"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made comparatively slow progress at school. I remember having to write out the fourth commandment from memory. The teacher counted twenty-three mistakes in ten lines of my writing. It will be seen from this, that, as regards learning, I continued heedless and backward. About this time, my father, who was a good violinist, took me under his tuition. He made me practice on the violin about an hour and a half a day. I continued this for a long time. But the result was failure. I hated ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... (four bars); petit tour forward with opposite ladies (four bars); right and left (eight bars); advance again; the ladies return to own places, and the gentlemen pass again round each other to their own ladies (four bars); petit tour backward (four ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... huge solid shell is full of expression; it looks as if it had been hollowed out by the sincerity of early faith, and it opens into a cloister as impressive as itself. Wherever one goes, in France, one meets, looking backward a little, the spectre of the great Revolution; and one meets it always in the shape of the destruction of something beautiful and precious. To make us forgive it at all, how much it must also have destroyed that was more hateful ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a thank-offering, I thought of my first instructress, and such like ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... the diocese had attacked him; but, though weak, he was obstinate. The Dean and he had become friends, and so he had learned to think himself in advance of the world. But yet he knew himself to be a backward, slow, unappreciative man. He was one who could bear reproach from no one else, but who never praised himself even ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... manners, the irrepressible boyish recklessness and the big heart. Our only authentic descriptions of him are of a Peter Warren many years older; our only even probable likenesses are the same. But let us take these, and reckoning backward see what a man of such characteristics must have been like in his ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... some in? The phials! Quick the precious pond water and bog water was poured out, with one thought of the nameless treasures for Mr. Rhys's microscope that she was spilling upon the ground; and Eleanor took the basket again and set off on the backward way. She was in a hurry, the sun was warm, the distance was a good quarter of a mile; by the time she had found the stream and filled her phial and retraced again her steps to where the sick man lay, she was heated and ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... these are the wish, on the one hand, to learn how the people who came before us lived and what they did, on the other—to transmit our own names and the memory of our deeds to those who will come after us. We are not content with our present life; we want to stretch it both backward and forward—to live both in the past and the future, as it were. This curiosity and this ambition are but parts of the longing for immortality which was never absent from any human soul. In our own age they are satisfied mainly by books; indeed they were originally the principal ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... scrub oak, when just before them, a solitary horseman could be seen, leisurely walking his steed. At the sudden appearance of the stranger, both men instinctively reined in their horses and pulled up short. The man at that moment, heard them, and giving a hasty look backward, drove his spurs into his horse, dashed forward at ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Peronne was no sudden hare-brained enterprise. There is much evidence that he nursed the project for many weeks without giving any intimation of his intentions. Nor was the situation as strange as it appears, looking backward. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... our poet—and we have been exceptional in our choice—he has always been backward in coming forward, and it was not until he was touched upon a tender point that he concluded to make himself heard, when he might depict, in glowing terms, some of the few ills which flesh ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... tell her anything; there wasn't time. Frosty, waiting disapprovingly a length ahead, looked back and beckoned again insistently. At the same instant a door behind the girl opened with a jerk, and King himself bulked large and angry in the lamplight. Beryl shrank backward with a little cry—and I knew she had not meant to ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... prayed that it might sink down through his "harn-pan" (his skull). His personal appearance seems to have been almost indescribable, not bearing any likeness to anything in this upper world. But as near as I can learn, his forehead was very narrow and low, sloping upwards and backward, something of the hatchet shape; his eyes deep set, small, and piercing; his nose straight, thin as the end of a cut of cheese, sharp at the point, nearly touching his fearfully projecting chin; and his mouth ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... spontaneously and ardently, it was really only a literary instrument, a fashioning tool and not a melting flame. Let us take a single example. He is describing the trial of Warren Hastings. 'Every step in the proceedings,' he says, 'carried the mind either backward through many troubled centuries to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... shown by all official statistics, it is signally shown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-General of the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown that the bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than those of the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest at birth, becomes greater and greater in after life, i. e. as soon as the influence of the economic conditions makes itself felt ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... their necks had been broken. But at length they put their shields afore them, drew their swords, and ran together like two fierce lions. Either gave other such buffets upon the helm that they reeled backward; then they recovered both, and hewed off great pieces of their ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... swelling on one of his legs, and by a very great discharge from it. Some crisis of that sort is unquestionably the only thing to which we can look with any reasonable ground of hope for the recovery both of his health and of his faculties. But this very consideration makes me very backward in giving credit to this report, unless it had more foundation than any which I ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... precious to thy soul (1 Peter 2:7) for thou knowest, that it is he, that hath delivered thee from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10). But as for you that are disobedient, except you mend your manners, you will stumble 'and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken' (Isa 28:13) and wonder and perish because you believe not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... tide had caused the floes to separate and the cold had not had time as yet to heal it; then flattening his body to its full length on the ice, he crawled out cautiously and seized the lead dog. Carefully he wormed his way backward to security, then leaned his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the sky was dark blue And the water came in with a wavy look Like a spider's web. The point of the slope came down to the water's edge; It was green with a fairy ring of forget-me-not and fern. The white foam licked the side of the slope As it came up and bent backward; It curled up like a beautiful cinder-tree Bending ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... to his country. Had he taken Violetta for an ally in all purity of heart? The kiss he had laid on the woman's sweet lips had shaken his absolute belief in that. He tried to set his brain travelling backward, in order to contemplate accurately the point of his original weakness. It being almost too severe a task for any young head, Carlo deemed it sufficient that he should say—and this he felt—that he was unworthy of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if it ain't above No. 10, where is it?" No answer. "Where does it go?" she repeated severely, like a schoolmarm to a class of backward boys. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... choir—as much as four hundred feet from the door, it was said. Then the Archbishop dismissed them, and they made deep obeisance till their plumes touched their horses' necks, then made those proud prancing and mincing and dancing creatures go backward all the way to the door—which was pretty to see, and graceful; then they stood them on their hind-feet and spun them around and plunged ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... find in your mind some connection between each word and the one following it. See how you can at some future time make one suggest the next, either by suggestion of sound or sense, or by mental juxtaposition. When you have found this dwell on it attentively for a moment or two. Pass it backward and forward before you, and then go ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... points of their poles into the river, until they struck bottom. Then, pressing the end they held against their shoulders, pushed with all their might. As the boat yielded to their thrust, they stepped backward down their planks, making room for another man in front, until there were four on each side of the boat, pushing with their utmost strength. As the men who first got on the planks reached the end, they jumped aside and made their way to the bow to begin anew the same operation, of dropping their ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... would desire to have the peopling of the earth, viz. the people of most intellect. If the highly intelligent and conscientious obey John Mill, we evidently must look forward to the peopling of every land by the most backward and least intelligent part of the nation.... Malthus was shocked by the system of encouraging very early marriage and large families for the mere sake of getting men as food for gunpowder: but if people marry (say young men at 27 or 28, not at 17 or 18) he denounces ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... my army," Sunny Boy indicated the column with a backward sweep of his hand. "We were marching, and we stopped to drill. But we'll ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... killed him!" added Taylor significantly. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Creighton. I trust your inquiry will be successful." He jerked his head backward. "What did you ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... That stream which eye had never tracked before, Whose course, 'tis said, in Western springs begun Flows on eternal to the rising sun! Though thousand perils seemed to bar his way, And all save him shrunk backward in dismay, Still hope prophetic poured the ardent prayer To reach that stream, though doomed to perish there! That prayer was heard; by Niger's mystic flood One rapturous day the speechless dreamer stood, Fixt on that stream his glistening ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... hitherto accustomed to cushions and springs in her drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned, what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan. Poor Garth, anxiously watching her, almost burst ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... when his sister, who was recovering from a severe attack of fever, was first allowed to go out into the open air. She had gone out, clinging to his arm into the peristyle of his father's house; as he walked backward and forwards with poor, weary, abandoned Sirona, his neglected figure seemed by degrees to assume the noble aspect of a high-born Greek; and instead of the rough, rocky soil, he felt as if he were treading the beautiful ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... kindly at the colonel, whose averted eyes made the younger man feel uncomfortable. Then he said gently, "Well, Colonel, don't be backward about saying what you want to to me." It was a long speech for Hendricks, and he felt it, and then qualified it with, "But, of course, I don't want to ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... crab wandered around, and found a nice quiet place under the shadow of a large log; here he half buried himself in the mud, and commenced the operation of changing his clothes. He swelled himself out until the upper shell separated from the lower, then worked his claws slowly backward and forward, and expanded and contracted the muscles of his body; little by little he emerged from his shell, and finally, with one effort, he freed himself entirely from his old clothes. He lay back, exhausted by his exertions. While the crab is soft it is ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "thought relations ought to be hunted up and hanged together." They said "the idea of huntin' us up had come to 'em after readin' my books." They told me so, and I said, "Wall!" I didn't add nor diminish to that one "wall," for I didn't want to act too backward, nor too forward. I jest kep' ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... tempts men ever to long for and hope for that which they have not earned. God gave man a trial of the plan of living in idleness upon that which he had not earned, and man fell. Then God established the other plan, and through it man has been rising—but rising slowly and with many a backward slip, because he has tried to thwart the Divine plan with the system of inheritance. Fortunately, the great mass of mankind has had nothing to leave to heirs, has had no hope of inheritances. Thus, new leaders have ever been developed in place of those destroyed by inherited prosperity. But, unfortunately, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... backward and Joe recognized the trained step of the professional boxer. The other's identity now came to him, although he was no follower of pugilism, a sport largely out of favor since the rapid growth of Telly scanned fracases. Boxing at its top had never ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... She took that backward mental glance he bade her, and remembered. Then she remembered, too, how that very evening Francesco had said that he was fretting for news of Babbiano, and that when she had asked how he hoped that news could reach him at Roccaleone, Gonzaga had entered before he answered her. Indeed, he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... A backward and slightly hydrocephalous boy whom my father had under observation, began at the age of six to show violent irritation at the slightest reproof or correction. If he was able to strike the person who had annoyed him, his rage ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... authority; there is a great deal of happiness in this world, if you knew how to extract it,—or, rather, I should say, of pleasure; there is a pleasure in doing good; there is a pleasure, unfortunately, in doing wrong; there is a pleasure in looking forward, ay, and in looking backward also; there is pleasure in loving and being loved, in eating, and drinking, and, though last, not least, in smoking. I do not mean to say that there are not the drawbacks of pain, regret, and even remorse; but there is a sort of pleasure even in them; it is pleasant ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... and soon fell a-snoring. Then Molly Whuppie slipped from under the bed, and slipped up the bed-clothes, and reaching out her hand slipped it under the pillow, and got hold of the purse. But the giant's head was so heavy on it she had to tug and tug away. At last out it came, she fell backward over the bedside, the purse opened, and some of the money fell out with a crash. The noise wakened the giant, and she had only time to grab the money off the floor, when he was after her. How they ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... backward slowly to the door. He had made no threatening sign or movement, but her fear had come overwhelmingly upon her and every instinct urged her to flight. But before she touched the handle of the door, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the spears that were thrown from the cliffs, before they had gone half way; some were stabbed as they reached the crest, and hurled backward from the precipice; two or three got to the top, and fought hand to hand with the Hillsmen. They were outnumbered, seven to one; but when the last of the English soldiers lay dead, twice their number of Hillsmen ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... reached the foot of the stair, I took steady aim at him with my pistol and pulled the trigger. But he seemed to have some intuition of his danger, for he stooped suddenly, and it was the man behind him who threw up his hands, sprang into the air, and fell backward. They faltered only for an instant, and then swarmed up the steps, their greased faces gleaming in the powder flashes. I thought it as good as ended, and throwing down my musket, caught up my hanger for a final stand, when something was thrown past me and bounded down the stair. It ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the game began in earnest. Nan, from being casually and unconsciously reckless, became deliberately dare-devil and always with a backward, ironic look for Gerda, as if she said "How about it? Will this ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... one of the world's most technologically advanced telecommunications systems; as a result of intensive capital expenditures since reunification, the formerly backward system of the eastern part of the country is being rapidly modernized and integrated with that of the western part domestic: the region which was formerly West Germany is served by an extensive system of automatic telephone exchanges connected by modern networks ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Lill in the large rocking-chair in front of the grate. She kept very still, for she knew Lill's stories were not to be interrupted by a sound, or even a motion. The first thing Lill did was to fix her eyes on the fire, and rock backward and forward quite hard for a little while, and then she said, "Now I am going to tell you about my thought travels, and they are apt to be a little queerer, but O! ever so much nicer, than the ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... tricks to pedigree animals as well as to scrubs. Those dogs jumped the ladders, and climbed them, and went through them, and did all kinds of things. The man cracked his whip once, and they began; twice, and they did backward what they had done forward; three times, and they stopped, and every animal, dogs, goats, ponies, and monkeys, after they had finished their tricks, ran up to their master, and he gave them a lump of sugar. They seemed fond of him, and often when they weren't performing ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... comings and goings by multitudes of destroyers, who attacked the enemy both by day and by night from the afternoon of May 31 to the morning of June 1, 1916. We are too close to the gigantic canvas to take in the meaning of the picture; our children stepping backward through the years may get the ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... his resistance) No! You are too much! You are not enough. (still wanting not to hurt her, he is slow in getting free. He keeps stepping backward trying, in growing earnest, to loosen her hands. But he does not loosen them before she has found the place in his throat that cuts off breath. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... be that could regard it as possible, at any distance of time, to marry another! Or what sort of woman could she be that would shrink from such a pledge! The mischief lies in promises made without forecasting thought. I knew what I was about. I saw forward and backward and all around me. A solitary education opens eyes that, in the midst of companions and engagements, are apt to remain shut. Knowledge of the world is no safeguard to man or woman. In the knowledge and love of ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... promised you the story, we will now, my children, go about the telling of that one operation in underground silk. It is not calculated to foster the pride of an old man to plunge into a relation of dubious doings of his youth. And yet, as I look backward on that one bit of smuggling of which I was guilty, so far as motive was involved, I exonerate myself. I looked on the government, because of the South's conquest by the North, and that later ruin of myself through the machinations of the Revenue office, ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... and in despite of his threats and promises, adhered to my determination. In this I was guided no less by necessity than will. During my father's life, in attempting to clamber up a table I had fallen backward, and drawn it after me: its edge fell upon my breast, and I never recovered the effects of the blow; of which I was made extremely sensible on any extraordinary exertion. Ploughing, therefore, was out of the question, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... line drawn from the middle of the forehead backward, horizontally, is sufficiently near the line of the lateral ventricles to enable us to compare the upward and downward development of the brain. In the two profiles here presented we see a marked difference of character illustrated ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... in parrying attack—for he had frequent need of such defense—the onslaught of Benito found him unprepared. He went over backward, the young man's fingers on his throat. From the overturned table money rattled to the floor and rolled into distant corners. Hastily the non-combatants sought a refuge from expected bullets. But no pistol barked. McTurpin's strength far overmatched that of ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... 1877 was wet and backward, and we looked forward to our journey out to the contract, where a house was nearly ready for us, with anything but unmixed pleasure. In the hope that the state of the roads might improve, we delayed our departure ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... and damp March air of Washington. From Jacksonville we went in a steamboat up the St. John's River to Enterprise. Florida was the part of the United States to be first touched by the feet of white men, and yet it seemed to me to be the most backward in the march of progress. It was interesting chiefly from its weird and valueless swamps, its sandy reaches and its alligators. It is a peninsula, dividing the Gulf of Mexico from the ocean, and a large part of it is ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... press for an explanation. It was not his way. He left her moodily, a frown of deep dissatisfaction upon his handsome face. Daisy did not spend much thought upon him. Her interests at that time were almost wholly centred upon her boy who was so backward and delicate that she was continually anxious about him. She was, in fact, so preoccupied that she hardly noticed at dinner that Muriel scarcely spoke ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... was really so good I thought he'd enjoy reading it, and so I got another fellow to show it him; but he didn't properly appreciate it, and cut up rough. He said he would overlook the personal allusions, but he really couldn't allow any fellow in his form to be so backward in spelling, and therefore I must borrow a spelling-book from one of the kids, and learn two pages a day until I improved. He used to hear me before we began first lessons. It was rather rough on the president of a literary society, making him stand up ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... 16,000 Swedes, had appeared in Northern Germany as the champion of the dispirited and leaderless Protestants. The Protestant princes, however, through fear of the emperor, as well as from lack of confidence in the disinterestedness of the motives of Gustavus, were shamefully backward in rallying to the support of their deliverer. But through an alliance formed just now with France, the Swedish king received a large annual subsidy from that country, which, with the help he was receiving from England, made him a ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... hand." [44]His hair all gravel, and all green his clothes, In doleful dumps the downcast Doctor rose, Then slunk unpitied from the hated plain, And inly groaning sought his couch again; Yet, as he went, he backward cast his view, And bade his ancient power a last adieu. So, when some sturdy swain through miry roads A grunting porker to the market goads, With twisted neck, splash'd hide, and progress slow, Oft backward looks the swine, and half ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... vigorously, the block from which the boat was to be fashioned being held firmly between his knees. His knife having got wedged in the wood, he made an unusual effort to draw it out, in which he lost his balance, and disturbed the equilibrium of his stool, which, with its load, tumbled over backward. Now, it very unfortunately happened that Aunt Rachel sat close behind, and the treacherous stool came down with considerable force ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... covered with a paper of the richest and glossiest black, on which was traced a lurid and arabesque pattern of dead gold. A black velvet curtain covered the single diamond-paned window; while a thick, yielding carpet of the same material prevented the sound of my own footfalls, as I paced backward and forward, from breaking the current of my thought. Along the cornices ran gold rods, from which depended six pictures, all of the sombre and imaginative caste, which ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was surrounded by men carrying lanterns with silver framework, and of peculiar construction. The censers, as they were swung backward and forward by the bearers, emitted a dense smoke, which rose far above the procession, and marked ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... she urged at the top of her voice, crying above the clamor of the racing dogs. "We're playfellows to-day, and I can't fall in love till to-morrow!" The last words she lilted mockingly, flashing a look backward ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... culture of the grape, the first and most important of which is that our crop ripens so much earlier than that of the South that we can secure the whole of the early markets without fear of any serious opposition. Until quite recently, grape culture was in a very backward state in Queensland, the grapes grown on the coast being nearly all American varieties, which are by no means the best wine or table sorts. A few grapes of European origin were grown on the Downs and in the Roma district, but their cultivation was ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... ticket, I think, my lady. Yes, just so. I found a nice old hag waiting to claim her five pounds reward; for, you see, the men at the police-office at Murford Haven contrived to keep her dancing attendance backward and forwards—call again in an hour, and so on—till I was there to cross-question her. A precious deep one she is, too; and a regular jail-bird, I'll wager. I soon reckoned her up; and I was pretty sure that whatever she knew she'd tell fast enough, if she ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... abroad and still kept au courant with European art matters in general; he knew what they were doing in Munich no less than in Paris, and letters with foreign postmarks were always dropping in on him to tempt his mind to little excursions backward across the sea. He kept himself more or less in touch too with the kindred arts, and readily passed in certain circles for a man of the most pronouncedly ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... of white egrets swept gracefully out into the gilding rays of the setting sun. A hundred in number, perhaps, they swerved in dignified fashion and in their ineffably beautiful posture of flying, necks gently bent backward and long legs trailing delicately, flew away to the west. They were beginning to rise for a long flight when a harsh rattle of shots broke the evening quiet. Pop-pop-pop! Repeating shotguns worked at full speed. The flock crumpled ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... up—not from the men he sought to rally to his flag, but from those who would win it at a cost of blood, for his troopers were running on a backward road, and Morrison fought alone. The "gray devils" were all around him now, and he backed against the wall, fighting till his sword was sent spinning from his fist by the blow of a musket butt; then, grasping the color-pole in both ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... rustle of a dress Stiff with lavish costliness! Here comes on whose cheek would flush But to have her garment brush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary 'broidery in, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, And in midnight's chill and murk, Stitched her life into the work. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; A hyena by her side Skulks, down-looking—it ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of ghosts when I reach my second wind, and I grabbed at this one. It moved backward silently and as I made a quick step toward it that specter let out the most blood-curdling yell I ever heard—the shriek ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... vapor rendered the forms indistinct and their movements doubtful. With a cool and practised eye, the youth sought a victim; but as he discharged his musket, an object glanced near his own visage, as though the bullet had recoiled on him who had given it a very different mission. Stepping backward a little hurriedly, he saw the stranger pointing through the smoke at an arrow which still quivered in the floor ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the ridge into the Kollerthaler Wald. His last halt was at Puttingen, but Kameke has sent an aide back at the gallop to summon up all supports. The regiment stacks arms for ten minutes' breathing-time while the cannon-thunder is borne backward on the wind to the ears of the soldiers. In two hours more they will be across the French frontier, storming furiously up the Spicheren Berg. As Hans gropes in his tunic pocket for his tinder-box, the little war prayer-book somehow gets between his fingers. He takes ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... tresses clinging to her neck and face. With uplifted hand, the apparition slowly advances toward the cowering Paul, as if to strike. Paralyzed with terror, the guilty wretch falls upon the floor, begging for mercy. Slowly the ghost, without change of mien, passes backward through the open door, ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Priory, and many other residences, from the feudal Castle to the undated Grange. On the horizon-line you recognise Ledbury, the Malvern hills; and the whole outline of the Black mountains. On the right, where the river careers along in its backward course, you see the interminable foliage of the forest of Dean, and the rich valleys of Glo'stershire. A very handsome house, about a mile down the river, attracted our attention. "It's a reg'lar good billet," said Mr Williams, breaking off from some other piece of information ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... a school-boy I would not think it was fun to trip a lame boy up. I would not think it fun to see him splash down backward into a pool, and when he soused under and wet his lame back ice-cold, I ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... backward direction of the knee, a bat, when placed on the ground, rests on all fours, having the knees directed upwards, while the foot is rotated forwards and inwards on the ankle. Walking is thus a kind of shuffle; but, notwithstanding ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... taking in his age and size at a single glance, shoved him aside with splendid violence. Mr. Carrington seemed to step lightly backward and forward in one movement; his left arm shot out; and there befell Mr. D'Arcy Rosenheimer what, in the technical terms affected by the fancy, is described as "an uppercut on the point which put him to sleep." He fell as falls a sack of potatoes, ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... flesh that he walked on them." Foison also saw, and wishing to brave this corpse, more terrifying for him than for any one else, he stooped and opened the dead lips with the end of his cane. A wave of fetid air struck the assassin full in the face, and he fell backward ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... serve for an apology, certainly this ought to do so. The bare title of the book is enough to have it universally cried down, and to give the world an ill opinion of its author; for people will not be backward to say, that he who writes the Praise of Drunkenness, must be a drunkard by profession; and who, by discoursing on such a subject, did nothing but what was in his own trade, and resolved not to move out of his own sphere, not unlike Baldwin, a shoe-maker's son, ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... mental faculties put to but few uses, and all are concentrated on the object of obtaining food for themselves and their offspring. Whatever ideas they possess, and they are by no means dull or backward in learning new ones, are ever keen and young, and Nature has endowed them with an undying mental youth, until their career on earth is ended. As says a poet, speaking of savages or men in ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... small tea-drinkings, and she arranged them for Saturday so Bentley could come up. They were wonderfully good friends, but Cynthia felt as if she had outgrown him. In her estimation he was just a big friendly boy that one could talk to familiarly. Anthony was more backward ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... now less than ever to sell it," replied the Andalusian, with so crafty and insulting a look that his interlocutor took a step backward, suddenly becoming conscious that he was treading ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... He closed as follows: "The cause is making headway, though slowly it is true, for it has the prejudices of hundreds of years to contend against. The peaceful revolution is upon us. It will not turn backward but will go on conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will enjoy equal rights; pure politics and good government will be insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... strong gravity of an assured peace,—the same broad forehead,—the same delicately chiselled features, but elevated and etherealized, glowing with a kind of interior ecstasy. He seemed to move from the shadow of the orange-trees with a backward floating of his lustrous garments, as if borne on a cloud just along the surface of the ground; and in his hand he held the lily-spray, all radiant with a silvery, living light, just as the monk had suggested to her a divine flower might be. Agnes seemed to herself to hold her breath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... He moved backward before her, slowly, across the grass-plot to the bench of stone, and she followed him. Their gaze met the while. There was no wonder in his look, no consciousness of self in hers. In the spaces beyond life their souls might meet thus; each drawing by the veil, each recognizing ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put in theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the security remains as promised. If you should not be ready by July, October would be just as favorable, if not more so—only, in Heaven's name, no backward step when once started!— Some articles of provision and ammunition seem to me to be absolutely necessary before you begin. Two months are a short time to get them ready, and I scarcely think it will be possible for you to be ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... feet of the onrushing crowd the black object struck. There was a hollow roar; a blast of thundering air swept us backward to ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... strooke a ship.] The same day the Salamander being vnder both her corses and bonets, happened to strike a great Whale with her full stemme, with such a blow that the ship stoode still, and stirred neither forward or backward. The Whale thereat made a great and vgly noyse, and cast vp his body and taile, and sowent vnder water, and within two dayes after, there was found a great Whale dead swimming aboue water, which wee supposed was that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... and that it is not to be supposed that he ever could be, especially as his visits to Philadelphia brought to his attention problems which he would never suffer to go unanswered or unsolved because of his interest in so many other things quite foreign to them. However, a backward look may be taken before resuming the story of ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... were stiff, and on alighting she steadied herself for a moment by the chaise-door before stepping in to kiss her brother. In that moment her eyes took one backward glance across the park and rested on the lights of Axcester glimmering between the ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... behind. Not till the machine was descending the long divide to the west did a single cowboy come into view to remind the girl of the heroic past, and this one but a symbol—a figure of speech. Leaning forward upon his reeling, foaming steed, he spurred along the road as if pursued, casting backward apprehensive glances, as if in the brassy eyes of the car he read his doom—the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... replied the person addressed, "I did think him very backward and lukewarm. I didn't like his tone altogether. Ah! what a thing experimental religion is! You know what it is, and so do I; but I werry much fear that delooded young man is as carnal-minded as my mother was, that went to hell, though I say it, as contented and unconcerned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and vocal music. The instruments were a gong made of a large keg, over one of the ends of which was stretched a skin which was struck by a small stick, and an instrument consisting of a stick of firm wood, notched like a saw, over the teeth of which a smaller stick was rubbed forcibly backward and forward. They had besides rattles made of strings of deer's hoofs, and also parts of the intestines of an animal inflated, inclosing small stones, which produced a sound like pebbles in a small gourd. With these, rude as they were, very good time ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. "The poor fish!" was his mental comment. "If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they'll be needing a lot of replacements—or yelling for ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Eve at once led the way upstairs to a certain suite of rooms, hung with uninteresting pictures, where she and Hilliard had before this spent an hour safe from disturbance. She placed herself in the recess of a window: her companion took a few steps backward and forward. ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... the ship began to move backward. Then with increasing speed it pulled out of the grip of the long grass, and in another minute was floating on top of the water, at the edge of ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... Chimney, this manner of uniting the lower extremity of the canal of the Chimney with the throat would tend to assist the winds which may attempt to blow down the Chimney, in forcing their way through the throat, and throwing the smoke backward into the room; but when the throat of the Chimney ends abruptly, and the ends of the new walls form a flat horizontal surface, it will be much more difficult for any wind from above, to find, and force its ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... gestures, throwing his body backward in imitation of the dying woman whom fear had killed, ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... Wherever he went he readily adopted the manners of those about him; and when at Owhyhee, having discovered that favours from the females were to be procured at the easy exchange of a looking-glass, a nail, or a knife, he was not backward in presenting his little offering, and was as well received as any of the white people in the ship. It was noticed too that he always displayed some taste in selecting the object of his attentions. The king of Owhyhee earnestly ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... down on it, so that the ball of soft fiber is pressed with some force against its inner or concave surface. Another man now takes a piece of bamboo a foot long or less, and shaped with a blunt edge, something like a paper knife, and commences a sawing motion backward and forward across the horizontal piece of bamboo, and just over the spot where the ball of soft fiber is held. The motion is slow at first, and by degrees a groove is formed, which soon deepens as the motion increases in quickness. Soon smoke arises, and the motion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... not turn around. Instead he stooped down as though to pick up a stone, which enabled him to look backward ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... explosion; then, almost immediately, came the screech of a rifled shell. Every man who heard it swiftly asked himself, "Will it strike me?" But even as the words were thought out it had passed, high in air, clean to the rear, and burst harmlessly. A few faces turned upward and a few eyes glanced backward, as if to see the invisible enemy. But there was no pause in the column; it flowed onward quietly, eagerly, and with business-like precision; it gave forth no sound but the trampling of feet and the muttering of the officers, "Steady, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... whispered from one to another; the junction agent, hand over mouth, bowed himself backward in mirth. "They say it's all from her home, and this is the dinin'-room table. My! My! My! ain't it awful, all ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... plate on the breakfast table, and Dyce eyed it with curiosity. The backward-sloping hand was quite unknown to him. He tapped at an egg, and still scrutinised the writing on the envelope; it was Constance who had crossed out the Rivenoak address, and had written ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... holding it in place, and pulled it through the guide thus formed. A light flashed upon his brooding intelligence. Slightly crooking his finger, so that the shaft could move freely, he drew the string backward and forward, with deep deliberation, over and over again. To his delight, he found that the shaft was no longer eccentrically rebellious, but as docile as he could wish. At last, lifting the bow above his head, he drew it strongly, and shot the shaft into the air. He shouted as it slipped ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... arranged that the carts should at once commence going backward and forward to Rosario, to fetch coal for the brickmaking, tiles, wood, etc., and that an experienced brickmaker should be engaged, all the hands at the farm being fully occupied. It would take a month or six weeks, it was calculated, before all would be ready to begin building; and ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... moments heavy footsteps were heard in the court below. The footsteps tramped backward ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... traditions, without reverence, without stability, such little expiring centres of prejudice and precedent make an irresistible appeal to those instincts for which a democracy has neglected to provide. Wentworth, with its "tone," its backward references, its inflexible aversions and condemnations, its hard moral outline preserved intact against a whirling background of experiment, had been all the poetry and history of Margaret Ransom's life. Yes, what she had really esteemed in her husband was the fact ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... stream, not because I had any hope of escape, but that it seemed better to go under fighting. The work was severe enough, as, not having learned the back-feather under water, I must dip the blade on either side alternately, while each time that I dare turn my eyes backward a moment the sight of Grace kneeling with set white face in the stern further strengthened me. The pace grew a little easier as we drew out into a somewhat slacker flow, and I made shift with an empty fruit-can ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... flushed, for the picture that her companion had so simply drawn of a gay officer of the garrisons had once been particularly grateful to her imagination, though experience and disappointment had not only chilled all her affections, but given them a backward current, and the passing image had a momentary influence on her feelings; but the mounting colour was succeeded by a paleness so deadly, as to make ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper |
