"Backwoodsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... used to be, that at first he incurred somewhat the derision of his neighbors, better skilled in backwoodsman's lore than himself, by hacking all around a tree, in order to get it down. It is said that some imagined his land would soon be in the market, and sold cheap; that the city bred farmer, better taught in navigation and surveying, than in clearing ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... strange madness had seized her; a sudden revulsion of feeling, amounting almost to repugnance, against the rugged man of the people who had hewn out his own fortune, and who looked, she thought, more like a backwoodsman than a gentleman. Yes; it was madness—such madness as is sometimes the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... which is called Aihen-loh, 'the glade of oaks;' and at night-fall he heard the plash of water, and knew not whether man or wild beast made it. And not daring to call out, he tapped a tree-trunk with his axe (some backwoodsman's sign of those days, we may presume), and he was answered. And a forester came to him, leading his lord's horse; a man from the Wetterau, who knew the woods far and wide, and told him all that he wanted to know. And they slept side by side that night; and in the morning they blest each other, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... and when we get to the top of that hill, there is another one beyond. And so we go on from step to step, getting ready to do the duties that we know are most imperative upon us, by sweeping preliminaries out of the way, and so we go on until our dying day, when somebody else buries us. Like some backwoodsman in the American forests who should say to himself, 'Now, I will not sow a grain of wheat until I have cleared all the land that belongs to me. I will do that first and then begin to reap,' he would be a great deal wiser ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? ’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the Backwoodsman.” ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... on a bad river have been dwelt upon, I suppose, by every writer who has occupied his pen at all with the life of the lumber-camps. But to the daring backwoodsman there seldom falls a task more hazardous than that of cutting loose a brow of logs when the logs have been piled in the form of what is called a "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... akin to sadness, at least in those who frequented the wilderness; it was the expression of the influence of the vast, desolate, and lonely nature amid which they passed their lives. It is true that Lincoln was never a backwoodsman, and never roved alone for long periods among the shadowy forests and the limit-less prairies, so that their powerful and weird influences, though not altogether remote, never bore upon him in full force; yet their effect ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... he had seen "Injun sign" the day previous, but a scout through the cottonwood grove revealed nothing, and as the sound was very faint and was not repeated, we concluded it was only fancy; father muttering as he crawled under his blanket that I was getting too almighty scarey for a backwoodsman. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... and who manfully accommodated themselves to their primitive surroundings. As has been well remarked by Mr. MacMullen,[56] "While they learned to wield the axe and swing the cradle with the energy and skill of the roughest backwoodsman, they retained their polished manners, their literary tastes, their love for the beautiful and the elegant; and thus exercised the most beneficial influence upon their rustic neighbours. In the absence of schools, of churches, of most of the refining ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... presence of Old Neb, there, was another evidence of the great advantage, which, he began to feel with hopeless rage, the man who had stolen that thing from him which he prized most highly, had over him. The negro was his servant. Servants meant prosperity, prosperity meant power. Backwoodsman as he was, Joe Lorey knew that perfectly. His face ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Never on this green earth," and Colonel Zane laughed as he slapped his friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry, old fellow. You can't help her having those changing dark-blue eyes any more than you can help being proud of them. They have won me, already, susceptible old backwoodsman! I'll help you with this spirited young lady. I've had experience, Sheppard, and don't you forget it. First, my sister, a Zane all through, which is saying enough. Then as sweet and fiery a little ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Tools to him that can handle them.' . . . Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom notwithstanding the peaceful Sower will follow, and as he cuts ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... hollowed a grave, where he placed the body, still wrapped in its deerskins. He noted on a finger of one hand a gold ring, a queer possession for a backwoodsman. This he took off and dropped into the pouch which hung round his neck. "I reckon it'd better go to Mis' Hanks. Jim's gal 'ud valley ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... not a large city, but it seemed a crowded metropolis to Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all seemed familiar, ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... enormously long; many of them would have seemed extremely old-fashioned to an ordnance officer. But every gun was like an additional limb to those practised marksmen, who knew little of firing in platoons, but everything of the patient accuracy which gives the backwoodsman his unerring aim. The assailants carried the latest weapons approved of by the War Office, and manipulated them with the faultless unison and unswerving harmony that would have compelled the compliments of a commander-in-chief at a review. At the top of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to be the publisher, himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had not yet received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through Carlyle, who, says Sterling, "said more in your praise than in any one's except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife." Carlyle at this time was much attached to Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, and it may have been Carlyle who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old victim. Carlyle had very little more appreciation of Keats than had Byron, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... hill. To the big soldier, Abe Long, the wag of the regiment, he had been drawn with genuine affection. He liked Abe's bunkie, the boy Sanders, who was from Maine, while Abe was a Westerner—the lineal descendant in frame, cast of mind, and character of the border backwoodsman of the Revolution. Reynolds was a bully, and Crittenden all but had trouble with him; for he bullied the boy Sanders when Abe was not around, and bullied the "rookies." Abe seemed to have little use for him, but as he had saved the big ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... been a sort of backwoodsman's life, and if there are treasure-vaults in this place I think we shall be able to get at them, however thick and heavy the stones may be on the top ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... around, every road, lane, by-path, shortcut and trail, is a familiar way to him. His practice, he declares, has well-nigh ruined him financially, and totally wrecked his temper. He can curse a man and cry over a baby; and he would go as far and work as hard for the illiterate and penniless backwoodsman in his cabin home as for the president of the Bank of Corinth or even Judge ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... add an illustrative instance related to me by the distinguished Methodist, Dr. David P. Durbin. Standing near the platform from which he was to preach at a camp-meeting, he observed a powerfully built young backwoodsman who was manifestly there with no better intent than to disturb and break up the meeting. Presently it became evident that the young man was conscious of some influence taking hold of him to which he was resolved not to yield; he clutched with both hands a hickory sapling next ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... resident, residentiary[obs3]; dweller, indweller[obs3]; addressee; occupier, occupant; householder, lodger, inmate, tenant, incumbent, sojourner, locum tenens, commorant[obs3]; settler, squatter, backwoodsman, colonist; islander; denizen, citizen; burgher, oppidan[obs3], cockney, cit, townsman, burgess; villager; cottager, cottier[obs3], cotter; compatriot; backsettler[obs3], boarder; hotel keeper, innkeeper; habitant; paying guest; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... discourse on a theme I understand,' said the President. 'I know all about trees in right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress. He then proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... "there you are looking like a barbarous backwoodsman, when we are trying our very best to make a respectable ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... not necessary for me even to sketch the biography of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-six years ago, when Kentucky was a pioneer State. He lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of a backwoodsman, a farmer, a river boatman, and, finally, by his own efforts at self-education, of an active, respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized and manifold interests of a new and energetic community. From his boyhood up he lived in ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... ridge along which you have travelled to take a view of the works. The slope of this outer ridge runs down to a meadow. The Rebels have cut down the tall trees, and made a line of rifle-pits. The logs are piled one above another, as the backwoodsman builds a log-fence. There is a space five or six inches wide between the upper log and the one below it. They have dug a trench behind, and the dirt is ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the passage of private bills. They became more numerous in later years, though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it is characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor commoners was not unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's eloquence. But to the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... means follows that we are not fit for society, because soirees are tedious, and because the soiree finds us tedious. A backwoodsman, who had been sent to the university, told me, that when he heard the best-bred young men at the law-school talk together, he reckoned himself a boor; but whenever he caught them apart, and had one to himself alone, then they were the boors, and he the better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... began in these words: 'The backwoodsman's hatred of the Indian has been a topic for some remark. In the earlier times of the frontier the passion was thought to be readily accounted for. But Indian rapine having mostly ceased through regions where it once ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... him fairly well, I fished for an invitation to visit his home. I wanted to see where this gentlemanly backwoodsman spent the days which were not lived on ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... but the old backwoodsman took the checkmate placidly and began to set the pieces for the second game in which the horses were the stake, hiding his useless rifle in a hollow tree,—his powder had been soaked and spoiled in the early morning plunge for life,—and drawing his hunting-knife ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... material that we are mainly indebted for the exquisite cutting instrument of the surgeon, the chisel of the sculptor, the steel plate on which the engraver practises his art, the cutting tools employed in the various processes of skilled handicraft, down to the common saw or the axe used by the backwoodsman in levelling ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... any backwoodsman (had chewed it originally because she'd heard it cured toothache, then had kept up the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... American birds by Wilson, already equals in elegance our most beautiful works in ornithology, and if ever that of Audubon be completed, it will have to be confessed that in magnificence of execution the Old World is surpassed by the New." The work of the "American backwoodsman" thus alluded to, has long been completed; the great Cuvier subsequently acknowledged it to be "the most splendid monument which art has erected in honor of ornithology;" and the judgment of mankind has placed the name of our countryman first in the list of authors and artists who have illustrated ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... McVey. Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as a backwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notion that he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wondered if both of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor as they were about her. In the silent summer night, when the sound of the horse's ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the princely mansions of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log cabins of the backwoodsman, the name of Arthur is equally known and cherished as the ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... lamb ready for the slaughter. Mr. McCann, who received him, could see the delight of his employers, and his own profit, if he should succeed in taking this fat backwoodsman into camp. ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... are the expert in the psychological wilderness. This is like one of those Red-skin stories where the noble savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinket dropped by the way. I have always liked such stories. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... 1793, d. 1863) graduated at Middlebury College, Vt., in 1818. He was at one time editor of the "Backwoodsman," published at Grafton, Ill., and later of the "Louisville Advocate." He was the author of many tales of western adventure and of numerous essays, sketches, etc. His language is clear, chaste, and classical; his style concise, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... however, seemed ready to make his home in Kentucky; and accident at last seems to have thrown one man into that country, whose story, upon his return, made some anxious to go there. This was John Finley, a backwoodsman of North Carolina. He was in the habit of roving about and trading with the Indians. In the year 1767, he, with certain companions as fearless as himself, led on from place to place by the course of trade, wandered far ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... man of his family to scale the mountains of the Shield where its eastern rim is turned away from the reddening daybreak. Thence he had forced his way to its central portions where the skin of ever living verdure is drawn over the rocks: Anglo-Saxon, backwoodsman, borderer, great forest chief, hewing and fighting a path toward the sunset for Anglo-Saxon women and children. With his passion for the wilderness—its game, enemies, campfire and cabin, deep-lunged freedom. ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... of the legal profession will naturally ask me, how could this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the forest or on the farm and the flatboat, without culture or training, education or study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never did. He never ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with all the air of one setting out on his travels in distant lands. He had a field glass slung over his shoulder, and a very large sheath knife buckled by a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman's simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising relish the picturesque plan and sky line of the antiquated village, and especially the wooden square of the old inn sign that hung over his head; a shield, of which the charges seemed ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom I admired, somewhere in the background, but I have never really seen her. Sometimes I was a stowaway on board ship or an Indian hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather some companion. My daythoughts were not about the women round about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were almost impersonal. I went on, at any ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a man of the world—had he not been a simple backwoodsman, he would have seen, in the eagerness of Stevens to make this arrangement, something, which would have rendered him suspicious of his truth. The instantaneous thought of the arch-hypocrite, convinced him that he could never return to Charlemont if this discovery was once made there. His ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the truth, Phineas had been a hearty, two-fisted backwoodsman, a vigorous hunter, and a dead shot at a buck; but, having wooed a pretty Quakeress, had been moved by the power of her charms to join the society in his neighborhood; and though he was an honest, sober, and efficient member, and nothing particular could be ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... over the quaint reminiscence of my old friend and the quainter way he had of telling it. The rude dialect of the backwoodsman might have seemed oddly out of place, there, but for the quiet, unassuming manner and the fine old face of Uncle Eb in which the dullest eye might see the soul ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... piety in their souls. "I see that ye are, in all ways, exceedingly pious." He recognized their worship as passing beyond the idols, to the true God. He did not profess that he came to revolutionize their religion, but to reform it. He does not proceed like the backwoodsman, who fells the forest and takes out the stumps in order to plant a wholly different crop; but like the nurseryman, who grafts a native stock with a better fruit. They were already ignorantly worshipping the true God. What the apostle ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... composed of deer-skins, and they were armed with rifles, powder-horns, and hunting-knives. The two men were guided by very different principles, those of Hurry Harry being entirely selfish, while Deerslayer sought, backwoodsman though he was, to live up to what he called ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... to the fire, and sat down. But he did not join in the merry talk that was going around. His thoughts were wholly given up to Jim and his story. He liked the short guide more than ever; and in the same proportion detested the big Maine backwoodsman whose daughter Jim had ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... lapse of about a minute, the latter raised himself up, and allowed the blanket to slip from over his head, which now appeared bound round with a piece of calico, fringed with gouts of congealed blood. The backwoodsman cast a side glance at the Indian, but it was only a momentary one, and he allowed his gaze to revert to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... a chew of tobacco, and walked away. For several days he went through the same performance, until at last one day he brought out his trusty axe and made the chips fly. Soon the chestnut was lying prone on the ground pointing away from the house. What this old backwoodsman did was to wait until a strong wind had sprung up, blowing in the direction that he wanted the tree to fall, and his skilful chopping with the aid of the wind placed the tree ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... to it," if we may use a proverbial phrase, left out by Mr. Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a more puckery flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the West,—like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my tea bar-foot," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons are good,—but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... lad," said the Captain, "you'll be treated well enough while we wait for the money to be paid. Here, Jeremy!" As the young backwoodsman came up, Bonnet continued, "Two boys aboard is bad business, for you're sure to be scheming to get away. However, it can't be helped, just yet, and mind what I say,—there'll be a bullet ready for the first one that tries it. Now get ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... now as ever, I suppose, but be as brief as possible,' said the young man in a lordly manner. Had he not just conferred an enormous favor, an alliance which might be called the gift of a prince, on this dull old backwoodsman? ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... ingenious work I ever saw, and very wonderful and astonishing to a backwoodsman like myself, for I supposed that money was ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'T won't be inconveniencing you, because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' " ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... joy that, once more, after long deprivation of sanctuary privileges, she could hear the word of God. It was a scene for a painter—that log cabin crowded with representatives of every state in the Union, in every variety of garb, and of all ages, from the gray-haired backwoodsman to the babe in its mother's arms. No costly organ was here, with its gentle, quiet breathings, or grand and massive harmonies; no trained choir; no consecrated temple, with its Sabbath bell, and spire pointing heavenward; no carpeted aisles and "dim religious light," and ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... spot where Edith had stood spell-bound while the contest was going on. O'Hara, although a skillful backwoodsman, was not equal to his savage companion; but he saw at once, from the dainty impress of the earth, that he was correct in supposing that Edith had stood there. They now resumed their pursuit, the hunter bringing all ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... the word was equivocal and the boy beside himself. For Hugh had wrenched the staff from him and was holding the hand that gripped the stiletto, while the lad, with streaming tears, plunged, whined and gnashed at the backwoodsman. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... upon this journey, and was crossing through Tennessee when death overtook him, at the cabin of a backwoodsman where he had stopped for the night. Some of the circumstances point to murder, others to suicide; the truth is conjectural. What does it matter, after all? He had lived largely; had done a man's work; he has a noble place ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... that, under other circumstances, would have captivated my entire attention. All the stories that I had heard of mishaps in these endless prairies, recurred in vivid colouring to my memory, not mere backwoodsman's legends, but facts well authenticated by persons of undoubted veracity, who had warned me, before I came to Texas, against venturing without guide or compass into these dangerous wilds. Even men who had been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... He was a rough backwoodsman; a fighter by nature and a passable soldier; a staunch friend and a patriot at heart; ignorant, wholly unversed in statesmanship, arbitrary in temper, and inclined to judge all subjects from a personal ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... describes him "as a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a backwoodsman." He remained, however, but a year or two in all at Philadelphia—then the seat of national government—and afterward became a planter in Tennessee, fought duels, subdued Tecumseh and the Creek Indians, winning finally the great opportunity of his life by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... movements; then the pale, gaunt, slow- moving, half hunter, half farmer, too indolent to disturb the wilderness from which he got a meagre living, planting his meagre crops among the girdled trees of withered foliage, which he did not take the trouble to cut down; then the backwoodsman, sallow as his immediate predecessor from the shade of the forest, who with his axe made a little clearing, built a "shack," turned his cattle into the grass that had grown for centuries untouched, and let his ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... all looked cleaner and really felt better, from the skill and industry of a few devoted women. A pleasant instance of the restraint of woman's presence upon the roughest natures occurred in the hospital I was attending. A stalwart backwoodsman was suffering from a broken arm, and had been venting his spleen upon the doctors and male nurses by continued profanity; but when one of his fellow-sufferers uttered an oath, while the "Sisters" were near ministering to the comfort of the wounded, he sharply reproved him, demanding—"Have ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... certain, however, that not only was I right to speak my mind, but that in the last resort the common sense of what the Anglo- Saxon chronicler called "miletes agresti," and the new journalism "the backwoodsman peers," would turn out to be not for but against revolutionary action. And ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... appreciated the special form, force, tendency of utterly dissimilar characters and her heart responded to every appeal alike of humblest suffering or loftiest endeavor. In the plain, yet eloquent phrase of the backwoodsman, "the string of her door-latch was always out," and every wayfarer was free to share the shelter of her roof, or a seat beside her hearth-stone. Or, rather, it might be said, in symbol of her wealth of spirit, her palace, with its galleries ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... some day that they have their bishops. After a battle I have always seen the ants carry away the dead for food. Ants display the utmost economy, and always carry away a dead fellow-creature as food. But I have just forwarded two most extraordinary letters to Busk, from a backwoodsman in Texas, who has evidently watched ants carefully, and declares most positively that they plant and cultivate a kind of grass for store food, and plant other bushes for shelter! I do not know what to think, except that the old gentleman is not fibbing intentionally. I have left ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... in return to house in given up "Young Backwoodsman," Mary Mitford asks about "Young Pretender, the," Mary ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the men was sacrificed to the phonograph, and for hours it never stopped going. Records had been brought by others of the men and girls, and Marjorie had never seen such gay and unwearied dancing. She was tossed and caught from one big backwoodsman to another, the dances being "cut-in" shamelessly, because the women were fewer than the men. They nearly all danced well, French or Yankee or Englishmen. There were a couple of young Englishmen whom she particularly liked, who ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... he dared not use his gun nor build a fire for fear his foes might find out where he was. He reached the fort in safety, and was of great service in beating off the attacking party. This is only one of the many narrow escapes of this fearless backwoodsman. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... referred to appeared to tickle the fancy of the backwoodsman, for he paused to indulge in a quiet chuckle which wrinkled up all the lines of good-humour and fun in his rough countenance. After applying himself for a few seconds with much energy to the drumstick,—he resumed his discourse in a slow, deliberate style ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... up the clothes basket and went into an adjoining room, leaving Kintchin to muse alone. He heard the low whistle of a backwoodsman's improvised tune, and looking up, saw a man leaning against the door-facing. To the old negro the new comer was not a stranger. Once that big foot had kicked him out of the road, and lying in his straw bed ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... servants enabled him to transfer the trust of one or the other conveyance to the liveried outriders. Then came the compact, boxy, buggy, buttoned-up vehicle of our friend the pedler—a thing for which the unfertile character of our language, as yet, has failed to provide a fitting name—but which the backwoodsman of the west calls a go-cart; a title which the proprietor does not always esteem significant of its manifold virtues and accommodations. With a capacious stomach, it is wisely estimated for all possible purposes; and when opened with a mysterious but highly becoming solemnity, before the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... before daybreak, jumping into our saddles, we pushed on. I must pass over the two following days. As yet we had met with no signs of civilisation, when we saw a wreath of smoke rising above the trees in the far distance. It might come from a backwoodsman's hut, or it might be simply that of a camp fire. It was not likely to rise from the camp of Indians, so Pierre thought, as they do not generally venture so far east. However, to run no risk of falling among foes, we sent forward one of our scouts, while we proceeded ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... just pays-an, or, as we also say, a 'countryman.' 'Savage,' too, or, as we ought to write it, salvage,[9] is nothing more grim or terrible than one who dwells in sylvis, in the woods—a meaning we can appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the adjective sylvan. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original type of a savage! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,' however, have become quite absorbed in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wasn't backwoods bred, and the other girls said she was timid and afraid of her shadder," chuckled Long Jerry. "She warn't afraid of the boys, and mebbe that's why the other gals said sharp things about her," pursued the philosophical backwoodsman. "You misses know more about ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... pretty little one it is, too," agreed Mr. Max. "For a backwoodsman, who is not supposed to have experience, it is very well put together. Oh, don't frown like that! I'll believe she's your granddaughter, if you say so," and he laughed in wicked enjoyment at Overton's flushed face. "It's all right, ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... one can see neither bank from the middle of the wide blue sheet of water, and where wrecks are unhappily as painfully frequent as on our own coasts, was quite sufficiently like going to sea to suit the adventurous young backwoodsman to the top of his bent. But when he got to Cleveland, a fortunate disappointment awaited him. The Cleveland captains declined his services in such vigorous seafaring language (not unmixed with many unnecessary oaths), that ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... parent to his feet, then lifted the man to his back and started off. A backwoodsman saw him coming, and ran to meet him. Soon Mortimer Arbuckle was in the house and lying tucked in ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... have heard but few of them in Louisiana, I guess, or you would know the difference betwixt thunder and the crack of a backwoodsman's rifle. To be sure, yonder oak wood has an almighty echo. That's James's rifle—he has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Annotators.—Can any of the correspondents of "NOTES AND QUERIES" point out to a literary Backwoodsman, like myself, any royal road towards assigning to the proper authors the handwriting of anonymous annotations in fly-leaves and margins? I have many of these, which I should be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... came near convulsing him with laughter. One of the Russians had succeeded in thrusting his head through the narrow opening at the top of the inverted hopper. Here he stuck. To the boy, he resembled a backwoodsman encircled by a barber's ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... restorer of the Union, the sixteenth president of the United States, was born in Kentucky on the twelfth of February, 1809. His father was a typical backwoodsman, and young Lincoln grew up among frontier surroundings. The Lincoln family came originally from Pennsylvania. At a later period the Lincolns moved south to Virginia, and again they migrated to Kentucky. It was here that the grandfather of Abraham ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... in the scale more than Mount Mitchell, and not to see him was to miss one of the most characteristic productions of the country, the typical backwoodsman, hunter, guide. So we rode down Bolling Creek, through a pretty, broken country, crossed the Caney River, and followed it up a few miles to Wilson's plantation. There are little intervales along the river, where hay is cut ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... common with the savage herdsman whom he employs,—to Generals and Dictators, as well as to the most ragged Pampa- Cossack in their pay. Our language is incapable of expressing the idea conveyed by this term; and the Western qualification "backwoodsman" is perhaps the nearest approach to a synonyme that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... to his new home, and in November 1831 his fourth child was born. This baby boy received the name of James Abram Garfield. Little did the humble backwoodsman dream that the name he lovingly gave his child would one day be on the lips of millions of his fellow-countrymen; that it would rank with those of princes, kings, and emperors; and that it would be linked for ever with the history of ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... Parson Collins, shrewd backwoodsman, ready for fight or prayer. He suffers at the hands of desperadoes, but is dauntless, and always gets the better of his partner in a trade. His white mule Ma'y Jane, is the only creature that outwits him, and that only at fence-corners.—Octave ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... States of the Far West, where no duel has yet been fought, there is no specific law upon the subject beyond that in the Decalogue, which says, "Thou shalt do no murder." But duelling everywhere follows the steps of modern civilization, and by the time the backwoodsman is transformed into the citizen, he has imbibed the false notions of honour which are prevalent in Europe, and around him, and is ready, like his progenitors, to settle his differences with the pistol. In the majority of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to an utter stranger a bewildering labyrinth, from whose mazes he might labor in vain to extricate himself, unless, indeed, he possessed the almost instinctive tact of the Indian, or the thorough knowledge of the most experienced backwoodsman. ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the man at the stern paddle being supreme in a canoe, the backwoodsman obeyed with a curse. It was no time to argue, while getting the canoe around in that sea. But as soon as the canoe was turned, and scudding with frightened swoops down the waves in pursuit of the fleeing bateau, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... settlement called Cold Water, which is in St. Ferdinand township. About the year 1808 or 1809, her father took his family to the St. Charles district, and settled only a few miles from the home of the veteran backwoodsman, Daniel Boone. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... his friendliness and loved him much. This story was current. He had for some time been a famous man and was subjected to much persecution from sight-seers which he bore good-naturedly. Standing one day at the Craigie House gate he was accosted by a lank backwoodsman: "Say, stranger, I have come from way back; kin you tell me how I kin git to see the great North American poet?" Longfellow, entering into the humour of the situation, gave to the stranger his ready bow and responded: "Why, I am the great ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Ned Cromarty. "And where will you find the lady that's to succumb to my fascinations? I'm within a month of forty, Mr. Rattar, I've the mind, habits, and appearance of a backwoodsman, and I've one working eye left. A female collector of antique curiosities, or something in the nature of a retired wardress might take on the job, but I can't think ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... undertaking, and then blithely defying public opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as the doctor pitched the tent like a backwoodsman, and his daughter showed a skilled acquaintance with ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... steadily to your profession for the present, Captain Sinclair. It will not do for you to give up your prospects and chance of advancement for even such a woman as me," continued Mary, smiling; "nor must you think of becoming a backwoodsman ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... pleased with his neighbors, and warmly reciprocated the interest they took in him. There was old Moses Waldron, the first settler, an out-and-out backwoodsman; smart with an axe, sure with a gun, free with a bowl of metheglin, open in hospitality, and an enemy only to owls, and blackbirds, wolves, thieves, tories and the British. He chased the tories and redcoats in his dreams, and talked to himself while walking alone awake. ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... he had divined who she was. He quickened his pace, bent upon overtaking her. Then, with the thrill of the hunter, he abruptly whirled and retraced his steps. With the backwoodsman's cunning he hastened over the ground he had already traversed, chuckling in anticipation of her surprise when she found him waiting for her at the other end of the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... week West, with the intention of settling there, and he will, he tells us, go first to Detroit, whence he will be able to send Harold forward to your farm. The boy himself is delighted at the thought, and promises to return an accomplished backwoodsman. John joins me in kind love to yourself and your husband, and believe ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty |
