"Backwards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... condemning, while Gefroi stood with hanging arms and panted. But Beltane looking upon his hurt, laughed, short and fierce, and as Gefroi came upon him, stooped and caught him below the loins. Then Beltane the strong, the mighty, put forth his strength and, whirling Gefroi aloft, hurled him backwards over his shoulder. So Gefroi the wrestler fell, and lay with hairy arms wide-tossed as one that is dead, and for a space no man spake ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... of head and eyes, by rapid changes of gait and gesture, (16) now casting a glance back and now fixing their gaze steadily forward to the creature's hiding-place, (17) by twistings and turnings of the body, flinging themselves backwards, forwards, and sideways, and lastly, by the genuine exaltation of spirits, visible enough now, and the ecstasy of their pleasure, that they ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... of the South, as well as from those of the whole earth; he has laid hold of the barbarians; he has not let a single one of them escape his gripe upon their hair; the Petti of Nubia have fallen beneath his blows; he has made their waters to flow backwards; he has overflowed their valleys like a deluge, like waters which mount and mount. He has resembled Horus, when he took possession of his eternal kingdom; all the countries included within the circumference of the entire earth are prostrate under his feet." Having effected his conquest, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... I am to see it. But I know what it is. It's this walking backwards and forwards between here and Bispo that's doing the mischief. Better give it up, Count. Better not come toiling up here any more. It's not good for your health. Why, man, ye're as white as ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... for soon were all her thinking powers swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road. It was not three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run backwards and forwards some ten times a day, with an heart light, gay, and independent; looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed, and free from the apprehension of evil as from the knowledge of it. Three months ago had seen her all this; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "We have begun backwards," said Mr. Roberts; "I was reading to-day that a mistake the missionaries made for years in trying to civilize the Greenlanders; and what a perfect failure they made of it until one day almost by accident, a man began to tell them about Christ on the cross, and the story ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... handed to him. He placed it over the middle of the compass, and altered its position until it lay exactly in the same direction as the needle. A second cord, with a plummet attached, was then held to the first and let down into the grave, and the coffin moved backwards and forwards according to this line, until the middle was in the same direction as the needle: this arrangement consumed at least ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... rope, and by means of the rope climbed up to the bar. Here he began to perform a great variety of the most astonishing evolutions, the man all the time poising the pole in the air. The boy would climb about the bar in every way, drawing himself up sometimes backwards and sometimes forward, and swinging to and fro, and turning over and over in every conceivable position. He would hang to the bar sometimes by his hands and sometimes by his legs—sometimes with his head downward, sometimes with his feet downward. He ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... Thomas, always the mildest of lads, struck him on the mouth so violently that he tottered backwards, and in doing so, fell straight under the feet of Sylvia, who stood in the doorway watching them, as if rooted to the spot, her blue eyes full of tears, and her face as white as when she had first come ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... stepped backwards. "Ah!" was all she said. Logan removed his eye-glass and stared blankly at Christie. "And did McDonald marry you in ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... earnestly they were speaking, he refrained from opening his window, and proceeded to dress himself; but he could not avoid having, every now and then, a full view of the faces of the two, as they turned backwards and forwards at the end of the garden. Something that he there saw puzzled and surprised him: the appearance of the stranger in green seemed more familiar to him than it could have become by the ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... she said, with the spirit of one who had cried, "Keep the Liberal out!" at a Leith polling-booth and had been haled backwards by the hair from the person of Mr. Winston Churchill. Mr. Philip laughed again and felt a kind of glow. He never could get over a feeling that to discover a woman excited about an intellectual thing was like coming on her bathing; her cast-off femininity affected ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... old woman,' he at length asked, 'that is so busy there, going backwards and forwards, in her gray cloak?' 'She is one of my attendants,' said his bride; 'she is to overlook and manage my waiting-maids and the other girls.' 'How can you bear to have anything so hideous always at your elbow?' replied Emilius. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Likewise, she must rise to her feet when men pass by, and in some districts, should she meet a man on the way, she must stop and remain standing meekly at the side of the path; also, she must leave the room backwards. Neither of these last-mentioned customs is universal, but are to be found largely ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... brought us to the foot of a bare green valley, which wound upwards and backwards among the hills. A little stream came down the midst and made a succession of clear pools; near by the lowest of which I was aware of a drove of shaggy cattle, and a man who seemed the very counterpart of Mr. Sim making ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the neighbors, called him Teencowry (three cowries[20]),—such a nice mean name against spells and cross-eyed people! Once a strange Melican Sahib had said, "Hello, Buster!" to him; but he wasn't at all frightened, for his gooroo had taught him how to say a holy mautra[21] backwards; and when the Melican Sahib passed on, he spat on his shadow and said it. Last week a lizard dropped on his foot, and yesterday he saw a cow on his right hand three times,—he had always been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... may get credit for the land for ten years or more, as we settle upon. That literary characters make "money" there: &c. &c. He never saw a "bison" in his life, but has heard of them: they are quite backwards. The mosquitos are not so bad as our gnats; and, after you have been there a little while, they ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... was free for a moment, and that was all he needed. He jerked his molecular ray pistol from its holster and beamed it mercilessly toward the door, hurling the attackers violently backwards. They died instantly, their chilled corpses driving back against their comrades with ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... two full hours there trying to get a rich hops dealer to take out some insurance. The man had him explain over and over again the advantages of insurance, studied the tables backwards and forwards, and yet he was unable to come to a decision. Then the waiter brought him his dinner. There he sat, smacking his lips with the noise of human contentment, his great white napkin tied under his chin in such a fashion that the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... westward burned; Gazed for a moment, set her hands Over her brow, so! drew the strands Loose and rich of her tawny hair, Once through her fingers, standing there; Then again to the rail she passed. One more look to the West she cast, And into the East she drew away: Backwards and forwards her brown arms play, Forwards and backwards, till far and dim, She grew one with the night's dun rim; Backwards and forwards, and then, was gone Into I know not what . . . alone. She came not back, she may never come; But a young ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prostrate on the ground. When somewhat recovered from the blow, he rose with his hand pressed to his nose, while the blood ran out between his fingers. "Oh! my goodness!" he exclaimed, seating himself at the root of a pecan tree, and rocking backwards and forwards. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... high-road beyond the river. Some one was coming towards the bridge from the manor-house, riding in a peculiar fashion. The wind blew from behind, but the dust was so thick that sometimes it travelled backwards. Occasionally horse and rider showed above it, but the next moment it whirled round and round them again, as if the road was raising a storm. Slimak shaded his ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the inscription of course begins at opposite ends on each side, the Thibetans are careful in passing that they do not trace the words backwards." — Turner. ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... it really are, cut a round hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper the color of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper with the hole in it, between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards, so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject) through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like one of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... driving back their blood-thirsty assailants? Happy check! for by this time, covered with wounds, Braddock had fallen; his aids and officers, to a man, killed or wounded; and his troops, in hopeless, helpless despair, flying backwards and forwards from the fire of the Indians, like flocks of crowded sheep from the presence of their butchers. Washington alone remained unhurt. Two horses had been killed under him. Showers of bullets had lifted his locks or pierced his regimentals. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... towards the foe; we had no word for firing; Grey in the gateways of St. Gond the Guard of the tyrant shone; Dark with the fate of a falling star, retiring and retiring, The Breton line went backwards and the Breton tale ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... with two clear blue eyes. The noble baron took no note of this, but as he gallopped past the little goose-herd, he reversed the whip he held in his hand, and in rough sport gave her such a push in the chest with the butt-end, that she fell backwards into the ditch. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... and was mortified rather than terrified, I believe, at the sudden application of the lash. The unfeigned surprise he manifested, together with the quick leap which his horse made, who partook of the blow, was irresistibly ludicrous. He was nearly thrown off backwards in the speed of the animal's flight along the road. It was some time ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... as it was by the exigencies of the costume she had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came. She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a tall fan of peacock's plumes made after the quaint designs of ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating from the peacock's feathers, the light of her golden garments, her ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... travelling of the Colonists backwards and forwards to England makes it absurd to speak of the Colonies as if they were a foreign land. They are simply pieces of Britain distributed about the world, enabling the Britisher to have access to the richest parts of ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... weighed less than forty pounds. He was supported in it wholly on his forearms, which passed through padded tubes, while his hands grasped a cross-bar. He guided the machine and preserved its balance by shifting his weight, backwards or forwards or sideways. In this apparatus, altered and improved from time to time, Lilienthal, during the next five years, made more than two thousand successful glides. At first he used to jump off a spring-board; then he practised on some hills in the suburbs of Berlin; then, in the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... rose and left the place. The confessor out of curiosity followed her to the door. When he saw the good lady, whom he thought mad, received by grooms, waiting women, and so on, he had like to have fallen backwards; but he ran to the coach door and asked her pardon. It was now her turn to laugh at him, and she got off scot-free that day ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... went to the gallows, sat down below it, and waited till evening came. And as he was cold, he lighted himself a fire, but at midnight the wind blew so sharply that in spite of his fire, he could not get warm. And as the wind knocked the hanged men against each other, and they moved backwards and forwards, he thought to himself "Thou shiverest below by the fire, but how those up above must freeze and suffer!" And as he felt pity for them, he raised the ladder, and climbed up, unbound one of them after the other, and brought down all seven. Then he stirred ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... before any exploring expedition, if only the state of the ice permit a suitable steamer to force a passage in that sea. In order to form a judgment on this point, it may perhaps be necessary to cast a brief glance backwards over the attempts which have been made to penetrate in the direction which the projected expedition ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... was allowed the high and envied privilege of raking the ashes from under the fire-place and carrying them to the ash-pit, which ash-pit was vast and lofty, being the joint production of many cottages. To reach the summit of the ash-pit, and thence to fling backwards down its steep sides all assailants who challenged your supremacy, was a precious joy. The battles of the ash-pit, however, were not battles of giants, as no children had leisure for ash-carrying after the age of seven. A still greater honour accorded to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... nothing more. The sun set, a great illuminated bubble, submerged in one vast bank of rosy suffusion; it grew dark; after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set, a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came on ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... tangible personality, ascends likewise through all the stages that lead to that zenith, with ever-increasing energy and clearness. Individuality is ever more strongly felt and accentuated; the psychological possibility of a single Homer is ever more forcibly demanded. If we descend backwards from this zenith, step by step, we find a guide to the understanding of the Homeric problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was for him the flawless and untiring artist who knew his end and the ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... an armour-bearer, a carpet of skin should be spread, should one be easily procurable. The straps of the skin (which are at the head) should, according to old custom, be to the front, so that the fur may point backwards. In old days, when the ceremony took place in a garden, a carpet of skin was spread. To hire a temple for the purpose of causing a man to perform hara-kiri was of frequent occurrence: it is doubtful whether it may be done at the present time. This sort of question should be referred beforehand ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Des Valles shouted, springing to his feet in his excitement, but as he spoke the enemy's fire broke out again, "Vive la France!" he shouted, and then fell heavily backwards. ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... innocently playing cards or walking backwards and forwards, and so have not seen one of the thousand pin-pricks with which your wife's self-love has been tattooed, you come and ask her in a ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... moved forward in the mist they caught sight of some French knights, who moved backwards and forwards along their front and then rode away, doubtless to inform their countrymen that the Flemings were advancing against them. In the French army were all the best knights and leaders of France, and as soon as they ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... round that southern extremity of England. His daughter Barbara, a good-looking girl with heavy red hair and a face as grave as one of the garden statues, still sat almost motionless as a statue when her father rose. A fine tall figure in light clothes, with his white hair and mustache flying backwards rather fiercely from a face that was good-humored enough, for he carried his very wide Panama hat in his hand, he strode across the terraced garden, down some stone steps flanked with old ornamental urns to a more woodland path fringed with little trees, and so down a zigzag ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Confusion—seeketh rest, and moans in vain: Ah! but you should hear it calling, calling when the haggard sky Takes the darks and damps of Winter with the mournful marsh-fowl's cry; Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy ridges come Leaping down and breaking backwards—million-coloured shapes of foam! Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh for the boon Portioned to the pleasant valleys and the grave sweet summer moon: Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly spirit of the dew-dells deep— ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... top of the ladder. Sabina mounted almost as quickly as he had done, till she reached the last few steps and could no longer hold by the uprights. Then she put out her hands; he grasped then both and slid backwards on his knees as she landed safely on the edge. She had not felt that she could possibly fall, even if her feet slipped, and she now knew that he was strong, and that it was good to ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... whiskers on him face, and stand very straight, like stick bending backwards. Him look like a soldier, and him blink one eye more ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... so it was most natural that they should look back for their religion, too. To find philosophy in Aristotle and to find spiritual life in Christ required not even the turning of the head. In all realms the age in its search for knowledge was facing backwards. It was a significant hour in the history of human thought when that attitude began to give way. The scandal caused by Alessandro Tassoni's attacks on Homer and Aristotle in the early seventeenth century resounded through Europe. He advanced the new and astonishing idea that, so ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... heard a rustling at no great distance. He looked around, and in an adjacent street, which the moon faintly enlightened, he perceived a tall figure, wrapped in a cloak, pacing slowly backwards ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... their youth they had been fellow-pupils in the school of the Amazon Scathach, who had taught them both alike the arts of war. When Loch the Great, as a dying request, prays Cuchulainn to permit him to rise, "so that he may fall on his face and not backwards towards the men of Erin," lest hereafter it should be said that he fell in flight, Cuchulainn replies: "That will I surely, for it is a warrior's boon thou cravest," and he steps back to allow the wounded man to reverse his position in the ford. The tale of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... greatly one from another in colouration. The American species is self-coloured, while the Malayan has the most unique pattern known to the animal world. The fore-quarters, the head, and the hind-legs are black, while the rest of the body from the shoulders backwards ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... the garden backwards, in silence, and gather a rose and keep it in a clean sheet of paper without looking at it, until Christmas Day, when it will be as fresh as in June, and if it is worn on that day on the bosom he that is to be the husband will ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... speedily for a tree. Dad lost the stick, and in attempting to brain the brute with his fist he overbalanced and fell out of the saddle. He struggled to his feet, and clutched his antagonist affectionately by both paws—standing well away. Backwards and forwards and round and round they moved. "Use your knife!" Anderson called out, getting further away himself. But Dad dared not relax his grip. Paddy Maloney ran behind the brute several times ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... precipitous that there was no possibility of proceeding any further on horseback. The burghers had therefore to lead their horses, and had great difficulty even in keeping their own footing. It frequently happened that a burgher fell and slipped backwards under his horse. The climb became now more and more difficult; and when we had nearly reached the top of the mountain, there was a huge slab of granite as slippery as ice, and here man and horse stumbled still ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... which it spread; we can grasp both the strong differences and the close bonds of connection between Assyria and Chaldaea, and understand the swing of the pendulum that in the course of two thousand years shifted the political centre of the country backwards and forwards from Babylon to Nineveh, while from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf, beliefs, manners, arts, spoken dialects, and written characters, preserved so many striking resemblances as to put their ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... daughter that probably the roads would be far more full of peril than their own house could ever be, if they strictly shut it up, lived upon the produce of their own park and dairy, and suffered none to go backwards and forwards to bring the contagion ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... spirit and ready presence of mind. With a swift jerk she dragged the slippery blade from the man's hands. She pulled it towards her beyond the man's reach. Then with a sudden vigorous thrust she drove the blade into the face of the nearest sailor. It took him full in the mouth and knocked him backwards. He picked himself up and spat out the broken fragments of some teeth. Kalliope ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Commission. The Honest Artificer that begot him, and all his frugal Ancestors before him, are torn off from the Top of the Register; and you are not left to imagine, that the noble Founder of the Family ever had a Father. Were we to trace many boasted Lines farther backwards, we should lose them in a Mob of Tradesmen, or a Crowd of Rusticks, without hope of seeing them emerge again: Not unlike the old Appian Way, which after having run many Miles in Length, loses it self in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... straps over our backs, so that we might use our hands, and we were clinging to the face of the big rock while our toes were seeking foothold in the treacherous shale of the trail. To loosen our hands was to fall backwards into the bluish white sea of unknown depths, and to retrace our steps was ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... like a great yellow prancing cock,[378] while I am left to watch the nets.[379] Once back again in Athens, these brave fellows behave abominably; they write down these, they scratch through others, and this backwards and forwards two or three times at random. The departure is set for to-morrow, and some citizen has brought no provisions, because he didn't know he had to go; he stops in front of the statue of Pandion,[380] reads his name, is dumbfounded and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... only in the rump, as may be seen by the turkey-cock when in a strutting attitude. By a strong muscular vibration these birds can make the shafts of their long feathers clatter like the swords of a sword-dancer; they then trample very quick with their feet, and run backwards towards ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... SAME HANDWRITING!" gasped the millionaire. And he let himself fall heavily backwards against the back of ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... mythological ring, and the stories of benign fairies, changing everything into gold, sound likewise like an echo from the long-forgotten forest of our common Aryan home. If we know how the trick of dragging stolen cattle backwards into their place of hiding, so that their footprints might not lead to the discovery of the thief, appears again and again in the mythology of different Aryan nations, then the pointing of the same trick as a kind of proverb, intended ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... in this world capable of exciting emotions of wonder and adoration more directly, than to travel alone through its forests. Pines, lifting their hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines his head so far backwards as to be painful to his organization, with trunks which require fathoms of line to span them; oaks, of the most gigantic form; the immense and graceful weeping elm; enormous poplars, whose magnitude must be seen to be conceived; ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... swallowed down a little balloonful of sobs, and went straight into the parlour, where her mother and Mr. Herbert still sat, and resumed her seat in the bay window. Her heightened colour, an occasional toss of her head backwards, like that with which a horse seeks ease from the bearing- rein, generally followed by a renewal of the attempt to swallow something of upward tendency, were the only signs of her discomposure, and none of them were observed by her mother or her guest. Could she have known, however, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... knew this song of TAMMAS'S. A shout of laughter went up from the whole gathering. The stranger fell backwards into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... this kind of vermin. The house was quickly torn down and out jumped an old residenter, who was old and gray. I suppose that he had been chased before. But we had jumped him and were determined to catch him, or "burst a boiler." After chasing him backwards and forwards, the rat finally got tired of this foolishness and started for his hole. But a rat's tail is the last that goes in the hole, and as he went in we made a grab for his tail. Well, tail hold broke, and we held the skin of his tail in our hands. But we were determined to ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... tower, and Ralph, walking up backwards, had his head through the hatch opening, when a shot was fired. He dropped one of his revolvers, and Alfred quickly seized him by the shoulders and drew him up. The hatch cover came ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... than boys, speak of the wearisome confinement which they endured at school. Not allowed, perhaps, to step out of one broad walk in a superb garden, and obliged to pace with steady deportment stupidly backwards and forwards, holding up their heads, and turning out their toes, with shoulders braced back, instead of bounding, as nature directs to complete her own design, in the various attitudes so conducive to health. The pure ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... beams of the westering sun came shining in, lying level and warm upon the group at the upper end of the hall, which had gathered around the white-haired, white-bearded bard, who, with head thrown backwards, and eyes alight with strange passions and feelings, was singing in a deep and musical voice to the sound of ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... inches from the beam, their feet were scarcely three from the ground. I was here placed in a guard—house, and kept there until the evening, when I was again marched off under my former escort, and we soon arrived at the door of a large mansion, fronting this parade, where two sentries were walking backwards and forwards before the door, while five dragoon horses, linked together, stood in the middle of the street, with one soldier attending them, but there was no other particular bustle, to mark the headquarters of the General commanding. We ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 'em each some bread an' salt, an' a candle to put the pins in and name. They done everything backwards—ye have to do everything backwards at a dumb supper. I don't know what happened when the candle burned down to the other girls' pins—I forget somehow—but when the pin Granny had stuck in the candle an' named for her lover was melted out and fell, the do' ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... it seemed to Seth that he was being hard pressed. At any rate, if it were not so, the two men running towards them must turn the scale. Feigning a vigorous onslaught upon his opponent, who was already somewhat disconcerted, Seth deliberately fired at the man fighting his master, who fell backwards with a cry. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... circlet of black ostrich feathers in some branches surrounds the face and stands high above the head. In the southern districts the warriors wear two single black ostrich plumes tied one either side the head, and slanting a little backwards. They walk with a mincing step, so that the two feathers bob gently up and down like the waving of the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, and vice vers. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter-full of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of the deck, and, as the ship heaves and pitches, you move your body about, so as to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you can't ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... This was Mr Thumble, who had ridden over to Hogglestock on a poor spavined brute belonging to the bishop's stable, and which had once been the bishop's cob. Now it was the vehicle by which Mrs Proudie's episcopal messages were sent backwards and forwards through a twelve-miles ride round Barchester; and so many were the lady's requirements, that the poor animal by no means eat the hay of idleness. Mr Thumble had suggested to Mrs Proudie, after their interview with ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the third, to send the same bit of pasteboard by a servant ad hoc. At three, all the world drives to the Villa Borghese, where there is a general salutation of acquaintances with the tips of the fingers. At four, up the Pincio. At five, it files backwards and forwards along the Corso. Everybody who is anybody is condemned to this triple promenade. If a single woman—who is anybody—were to absent herself, it would be inferred, as a matter of course, that she ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... to relate with infinite humor an adventure between him and a mastiff, when he was a boy. He had heard somebody say that any person throwing the skirts of his coat over his head, stooping low, holding out his arms, and creeping along backwards, might frighten the fiercest dog, and put him to flight. He accordingly made the attempt on a miller's animal in the neighborhood, who would never let the boys rob the orchard; but found to his sorrow that he had a dog to deal with which did ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... has said: "There is a finality and a want of elasticity about Mohammedanism which precludes its expanding beyond a certain fixed line of demarcation. Having once reached this line, it appears to lapse backwards—to tend toward mental and moral slavery, to contract with the narrower and narrower ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... body, and appear of the same colour, but much whiter than that of the liquor out of which it is made. For the abundance of reflections of the Rays against those surfaces of the bubbles of which the froth consists, does so often rebound the Rays backwards, that little or no light can pass through, and consequently the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... for exactly ten seconds, and then, clean and straight, with lightning swiftness, his one hand shot forward. It was a single hard blow, delivered full on the jaw with a force that nearly carried Nick with it, and it sent the offender staggering backwards on his heels in bellowing astonishment. The opposite wall saved him from falling headlong, but the impact was considerable, and tendered him quite incapable of recovering his He subsided slowly onto the floor with a flood of language that at least testified to the fact that his ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... four houses; and, as its name betokens, I believe, stood at the junction of four roads; on one of which we were moving; a second, inclined to the right; a third, in the same degree, to the left; and the fourth, I conclude, must have gone backwards; but, as I had not an eye in that direction, I did ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... and honour of the State. Railway signals, of all earthly things the most poetical, the coloured stars of life and death, shall be lamps of green and crimson worthy of their terrible and faithful service. But if ever this gradual and genuine movement of our time towards beauty—not backwards, but forwards—does truly come about, Morris will be the first prophet of it. Poet of the childhood of nations, craftsman in the new honesties of art, prophet of a merrier and wiser life, his full-blooded enthusiasm ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... Cassell's Magazine remarks:—"We hear individuals now and then talking of the ease with which the season-ticket holder journeys backwards and forwards daily from Brighton. By the young, healthy man, no doubt, the journey is done without fatigue; but, after a certain time of life, the process of being conveyed by express fifty miles night and morning is anything but refreshing. The shaking and jolting of the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... Time He bent His mind, For the beginning, which He could not find, Through endless centuries and backwards still Endless for ever, till His 'stonied will Halted in circles, dizzied in the swing Of mazy nothingness.—His mind could bring Not to subjection, grip or hold the theme Whose wide horizon melted like a dream To thinnest edges. Infinite behind The piling centuries were trodden blind ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... ate a little piece of bread, and as they heard the strokes of the wood-axe they believed that their father was near. It was not the axe, however, but a branch which he had fastened to a withered tree which the wind was blowing backwards and forwards. And as they had been sitting such a long time, their eyes closed with fatigue, and they fell fast asleep. When at last they awoke, it was already dark night. Gretel began to cry and said: 'How are we to get out of the forest now?' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... but tell me, did you ever see anything like this boat? Did you ever imagine a thing could crawl with such a slowness—such a slowness? I shall die of it! I believe the screw is working backwards." ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... seen a penitent submit to it for more than a quarter of an hour on a bitterly cold day in January. In summer, on the other hand, the religious exercise called Hiyakudo, or "the hundred times," which may also be seen here to advantage, is no small trial of patience. It consists in walking backwards and forwards a hundred times between two points within the sacred precincts, repeating a prayer each time. The count is kept either upon the fingers or by depositing a length of twisted straw each time that the goal is reached; at this temple the place allotted ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Penalty, Remorse. They marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They came with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self now. Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on her, blocking ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... disturbance by shooting against and battering the church; insomuch that sometimes a cannon bullet has come in at the windows and bounced about from pillar to pillar (even like some furious fiend or evil spirit) backwards and forwards and all manner of sideways, as it has happened to meet with square or round ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... part of the breast to the wing below, for the same purpose; between these lies a deep triangular cavity; the thighs are remarkably thick, strong, and muscular, covered with long feathers pointing backwards, usually called the femoral feathers; the legs, which are covered half way below the knee, before, with dark brown downy feathers, are of a rich yellow, the colour of ripe Indian corn; feet the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... But, ere the light went out, a glance had revealed a scene that I shall never forget. Our visitor, whose weight, as he tried his usual balancing experiment, had caused the slender legs of his chair to snap off short, had fallen backwards. In trying to save himself, he had caught at the table, and wrenched that from its centre fastening. Startled by this sudden catastrophe, my husband had sprung to his feet, grasping his chair with the intent of drawing it away, when the top of the ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... Jesse; on the other hand, Saul's genealogy is carried further back, and there was no reason for not doing so in David's case also if the materials had existed. But here, as in Ruth, the pedigree is traced backwards through Jesse, Obed, Boaz, up to Salma. Salma is the father of Bethlehem (ii. 54), and hence the father of David. But Salma is the father of Bethlehem and the neighbouring towns or fractions of towns AFTER THE EXILE; he belongs to ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... bottom; I therefore landed with the master in search of a convenient place for that purpose, and was accompanied by Mr Banks and Dr Solander. We found walking here exceedingly troublesome, for the ground was covered with a kind of grass, the seeds of which were very sharp and bearded backwards, so that whenever they stuck into our clothes, which indeed was at every step, they worked forwards by means of the beard, till they got at the flesh, and at the same time we were surrounded by a cloud of musquitos, which incessantly tormented us with their stings. We soon met with several places ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... moment Lady Clavering, looking round the pair,—she was on the first carriage-step, and would have been in the vehicle in another second, but she gave a start backwards (which caused some of the powder to fly from the hair of ambrosial Jeames), and crying out, "Lor, if it isn't Arthur Pendennis and the old Major!" jumped back to terra firma directly, and holding out two fat hands, encased in tight orange-coloured gloves, the good-natured ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and throwing a long succession of hindrances in the way of his conqueror, argues some essential defect of system. Under our modern policy, military power—though it may be the growth of one man's life—soon takes root; a succession of campaigns is required for its extirpation; and it revolves backwards to its final extinction through all the stages by which originally it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly impossible from the solitariness of the Roman power; co-rival nations who might balance the victorious ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... backwards and forwards, bringing plates and glasses. He laid the table slowly, then put a cold fowl on it, and told me that all ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... down into his seat with that same strong shudder, the luminous face was already incoherent; the features had relapsed again into blots and shadows, the drapery was absorbing itself upwards into the center from which it came. Once more the nebula trembled, moved backwards, and disappeared. The next instant the radiance went out, as if turned off by a switch. The ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... crystal, he performeth everything therein, and the things which he doeth are like unto the things which are done in the Lake of Twofold Fire, wherein there is none that rejoiceth, and wherein are all manner of evil things. The god Hetep goeth in, and cometh out, and goeth backwards [in] that Field which gathereth together all manner of things for the birth-chamber of the god of the city. When he setteth in life, like crystal, he performeth all manner of things therein which ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... with bull-like fury. Henry places himself on guard in the manner of a well taught boxer, and gets away smartly, but unfortunately forgets the stool which is just behind him. He falls backwards over it, unintentionally pushing it against the shins of Bompas, who falls forward over it. Mrs Bompas, with a scream, rushes into the room between the sprawling champions, and sits down on the floor in order to get her right arm round her ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... been acting under the supervision of a Supply Officer, whose work I do when he is away, and I know the system of transport and supply backwards. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves slowly. A wave, but without wind! a current, but with no fall! all the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... him in a heap. Mary Hope turned white, her eyes staring up at Lance a little above her. In that instant they both remembered the short turn of the switch-back, and the twelve-foot bank with the scrambling trail down which no horse could walk backwards and keep his legs ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... first three hours, the camels were kept going at the top of their speed; but as they neared Berber, there was a perceptible slackness. Ahmed Bey and Gregory rode backwards and forwards along the line, keeping them together, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... her get in first, which she did very rapidly, as if to escape observation. There she crouched like a wild beast, in the left corner, on the straw, riding backwards. The doctor sat beside her on the right. Then the executioner got in, shutting the door behind him, and sat opposite her, stretching his legs between the doctor's. His man, whose business it was to guide the horse, sat on the front, back to back with the doctor and the marquise, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... getting down over their horse's head,' said Dave presently, in a reflective sort of way—'in fact I've done it myself—but I never saw a man get off backwards over his ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... anathema, answered him, and in a couple of seconds Kelly himself lurched into him, nearly hurling him backwards. "And is it yourself?" cried the Irishman. "Then help me to hold the damned young scoundrel, for he's fighting like the devils in hell! Here he is! ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... under the outstretched arms of Silent, fairly heaved him up from the floor and drove him backwards. The big man half stumbled and half fell, knocking aside two chairs. He rushed back with a shout, but at sight of the white face with the thin trickle of blood falling from the lips, and at the sound of that inhuman ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... rumped, this, I guess, will be allowed a plain ugly Horse; but yet if such a Horse be strong, and justly made in those parts which are immediately conducive to action; if his shoulders incline well backwards, his legs and joints in proportion, his carcase strong and deep, his thighs well let down, we shall find he may be a very good racer, even when tried by the principles of mechanics, without appealing to his blood for any part of his goodness. We are taught by this ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... the battle raged. Rupert having no fixed duty rode backwards and forwards along the roads, now watching how went the defence against the French attack, now how the Dutch in vain tried to press back the Spaniards and open a way of retreat. Late in the afternoon he saw ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... unacquainted with the nature of the business, but old birds want a more substantial temptation than chaff. A principal objection against the plan of union was the risque and expense of sending materials and publications backwards and forwards through so great a distance: one failure would be fatal to one month's magazine, and a repetition of such a disaster would discourage subscribers. The subscribers here would probably not be satisfied with a magazine printed elsewhere, and could not be furnished ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... said Karen, jerking herself backwards and forwards in her rocking-chair. "I'm seventy years and more old. I hain't got no more work to do. I'm goin'; and I'm ready, praise the Lord! They're most all gone; — and the rest is comin' after; — it's time old ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... very supple in the joints and turn backwards or outwards from the palm, it is an indication of a quick wit and clever brain; but such persons lack continuity of purpose. They have no "hold," as it were, on any ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... blood-name, which she gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated with her companion at the chess-board of matrimony, had but just pushed forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... combined line he must either divide his force or operate on only one of the confluents, leaving the rest free. The farther he can be pushed back from the point of confluence the more effectually will he be limited to a single line, because the combining lines, traced backwards, trend more and more apart, and it is, therefore, more and more difficult for him to keep detachments of his force within supporting distance of each other if they continue to act against two or more lines. The particular case of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... such a conjunction could have produced such a scene that the evening star came up backwards to look ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unaccountable as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a charwoman's or housemaid's business of scouring the floor. Both his little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... cripple, who cannot leave the car when the customs officers search it. Now, signore, let's be off and trust to our good fortune in getting away. I will tell the officers of the dogana at Ventimiglia a good story—trust me! I haven't been smuggling backwards and forwards for ten years ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of Coire demonstrated immediately how light fat man are; for when men are big-bellied, a merciful providence, in the consideration of their works, often makes their internal tubes as elastic as balloons. The aforesaid bishop sprang backwards with one bound, burst into a perspiration and coughed like a cow who finds feathers mixed with her hay. Then becoming suddenly pale, he rushed down the stairs without even bidding Madame adieu. When the door had closed upon the bishop, and he was fairly in the street, the Cardinal of Ragusa began ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... appeared on the banks of the Nile, stars of the lion, (Leo;) at the time of reaping, stars of the sheaf, (Virgo;) stars of the lamb and two kids, (Aries,) when these animals were born; stars of the crab, (Cancer,) when the sun, touching the tropic, returned backwards; stars of the wild goat, (Capricorn,) when the sun reached the highest point in his yearly track; stars of the balance, (Libra,) when days and nights were in equilibrium; stars of the scorpion, (Scorpio,) when periodical simooms burned like the venom of a scorpion; and so ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... velocities far below that of fifth-order rays. At only a very small fraction of that speed the tracers I am following are so badly distorted that they disappear altogether, and I have to distort them backwards. That wouldn't be too bad, but when I get up to about one per cent of the velocity I want to use, I can't calculate a force that will operate to distort them back into recognizable wave-forms. That's another problem for Rovol to chew ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... "as this is the first of January. Last night I observed an unusual amount of going backwards and forwards, so, I suppose, nobody need be much at a ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... shoulder. With another laugh he grasped its roots and twisted it from the Very Young Man's hand. A second more and they came together again, and the Very Young Man felt his antagonist's powerful arms around his body, bending him backwards. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... added Mallard, his eyes happening to catch Cecily's face as it looked backwards, and his ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... just finished his plans for getting hold of the other end of the force of gravity. The general idea is to build a sort of tower or flag-pole on the planet—something that reaches far enough out over the edge to get an underhold as it were—grip hold of the force of gravity where it works backwards. Of course, as anyone can see at a glance, when it is once built out with steel, the first forty miles or so (workmen using compressed air and tubular trolleys, etc.), everything on the tower would pull the other way and the ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... over the winding upland road back to her home, her thoughts followed her sister into her new existence, and then turned wistfully backwards to the days that had been marked off into the past by Algitha's departure. How bright and eager and hopeful they had all been, how full of enthusiasm and generous ambitions! Even as they talked of battle, they stretched forth their hands for ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... seconded his efforts on the other side, and then, under the strain of their united exertions, the stone began to move slowly from its place. Little by little they raised it, putting all the strength they possessed into the operation, until, at last, with one great effort they hurled it backwards, and it fell with a crash upon the pavement behind them, revealing a dark, narrow hole, the bottom of which it ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... an open place, and were just discussing the matter, when—whiz!—a bullet grazed the flank of Wildgoose, and the mettlesome creature reared straight into the air, threatening to fall backwards ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... evolution of successive specific manifestations. These relationships, as also this developmental power, will doubtless, in a certain sense, be somewhat further explained as science advances. But the result will be merely a shifting of the inexplicability a point backwards, by the intercalation of another step between the action of the internal condition or power and its external result. In the meantime, even if by "Natural Selection" we could eliminate the puzzles of the "origin of species," yet other phenomena, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... month. I then sent Bombay to see the queen, to ask after her health, beg for a hut in the palace enclosures, and say I should have gone myself, only I feared her gate might be shut, and I cannot go backwards and forwards so far in the sun without a horse or an elephant to ride upon. She begged I would come next morning. A wonderful report came that the king put two tops of powder into his Whitworth rifle to shoot a cow, and the bullet not only passed ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... far backwards on an ordinary chair, with his outstretched right arm resting on the dining table. His face was flushed and the thick fringe of black hair about the bald top of his head was slightly disordered. He tried to smile, but the smile turned into ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... was a man so real, and free from pretence. No one, as I believe, will ever taste the flavor of certain writers as he has done. He was the last true lover of Antiquity. Although he admitted a few of the beauties of modern times, yet in his stronger love he soared backwards to old acclivities, and loved to rest there. His essays, like his sonnets, are (as I have said) reflections of his own feelings. And so, I think, should essays generally be. A history or sketch of science, or a logical effort, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall |
