All the men were fine, stalwart fellows, as Maine men usually are; but this one over-topped his comrades, standing straight and tall as a Norway pine, with a face full of the mingled shrewdness, sobriety, and self-possession of the typical New Englander.

Then he crept a few paces down the wall to where an ivy bush over-topped it, enough for him to look through the leaves without being seen.

In fine, an insatiable ambition, the rage of raising their relative fortunes, not so much through real necessity, as to over-top others, inspire all men with a wicked inclination to injure each other, and with a secret jealousy so much the more dangerous, as to carry its point with the greater security, it often puts on the face of benevolence.

In Shakespeare's time hounds that went too fast for the rest of the pack were "trashed for over-topping," that is to say, they were handicapped by a strap attached to their necks.

Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost of embankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanes from oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped the banks and broke them.

I think it is Sir Francis Bacon's Observation, that in a numerous Family of Children the eldest is often spoiled by the Prospect of an Estate, and the youngest by being the Darling of the Parent; but that some one or other in the middle, who has not perhaps been regarded, has made his way in the World, and over-topped the rest.

I always imagined that kind and benevolent Propensions were the original Growth of the Heart of Man, and, however checked and over-topped by counter Inclinations that have since sprung up within us, have still some Force in the worst of Tempers, and a considerable Influence on the best.

Vetch (vicia) is so called from its quality of conquering (vincire) because this plant, like the vine, has tendrils by means of which it creeps twisting upward on the stalks of lupines or other plants where it clings until it over-tops its host.

The hunter was a big-legged, small-headed Abenaqui, with knees over-topping his tuft of hair when he squatted on his heels.