"Girdle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Maria Padella was accused of having bewitched Don Pedro. According to one popular tradition she presented Queen Blanche of Bourbon with a golden girdle which, in the eyes of the bewitched king, took on the appearance of a living snake. Hence the repugnance he always showed toward the ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... longer than the surplice, and with tight sleeves. It is confined at the waist by a girdle, and, when employed in the Eucharist, it is often, though not necessarily, ornamented with patches of ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... commenting upon the policy of General Jackson, as having for its object the "dismembering of Mexico, and restoring slavery to Texas, and of surrounding the South with a girdle of slave states, to eternize the blessings of the peculiar institution, and spread them like a garment of praise over the whole North American Union," he explained the effect of party divisions always operating in the United States, and the character of the several proportions ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... scarcely possible to help joining him. His attire consisted of a long loose gown of spotted crimson silk, with the royal cipher woven in front in gold; hose of blue cloth, guarded with red and black cloth; and red cordovan buskins. A sash tied round his waist served him instead of a girdle, and he wore a trencher-shaped velvet cap on his head, with a white tufted feather in it. In his hand he carried a small horn. He was generally attended by a monkey, habited in a crimson doublet and hood, which sat upon his shoulder, and played very diverting tricks, but the animal was not ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Lydia. "And I suspect he's so cross with me that he hates to keep this engagement. But I don't care. I wish I had a new dress. But I've made the sleeves small in my organdy and made a new girdle. It looks as well as could ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... is exceedingly simple. They just lay aside the girdle of beauty or chastity which they ordinarily wear and present themselves to the public as Eve did to Adam; or like so many ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... river has moved through my thought as it rolls through the landscape spread out at my feet. There it lies, winding for many a mile within the boundaries of this noble outlook; by day flecked with sails approaching and receding, and at night shining under the full moon like a girdle of silver, clasping mountains and broad meadow lands in a varied but harmonious landscape. From the point at which I look out upon its long course, the stream has a setting worthy of its volume and its history. In the distant background a ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... not mean merely in its magnificence; the most splendid time was not the best time. It was still in the thirteenth century,—when, as we have seen, simplicity and gorgeousness were justly mingled, and the "leathern girdle and clasp of bone" were worn, as well as the embroidered mantle,—that the manner of dress seems to have been noblest. The chain mail of the knight, flowing and falling over his form in lapping waves of gloomy strength, was worn under full robes of one color in the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... figure in coloured pottery (faience), representing either a votary or priestess of a goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the waist and emphasises the broad hips. The little statue is about ten inches high, and was found by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos, the ancient buried city the capital of Crete, in the Later Palace. Its date is that of the close of the Minoan ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... smell made their eyes large and their sight keen, so that in a fight they could see the spears coming and could parry or avoid them.[177] Similar magical virtues are ascribed to the hair of the dead by the Arunta. Among them the hair of a dead man is cut off and made into a magic girdle, which is a valued possession and is only worn when a man is going out to engage in a tribal fight or to stalk a foe for the purpose of destroying him by witchcraft. The girdle is supposed to be endowed ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... summer, and in winter blue coats or gowns, their stockings being of white broadcloth "sewed close up to their round slops or breeches, as if they were all but of one piece." Later on, none were allowed to wear "any girdle, point, garters, shoe-strings, or any kind of silk or ribbon, but stockings only of woollen yarn or kersey; nor Spanish shoes; nor hair with any tuft or lock, but cut short in decent and comely manner." ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... divided nearly in two, and the southern portion is sometimes called Lake Pskov. It may have been across the narrow part between the two ends of the lake that the hero is supposed to have waded, when, even during a great storm, the water reached only to his girdle. ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... of wind-blown prairie-cane you see an oasis emerging,—a ridge or hillock heavily umbraged with the rounded foliage of evergreen oaks:—a cheniere. And from the shining flood also kindred green knolls arise,—pretty islets, each with its beach-girdle of dazzling sand and shells, yellow-white,—and all radiant with semi-tropical foliage, myrtle and palmetto, orange and magnolia. Under their emerald shadows curious little villages of palmetto huts are drowsing, where dwell a swarthy population of Orientals,—Malay fishermen, who speak the Spanish-Creole ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... a man at a hotel who kept me up till three in the morning proving to me that the earth is flat. I'll give Mr. Smith his address, and when he gets home he can go and prove to him that he's a flat. (Laughter.) You remember in a play of Shakespeare there's a little chap that says he'll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. His name was Puck, gentlemen. Mr. Smith won't do it quite so quick—not this journey, at any rate—but who knows what these young scientific fellows will be a-doing of next? Mr. Smith's aeroplane hasn't got a name, I believe, but he'd better christen ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Armida had an enchanted girdle, which, "in price and beauty," surpassed all her other ornaments; even the cestus of Venus was less costly. It told her everything; "and when she would be loved, she wore the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the military cloaks of our days, and discovered the knightly armour, which showed to peculiar advantage his powerful limbs. A straight black tunic without sleeves descended to his knees. It was fastened by a silver girdle, from which depended on one side a strong sword, and on the other a dagger, the richly wrought handle of which seemed to declare it of Turkish make. His arms and hands were covered with a steel tissue, sitting close and so flexible that it yielded lightly to every motion. The squire ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... of this order (of St. Antony) wore a collar of gold, with an hermit's girdle, to which hung a crutch and a little bell.[3] See in the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1750, the plate of the orders of knighthood, where T, whether a letter or crutch, is given to the order ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... breakfasted and dressed, the next morning, when the grand vizier appeared, according to his orders, to accompany him in his excursion. The caliph stuck the box with the magic powder into his girdle, and having commanded his retinue to remain behind, he set off with only the grand vizier, on his way. They went first through the spacious gardens of the caliph, but they could not find any living animal to try their experiment upon. At last, the vizier ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... your own affinity, Bid them pluck the beam out of their own eye: The old popish priests mock and despise, And the ignorant people, that believe their lies, Call them papists, hypocrites, and joining of the plough; Face[107] out the matter, and then good enough! Let your book at your girdle be tied, Or else in your bosom that he may be spied; And then it will be said both with youth and age, Yonder fellow hath an excellent knowledge. Tush, tush! I could so beat[108] the bush, That all should be ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... he indeed proved to be, for after casting a furtive look, not unmingled with surprise and suspicion, at his brother redskin, he opened a small bag which hung at his girdle, and delivered to McLeod ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the poor heathen there, surely his heart and his eyes must overflow with tears of joy, if he possess any feeling of interest in the happiness of others: they are indeed sparkling rubies in the golden girdle of our dear Saviour, as the text for the day speaks, Rev 1 13. And I believe the Saviour has in these northern waters many such gems that he will also gather, and set in it to his praise and glory. My heart is much impressed with the thought ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... Dukala, in a place of level barley fields new cut with the media luna. Brilliant poppies and irises stained the meadows on all sides, and orchards whose cactus hedges, planted for defence, were now aflame with blood-red flowers, became a girdle of beauty as well as strength. The khalifa rode a swiftly-ambling mule, a beast of price, his yellow slippers were ostentatiously new, and his ample girth proclaimed the wealthy man in a land where all the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... in a gown of ruby cashmere, and wore an expensive cap and slippers to match; the girdle was untied, leaving the rich chenille tassels to trail almost upon the ground, and the velvet fronts so elaborately embroidered were crushed rudely aside by his hands, which were thrust into ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... white mark on the arms and back. On grand occasions public officials wear a similar dress of a light fawn or dove tint. A person of the rank of a gentleman invariably wears two swords stuck in his girdle. On sitting down he removes the longest, and places it against some piece of furniture at his side; but he never parts with the smaller one, which is kept sharp, and in readiness to kill himself should any accusation ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... means to know," said I. "I cannot continue to go dovering round in the black night with two men's lives at my girdle! Catriona, try to put yourself in my place, as I vow to God I try hard to put myself in yours. This is no kind of talk that should ever have fallen between me and you; no kind of talk; my heart is sick with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bordering on Bosnia a rich band of silk or coloured wools is twisted round it. Over the skirt of rough linen (the kosulja), open to show the breast, is the krozet, a waistcoat crossed on the breast with flat buttons of silver, or tin, and embroidery; it is bound to the sides with a girdle (pas) made of red strings. The trousers (benevrechi) are of a coarse blue cloth fitting to the legs and very tight at the calf, below which they are split up and fastened by sponje, copper or silver hooks. The stockings (nazubei) are of wool of various patterns. The shoes ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... to the crown lying on the table.) What subtle potency lies hidden in this gaudy bauble, the crown,[7] that makes one feel like a god when one wears it? To hold in one's hand this little fiery coloured world, to reach out one's arm to earth's uttermost limit, to girdle the seas with one's hosts; this is to wear a crown! to wear a crown! The meanest serf in Russia who is loved is better crowned than I. How love outweighs the balance! How poor appears the widest empire of this golden world when matched ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... sweat, sir. Why, your gold Is such another med'cine, it dries up All those offensive savours: it transforms The most deformed, and restores them lovely, As 'twere the strange poetical girdle. Jove Could not invent t' himself a shroud more subtle To pass Acrisius' guards. It is the thing Makes all the world her grace, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... an ordinary London square. Its cubic contents would build a city of twenty-two thousand such houses as were above described, and laid in a line of cubic squares would reach a distance of nearly seventeen thousand miles, or girdle two-thirds of the earth's circumference at the equator. Herodotus says that its construction required the continuous labour of a hundred thousand men for the space of twenty years, and moderns do not regard ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... pale pink georgette, with long bell-shaped sleeves and a black velvet girdle knotted at one side, fitted him seemingly like a glove. A large Leghorn hat, its black velvet streamers fastened beneath his chin, heavily weighted with a full-blown rose over one eye, threatened to hide his rebellious mop of hair. White silk stockings and a pair of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... drawn forth a calamus from his girdle, and, cross-legged on the ground, with his roll of papyrus in his hand, he raises his head towards Antony, who, seated beside ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... silver upon him; a crimson cloak in wide descending folds upon him, fastened at his breast by a golden brooch set with precious stones; a neck-torque of gold around his neck; a white shirt with a full collar, and intertwined with threads of gold, upon him; a girdle of gold inlaid with precious stones around him; two wonderful shoes of gold with runings of gold upon him; two spears with golden ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Cyane, a water nymph. But Cyane, before Demeter came to her, had been changed into a spring of water. And now, not being able to speak and tell Demeter where her child had gone to and who had carried her away, she showed in the water the girdle of Persephone that she had caught in her hands. And Demeter, finding the girdle of her child in the spring, knew that she had been carried off by violence. She lighted a torch at Etna's burning mountain, and for nine days and nine nights she went searching ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... dishevelled, reaching down to her feet. Her countenance is most ferocious. Her tongue comes out of her mouth, and hangs over her chin. She has three eyes, red and fiery. Her lips and eyebrows are streaked with blood. She has two dead bodies for ear-rings, and wears a girdle around her loins—a girdle made of bloody hands, which she cut off from the bodies of her enemies. She has a necklace of skulls, which she took from the bodies of the giants ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... The first wild tumult of rage having more or less spent its force, she began, with a kind of heart-broken curiosity, to ask for the facts. She spoke nervously, beating a palm with a gold tassel of her girdle. "Begin at the beginning. Tell ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... princes, And looseth the girdle of the strong; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... a Summer Assizes holden at Hartfor[d], while the Judge was sitting upon the Bench, comes this old Tod into the Court, cloathed in a green Suit, with his Leathern Girdle in his hand, his Bosom open, and all on a dung sweat, as if he had run for his Life; and being come in, he spake aloud as follows: {27b} My Lord, said he, Here is the veryest Rogue that breaths upon the face of the earth. I have ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... being is generally found to be an inner citadel surrounded by a network of prejudices. It was only Johnson's intimate friends who were admitted into the central fortress of his faith: the rest of the world saw it plainly indeed, but did not get nearer than the girdle of defensive prejudices outside, and to them they {142} often got nearer than they liked. Whether people discovered that Johnson was a Christian or not, they were quite certain to discover that he was a Churchman. His High ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... as though with hard effort, as a decrepit person might have done. You saw that she was dressed in a long gown of black, pleated to the knees, having no clasp or girdle, and bare of any ornamentation except a gold star on ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... loved Eleanor in spite of everything, but she had to admit to herself that a timid little freshman might infinitely prefer staying at home from the sophomore reception to going in Eleanor's company, if she happened to be in a bad mood. And furthermore, as Betty lost her temper over Helen's girdle, which would go up in front and down behind, completely spoiling the effect of an otherwise pretty evening dress, she was in a position to realize that trying to help is by no means the soul-inspiring thing that it ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... Helma made a girdle of brakes for herself, and a dandelion wreath for her hair. She wove a dear little cap of star flowers for Ivra, and a chain of them for her neck. Eric crowned himself with bloodroot and contrived grass sandals for his feet. But the sandals, of course, wore through ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... him in the darkness, and he felt that he was being draped in other garments than his own; a circlet of ice seemed to run about his head, while round the waist, enclosing the fastened arms, he felt a girdle tightly drawn. At last, about his very throat, there ran a soft and silken touch which, better than if there had been full light, and a mirror held to his face, he understood to be the cord of sacrifice—and ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... killed by a bear was also very evident. He was naked to the waist, and had been cutting grass. His bundle lay by him, and the long curved kind of sickle that the hillmen used to cut grass with was stuck in his girdle, showing that he had not had time to draw it to strike one blow in his defence. The mark of the bear's paw on his left side was quite distinct. This had felled him to the ground, and then the savage brute had given him one bite—no more, but that one had demolished almost the whole ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... appearance was strange indeed. His hair was long and unkempt; his face tanned with the sun and the desert air; his body unnourished by the simple food of locusts and wild honey. His raiment was of the coarsest and cheapest cloth of camel's hair. His girdle was a rough band of leather, such as was worn by the poor,—most unlike those made of fine material, and ornamented with needlework. His whole appearance must have been a great contrast to his gentle and refined ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... "By your leave, Sor Beppo," Angioletto stepped delicately into the room. He threw down cloak and cap, unstrapped girdle and hanger, stripped off his doublet, and stood up in shirt and breeches. Beppo watched him, all agape, too breathless to chew. Before he ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... enter my chamber."—"Of a blue colour, was it not?" interrogated the doctor.—"Of a pale blue! and this pale blue light was followed by a tall, meagre, stern figure, who appeared as an old man of seventy years of age, arrayed in a long light coloured rug gown, bound with a leathern girdle: his beard thick and grisly; his hair scant and straight; his face of a dark sable hue; upon his head a large fur cap; and in his hand a long staff. Terror seized my whole frame. I trembled till the bed shook, and cold drops hung upon every ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Grandma, the Demon, would join them, the silver cigarette case dangling at her girdle. Then was he sorely beset. They would perhaps talk about him over his head, discuss his points as if he were some new beast from ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... in the imperial scheme? If looks went for what looks rarely do, except in women, they should have been the lords of those they met; but as it was they were simply the representatives of one of the suppressed races which, if they joined hands, could girdle the globe under British rule. Somehow they brought the sense of this home to the beholder, as none of the monuments or memorials of England's imperial glory had done, and then, having fulfilled their office, lost ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... how he used always to wear a sketch-book attached to his girdle as he walked through the streets of Florence, so that he might make a sketch of any face whose expression especially attracted him; how he would invite peasants to his studio and talk with them and tell laughable stories, that he might ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now, kindly. Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her two brothers had borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and with a score of cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... body of troops, nor armor, no shields, no crossbows, no swords. They had knives, rudely made of some hard stone, but it seemed that they were made for hunting and felling and dividing. No clothing hid from us any frame. The cacique had about his middle a girdle of wrought cotton with worked ends and some of the women wore as slight a dress, but that was all. They were formed well, all of them, lithe and slender, not lacking either in sinew and muscle, but it was sinew and muscle of ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... behind the counter, nor, placing the matter in the most favourable point of view, in the descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile enslaver—French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented with a piece of buffoonery, like a beehive on his head and a picklock key at his girdle)—the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont the matter is different: we must either have been the rabble or the lords; we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank and spirit as our ancestors ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... obliterated, it can easily be deciphered that the latter figure wears a garment similar to the kwaca or dark-blue blanket for which Tusayan is still famous, and that this blanket was bound by a girdle, the ends of which hang from the woman's left hip. While the figure of the man is likewise indistinct (the vessel evidently having been long in use), the nature of the act in which he is engaged ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... again commence the race far life or death. But it seemed a hopeless attempt—so utterly helpless was the Sachem, and so unable to retain his seat. Quick as thought Oriana unbound her long twisted girdle of many colors; and, flinging it to Henrich, desired him to bind the failing form of her father to his own. He did so: and the nurse having mounted behind Oriana, again the now furious steeds started forward. All ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... commands an extent of nearly fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I have great pleasure in sending you this despatch—the first that has been telegraphed from an aerial station—and to know that I should be so much encouraged, from having given ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... mend a wagon, defend one's self vigorously if need be, make a buttonhole and eat one's breakfast. No Servian who adheres to the ancient costume would consider himself dressed unless the crooked knife hung from his girdle. Although the country-side along the Danube is rough, and travellers are said to need protection among the Servian hills, I could not discover that the inhabitants wore other weapons than these useful articles of cutlery. Yet they are daring smugglers, and sometimes openly defy the Hungarian authorities ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... small tradesmen, our host is clad in a "gelabieh," or long gown of white or blue cotton, gathered round the waist by a girdle of coloured cloth. Stuck jauntily on the back of his head is the red "tarbush," or fez, universal in the towns, or, if married, he wears a turban of fine white cotton; his shoes are of red or yellow leather, but are generally carried in his hand if ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... from the Gravel Pits at Kensington.[26] Levee stopped the coach and without more ado, ordered both the coachmen and footman to jump the ditch, or he'd shoot them. They then stripped the ladies of their necklaces, cut a gold girdle buckle from the side of the child, and took away about ten shillings in money, with a little white metal image of a man, which they thought had been solid silver, but proved ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... vinegar! Then the good Pantagruel, thinking he had fainted, commanded them to provide him some vinegar; but Panurge knew well that there was some good prey in hands, and forthwith showed unto noble Pantagruel how he was bearing upon his back a fair roebuck, and all his girdle bordered with hares. Then immediately did Epistemon make, in the name of the nine Muses, nine antique wooden spits. Eusthenes did help to flay, and Panurge placed two great cuirassier saddles in such sort that they ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... determine to which of these two classes a given symbol belongs. Did Jeremiah, for example, actually go to Euphrates to bury the linen girdle there, or only in prophetic ecstacy? Jer. 13:1-11. Did Ezekiel perform the acts recorded in chap. 4 in reality or in vision? The answer to such questions is not of great importance, since either way the meaning of the symbols and the instructions which they ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... brae, in Scotland and England, as teugh and birnie as a very deil wi' me. It's true, she's as poor's a sang-maker and as hard's a kirk, and tipper-taipers when she taks the gate, first like a lady's gentlewoman in a minuwae, or a hen on a het girdle; but she's a yauld, poutherie Girran for a' that, and has a stomack like Willie Stalker's meere that wad hae disgeested tumbler-wheels, for she'll whip me aff her five stimparts o' the best aits at a down-sittin ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy. When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood, poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... leather overlaid with metal across chest and abdomen, and embossed with bronze designs of ancient pattern and workmanship. The hem of the white tunic showed below the leathern pendants that hung a foot down from his girdle; the greaves were ornamented at the knees with lions' heads; an armour-bearer carried his master's bronze helmet with its crest of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... only that idols were often absent, but that, where they existed, the images of the gods served merely as depositories for the proper representatives of the divinity. Each of these was called a maro aurou, and was a kind of girdle artistically adorned with red, yellow, blue, and black feathers—the red feathers being especially important—which were consecrated and kept as sacred objects within the idols. They were worn by great personages on solemn occasions, and ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... your darling shall have it; until then lend it to your little girl, as a strengthening amulet. The sight of it will hold me firm, will girdle my soul with fortitude, as it girdles my finger; will set a yet holier seal to the compact whereby I pledged my life, that you might die in peace. If, in the last hour, you had known all my peril, all that my promise entails, would you ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... said William the Norman, "let his corpse guard the coasts, which his life madly defended. Let the seas wail his dirge, and girdle his grave; and his spirit protect the land which hath passed to the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as the island swam closer, the embracing fringe of cocoanut-trees drew my eyes. They were like a girdle upon the beautiful body of the land, whose lower half was in the ocean. They seemed the freewaving banners of romance, whispering always of nude peoples, of savage whites, of ruthless passion, of rum and missionaries, cannibals ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Abdera on his way back, and to have made with them a guest-friendship and presented them with a Persian sword of gold and a gold-spangled tiara: and as the men of Abdera themselves say (though I for my part can by no means believe it), he loosed his girdle for the first time during his flight back from Athens, considering himself to be in security. Now Abdera is situated further towards the Hellespont than the river Strymon and Eion, from which place the story says that he embarked ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... some another (for there were many modes of egress from the tiny dwelling); but at last F—— cried decidedly, "We must try them all in succession," and shouldering his gun, with the revolver sticking in the girdle of his dressing-gown, sallied valiantly forth. I don't know what became of Mr. A——: I believe he took up a position with the rifle pointing downwards; the maids retreated beneath their blankets, and I (too ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Is your belt strong?" He pointed to a girdle of yellow leather which caught her tunic ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... with one foot bare. He was of a better class, and was even nobly dressed, as though it were a part of his vow to show to all men that he did this deed, wealthy and great though he was. He was a fine man, perhaps thirty years of age, with a well-grown beard descending on his breast, and at his girdle he carried a ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... brutality and falseness of this reply had no other effect than to embitter Queen Charlotte's hatred against the arbiter of the world's destinies, before whom she and her consort refused to bow, even when, three years later, they were forced to seek shelter behind the girdle ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of humble origin, this arch-impostor assumed the title of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, and styled himself Grand Cophta, Prophet and Thaumaturge. He married Lorenza Feliciani, the daughter of a girdle-maker of Rome. Balsamo professed alchemy and free-masonry, practised medicine and sorcery, and raised money by various methods of imposture. He rode about in his own coach, attended by a numerous retinue in rich liveries. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... remained,—for a fugitive could not hope for mercy,—and the scarcely less terrible dangers of the pitiless wilderness between her and Canada, filled her with despair, for she was half dead already with hunger and cold. She tied her girdle to the bough of a tree, and hung herself from it by the neck. The cord broke. She repeated the attempt with the same result, and then the thought came to her that God meant to save her life. The snow by this time had melted in the forests, and she began her journey for home, with a few handfuls ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... offenders against this new censorship. It is the result of the control by the spiritual, or perhaps, lineal, descendants of the first South Sea censors, of the great grand-children of those men who wore the girdles of leaves at the landing of the Marlboro school teacher a hundred years ago. The girdle-wearers are members of the Hawaiian legislature—soon to be succeeded by Japanese-native-born—and the censors, likely, are wives of financiers and sugar factors. Again the feeble remnant of the Hawaiian race voted ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... vague irregular features, with an entire absence of expression. He wore an Arab haick upon his head bound with many yards of brown camel's hair, a long white garment, something like a burnouse, only embroidered at the edge with crimson thread and confined at the waist by a girdle containing quite a small arsenal of weapons, while at his back he carried a rifle of European manufacture, and around his neck was the invariable ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... with high massive walls and low turreted roof, Grandison Place rose above the surrounding buildings in castellated majesty. It stood in the centre of a spacious lawn, zoned by a girdle of oaks, beneath whose dense shade the dew sparkled even at noonday. Within this zone was a hedge of cedar, so smooth, with twigs so thickly interwoven, that the gossamer thought it a framework, on which to stretch its transparent web in the morning ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... he met a hermit, whose white and venerable beard hung down to his girdle. He held a book in his hand, which he read with great attention. Zadig stopped, and made him a profound obeisance. The hermit returned the compliment with such a noble and engaging air, that Zadig had the curiosity to enter into conversation with him. He asked him what book ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that city, is the field where balm groweth; and it cometh out on small trees, that be none higher than to a man's breeks' girdle, and they seem as wood that is of the wild vine. And in that field be seven wells, that our Lord Jesu Christ made with one of his feet, when he went to play with other children. That field is not so well closed, but that men may enter at their own list; but in that season that the balm is growing, ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... square on her feet and at the latter end of the nineteenth century. Once free, she bounded from her perch on the high sea-wall. In an instant she had tucked her tinted draperies within the slender girdle; her sandalled feet must be untrammelled, she was about to take her run on the beach. Soon she was pelting, irreverently, her painter with a shower of loose pebbles. Next she had challenged him to a race; when she reached the goal, her thin, bare arms were uplifted as she clapped and shouted ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... a man he was from whose help ye have fallen away, as ye cleave your long path to Aeetes; for well do I know that I saw him here in the halls of Dascylus my father, when he came hither on foot through the land of Asia bringing the girdle of warlike Hippolyte; and me he found with the down just growing on my cheeks. And here, when my brother Priolas was slain by the Mysians—my brother, whom ever since the people lament with most piteous dirges—he entered the lists with Titias in boxing and ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... upon her by reason of her beauty. A vest of white silk was upon the maiden, with clasps of red gold at the breast; and a surcoat of gold tissue was upon her, and a frontlet of red gold upon her head, and rubies and gems were in the frontlet, alternating with pearls and imperial stones. And a girdle of ruddy gold was around her. She was the fairest ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... again began to creep on his knees and belly, till he arrived at the cabin of Djalma—that cabin constructed of mats suspended from bamboos. After listening attentively, he drew from his girdle a knife, the sharp-pointed blade of which was wrapped in a fig-leaf, and made in the matting an incision of three feet in length. This was done with such quickness, and with so fine a blade, that the light ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... on her (for she wore the garb of woman), gazing still as she grew: and again she said mildly, 'Consider:'—then I noted that from her jewelled girdle upwards, all was gorgeous, glistening, and most beautiful; her white vest was rarely worked with living flowers, but brighter and sweeter than those of earth; flowing tresses, blacker than the shadows cast by the bursting of a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his head is raised towards the Infant Jesus, his left hand is placed devoutly on his breast while his right is foreshortened and points towards the spectator. He wears a white rochet tied by a girdle with golden tassels, a white amice around his neck, a magnificent pallium woven with gold falling to his feet, and a long chasuble embroidered with gold and lined with red enveloping his shoulders and arms, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... though I was too much given to pleasure, owing to that accursed music, I never neglected to devote some hours of the day or night to study. At that time I fashioned a silver heart's-key ('chiavaquore'), as it was then so called. This was a girdle three inches broad, which used to be made for brides, and was executed in half relief with some small figures in the round. It was a commission from a man called Raffaello Lapaccini. I was very badly paid; but the honour which it brought me was worth far more than the gain I ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... 358, the article headed "Memorable Days," the writer, in that part of which the Avver Bread is treated of, says it is made of oats leavened and kneaded into a large, thin, round cake, which is placed upon a girdle over the fire; adding, that he is totally at a loss for a definition of the word Avver; that he has sometimes thought avver, means oaten; which I think, correct, it being very likely a corruption of the French, avoine, oats; introduced among many others, into the Scottish language, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... immediately, took the shape of a galley with masts and yards, although no larger than the moon's disk as we see it from the earth. In the same instant the elf sat in the little vessel, which trembled at every step, drew a rush from his girdle, and steered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... this transit in very favourable circumstances, was actually able to follow the planet until it had passed entirely away from the sun, at which time the globe, though itself invisible, was distinctly marked by the girdle of light by which it was surrounded. This luminous circle is inexplicable save by the supposition that the globe of Venus is surrounded by an atmospheric shell in the same way ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth colored great coat" costing 11$. 6d and a "fine bound hat with girdle and buckle" costing 10$. 6d.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain," and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... face was thirteen inches long; his beard a palm; his nose half a palm; his forehead a foot over. His lion-like eyes flashed fire like carbuncles; his eyebrows were half a palm over. When he was angry, it was a terror to look upon him. He required eight spans for his girdle, besides what hung loose. He ate sparingly of bread; but a whole quarter of lamb, two fowls, a goose, or a large portion of pork; a peacock, crane, or a whole hare. He drank moderately of wine and water. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... generous—that is in the right sense of the grand old word—a truly high-bred, nature. I have been touched, and deeply touched, at finding so many of them, on landing for the first time at Liverpool, hurrying off to our quaint old city of Chester to gaze on its old girdle of walls and towers; Roman, Mediaeval, Caroline; its curious 'Rows' of overhanging houses; its fragments of Roman baths and inscriptions; its modest little Cathedral; and the—really very few—relics of English ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... amid all his bustle and business. This was no less than a knife—the first that Hans had ever possessed of his own. It had a pretty stag's-horn handle and a green leather sheath, so that, stuck in his girdle, it looked quite like that of a real woodsman or hunter, and made Hans not a ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... out among themselves about the prey, let slip the great prize. Neither was their greediness prejudicial to Lucullus in this only, but also they slew Callistratus, the king's confidential attendant, under suspicion of having five hundred pieces of gold in his girdle; whereas Lucullus had specially ordered that he should be conveyed safe into the camp. Notwithstanding all which, he gave them leave to plunder ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... chose for that evening should sound the keynote of her personality like a leitmotif in an opera. The costume was a creation of white satin, the folds caught here and there with strings of pearls. There was a single large rose of pink velvet among the draperies of the skirt; a looped girdle of blue velvet was the only other splash of color. But the full-leaved, expanded and matured rose became the vivid epitome and illustration of the woman herself. A rope of pearls that hung down to her waist added the touch of soft luster essential to preserve the picture ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... he bounded forward, as does the animal whose name he bore when leaping upon his prostrate foe. The intervening space was cleared at the single leap, and the knife, whipped from the girdle at the instant of starting, made a fierce sweep through the air, almost too quick for the eye to follow, and shot like the head of a rattlesnake at ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... frenzy, with convulsive shiverings and tremblings tears of his skin garments so that he is quite naked save for a girdle of eagle-claws about his thighs. His long black hair flies about his face. With an abruptness that is startling, he ceases all movement and stands erect, rigid. This is greeted with a low moaning that slowly ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... an old man, with an ink horn and other writing materials, worn in a case stuck into his girdle instead of weapons, who prostrated himself, and was questioned. He remembered the name of Daireh, and knew there was something wrong about him. But he must consult his books and examine ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the crash of their encounter was heard like thunder throughout the camps. And they measured their strength from the morning until the setting of the sun. And when the day was about to vanish, Sohrab seized upon Rustem by the girdle and threw him upon the ground, and kneeled upon him, and drew forth his sword from the scabbard, and would have severed his head from his trunk. Then Rustem knew that only wile could save him. So he opened ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... suspicion of treachery costs you your life. Take shelter in the Doge's palace, and girdle yourself round with all the power of the Republic—though clasped in the Doge's arms, and protected by a hundred cannons, still would we murder you! Fly to the high altar; press the crucifix to your bosom, and even at mid-day, still would we murder you. ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... fire, and his countenance as the sun shineth in his strength; the darker glow of the feet, yet as of fine brass burning in a furnace—as if they, in memory of the twilight of his humiliation, touching the earth took a humbler glory than his head high in the empyrean of undisturbed perfection; the girdle under his breast, golden between the snow and the brass;—what were they all but the effulgence of his glory who was himself the effulgence of the Father's, the poor expression of the unutterable verity which was itself the reason why John ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... corridors defended by gusts of hot air; down the middle swoops a pale little girl on parlour skates. "Get out of my way!" she shrieks as she passes; she has ribbons in her hair and frills on her dress; she makes the tour of the immense hotel. I think of Puck, who put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, and wonder what he said as he flitted by. A black waiter marches past me, bearing a tray, which he thrusts into my spine as he goes. It is laden with large white jugs; they tinkle as he moves, ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... into the body of His glory, He still remains corporeally and spiritually a true Son of man. Thus the face that looks down from amidst the blaze, though it be 'as the sun shineth in his strength,' is the old face; and the breast which is girded with the golden girdle is the same breast on which the seer had leaned his happy head; and the hand that holds the sceptre is the hand that was pierced with the nails; and the Christ that is ascended up on high is the Christ that loved and pitied adulteresses and publicans, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
