figure, his black knee-breeches and silk stockings, his gold-headed cane. He was an author, a learned man, as well as a Norwich merchant, the very Aristarchus of Dissent—a kind-hearted, hospitable man withal, if my boyish experience may be relied on. One Sunday there came to preach in the Old Meeting ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... dress was of an amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style on one side of his head; a rusty[1] blue military coat with brass buttons; and a wide pair of short petticoat trousers,—or rather breeches, for they were gathered up at the knees. He ordered everybody about him with an authoritative air, talking in a brattling[2] voice that sounded like the crackling of thorns under a pot, d—d the landlord and servants with perfect impunity, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Letters notice only Latin versifying, but they show us a young man supposed to be nineteen, still at school, having a smart pair of breeches for holy days, falling in love, eating figs and raisins, proposing to come up to London for a day or two's holiday or lark to his elder brother's, and having 8d. sent him in a letter to buy a pair of slippers with. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... now fairly bright and warm; and Anderson, who is the first to enter, has left his cloak at home. He is accompanied by Lawyer Hawkins, a brisk, middleaged man in brown riding gaiters and yellow breeches, looking as much squire as solicitor. He and Anderson are allowed precedence as representing the learned professions. After them comes the family, headed by the senior uncle, William Dudgeon, a large, shapeless man, bottle-nosed and evidently ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... inexorable, that he kept harrying his tradesmen. To be caught unprepared by the telegram would be a disaster. But the tradesmen had lessons to teach him, and by the time the kit was approximately completed he had learnt the lessons. Whether the transaction concerned his tunic, breeches, spurs, leggings, cane, sword, socks, shirts, cap, camp field-kit, or any of the numerous other articles without which an officer might not respectably enter the British Army, the chief lesson was the same, namely, that the tradesmen ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Another one told him that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had got the mittin was praowlin' abaout with a pistil,—one o' them Darringers abaout as long as your thumb, an' 'll fire a bullet as big as a potato-ball,—a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots y' right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his pocket. The stable-keeper, who it may be remembered once exchanged a few playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these unfeeling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the other expence of a day after playes and the taverne ... and men have still some othes left to swear here.... The visitants are all men without exception, but the principall inhabitants are stale knights and captains out of servis, men with long rapiers and breeches, who after all turne merchant here, and trafficke for news. Some make it a preface to dinner and travell for a stomache, but thriftier men make it their ordinary, and boarde here very cheape. Of all such places it is least troubled ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... sufficiently watched his infant. The "viscount-judge" of Falaise appeared on the solemn occasion "on horseback, with a plume of feathers on his head, and his hand on his side." The sow was dragged forth dressed in the costume of a citizen, in a vest and breeches, and "with gloves on, wearing a mask representing the face ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... distant from Aldeire some four leagues, and the road between the two towns is a very bad one. Before nine o'clock on the following morning, however, Uncle Juan Gomez, wearing his blue stockinet knee-breeches and his embroidered white Sunday boots, was in the office of Don Matias de Quesada, a vigorous old man, a doctor in civil and criminal jurisprudence, the most noted criminal lawyer in that part of the country. He had always been a promoter of lawsuits, and was very wealthy, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... blows and insults and we may observe the great value then attached to needles. It is "a right pithy, pleasant and merry comedy"—a country story of an old dame who loses her needle when sewing a patch on the seat of her servant Hodge's breeches. The cat's misdoings interrupt her, and her needle is lost. The hunt for the needle is amusing, and Gammer Gurton and Dame Chat, whom she suspects of having stolen it, abuse and call each other witches. Hodge, the man with the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... delight. "But I'll have to borrow some breeches from someone. You don't want me to ride in a skirt ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... aquiline nose, completed the sum of any features which might be called distinctive. He was a man who was thoroughly adapted to his work—work which needed a cool head and quick eye rather than great mental attainments. He was dressed in a brown canvas tunic with brass buttons, and his riding breeches were concealed in, a pair of well-worn leather "chaps." A Stetson hat worn at the exact angle on his head, with his official "side arms" secured round his waist, completed ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... her majesty of the mouth; and, seizing by the hinder part of his breeches the unfortunate Tarpaulin, who had just commenced pouring out for himself a skull of liqueur, she lifted him high into the air, and let him fall without ceremony into the huge open puncheon of his beloved ale. Bobbing up and down, for a few seconds, like an apple ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... prepared and had my mind made up long ago," cried Peterkin, swaggering about the deck with his hands thrust into his breeches pockets. "The fact is, Jack, I don't believe that Tararo will be so ungrateful as to eat us, and I'm quite sure that he'll be too happy to grant us whatever we ask; so the sooner we go in ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the time required men to wear at a ball white kerseymere breeches and silk stockings. This pretty costume showed to great advantage the perfection of Montcornet's fine shape. He was five-and-thirty, and attracted attention by his stalwart height, insisted on for the Cuirassiers of the Imperial Guard whose handsome uniform enhanced the dignity of ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... said the red one. Then he thrust his hand into his breeches pocket, and drew forth the prettiest little plough that you ever saw. He stood it on the ground before Jacob, and it grew large as you see it in the picture. "Plough away," said he, and then he went back again whither he ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... presently showed himself on the edge of the shelf of rock. And Copplestone found himself staring at a queer figure of a man—an under-sized, quaint-looking fellow, clad in dirty velveteens, a once red waistcoat, and leather breeches and gaiters, a sort of compound between a poacher, a game-keeper, and an ostler. But quainter than figure or garments was the man's face—a gnarled, weather-beaten, sea-and-wind stained face, which, in Copplestone's opinion, was holiest enough and not without abundant ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... greatness, and was not devoid of a certain grace. He wore a linen collar, a round-brown wig, as though without powder, and which did not reach to his shoulders; a brown coat tight to the body, even, and with gold buttons; vest, breeches, stockings, no gloves or ruffles, the star of his order over his coat, and the cordon under it, the coat itself being frequently quite unbuttoned, his hat upon the table, but never upon his head, even ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... every art and science of the West, as well as the most approved methods of manufacture, from the making of a man-of-war to the etching of an engraving. Nothing escaped the keen eyes of this rude, half-savage northern giant. For a week he put on the wide breeches of a Dutch laborer and worked in the shipyard at Saardam near Amsterdam. In England, Holland, and Germany he engaged artisans, scientific men, architects, ship captains, and those versed in artillery and the training of troops, all of whom he took back with him ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the holy ceremony. I looked, alternately in fear and wonder, at those terrible warriors with their swords always raised, those beautiful huntresses shooting the arrow which never left the bow, and those shepherds in satin breeches always playing the flute at the feet of the perpetually smiling shepherdess. Sometimes, when the wind blew behind these hanging pictures, it seemed to me that the figures themselves moved, and I watched to see them ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... well-cut breeches and traveling caps, looking as if they had stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes motion picture. They offered to carry letters back and deliver messages, and they found everything on my place perfectly fascinating, and laughed heartily at my mattress of willow twigs—and were particularly ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... really great actors are great in soul, and do not blubber like a great school-girl because Anne Bellamy has two yellow silk dresses from Paris, as I saw Woffington blubber in this room, and would not be comforted; nor fume like Kitty Clive, because Woffington has a pair of breeches and a little boy's rapier to go a playing at acting with. When I was young, two giantesses fought for empire upon this very stage, where now dwarfs crack and bounce like parched peas. They played Roxana and Statira in the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... shillings perhaps; or, perhaps you ain't got a pair o' boots as has in 'em more leather 'n holes, or a pair of breeches as is good ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... with the clockwork monkeys, the flower-stalls and the vegetable-sellers, all these were here; in the centre of the square, sheep and pigs were penned. Dogs were barking, stout farmers in corduroy breeches walked about arguing and expectorating, and suddenly, above all the clamour and bustle, the Cathedral chimes ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... side of the double-breasted swell of blue Cairnsmuir of Carsphairn], "an' think that howkin' (wi' a lassie to help ye) in among the gravel is guddlin'. You see here!" cried Andra, and before either Winsome or Ralph could say a word, he had stripped himself to his very brief breeches and ragged shirt, and was wading into the deepest part of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... is generally found in a luxurious suite of rooms in one of the best hotels. He goes about clad in a blue blouse with a tasseled girdle, and baggy black breeches tucked into heavy boots. He offers his visitors tea from a samovar and fruit from the Crimea. Speaking of what he had accomplished for the cause of sobriety in Russia, Mr. ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various |
