"Backwoods" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... specimen of the backwoods' gentleman—you will admit there are gentlemen in the backwoods." (Here the doctor glanced good-humouredly, first at our English friend Thompson, and then at the Kentuckian, both of whom answered him with a laugh.) "His house was the type of a backwoods mansion; a wooden structure, both ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... unreality all about her. It was herself who walked and moved, yet all the time she seemed to stand aside and let another self think and feel and act. A composite odour of groceries, bacon, tobacco, and cheap clothes met her as she entered the rough, homely shed, which was a typical emporium of the backwoods; but she had no time to analyse the odours, being at once attracted by Katherine, who stood at a tall desk by the window, entering items in a ledger. At the same time Katherine glanced up and saw the visitor entering the door. She flushed at the sight, and became suddenly nervous, acutely conscious, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... are rich enough to support a yacht, let alone the fact that not one man in fifty lives near enough to yachting waters to make such an acquisition desirable—or feasible, even. It is different with the canoe. A man like myself can live in the backwoods, a hundred miles from a decent sized inland lake and much further from the sea coast, and yet be ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... limit, boundary, bounds, confine, enclave, term, bourn, verge, curbstone^, but, pale, reservation; termination, terminus; stint, frontier, precinct, marches; backwoods. boundary line, landmark; line of demarcation, line of circumvallation^; pillars of Hercules; Rubicon, turning point; ne plus ultra [Lat.]; sluice, floodgate. Adj. definite; conterminate^, conterminable^; terminal, frontier; bordering. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The nephew and heir of the great Firm voluntarily surrendering consideration, ease, riches, unbounded luxury for the sake of the heathen—choosing a wigwam instead of a West End palace; parched maize rather than the banquet; the backwoods instead of the luxurious park; the Red Indian rather than the club and the theatre; to be a despised minister rather than a magnate of this great city; nay, or to take his place among the influential men of the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the day turns out hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the coach below ever thinks of offering to change seats with her, though it pour torrents. In America, the roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain always, as a matter of course, considers himself charged with the protection of the ladies. 'Place aux dames' is written in the heart of many a shaggy fellow who could not utter a French word any more than could a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... its familiar court-day, which was a holiday for all the country-side, especially in the fall and spring. From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the court-house green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes,—the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled, and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... Andrew Jackson led, there was neither delay nor hesitation. At once he sent his backwoods infantry down river in boats, while the mounted men rode overland. Four weeks later the information overtook him at Natchez that Congress had refused to sanction the expedition. When the Secretary of War curtly told him that his corps was "dismissed from public service," ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... and it extended itself into every part of the country. If we inquire what the world thought of it, we have still more to raise our wonder; for, not to mention the excitement it caused in England, the movement and its party-names were known to the police of Italy and to the backwoods-men of America. And so it proceeded, getting stronger and stronger every year, till it came into collision with the Nation and that Church of the Nation, which it began by professing especially ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of an ambitious, backwoods Ohio boy who rose to prominence. Everyday humor of American ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... again. If I could have ten acres cleared two miles away from any living being, I could be happy with my children. I find a kind of comfort when I am at work from daybreak to sundown, and know that it is all my own." I believe that life in the backwoods has an allurement to those who have been used to it that dwellers ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... hair, his strong jaws rimmed with bristling new whiskers, long arms and longer legs, large hands, big features, every movement quick and powerful. The first impression was one of enormous strength. He looked every inch the stalwart backwoods athlete, capable of all the feats of physical strength campaign stories had credited to his record. One glance at his magnificent frame and no one doubted the boast of his admirers that he could lift a thousand pounds, five hundred in each hand, or bend an iron poker by striking ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... I'm not sorry for you! I just mean, you couldn't have had so terribly much fun, after you were eighteen or so. Schoenstrom must have been a little dull, after very many years there. This stuff about the charm of backwoods villages—the people that write it seem to take jolly good care to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... he picked up Clark where Louisville now is. And then he left the Ohio River and crossed by horseback to the Army post across from here, to get still more men for the expedition—soldiers, you see, good hardy men they were, who knew the backwoods life and feared nothing. So after they got all of the expedition together, they made winter quarters over yonder, and in the spring they came over here, and the great fleet of three boats and forty-five men started ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... my dear fellow. I am miserably behind the age. People are getting so cursedly in earnest now-a-days, that I shall have to bolt to the backwoods to amuse myself in peace; or else sham dumb as the monkeys do, lest folks should find out that I'm rational, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in the backwoods! Living where the dun deer roam, and wild fowl flock! Sleeping a-nights where waters murmur, wolves howl, and panthers scream in your hearing; and whip-poor-wills sing till morning comes, and Nature appears in ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... moved to Indiana, and there the first great sorrow of his life befell the little boy. His mother died of a fever that appeared among the settlers, leaving Abraham and his sister Sarah, a little girl of eleven, to do the housework and the heavy chores of a backwoods farm. The following year Thomas Lincoln went away to Kentucky to marry again, and he brought back with him a big hearted woman named Sally Johnson, who had three children by a ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... were a fairy penny, in the virtues of which neither speaker nor hearer had any very serious belief. In fact, there was something odd and incredible in the idea that this was no longer plain Maurice Leigh, the most popular and one of the poorest members of this small Backwoods world, but Maurice Leigh Beresford, of Hunsdon, an English country gentleman rich enough, if he chose, to buy up the ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the old gentleman is said to have invoked the backwoods 'Chandlers' and 'Hoveys,' I will obligingly translate for you, as possibly you may not be able to read it in the original Sanscrit! Oh! don't tell me that you 'won't trouble me,' and all that. I will bore you, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have been detained here three days by a circumstance truly agreeable. I have had the happiness of seeing Captain Michael Cresap marching at the head of a formidable company of upwards of one hundred and thirty men from the mountains and backwoods; painted like Indians; armed with tomahawks and rifles; dressed in hunting shirts and moccasins; and, tho' some of them had travelled hundreds of miles from the banks of the Ohio, they seemed to walk light and easy, and not with less spirit ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... been satisfied. To see the East; to see India and far Cathay; to see the tropics and to live for a while in a tropical island; to be carried along the Grand Canal of Venice in a gondola; to see the gardens of Boccaccio and the cell of Savonarola; to camp and hunt in the backwoods of Canada, and to walk the streets of New York, all these things have I longed, from youth upwards, to see and to do—yea, as ardently as ever Drake desired to set an English sail upon the great and unknown sea, and all these things, and many more, have been granted ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... an opportunity to acquire information, when he could obtain it at first hand, and hence as they sat beside the fire, watching the rosy flames dance and play at tag, he put many more questions to the backwoods boy concerning the secrets of the profession, and learned various new things that up to this time he ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... in the backwoods, the trip down the rivers was one long adventure. Abe sat at the forward oar, guiding the big flatboat through the calm, blue waters of the Ohio, while Allen cooked supper on deck. Afterwards ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... starfish can not possess any organization corresponding to the starfish. The egg is a single cell, and the starfish a community of cells. The egg can, therefore, no more contain the organization of a starfish than a hunter in the backwoods can contain within himself the organization of a great metropolis. The descendants of individuals like the hunter may unite to form a city, and the descendants of the egg cell may, by combining, give rise to the starfish. But neither can the man contain within himself the organization of the city, ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... the backwoods people in that section of country to cross the Sacramento on the Yellow Dragon cable. For this service a small toll was charged, which tolls the Yellow Dragon Company applied to ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... shining in the darkness. In Germanic eyes Ottokar's fault was that of being a Slav, successful and of great ability. I cannot agree with the German chronicler's estimate of Rudolph. We are expected to accept him as a modest sort of backwoods peer, the kind that wears flannel next its skin and keeps its small estates unencumbered. We have also a pretty picture in verse of this Rudolph. He is described as meeting a priest carrying the Host, on the bank of a foaming mountain torrent somewhere among the Alps where the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the right hand of fellowship, and invited him to make the opening prayer. It was considered a good prayer, generally speaking, but it was criticised as not containing anything attractive to young people. He was understood to be on his way to take charge of a backwoods church down in Aroostook County, where probably his prayers would be more acceptable to the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... book is that in which Harvey, by a clever stratagem, assists Capt. Wharton to escape. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was born at Burlington, N.J., but was reared in the wild country around Otsego Lake, in central N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of his father. It was here he learned the backwoods lore, which in combination with his romantic genius, made him one of the most popular ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... and a half-blind one standing by, begging for a report of what's taking place. Before you married, Alfred, I'll bet you selected a better place than that when you wanted to kiss a girl. That fellow lives in a big town and I live here in the backwoods, but I can learn ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... given. A painter has to clear away the old paint off a door, or a wall, before he lays on the new. The initial gift that comes from being laid hold of by Jesus Christ is the burning off of the old coat of paint. But that is only the preliminary to the laying on of the new. A man away in the backwoods will spend a couple of years after he has got his bit of land in felling and burning the trees, and rooting out and destroying the weeds. But is that what he got the clearing for? That is only a preliminary to sowing the seed. My friend! If Jesus Christ has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a boy of about nine. In the background was a miserable hovel made of crude lumber and patched windows. This couple and their baby had been discovered by a geological survey outfit living in the backwoods hills. Relief, aid, and help were being rushed, and the legislature was considering ways and means of their schooling. Neither of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... weather and manner of living which poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear, in the gray unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Tales," like the "Pathfinder Tales" of J. Fenimore Cooper, combine historical information relating to early pioneer days in America with interesting adventures in the backwoods. Although the same characters are continued throughout the series, each book is complete in itself, and, while based strictly on historical facts, is an interesting and ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... writing many an article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!—"Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog"—a squib which would never have been written but ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had scathed and torn him so; He would seize it by the vitals; he would crush it day and night; he Would so pursue its footsteps, so return it blow for blow, That Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods or in town! ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... sea, and the deprivations of individuals wrecked on some desert coast; but it is by no means generally known that scarcely a summer passes over the colonists in Canada, without losses of children from the families of settlers occurring in the vast forests of the backwoods, similar to that on which the narrative of the Canadian Crusoes is founded. Many persons thus lost have perished in the wilderness; and it is to impress on the memory the natural resources of this country, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... In the "backwoods" of Pennsylvania stood a little mill. The miller appertaining unto this mill was a Pennsylvania Dutchman—a species of animal in which for some centuries sauerkraut has been usurping the place of sense. In Hans Donnerspiel the usurpation ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... "manners"—a feature of backwoods education to which Dorsey had not aspired. Crawford had doubtless introduced it as a refinement which would put to shame the humble efforts of his predecessor. One of the scholars was required to retire, and then to re-enter the room as a polite gentleman is supposed to enter ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... time, brief as it was, could not be compared in celerity with the flight of the Nicaraguans, who betook themselves to the backwoods with an impetuosity seldom seen outside of a race-course. There was no loss of life so far as the British were concerned, and the only casualties resulting to the Nicaraguans were colds caught through the overheating of themselves in their feverish desire to explore immediately ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... gaily. "I'd be flattered to death to think a simple backwoods maiden could make such a profound impression on a young man from the city—but it ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... successes of men who scarcely learned anything of their teachers, that I sometimes ask whether the great American celestial mechanician of the twentieth century will be a graduate of a university or of the backwoods. ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... as sure as you are alive! (and may not be long.) What's to be done now? Joe was a nice fat little boy, and the bear might be hungry. He wasn't afraid: pooh!—no. A little backwoods boy afraid? They are made of different stuff than the little ruffled-collar boys that tag about with the nursery maid at their heels, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... home, after almost ten years of separation, just the same careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that we were when we parted in St. James's street,—he for the West, I for the Eastern World—he to fell trees, and build log huts in the backwoods of Canada,—I to shoot tigers and drink arrack punch in the Carnatic. The world had wagged with us as with most others: now up, now down, and laid us to, at last, far enough from the goal for which we started—so that, as I have said already, on landing in New York, having ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... succeeding centuries white men struck their claws ever firmer into America. The Indians were forced back into the backwoods, and in North America they have been almost exterminated. Under French, and later, under English rule, those parts of North America have developed an unexpected power and wealth which were despised by the Spaniards, who in their ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... negroes, to whom full political equality was conceded in North America? And shall a highly intellectual woman be vested with lesser rights than the rudest, least cultured man,—an ignorant day-laborer of the backwoods of Pomerania, or an ultramontane canalman, for instance, and all because accident let these come into the world as men? The son has greater rights than his mother, from whom, perchance, he derives his best qualities, the very qualities that alone make ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... out very well while it is green, but has not substance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber or men is always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, let us say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothing in a more complicated civilization. City life is a severe trial. One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks; another shrinks and swells with every change of circumstance. Prosperity is said to be more ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Ethelinda and buying a new, strange, nameless brunette head, gluing it calmly on Ethelinda's body, as a small acquaintance of mine did last week, apparently without a single pang? Never! A doll had a personality in those times, and has yet, to a few simple backwoods souls, even in this day and generation. Think of Charles Kingsley's song,—"I once had a sweet little doll, dears." Can we imagine that as written about one of these modern monstrosities with eyeglasses and corsets ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... only what every settler who builds himself a hut in the backwoods must feel, Bert. It is the work of every wood-cutter and charcoal-burner; it is a good deal like the work of every miner. You have been brought up too soft, ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... green zenith of June when MacPhairrson went away. When he returned, hobbling up with his tiny bundle, the backwoods world was rioting in the scarlet and gold of young October. He was quite cured. He felt singularly well. But a desperate loneliness saddened his home-coming. He knew his cabin would be just as he had left it, there on its steep little foam-ringed island; and he knew the Boy would be ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... answer, "because she had not been introduced;" but this state of ignorance is, fortunately, not very common. It should be met by the surprised rejoinder of the Hoosier school-mistress: "Don't yer know enough to speak when yer spoken to?" Let every woman remember, whether she is from the backwoods, or from the most fashionable city house, that no such casual conversation can hurt her. It does not involve the further acquaintance of these two persons. They may cease to know each other when they go down the front steps; and it would be kinder if ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... of the beat men I over knew," said Phoebus. "He was a remarkable instance of energy combined with softness of disposition. In my opinion, however, he ought never to have visited Europe: he was made to clear the backwoods, and govern man by the power of his hatchet and the mildness of his words. He was fighting for freedom all his life, yet slavery made and slavery destroyed him. Among all the freaks of Fate nothing is more surprising than that this Transatlantic planter should have been ordained ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... leader, but their impulse was checked by a stern command from behind. Glancing in that direction, they saw themselves covered by a long, brown rifle-barrel, held by a white man clad in the leathern costume of the backwoods. At the same time half a dozen laborers who, home-returning from the fields, had noticed that something unusual was taking place, came hurrying to the scene of disturbance. Wisely concluding that under these circumstances ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the spur to action. Napoleon was born in obscurity, the son of a hand-to-mouth scrivener in the backward island of Corsica. Abraham Lincoln, the boast and pride of America, the man who made this land too hot for the feet of slaves, came from a log cabin in the Ohio backwoods. So did James A. Garfield. Ulysses Grant came from a tanyard to become the world's greatest general. Thomas A. Edison commenced as a newsboy ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... in the week at the outpost in the American backwoods where we dwelt—when the other young fellows were cleaning gulls or arranging snow-shoes for the day's work, Lumley was ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... produced an apple having a slightly different flavour to what it had in this country. You could always distinguish an American apple by its peculiar piquancy—a sub-acid piquancy, a wild strawberry piquancy, a sort of woodland, forest, backwoods delicacy of its own. And so on, and so on—"talk, talk, talk," as Mrs. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... dog; no "hunter's home" would be complete without one, but Louis scouted the idea of adding things as unfitting as plush table-covers and upholstered footstools. The table went bare, and he fashioned a footstool for his mother out of a log, in true backwoods fashion. ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... said the latter the next morning at breakfast—"to think that the backwoods of America should have turned us out such ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... invoked the saints, and cursed his director for his medley of directions many a time, before he stumbled at length on Mr. Boone's house. He was invited to sit down and dine, in the simple backwoods phrase, which is still the passport to the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... men know: Despite compromise, war and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... once both heart and imagination. In its dress, its drill, its games, its objects, it jumps perfectly with the feelings of the boy who adores Robinson Crusoe, Chingachcook the Last of the Mohicans, Jim Hawkins, who sailed to Treasure Island, buccaneers, trappers of the backwoods, and all who sit about camp fires in lonely places of the earth. It is a movement which aims at making all boys brothers and friends, and its end is good citizenship; it is a foe to none save the snob, the sneak, and ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... of whom to make converts, but, gathering several hundred of the peasants from the neighborhood, he managed to imbue them with an absolute faith in his divine mission, and emigrated with them to the backwoods of Pennsylvania, in Butler County. After about ten years they removed to the banks of the Wabash, in Indiana; then, in 1825, returned to Pennsylvania, and settled finally in Beaver County, some sixteen miles below Pittsburg, calling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... tyranny, have prevented the development of that feeling of independence among the lower orders, which in a freer race finds its expression in ill manners and discourtesy to superiors. I knew a gentleman in the West whose circumstances had forced him to become a waiter in a backwoods restaurant. He bore a deadly grudge at the profession that kept him from starving, and asserted his unconquered nobility of soul by scowling at his customers and swearing at the viands he dispensed. I remember the deep sense of wrong with which he would growl, "Two buckwheats, begawd!" ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... matter what the world thinks," Gillespie said, and he spoke of the small backwoods settlement as if it were some great center of opinion such as in great communities dispenses fame and infamy, and makes its judgments supremely dreaded. "Besides," he faltered, "no one is knowing but ourselves to his coming back. It can seem as if ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... van, at the head of his company of mounted riflemen, mounted on a splendid Kentucky bay, and rigged out in his dashing backwoods uniform, rode Captain Bushrod Reynolds, whom we left twenty-four years ago in the Paradise a sturdy urchin of nine, and still a candidate for breeches and boots. Yes, there he rode, a tall, athletic ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... form of the affidavit may be judged peculiar; but it was thought best not to startle the authorities with the admission that the man had not been baptized at all. They could easily believe that a State like Ohio, which some of them doubtless regarded as still in the backwoods and mainly tenanted by the aborigines, might have omitted, in days gone by, to require a Taufschein; but that an unbaptized Christian should offer himself to be married in Germany would perhaps have so paralyzed their powers of belief ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... are heaps and heaps of railway sleepers down in the wood heap, and we could pile them up into a hut. It's only what people do out in Canada. Gibbie's always telling us tales of women who emigrate to the backwoods, and build colonies of log-cabins. Ave, you're not going to sleep ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... such fortunate conditions that they have to do either a good deal of outdoor work or a good deal of what might be called natural outdoor play do not need the athletic development. In the Civil War the soldiers who came from the prairie and the backwoods and the rugged farms where stumps still dotted the clearings, and who had learned to ride in their infancy, to shoot as soon as they could handle a rifle, and to camp out whenever they got the chance, were better ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Hammond said: "Now, Nick, I am expecting your Aunt Ella and Uncle Alfred today, and I want you to be on your guard while they are here, and not act as if you were a backwoods boy who does not know anything. I especially want you to be gentlemanly; for Uncle Alfred is such a stranger to us yet that he will not understand you, and will think less of your papa and myself for seeing you rude and ill-mannered. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the morning he could see the expectation of this story in their faces: a pair of distant, clearest eyes would be furtively lifted to his, then quickly dropped; or another pair more steadily directed at him through the backwoods ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Cooper, when he determined to tell the fresh story of the backwoods and the prairies, found a pattern ready to his hand in the Waverley novels, so Ibsen availed himself of the "well-made play" of Scribe when he wrote the 'League of Youth,' which is his earliest piece in prose presenting contemporary life and character in Norway. There is obvious significance in ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... raptures over the barbarian's kindness. Emboldened by my sympathy, she told me how she had given up, little by little, what she imagined to be the weakness of her early education, until she found that she acquired but little strength in her new experience. How, translated to a backwoods society, she was hated by the women, and called proud and "fine," and how her dear husband lost popularity on that account with his fellows. How, led partly by his roving instincts, and partly from other circumstances, he started with her to California. An account of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... AUGUSTUS JOHN will be able to accompany Lord BEAVERBROOK to Canada this summer, so that his lordship may gratify his lifelong ambition to be painted by Mr. JOHN, with the primeval backwoods for a setting, in the character of a coureur-des-bois, of the type immortalized by Sir GILBERT ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... that you cannot give your man as much soil as he has on the prairies or in the Canadian lumber lands. This, no doubt, is true, but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does not clear his land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it, and goes on digging and delving little by little, until, after many years of Herculean labour, he hews out for himself, and his children after him, a freehold estate. Freehold estates, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... reached the ears of Matheson, and set up a curious train of thought as he drove in his cab to his office in the Rue Laffitte. The words carried him back to a forest-clearing in the backwoods of Ontario, where he and his half-brother had made holiday camp some eighteen years before. They were comparing ambitions—two young men unusually alike in features but very different in temperament and will-power. John Riviere, the elder of the two, ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... that held the trout and took out a fine string of them, and ate them up on the spot, leaving only the string and one head. In August bears come down to an ancient and now brushy bark-peeling near by for blackberries. But the creature that most infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house down if you do not look out. Of a summer evening they will walk coolly into your open door if not prevented. The most annoying ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... backwoods of Carolina, Jackson had early crossed the Alleghanies and settled in Tennessee. Whenever trouble came to the Western people, whenever there was need of a stout heart and an iron will, Jackson was at the front. He always did his duty. He always did his duty well. Honest and ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... single Old-World notion) produced in a single generation. We ourselves have known a parallel instance in the children of a British soldier who deserted during the War of 1812; in tone of thought, accent, dialect, and physique they were unmistakably Yankee. If the backwoods Americanize men so fast, is it wonderful that two centuries of the Western Hemisphere should have produced a breed so unlike the parent Bull? It is time Bull began to reconcile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... "the thing is for all of us to fall into line and forge ahead, Colonel. If we don't, we'll be left behind; and in these times to lag is to take to the backwoods." ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... romantic interest first invested the American Indians, French writers saw in them the prototypes of the Germans described by Tacitus. Not only Voltaire and Rousseau, but Montesquieu himself, regard them curiously, as if in the backwoods dwelt the future dominators of the world. Comparisons were drawn between their manners, their religion, their customs, and those of the Goths and the Franks, and litterateurs indulged the fancy that in delineating the Hurons ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Old Country way of treating a servant. Sarah Emily was far from the Old Country type, however, and William seemed to have forgotten that servants had a place of their own since he had lived so long in the backwoods. When the family would arrange themselves at table, with the maid standing properly behind her mistress, Mr. Gordon would wait for her to be seated before asking the blessing, regarding her with gentle inquiring ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... careering under sail and steam, and near it a coloured sectional map of some new township marked out in squares. These are the advertisements of an Atlantic or Australian line, or of both; and the editor is their agent. When the young ploughman resolves to quit the hamlet for the backwoods of America or the sheepwalks of Australia, he comes here to engage his berth. When the young farmer wearies of waiting for dead men's shoes—in no other way can he hope to occupy an English farm—he calls here and pays his passage-money, and his broad shoulders and willing hands ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... not all bad. They were incensed against me as an Abolitionist—or "nigger-stealer," as they phrased it—and, under the countenance and guidance of their elders, their worst passions were now at play; but for all that, they were not essentially wicked. They were rough backwoods' boys, and the spirit of my retort pleased them. After that they ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... The backwoods lawyer was better fitted to conciliate the good-will than to command the obedience of his men. There were many serving under him, who both from character and education could better ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... BACKWOODS SURGERY AND MEDICINE. By Charles S. Moody, M.D. A handy book for the prudent lover of the woods who doesn't expect to be ill but believes in being on the safe side. Common-sense methods for the treatment of the ordinary wounds and accidents are described—setting ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... brief, pointed way that served to convince better than eloquence. These are the characteristics that make for success in practise before our Courts of Appeal; and Jefferson's success shows that they serve better than bluster, even with a backwoods ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... father's clearing, they found the settler's son, a brawny fellow about Cyrus's age, in buckskin leggings and coon-skin cap, who wielded his axe with arms which were tough and knotted as pine limbs. He bawled to them in the forceful language of the backwoods, which to unaccustomed ears sounded a trifle barbaric, to keep out of the way until his tree ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... father of Thomas, was a notable man. His parents were poor, and in early life he went into the backwoods of Virginia as a surveyor. He is described as a person of great stature and strength. His mind was equally robust. He was a natural mathematician, and was remarkable for hardihood and perseverance. His temper was equable, but his passions were strong and his anger ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there was something more in it, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... for he many be a friend of yours, and I have to use him sometimes myself." Mr. Duncan sighed. "It's all very sordid and annoying. Now this evening, for instance, when we might have enjoyed ourselves with those books, I've' got to go to the House, just because some backwoods farmers want to talk about woodchucks. I suppose it's foolish," said Mr. Duncan; "but Bass has tricked us so often that I've got into the habit of being watchful. I should have been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sort of school it was. There was no one belonging to me, or associated with me in any way, who had literary tastes or ideas, the nearest I can make to it is that my great-grandfather was a circuit writer, a Welshman, known as "Priest" Jones in the backwoods, where his enthusiasm led him ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... to Florida—the land of the palms!" announced the manager. "You know I spoke of tentative plans for a drama down there when we were in the backwoods. Now I have everything arranged, and we will leave on a steamer for St. Augustine one ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... Cooper's best writing with the life he knew at first hand is thus perfectly plain. In his novels dealing with the wilderness, popularly known as the Leatherstocking Tales, he drew directly on his knowledge of the backwoods and backwoodsmen as he gained it about Cooperstown. In The Pioneers (1823) he dealt with the scenes of his boyhood, scenes which lay very close to his heart; and in the other volumes of this series, The Last ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... scurried up to her room, not even waiting to hear the voice of temptation, and began hunting her belongings through for something. It was foolish, but she was more excited over the thought of this rough, impromptu backwoods dance than she ever had been in the city by real dances, or out with Cousin Anna at the carefully planned subscription dances where you knew just who was coming and just what they were ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... not been for the cross old aunt, Rebecca would still have been at Sunnybrook; and from the standpoint of educational advantages, or indeed advantages of any sort, she might as well have been in the backwoods," returned Adam. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the target and bosses are bright in the Highlands, The axe in your hands might be blunted well, too. Then forward—and see ye be huntsmen true, And, as erst the red deer felling, So fell ye the Gaul, and so strike ye all The tribes in the backwoods dwelling. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... much mischief for idle hands in Lindsay as anywhere else. The worst tragedy I ever heard of happened on a backwoods farm, fifteen miles from a railroad and five from a store. However, I expect your mother's son to behave himself in the fear of God and man. In all likelihood the worst thing that will happen to you over there will be that some misguided woman will put you to sleep in ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that, And through imagination to possess, As they were mine, the lives of other men. This growth original of virgin soil, By fascination felt in opposites, Pleases and shocks, entices and perturbs. 580 In this brown-fisted rough, this shirt-sleeved Cid, This backwoods Charlemagne of empires new, Whose blundering heel instinctively finds out The goutier foot of speechless dignities, Who, meeting Caesar's self, would slap his back, Call him 'Old Horse,' and challenge to a drink, My lungs draw braver air, my breast dilates With ampler manhood, and I front both ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... I'll have to try my luck gambling before I do. When I hang out my shingle I may ask you to help—a little. Self-made men of to-day are made on paper—not by splitting logs or teaching school in the backwoods in order to buy a dictionary and law books—we haven't the time for that. So I'll take my chances and you'll ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods," the third volume of the series, are told the mid-winter sports of our heroine and her friends; and later, after the school year is concluded, we find them all at the seaside home of one of the Briarwood girls, and follow them through the excitement and incidents of "Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... native of Ohio, where he was born somewhat more than a half-century ago. His father was a famous hunter and rifle shot, and it was doubtless his exploits and those of his associates, with their tales of adventure which gave the son his taste for the breezy backwoods and for depicting the stirring life of the early settlers on ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... and shook himself in his cousin's direction, spattering him with drops. "Don't mention it, dear fellow!" he said, through his chattering teeth. "It serves me right for expecting civilized manners in the backwoods. This no doubt appears to you an exquisite pleasantry, and its delicacy will be appreciated, no doubt, by others of your circle. Enfin, in the presence of your father, whom I respect, I can but accept your ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... humourless democracy detected in him no taint of the patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid his arrears of knowledge with the ready coin ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... are, my dears!" exclaimed Mr. DeVere, as he entered the room. "We have just received word that the entire company will spend some months in the backwoods, getting pictures ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... the sixteenth President of the United States, was born in a log cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky on the 12th day of February 1809. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was sixth in direct line of descent from Samuel Lincoln, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638. Following the prevailing ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... of parents and children. It is true that the habits of a community can make such cruelty rare, but these habits, I fear, are only to be produced through the prolonged reign of law. Experience of backwoods communities, mining camps and other such places seems to show that under new conditions men easily revert to a more barbarous attitude and practice. It would seem, therefore, that, while human nature remains as ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... observation, he spoke in a high-pitched voice of the balmy weather and the sweet profusion of birds and flowers, when there was more like to be a "sweet profusion" of Indians; and I nigh stifled with laughter to see this lumbering, free-voiced forest-runner transformed to a mincing, anxious, backwoods macaroni at the smile of a ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... veritable monster of the sea to my backwoods eyes; enough to pluck the heart out of a man. Has either of you stepped ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... sky-coloured cottonade. Some wear coats made of green blankets, others of blue ones, and some of a scarlet red. There are hunting-shirts of dressed deerskin, with plaited skirt, and cape, fringed and jauntily adorned with beads and embroidery—the favourite style of the backwoods hunter, but others there are of true Indian cut—open only at the throat, and hanging loose, or fastened around the waist with a belt—the same that secures the knife and pistol. There are cloth jackets too, such as are worn by sailors, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... House, standing alone by the wayside under nodding pines, with its streamlet and water-tank; its backwoods, toll-bar, and well-trodden croquet ground; the ostler standing by the stable door, chewing a straw; a glimpse of the Chinese cook in the back parts; and Mr. Hoddy in the bar, gravely alert and serviceable, and equally anxious to lend ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... door opened and revealed a young man in work-a-day black suit and derby, with a candle in one hand and a property spear in the other. He conducted us down a narrow, drafty hallway, into a hall in which were wooden benches as rude as those in the bandstand of a backwoods country fair in the States, and a slightly raised platform at the farther end. We were soon in eager conversation with young store clerks and typists and artisans who were about to set to work at that in which their hearts lay, the interpreting of plays out of Ireland's heart. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... for departure we felt like saying with the blind preacher, whom William Wirt, the orator of Virginia, heard concluding his sermon to a backwoods congregation: ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... gasp and a short roar, as the pincers slipped. And no wonder, for it was a three-fanged grinder of the largest size, situate in the remote backwoods of ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... became a character in the country. He was, in fact, what is colloquially known as "an old poison oaker." This is an individual who sinks so low in the scale of civilization that he lives out in the backwoods or poison oak brush and becomes animal in type. His hair grew to his shoulders, his beard was unkempt, his finger nails were as long as claws and filthy with dirt. Rags of unknown antiquity partially covered his limbs, vermin infested his body and he stayed with the most ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... New World of fancy and fiction so graphically described in Indian stories and tales of backwoods life? And where are the vast prairies and almost boundless forests of sober fact, where the bear, the wolf, and the buffalo roamed at will—the famous hunting-grounds of the Red Indians and the trappers of the ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... reports! Hence, in the midst of a perfect horror of detestable weathers of a quite incongruous strain, and with less desire for correspondence than - well, than - well, with no desire for correspondence, behold me dash into the breach. Do keep up your letters. They are most delightful to this exiled backwoods family; and in your next, we shall hope somehow or other to hear better news of you and yours - that in the first place - and to hear more news of our beasts and birds and kindly fruits of earth and those human tenants who are ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said to himself, as he breathed with relief the outside air again, "that was the rudest thing I ever knew a lady to do. She is a lady, there is no doubt of that. There is nothing of the backwoods about her. But she might at least have answered me. What have I done, I wonder? It must be something terrible and utterly unforgivable, whatever it is. Great heavens!" he murmured, aghast at the thought, "I hope that girl isn't going up to the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... rider whose breath was enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as cotton velvet! A cross old woman came next, and whose look would have given any reasonable man the double-breasted blues before breakfast; alongside of her was a rale backwoods preacher, with the biggest and ugliest mouth ever got up since the flood. He was flanked by the low comedian of the party, an Indiana Hoosier, 'gwine down to Orleans to get an army contract' to supply the forces then ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... woods the scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true enough description, but after all, there were very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth Illinois Circuit or anywhere else who could hold their own, even in a purely professional struggle, with that long-armed logician from the backwoods. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... of Lexington—the war message—transmitted from hand to hand till village repeated it to village, the sea to the backwoods, "found the farmer of Pomfret, two days after the conflict, like Cincinnatus, literally at the plough." He unyoked his team and hastened in his rude dress to the camp. Summoning the forces of Connecticut, he was placed at their head, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... there to do about it? You know well enough that I can't afford to marry her. I suppose it's the best thing for me that she has gone off to the backwoods somewhere, for while she was here I could not help seeing her, and after all ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... satisfaction tae read yir letter frae the backwoods—or was't a public-hoose in New York? ma memory's no what it used to be—tellin' hoo ye were aye thinkin' o' yer auld granny, and wantin' tae come hame and be a comfort tae her if she wud ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... that you have read a deal more than have we who come from the backwoods," said he. "You have studied natural science and much else, still I wonder if any of you can tell me what the stones in ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... natives, the stir, the bustle, the confusion, the shifting splendors of the costumes—dear me, the delight of it, the charm of it are beyond speech. The two-hour wait was over too soon. Among other satisfying things to look at was a minor native prince from the backwoods somewhere, with his guard of honor, a ragged but wonderfully gaudy gang of fifty dark barbarians armed with rusty flint-lock muskets. The general show came so near to exhausting variety that one would have said that no addition to it could be conspicuous, but when this Falstaff and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the then almost unknown Canadian West had been growing upon him, and as it grew he shrank more and more from disclosing his plans to his fiancee. Had she been one of the country girls of the neighbourhood, a daughter of the sturdy backwoods pioneers, bred to hard work in field and barnyard, he would have hesitated less. But she was sprung from gentler stock. It seemed almost profane to think of her in the lonely life of a homesteader on the bleak, ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... was almost as tall as Humphrey, but of a much slighter build; yet he was wiry and muscular, as could well be seen, and plainly well used to the life of the wild woodlands. His dress was that of the backwoods, dressed deerskin being the chief material used. Both travellers wore moccasins on their feet, and carried the usual weapons of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... OF THE FOREST. By EVELYN RAYMOND. Illustrated by IDA WAUGH. The heroine of this unusual tale resides with her uncle on an island in the backwoods of Maine, and her exciting adventures, her unique animal pets, her rescue of her father from unlawful imprisonment, all combine to form a story of exceptional interest and merit. Considerable information concerning animal and plant ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... who never knew flint and steel, or a brimstone stick. He explained to Larry how easy it was to cook game, by making a fire in a hole until it had become very hot, and then placing the meat therein; sealing the oven until hours had elapsed; which backwoods method of cooking was really the ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... itself.... They abuse our hospitality, insult our peculiar institutions, set at defiance all the refinements of life, and return home, lamenting the social anarchy of America, and retailing their own indecent conduct as the ordinary customs of the country.... The pranks which, in a backwoods American, would be stigmatized as shocking obscenity, become, when perpetrated by a rich Englishman, charming evidence of sportive ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... can. [Laughter.] Well, the Frenchmen knew, after all, that the Americans can never get along without their wines, and without their silks, and without their jewels, and without their art, and without their science, and without the numberless elegancies which make life even in our backwoods tolerable. And we know that they cannot very well dispense with our wheat and corn and the oil from the earth and the cotton to weave into those delicate tissues with which they clothe the world. [Applause.] So that, after all, these superficial ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... with excitement; still, it was necessary that I should first decide whether the slot had been properly described and properly followed up, ere the work could be stamped with full approval. A writer might have won fame throughout the civilized globe for his trappers and his realistic backwoods, and all went for nothing. If his pemmican were not properly compounded I damned his achievement, and it was heard no ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... "and would you imagine it, he seems to think that everything here goes on as it does in his d——d little backwoods ranch at home; talks about the pretty girls who walk alone in the street; says how sensible it is; and how French parents are misrepresented in America; says that for his part he finds French girls,—and ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... said Alfred to himself, as he watched the graceful rider disappear. "What spirit! Now, I wonder who she can be. She had on moccasins and buckskin gloves and her hair tumbled like a tomboy's, but she is no backwoods girl, I'll bet on that. I'm afraid I was a little rude, but after taking such a stand I could not weaken, especially before such a haughty and disdainful little vixen. It was too great a temptation. What eyes she had! Contrary to what ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the very next vessel that leaves Liverpool for Australia. I shall be better in the diggings or the backwoods than ever I could be here. I'm broken for a civilized life from this ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... wore no regular uniform, although there was a general similarity in their attire, which was that of an ordinary backwoods hunter. When off duty they were allowed to dress as they pleased, and at Mr. Jackson's the two friends were attired in the ordinary dress of colonists of position. At these little gatherings political subjects were never discussed, and a stranger spending an evening there ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... the right principle," said Stover, assuming a deliberate look; "but crude, very crude, backwoods, primitive, and all that ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... miles of scrub and underwood are diversified chiefly by crude advertisements. Here you are asked to purchase Duke's Mixture; there Castoria Toilet Powder is thrust upon your unwilling notice. In the few cities which you approach the frame-houses and plank-walks preserve the memory of the backwoods. In vain you look for the village church, which in Europe is never far away. In vain you look for the incidents which in our land lighten the tedium of a day's journey. All is barren and bleak monotony. The thin line of railway seems a hundred miles from the life of man. At one ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... she interrupted placidly. "I know! You're going to tell me, once more, your pet theory that there's many a boy in that backwoods who might paint a great canvas, or model a deathless bronze—or—or lead a lost cause, if he could only be found and provided with the chance. It sounds—it sounds very big and grand and romantic, Cal, but has it ever occurred to ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the fence corner? Ye're a fine lot of jays up here in th' backwoods! Do I know him? Full well I do! An' that shows, ye what honest workin'men has got to come to, these days. Didn't ye see him sittin' there on that castin'? Th' bosses put him there to keep tricks on ye. If ye have the nerve of a bunch of hoboes, ye'll watch yer chances and step on him ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... might ask that question, but not the backwoods boy who had learned navigation on the waters of the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal. He pushed to the mouth of the river, and there took possession of the Sandy Valley, a small steamer in the quartermaster's service. Loading her with supplies, he set about starting up the river, ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and serious, is a product of the backwoods and a crack rifle shot. Quick thinking and pluck bring him a scholarship to Clarkville School where he is branded "grind" and "dub" by classmates. How his batting brings them first place in the League and how he secures his appointment to West Point make CRACKER ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... A Backwoods Boyhood, in Moores, Abraham Lincoln; Choosing Abe Lincoln Captain, in Schauffler, Lincoln's Birthday; Following the Surveyor's Chain, in Baldwin, Abraham Lincoln; His Good Memory of Names, in Gallaher, Best Lincoln Stories; Lincoln and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... one," stipulating in advance every cent he was to get and writing it all down in the contract, most likely Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus would have remained a struggling, discouraged preacher in the backwoods of Morrow county, Ohio. ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... inhabitants, and the frontier had retired to a comfortable distance from the sea-board. The Indian had already grown legendary to town dwellers, and Freneau fetches his Indian Student not from the outskirts of the settlement but from the remote backwoods of ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... my eagerness to learn from books, that I had given no thought to people. Madison, my first town, showed me that my clothes were homemade and tacky. Other girls wore store shoes and what seemed to me beautifully made dresses. I was a backwoods gawk. I hated myself ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... was a rough place. No mining hamlet in the placer gulches of California, nor any backwoods village I ever saw, approached it in picturesque, devil-may-care abandon. It was a lawless draggle of wooden huts and houses, built in crooked lines, wrangling around the boggy shore of the island for a mile or so in the general form of the letter S, without the slightest subordination to the ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... its vividness of enterprise, devotion, and infamy. It has been, in periods of peace, a dull, dolorous town, of mammoth hotels, paltry dwellings, empty lots, prodigiously wide avenues, a fossil population, and a series of gigantic public buildings, which seemed dropped by accident into a fifth-rate backwoods settlement. During the sessions Washington was overrun with "Smartness": Smart pages, smart messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politicians, smart women, smart scoundrels! Greatness became commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Willard's Bar, with ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... looked at his neighbour doubtfully. This Captain Fort, who was a friend of Leila's, and who had twice been to see them, puzzled him. He had a frank face, a frank voice, but queer opinions, or so it seemed to, Pierson—little bits of Moslemism, little bits of the backwoods, and the veldt; queer unexpected cynicisms, all sorts of side views on England had lodged in him, and he did not hide them. They came from him like bullets, in that frank voice, and drilled little holes in the listener. Those critical sayings flew so much more poignantly from one who had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... once since in the backwoods of America. His fate seemed still to follow him, and his good temper appeared immortal—his situation was more peculiar than pleasant. He was seated on a log, three hundred miles from any civilised habitation, smiling blandly at a broken axe (his only one), the half of which was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... an advantage if the Reform of the House of Lords could also have been disposed of in the present Parliament, but it is not one of the questions upon which the welfare of the country will immediately depend. Everyone admits the need for reform; the abolition of the "backwoods-man" must come; but it is the men of most experience in public affairs who regularly attend sittings of the House of Lords, and they contribute even now a valuable element in promoting useful legislation as well as in revising and amending ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... tea-planter has to do after getting possession of his lease is to clear the land and get ready for planting. The outlay for this is considerable, and not much unlike clearing up a farm in New England, or in the backwoods of Canada. Then the young plants are set out; after this has been done, the ground must be kept clear of weeds, just as in raising corn or potatoes. It must be frequently stirred, so that the plant can get as much nourishment ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... hadn't any hair, I hadn't any teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of a village—hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village —I—why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who began life as a waiter in a backwoods tavern, tells the story of his life, we all like to gather close about him and listen to his tale. Peter H. Burnett, the first Governor of California, and now the President of the Pacific Bank in San Francisco, has recently related his history, or the "Recollections of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... ethical works of the day, that a sister's influence is illimitable, and she felt besides an added weight of responsibility towards her motherless sister and brothers. "I don't know, papa," she said at last, "unless we all take to the backwoods, live in a wigwam, and feast on the fruits of the chase. Edward chafes a good deal under the restraints of ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... should decide to go direct from here to Pioneer Camp, and should not go up around Silver Lake and thence to Ralph's farm, to call for you, Tom," he added, "I will send Joe to the farm, and he will guide you to camp through the backwoods north of Pioneer Lake. That will be an interesting experience for you, and Joe is good company. Take good care of yourself, my boy, until we all ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... middle of a ten-acre lot. It was approached by a straight walk, paved with a mixture of sand and tar, similar to that which the reader may have seen in the Champs Elysees. I do not know whether my backwoods friend or the Parisian pavior was the first inventor of this composition; but I am satisfied the corn-cracker had not stolen it from the stone-cracker. The walk was lined with fruit-bearing shrubs, and directly in front of the house ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... studied Indian archaeology and folk-lore, as a man he consummated his predilections for Indianology, by loving, winning and marrying the quiet little daughter of the English trader, who himself had married a native woman twenty years ago. The country was all backwoods, and the Post miles and miles from even the semblance of civilization, and the lonely young Englishman's heart had gone out to the girl who, apart from speaking a very few words of English, was utterly ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... until the French gave up this region that they could even venture lawlessly into it, and it was not until it fell from Great Britain to the new power of the United States that the borderers began openly to press into the backwoods, singly as hunters and trappers, in families as neighborhoods as the founders of villages and towns. The pioneers felt that they were going to take their own wherever they found it, from the savages who ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... signs, and announcements like that just mentioned, were of such frequent occurrence that the substance was soon abbreviated to "Piker," and became a by-word. It was often, perhaps always, spoken with a tinge of odium. Possibly this was due to the fact that many of the people referred to were of a "backwoods" class, rather short in culture, and in personal makeup, manner and language, bearing a general ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... can shut my eyes and almost fancy I see your home in the backwoods. There are your two sisters running ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... to invite the population to assemble without delay in front of the block-house. With backwoods-like celerity the summons was obeyed; men, women, and children hurried towards the central point, wondering, yet more than half suspecting, what was the major's object in calling ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... business trip. One of the big houses wants to get some papers and testimony and that sort of thing out of a man who is living in a backwoods village there for his health—and his liberty. None of their own men can afford time to go. And I got the chance, a very good one ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth in a "backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had "the appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout believers, we ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... old backwoods aunt had admired and exclaimed over the butterfly so unexpectedly developed from the brown tailor-made chrysalis, Barbara determined to take a walk. She knew that over through that cool, fascinating forest, ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... son of Jake Benton, the backwoods holiness preacher of the Ozarks. At the age of twenty-one he had become the husband of Eva Gray, who was two years younger than he. This union had been a blessed happy one. If all of Chicago's homes were like that of Harry Benton, it might well be nicknamed the Paradise of America. Thrice ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... more sense than to spend your time fooling with a sort of cave-man from the backwoods, I can't conceive," she scolded. "You must have known how it ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... a tall, robust Yankee, hern in the backwoods of Maine, sallow, and with a long face;—the other was a short little Cockney, who had first clapped his ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... time for about a month when I was 21. It happened because I had nothing to do while visiting my mother before returning to University except help with housework and prepare meals. The food available in the backwoods of central B.C. didn't appeal to me because it was mostly canned vegetables, canned milk, canned moose meat and bear meat stews with lots of gravy and greasy potatoes. I decided to pass on it altogether. I remember rather enjoying that time as a fine rest and I left feeling very good ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... is, a tall, handsome youth, with his right arm thrown across the horse's neck, and his left hand grasping his compass-staff. He is clad in a buck-skin hunting-shirt, with leggings and moccasins of the same material, the simple garb of a backwoods man, and one that well becomes him now, as in perfect keeping with the wildness of the surrounding scenery; while in his broad leathern belt are stuck the long hunting-knife and Indian tomahawk. In stature he is much above most youths ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer |
