"Backbone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know nothing? Or was it that fatal combination of Spain and Africa, when the Vandals ensconced themselves in both provinces by 428 and the Vandal fleet (with Majorca and the islands for its bases) cut off Rome from her corn supplies and broke the backbone of ancient civilization, which was the Mediterranean sea? Not once alone in the history of Europe has the triumph of a hostile rule in Africa and Spain spelt disaster to ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... the latter be. Thus to the student of heredity nothing could well seem more improbable, at any rate amongst the higher animals, than that characters so profound as those of sex should be determined by nurture. He simply cannot but believe that the sex of the individual is as inborn as his backbone, and as incapable of being created by varying conditions of nurture. The causation of sex is therefore really a problem in heredity; and we may most confidently assert, in the first place, that the sex of every human being is already determined at the moment of conception when, indeed, the new ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... She is New England to the backbone, and one who is New England to the backbone is insufferable. She is stiff and set in her ways. She would go to the stake for a fad, or send her nearest ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I am not; but I am a Confederate to the backbone. It was my intention to set up a navy on my own hook. The Pedee was the first vessel, and I intended that the Vixen should be the second, and ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... true. He remembered that the repairs, which were the backbone of Paasch's trade, began to come in slowly on Monday. Paasch always began the week by making a pair of boots for the window, which he sold at half price when the leather had perished. In his eagerness for work, he had forgotten that Paasch's business was so small. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... men got to be the first to show that the fighting backbone of the country is where it belongs. If us fellows with education don't set the example, what can we expect from the other fellows? Don't ask me to be a quitter, mother. I couldn't! I wouldn't! My country ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... were the prize portions. Another immense area—the present British protectorate of Bechuanaland—was immediately south and touched the Cape Colony and the Transvaal. Portuguese East Africa lay to the east but the backbone of Africa south of the Congo line lay ready to be plucked by ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... told us that which made us weep. He told us, there were many strange men a little way from us, whose faces were white, and who wore no skins, whose cabins were white as the snow upon the Backbone of the Great Spirit[A], flat at the top, and moving with the wind like the reeds on the bank of a river; that they did not talk like the Walkullas, but spoke a strange tongue, the like of which he had never heard before. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... to tell me how much I resembled him, being, so they said, a Montressor to the backbone; and this I took to mean commendation, for the Montressors were a well-descended and well-thought-of family, and the women were noted for their beauty. This I could well believe, since of all my aunts there was not one but was counted a pretty woman. Therefore ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The backbone of the point ran back into the jungle and we found it a hot and hard climb through the tangled vines and thick shrubbery. After we had reached the other side we crawled out on the beach and made a careful reconnaissance to ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... miles in an air line westward, across a practically trackless region, would be required to measure the distance to the nearest Mormon settlements on the Sevier, while eastward it was more than twice as far to the few pioneers who had crossed the Backbone of the Continent. The Uinta Indian Agency was the nearest establishment to Green River. It was forty miles west of the mouth of the Uinta. In southern Utah the newly formed Mormon settlement of Kanab offered ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... backbone; our spinal column has given way, by reason of our fore-fathers' energy," ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... packed. It is true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found in the better class of salon. To be absolutely accurate, there was hardly any conversation. The youths of Melbourne were sturdy and honest. They were the backbone of England. England, in her hour of need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that, unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... they are wonderful. Why, man alive, you have put backbone even into me—I who have been a jelly-fish all my life—and last night, when I heard you explain to that young fellow that he must not let his wife be his conscience, I got a sudden glimpse of things. You've been my conscience all my life, but, thank God, you've led me out into a clear ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... order to save his own. Don't forget that, my dear." Carefully he dissected a sand-dab and removed the backbone. "I'd give a ripe peach to learn the identity of the scheming buttinsky who bought old Cardigan's Valley of the Giants," he said presently. "I'll be hanged if that doesn't complicate ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... British officers, Major Money, and Lieuts. Gibson and Cape, were killed. Sumter lost few men, but he was himself wounded. The ball passed through the shoulder and carried away a small portion of the backbone. He was placed in a raw bullock's hide, fastened between two horses, and thus carried with a guard of five men to ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... shillings per diem paid for my food and tobacco. I hoarded every penny like a miser. I longed to prospect, to explore; but before attempting this it was necessary to have a few pounds in hand. On Sundays it was my habit to walk to the top of the "Divide," the backbone of the mountain range. On one side of it lay Pilgrim's Rest, on the other "Mac Mac," another mining camp so called on account of most of the diggers there in the first instance having been Scotsmen. From this lofty coign I could ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... with about a dozen others," he answered, "form the backbone of a political party. As time goes on we shall in all probability be drawn closer and closer together. It seems to me best that our alliance should be as real ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a jerk. "Hi, you, what do you take me for, an ice-box?" And he commenced to squirm as the cold snow ran down his backbone. Then he made a dive for Pepper and chased The Imp around the dormitory. Over two of the beds they flew, and then brought up in ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... which are stuck his hatchet, his kiley or boomerang, and a short heavy stick to throw at the smaller animals. His hatchet is so ingeniously placed that the head of it rests exactly on the centre of his back, whilst its thin short handle descends along the backbone. In his hand he carries his throwing-stick and several spears, headed in two or three different manners so that they are equally adapted to war or the chase. A warm kangaroo skin cloak completes his equipment in the southern ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... thundered the captain, his face white with rage. "Find him, and, by the trident of Neptune, I swear I'll see his backbone!" ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... past one, a ball fired from the mizzen-top of the Redoubtable struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell on his face. "They have done for me at last, Hardy," he said; "my backbone is shot through." He was carried below, laid on a pallet in the midshipmen's berth, and insisted that the surgeon should leave him—"for you can do nothing for me." He was in great pain, and expressed much ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... in a book is often obscurity; and an author whose meaning is got at only by severe mental exertion, and a straining of the mind's eye, is generally weak in the backbone of him. Occasionally it is the dullness of the reader, but oftener the obtuseness of ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... higher up on the Fraser and in Cariboo, after the colony of British Columbia had taken its place on the political map, that Governor Douglas was put to the task of building a great road. Henceforth, for a few years at least, the miners would be the backbone, if not the whole body, of the new colony. How could the administration be carried on if the government had no road into the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... tendon. Down it came, still hugging Steinar. I smote again with all my strength, and cut into its spine above the tail, paralysing it. It was a great blow, as it need to be to cleave the thick hair and hide, and my sword broke in the backbone, so that, like Ragnar, now I was weaponless. The forepart of the bear rolled about in the snow, although ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... "To the backbone—to the shedding of my blood. Stand by me now in my distress: and while I have either soul or body, I will ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... alive, sir, it was only in regard of her crassin' in an' whippin' the word out o' my mouth, that I wanted to take a rise out of her. Oh, bedad, sir, no; the crathur's thruth to the backbone, an' ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... the debacle. And then, unless every scrap of grit and backbone has been Prussianized out of the Teuton, the revulsion of feeling will sweep the oppressors out of existence; and Germany, released from the strangle-hold, may rise once more to take the place among the civilized nations of the world which, by her foul doings of the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... notice for twenty-four hours. He grinned to himself, and began to look around and get acquainted with the new order of beings and things. He was very awkward and very self-possessed. In addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious ownership of eleven millions, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... replied Mr. Grimm promptly. "I am certain, however, that the backbone of the alliance was broken—its only excuse for existence destroyed—when they permitted me to learn of the wireless percussion cap which would have placed the navies of the world at their mercy. Believe me, gentlemen, if they had kept their secret it would have given them dominion of the ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... stuff that's in us, and in twenty-five or thirty more of our kind. The stuff, the backbone, the heart that's in you, Bohannan! That's in me! In ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... thirst for good Jamaica rum! I've seen his eyes glitter an' his tongue lick his lips at the sight of a bottle; an' I've heared un groan, an' seed his face screw up, when he pinched the pennies in his pocket an' turned away from the temptation t' spend. It hurt un t' the backbone t' pull a cork; he squirmed when his dram got past his Adam's apple. An', Lord! how the outport crews would grin t' see un trickle little drops o' liquor into his belly—t' watch un shift in his chair at the Anchor an' Chain, an' t' hear un grunt an' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... history of that remarkable day became unconnected, hazy, and confusing. I became to some extent mechanical in my thoughts and actions. I rowed and rested, and rowed again; I ate and sang, and even laughed. My comrade did the same, like a true Briton, for he was game to the backbone. But the one great, grand, never-changing ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... lending itself to rapid reproduction, they were of no practical value. In other ways, the continental races, when discovered, were sadly behind the times. In business, they ignored the use of "corners," that backbone of American trade, and their ideas of advertising were but little in advance of those ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... to say, 'one of 'em has got to git an' I'd rather 'twould be the other!' 'Twa'nt that way with the palaverin' yaller-headed piece that yo' pa married arterwards. She'd a sharp enough tongue, but a tongue don't do you much good with a man unless he knows you've got the backbone behind to drive it. It ain't the tongue, but the backbone that counts in marriage. At first he was mighty soft, but befo' two weeks was up he'd begun to beat her, an' I ain't got a particle of respect for a woman that's once ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... continent, for example, we learn through the researches of a multitude of workers that in the early day it was a mere archipelago. Its chief island—the backbone of the future continent—was a great V-shaped area surrounding what is now Hudson Bay, an area built tip, perhaps, through denudation of a yet more ancient polar continent, whose existence is only conjectured. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... look like one, Sir Francis," Geoffrey said as he shook his old commander's hand, "but I am English to the backbone still. But my story is too long to tell now. You will be doubtless too busy tonight to spare time to listen to it, but I pray you to breakfast with me in the morning, when I will briefly relate to you the outline of my adventures. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... Irishman, briefly and feelingly. Then he glanced at his companion out of the tail of his eye. "I s'pose it's your education, boy. That's what's wrong with you. Your head's running wheels. You come into cattle too late. You've got city doings down your backbone, and I guess you need weeding bad. Say, you're a ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... through holy water to my doctor's degree. And yet no sooner had I taken the dip than a great horror came over me. Many a time I got up at night and looked in the glass, and cursed myself for my want of backbone! Alas! my curses were more potent than those of the Rabbis against Spinoza, and this disease was sent me to destroy such backbone as I had. No wonder the doctors do not understand it. I learnt in the Ghetto that if I didn't twine the holy phylacteries round ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was a university athlete; he was no sooner down than up. So, when the bull came down from his rearing, and turned to massacre his assailant, he was behind him, and seizing his tail, twisted it, and delivered a thundering blow on his backbone, and followed it up by a shower of them on his ribs. "Run to the gate, Zoe!" he roared. Whack! whack! whack!—"Run to the gate, I ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... New Ontario, and also the upper part of the province of Quebec. Outside of this territory there was at the dawn of time no other 'land' where North America now is, except a long island of rock that marks the backbone of what are now the Selkirk Mountains and a long ridge that is now the mountain chain of the Alleghanies beside ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... further by thinking himself wise. He preferred somebody else to God. Whom? Himself! Then—birds; then-beasts on all fours with backbone on a line with the earth, nose and mouth close to the ground; then—gray-black, slimy, crawling, creeping things. He traded off the truth of God for a lie; the sweet purity of God for rank impurity. He dethroned God, and took the seat himself. He bartered God for beasts ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... "Backbone of a shark, twelve foot long, as we hooked and drew aboard o' the Princess off Barbadoes, Jennywury sixteen, eighteen ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... were an impressive lot. Their average height was close to six feet, their distant feline ancestry apparent only in small vestiges. A Salarik's nails on both hands and feet were retractile, his skin was gray, his thick hair, close to the texture of plushy fur, extended down his backbone and along the outside of his well muscled arms and legs, and was tawny-yellow, blue-gray or white. To Terran eyes the broad faces, now all turned in their direction, lacked readable expression. The eyes were large and ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... undefiled? Yes, I know there were honorable men in politics, but they were lonely, and they hated with an unspeakable hatred all the means that were used to keep them there. And there were any number of men who had been honorable once. When a man becomes possessed by the desire of place, his backbone becomes elastic, and he stoops to things of which he had believed himself incapable. I don't know what it is, but it weakens a man's moral fibre, and breaks down the tissues of his will, and gives him mental ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... crossed, but moved with such extraordinary speed that within four days after its declaration of war its standing army was crossing the channel, and within a fortnight it had landed upon French soil the two army corps which constituted the backbone of her ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... man has a secret intelligence somewhere; and if they could discover it they would imitate him. Don't you permit yourself to feel that any mental force is too high for business. The statesman is but a business man. Behind the great general is the nation's backbone, and that backbone is a financier. Let me see, what time is it?" He looked at his watch. "Come, we will ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... d'Orleans in marrying him! M. le Duc d'Orleans often laughed at her pride, called her Madame Lucifer, in speaking to her, and she admitted that the name did not displease her. She always received his advances with coldness, and a sort of superiority of greatness. She was a princess to the backbone, at all hours, and in all places. Yet, at the same time, her timidity was extreme. The King could have made her feel ill with a single severe look; and Madame de Maintenon could have done likewise, perhaps. At all events, Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans trembled before her; and upon the most commonplace ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... come forward without a moment's warning, and pretended that he would do the thing out of hand! Men knew that it had to be done. The country had begun to perceive that the old Establishment must fall; and, knowing this, would not the Liberal backbone of Great Britain perceive the enormity of this Cagliostro's wickedness,—and rise against him and bury him beneath its scorn as it ought to do? This was the feeling that made a real Christmas impossible to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... prettiest shape you ever saw. We got to talkin' and she told me about herself. It was like a story. She had a cruel stepmother who didn't want her around, so kept her away at school, and a handsome, extravagant father without enough backbone to stand up for her; and on top of everything he died suddenly. Her stepmother had money and she put this poor child in a cheap lodgin'-house tellin' her to find a job, and she herself went calmly off travelin'. This poor lamb tried one place after another, but her beauty always stood in her way. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... green eyes at its old friend. It seemed to meditate a leap on to the old man's lap over the bent back of the ordinary seaman who sat at Singleton's feet. Young Charley was lean and long-necked. The ridge of his backbone made a chain of small hills under the old shirt. His face of a street-boy—a face precocious, sagacious, and ironic, with deep downward folds on each side of the thin, wide mouth—hung low over his bony ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... along the narrow backbone until he reached the crossing-point of the runner; there he grasped a hand-rope, and made his way, step by step, along the jouncing plank to the end, where he wrapped his legs around the wire stay, and held ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the novel an air of documentary realism. What's more, Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and without them the national industries would be non-existent. They are a picturesque, poor and generally ignorant class, although possessed of excellent natural elements and traits which must develop as time goes on. They form a strong, virile backbone to the country, but the conditions of their life are at present but little removed from serfdom, due to their general poverty as a class and to the monopolisation of the ownership of land by the upper classes. In this connection it is to be recollected that the natives ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... am afraid. I like shooting and hunting; but these Frenchmen have no backbone for sport. Will you believe it, one has the greatest difficulty in getting a good knock at polo unless there is a crowd of ladies on ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by a ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... like horror stories, crazy stories and stories written far into the future, as "Brigands of the Moon." These stories make light of the vast distances of space and are too weird, droll and fail to give a single shiver down my old backbone. They are strange and inhabited by strange people. No story can give the faintest idea of the space between those mighty suns of the universe. Most of them have more imagination than scientific knowledge. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Kitty are going to a dance at Buckton's country house to-night. You may call that right and proper, sir, but I don't. The way married couples live to-day is an outrage on common decency. If you had any backbone you'd make your wife behave herself. She is more of a belle, sir, right now than before you married her. She is crazy for excitement, and the whole poker-playing, wine-drinking set she goes with is on the ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the various straps should have been strong they looked weak, and scarce a buckle could boast an innocence of knotted string. The saddles were of wood, and calculated to inflict serious internal injuries to the rider in case of a fall. They stood at least a foot above the horse's backbone, raised on a thick cushion upon the ribs of the animal, and leaving a space in the middle for the secretion of ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... range of mountains which runs like a backbone all through Korea from north to south, and late in the evening we come to the capital, Seoul, which has 280,000 inhabitants, a fifth of whom are Japanese. The town is confined in a valley between bare cliffs, and from the heights all that can be seen ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... in his bedroom, a waif of melancholy. He drew a chair up, lighted a cigar, eyed the young man from head to foot, and then said: "Pride, have you got any backbone? If you have, brace up. You are ruined. That's about as mild ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... always pulled through before, Saadat. When I've been most frightened I've perked up and stiffened my backbone, remembering your luck. I've seen a blue funk evaporate by thinking of how things always come your way just when the worst seems ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at Laramie, and immediately afterward I was on board the blind baggage of an overland that was climbing to the pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One does not ride blind baggages in the daytime; but in this blizzard at the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted if the shacks would have the heart to put me off. And they didn't. They made a practice of coming forward at every stop to ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of a colour and length of flowering season to be used in jungle-like masses for summer colour? Second—has it fragrance or decorative quality for house decoration? Thirdly, has it the backbone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten shapelessly at the first hard shower and so render an array of conspicuous stakes necessary? Stakes, next to unsightly insecticides and malodorous fertilizers, are the bane of gardening, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... says that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers (not to mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words." ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... tastes good!" murmured Tom Reade, as he picked a piece of fried perch free of the backbone and ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... friendship is at an end, or only continues to exist on paper. Doctor Howe was as warm-hearted as he was firm-hearted, but he never gave his full confidence to any one until he had read him through to the backbone. His friends were so fond of him that they would go any distance to see him. His idea of friendship seemed to be like that of the friends in the sacred band of Thebes, whose motto was either to avenge their comrades on the field of battle or to ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... some distance when we heard the report of a gun, and coming round the point of a rock which lay just before us, we saw a Delaware Indian hunter, who had just discharged his carabine at a huge bear, and broken its backbone; the animal fell, and set up a most plaintive cry; something like that of the panther when ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... believes himself to be not only the backbone of the British Army, its vital centre and support, but also its decorative master-piece. Other officers, of whom the Guardsman is wont to speak with a vague pity as belonging to "some line regiment," are not apt to sympathise with him in this exalted estimate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature with all her sex's ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits and very averse to the idle labor ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... don't keer to neither," Applehead retorted crossly. "Shoo 'em off, Luck, so's we kin eat. My belly's shore a floppin' agin m' backbone, 'n' I'm ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... ears—for the reason given already when I was speaking of the resolution of the spirits and of that spiritual blood whereof the arteries are the sole and proper receptacles, and that likewise he doth maintain a large portion of the parastatic liquor to issue and descend from the brains and backbone. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the very latest of these. Happily my milliner is back from Paris. Ay, and we have fossils in our neighbourhood, though, on my honour, I don't know where—somewhere; the princess can guide him, and you can help at the excavations. I am told he would go through the crust of earth for the backbone ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... earliest times down to the commencement of our era. The evidence upon a particular point may be very full at one period and almost entirely lacking at another. The Code forms the backbone of the skeleton sketch which is here reconstructed. The fragments of it which have been recovered from Assur-bani-pal's library at Nineveh and later Babylonian copies show that it was studied, divided into chapters entitled Ninu ilu [s.]irum from its opening ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... doubt that had begun to work had nearly driven me crazy. I don't mind saying, though, that I wish I had kept on meaning them, that I could do what I said I'd do, for I meant them then—I reckon I did! But I haven't any backbone, my will is a poor miserable weak thing that takes a spurt and then fizzles out. And I'd rather be good than bad. I reckon that has something to do with it. I'd have gone to the bad, I suppose, if you hadn't taken hold of me; I'd have just ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... feelings. Music often produces another peculiar effect. We know that every strong sensation, emotion, or excitement— extreme pain, rage, terror, joy, or the passion of love— all have a special tendency to cause the muscles to tremble; and the thrill or slight shiver which runs down the backbone and limbs of many persons when they are powerfully affected by music, seems to bear the same relation to the above trembling of the body, as a slight suffusion of tears from the power of music does to weeping from ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the houses he thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country. They won't upset us easily. Possession's nine ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "I'd like to see a reporter with backbone enough to go within talking distance of a leper in the pest-house. And I'd like to see the editor who wouldn't send a pest-house letter (granting it'd been smuggled past the guards) out to be burned the very second he became aware of its source. Don't you worry, Doc. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... "We were on the backbone of Trestle Summit, where, either way, the track descends at a sharp grade for over three miles. It was nearly six miles to Woodsville; but I knew while the mail was climbing the up grade we could get well on toward the station. So I said to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... hank'cher inside the portrait of President Linkum, 'cause we thought that was the saftest place, but I knowed the house would be sarched, so I jest hid it in a better place. Since he ain't showed no more backbone than a saucer of blue-mange, I shall have to give it up; but if I had found it, you would never set your two eyes on it, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a period of silence in the Russian-Jewish press. [1] The rank and file of the Russian Jewish intellectuals, who formed the backbone of the reading public of this press, became indifferent to it. Living up conscientiously to the principle of a "fusion of interests," they failed to recognize the special interests of their own people, whose only duty they thought was to be Russified, i.e., obliterated and ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... without blotting it and press hard. It smudges your signature into such a queer shape. Everybody's comes out differently. One looks like a caterpillar, and another like a butterfly, or perhaps a fish's backbone. Ella Johnson's was the exact ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... conspicuous. Their use is, to give firmness and shape to the body. Some of them likewise serve as armour, or defense, to guard important parts; thus the skull is admirably contrived to defend the brain; and the spine or backbone is designed, not only to strengthen the body, but to shield that continuation of the brain, called the spinal marrow, from whence originate great numbers of nerves, which pass through convenient openings of this bone, and are distributed to various ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... business, and watchin' the corners to prevent losses like this that eats up the profit, and not go around with his sleeves rolled up and his jaw slewed, lookin' for a fight. And if he starts one he's got to have the backbone and the gizzard to hold up his end of it, and not let 'em put a thing like this over on him. Why wasn't you in the wagon ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... and the furst we heard was 'For 'tis my delight av a shiny night,' frum a band that thought we was the second four comp'nies av the Lincolnshire. At that we was forced to sind them a yell to say who we was, an' thin up wint 'The wearin' av the Green.' It made me crawl all up my backbone, not havin' taken my brequist. Thin, right smash into our rear, came fwhat was left av the Jock Elliotts - wid four pipers an' not half a kilt among thim, playin' for the dear life, an' swingin' their rumps like buck rabbits, an' a ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... I've been plenty of kinds of fool in my time, I assure you. Money's the backbone of your trouble, no doubt. Nothing worse, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... they don't believe in London professors, and speech-makers, and chaps like that. They know that the North is the backbone and the brain of England, and in the North they want to be spoken to by ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Solomon cried indignantly. "I've grown so thin through not eating that it's a wonder you can't feel my backbone, too." ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... those things, has a grain of truth in it. The legend is, that the monkeys first found out the properties of the leaf, and it is because they live on it that they are so strong. Do you know that a gorilla's arm is not half so thick as yours, and yet he would take you and snap your backbone across his knee; he would bend a gun-barrel as you would bend a cane, merely by the turn of his wrist. That is Simiacine. He can hang on to a tree with one leg and tackle a leopard with his bare hands—that's Simiacine. At home, in England and in ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... looked at one another, and at the mates. They were a jumbled lot, riff-raff of all the seas, Cape Verders, Islanders, a Cockney or two, a Frenchman, two or three Norsemen, and a backbone of New England stock. They looked at one another, and at the mates, with stupid, questioning eyes; and one or two of them nodded in a puzzled way, and the Cape Verders grinned with embarrassment. A New ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... and I had won just $1,900. Some of the boys laughed, but Jesse and Aud looked as sober as Mose Wilson used to look when he was on the police bench saying "Thirty, fifty." The Meader boys were game to the backbone, and although they could not laugh with the other boys when I made my first play in their new house, they did ask me to have some wine, and gave me a very pressing invitation to come and see them again; for well they knew my luck would ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... the sense on't," declared David. "I c'n imagine gettin' on to a hoss's back when 't was either that or walkin', but to do it fer the fun o' the thing 's more 'n I c'n understand. There you be," he continued, "stuck up four five feet up in the air like a clo'espin, havin' your backbone chucked up into your skull, an' takin' the skin off in spots an' places, expectin' ev'ry next minute the critter'll git out f'm under ye—no, sir," he protested, "if it come to be that it was either to ride a hossback ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... correspondents at Austrian headquarters, in summing up the result of the fighting in the Carpathians, say that the Russian loss has been 500,000, and that the backbone of the invading army is broken; Germans prepare to attack ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... young man," declared Killigrew emphatically. "He's the real article. American to the backbone; a millionaire who doesn't splurge. Well," sighing regretfully, "he was born to it, and I had to dig for mine. But I can't get it through my head why he wants to excavate mummies when he could dig up potatoes ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... watch its deportment. Above all things encourage a straight backbone and proud shoulders. Above all things despise a slovenly movement, an ugly bearing and unpleasing manner. And make a mock of petulance ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... the whaler answered. "The Eskimo would have been wiped off the face of the earth but for that one man's work. He started the reindeer idea, he brought in a few himself, he got the Government interested an' now reindeer are the backbone of northern Alaska. Our steam whalers had driven the whales an' the walrus an' the seal so far north that the Eskimo couldn't reach them. They were slowly starvin' to death by hundreds when Uncle Sam stepped in. And your captain commandant, that's Bertholf, who ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... hoist sail, then one comprehends better the importance of the fisher-families whose work is made up of endurance, exposure, nerve and skill; who play touch and go with the sea; and who in the slack seasons have—unlike the ordinary workman—only too much time to think for themselves. They are the backbone of the Navy. ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... It was a gruesome horror, partly eaten by rats, swollen, abnormally heavy, one side flattened from lying so long upon the floor. He could hardly stand; each time he bent over it seemed as though his backbone was disjointing. After cleaning out the debris he began to sweep. The dust was fearful, choking, blinding, so thick that he could hardly see what he was about. By and by he dimly made out Geary's figure ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... rifle or musket-ball from the mizen-top of the "Redoubtable" passed through him, and he fell on his knees on the very spot where his secretary had before him breathed his last. "They have done for me at last," said he to Hardy, who was anxiously bending over him, "my backbone is shot through." He was carried down to the cockpit, which was crowded with the wounded and the dying, and where it was too soon discovered that his wound was mortal, the ball had entered his left shoulder, through the forepart of the epaulette, and had lodged in his spine. In the meantime the battle ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... would nourish him by infusing a celestial elixir through his skin and he reflected that he might as well take a little food[320]. So he took a palmful or two of bean soup. He was worn almost to a shadow, he says. "When I touched my belly, I felt my backbone through it and when I touched my back, I felt my belly—so near had my back and my belly come together through this fasting. And when I rubbed my limbs to refresh them the hair fell off[321]." Then he reflected that he had reached the limit ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... one, "as I'd so many joints in my backbone, and that each one of them could hold so ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... as to model their instincts and modifies the entire race, and to differentiate it from others in morals just as much as the color of the skin differentiates a negro from a white man, are liars to the backbone, so that one can never trust a word that they say. I do not know whether they owe that to their religion, but one must have lived among them in order to know the extent to which lying forms part of their being, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... and the Bengalis are the backbone of Indian mercantile business. Yet in "India," by Sir Thomas Holdich, I read that out of the population of 287,000,000 the Parsis do not number even one-tenth of a million. It seems to me that we have the Parsi woman's type at home in some of our old families, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... man-of-all-work, found a little occupation in attending to the duties of his office, but the unfortunate Governor had nothing whatever to do except await the arrival of Indians, who were not due at that time. The horse was a bad one, without a saddle, and in possession of a pronounced backbone. My "Friday" was not sociable. I had no books, no newspapers, no magazines or literature of any kind, no game to shoot, no boat wherewith to prosecute fishing in the bay, and no prospect of seeing any one to speak to for weeks, if not months, to come. But I had pen and ink, and, ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... walking about his feet, looking into his face and crying piteously. He stooped down and stroked it, shuddering as his hands came in contact with its emaciated body. Its fur was saturated with rain and every joint of its backbone was distinctly perceptible to the touch. As he caressed it, the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... littoral of the main island. Similarly, the provinces now called Ugo and Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan. Within Dewa, Mutsu, and the island of Yezo, the aboriginal Yemishi had been held since Yamato-dake's signal campaign in the second century A.D., and though not so effectually quelled as to preclude all danger of insurrection, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the building. His face might have been described as a little too regular—a little too handsome perhaps for true greatness, but for the look of deep thought in his piercing eyes. And the finely chiseled lines of character, positive, clean-cut, vigorous. He had backbone. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... was a high wind, the Doctor's marrow crawled in his backbone at the sound of groanings and moanings and most dolorous cries for help, coming up out of black Coupee Bay, where they had picked up Tom Hamon's ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... race, moreover, which was moulded in different directions by the nature of the country in which it lived. Palestine was partly mountainous; the great block of limestone known as the mountains of Ephraim formed its backbone, and was that part of it which was first occupied by the invading Israelites. But besides mountains there were fertile plains and valleys, while on the sea-coast there were harbours, ill adapted, it is true, to the requirements of modern ships, but sufficient for the needs of ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... like one of those ideal examples which military instructors take for their models when they wish to simplify a lesson upon terrain. Upon one side ran the long, high, and difficult range which is the backbone of England; upon the other the sea, and the sea and the mountains leant one towards the other, making two sides of a triangle that ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... documents, however well-tested and established, are not the backbone of the Christian religion. It may well be that to minds inured from infancy to the worship of the letter; to believers in "the Bible and the Bible only" as the ground of their religion; Arnold's solvent methods and free handling of the sacred ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... manhood and brings into subordination evil thoughts, evil passions, and evil practices. Men who have no self-control will find life a failure, both in a social and in a business sense. The world despises an insignificant person who lacks backbone and character. Stand upon your manhood and womanhood; honor your convictions, and dare ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... recognised neither political nor religious differences—that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister—gravely informed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale. "Rathkeale," said he, pompously, "is a Nationalist town—Nationalist to the backbone—and every pound of butter made in this Creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all." This sentiment was applauded loudly, and ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... hind hooks on thet air dog he 'd rake his ribs right off," said D'ri, as he lifted his hat to scratch his head. "Would n't 'a' left nothin' but the backbone,—nut a thing,—an' thet would n't 'a' been a real ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... Mersey takes its sources—for it is formed by the union of several smaller streams—in the ranges of high limestone hills east of Liverpool, in North Derbyshire. These hills are an extension of the Pennine range that makes the backbone of England, and in Derbyshire they rise to a height of nearly two thousand feet, giving most picturesque scenery. The broad top of the range at its highest part is called the Kinderscout, or, more familiarly, "The Peak." ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... life as he is universally felt to be in public. He had the soundest head I ever knew since Cornewall Lewis left us, curiously original, yet without the faintest taint of crotchetiness, or prejudice, or passion, which so generally mars originality. Then he was high-minded, and a gentleman to the backbone; the man of all I knew, both mentally and morally, best worth talking things over with; and I was besides deeply attached to him personally. We had been intimates and collaborateurs in many lines for twenty-five years; so that altogether there is a great piece gone out of my daily ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... a-makin' a false play, but—durn the critter anyway, Shane! He ain't got no more backbone than a wet string! He's been in a hell of a stew ever since we got here about this storm a-brewing and it's beginnin' to roil me just havin' him pesticate around. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... asleep in a nook behind the metal refuse-can, when the strange cat ventured to ascend the steps of the porch, his appearance was so unwarlike that the cat felt encouraged to extend its field of reconnaissance for the cook had been careless, and the backbone of a three-pound whitefish lay at ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... order. It was wonderful how much backbone and dignity and self-respect the justice's very flattering remarks had injected into the nine trustees—no, eight, for the Scotchman fully understood and ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong, and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... as Mrs. Poor's. It was easy to see that the pluck of the little woman extorted a certain admiration from the very men who had fathers, sons and brothers in the cells beyond. She was not a bit more than half as big as her antagonist, but she looked game to the backbone, and the forthcoming result was not altogether to be predicted. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, as the men leaned over the counter with faces expressive of intensest excitement, while those behind stood on tiptoe to see. For the moment everything else was forgotten in the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... and greens which control the colour scheme. The kneeling Venus alongside is unusually alluring in its blue and gold tones, and is one of the really fine pictures in the exhibition. While the Venus and the Centaurs are the backbone of the Italian section, Tito's "Blue Lady" is very chic and, as a colour arrangement of blue-blacks and flesh colour, most decorative. The canvas in the center, evidently belonging to an older period ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... arisen to give them a chance to show their grit and backbone. Maurice was of the opinion that they had come out of these conflicts with flying colors, and each victory seemed to renew their self confidence, as though that were the true reason for ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... he to the backbone; and clear grit through and through; Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn't do; The boy was dying sir, dying, as plain as plain could be, Worn out by his ride with ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... Nelson's special gifts as a rector were developed and brought into full flower in Christ Church because of the many remarkable people who formed the backbone of his parish. In point of numbers and in ability, they were an unusual group, a group characterized by breadth of vision, and by a faith sufficient for them to carry through the bold projects outlined ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... off to her little play box, and returned with the knife. It was almost as large as the Chintz Imp, but he possessed so much wiry strength in his thin arms and backbone that he was able to clamber ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... Frith, R.A., sought to persuade the overworked Leech to take a holiday, he added, just to drive the matter home: "If anything happened to you, who are the 'backbone of Punch,' what would become of the paper?" At which Leech smiled, says his biographer, and retorted, "Don't talk such rubbish! Backbone of Punch, indeed! Why, bless your heart, there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Keep up your pluck, Billy. Something can be done about it, I know. You can furnish the brains and I the backbone. Good-night, old boy." ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... moment Uncle Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he seemed to stiffen his backbone. His face was bleak, but he pulled ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... shown on the screen, a murmur goes round the hall; it is the people reading the writing out loud to assure themselves of its meaning. So the talking Sicilian is telling everything twice, once with his voice and once with his gestures and there is so much oil in his backbone that there is nothing creaky, awkward or grudging in his movements; the gestures are made with an exuberance, an intensity and a natural unconscious beauty which seem to lift the matter above the plane of ordinary ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Hampton Bank. It required some courage for a youth of his disposition to make up his mind to beard the lion in his den—or, in other words, to approach Mr. Blake in his office. For Sam, while bold enough when his two hulking cronies were about, had no real backbone ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... at least it looked like tobacco, in a little wooden bowl that he also produced from his basket. Next he said something to his companion, Marut, who drew a flute from his robe made out of a thick reed, and began to play on it a wild and melancholy music, the sound of which seemed to affect my backbone as standing on a great height often does. Presently too Harut broke into a low song whereof I could not understand a word, that rose and fell with the music of the flute. Now he struck a match, which seemed incongruous in the midst of this semi-magical ceremony, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... much the ex-detective would urge in his favour. To his neighbours he was an awe-inspiring but kind and sympathetic man. "If you want my true opinion of him," says Detective Parrock, "he was a burglar to the backbone but not a murderer at heart. He deserved the fate that came to him as little as any who in modern times have met with a like one." Those who are in the fighting line are always the most generous about their adversaries. Parrock as a potential target for ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... reach the backbone of Peru we are not only above the clouds as in Bolivia, but we are surrounded by mystery. Here can be seen today the ruins of temples that were richer perhaps than any of those of the countries with which we are all so familiar. This article, however, will ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... he went on. "A feller that gives out when the road's hard, who hasn't enough backbone to stand a few days' heat and thirst. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... is the only sure guarantee in these matters. Women, believe me, never have any principle. Principle is a backbone, and no woman—except bodily—ever possesses any backbone. Their priests and their teachers and their mothers fill them with doctrines and conventionalities—all things of mere word and wind. No woman has any settled principles; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found it that trip. I lifted a box one end an inch ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... specialized head, and therefore no skull, brain, or jaws: it is destitute alike of limbs, of a centralized heart, of developed liver, kidneys, and, in short, of most of the organs which belong to the other Vertebrata. It presents, however, a rudimentary backbone, in the form of what is called a notochord. Now a primitive dorsal axis of this kind occurs at a very early period of embryonic life in all vertebrated animals; but, with the exception of Amphioxus, in all other existing Vertebrata ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... "He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent, "and they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir, as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Englishman. "The machinery of this thing moves as noiselessly as the backbone of an eel. I wish I ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... sovereignty, as Portugal to them was typified by the Paulistas, their most inveterate enemies. The Marquis de Valdelirios in his curious despatches touches much upon this war, but perhaps the best account is to be found in the curious memoir of the Irish Jesuit Father, Tadeo Hennis,** who was the backbone of the resisting Guaranis. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... explaining why he could not immediately go to Ballyards. Eleanor could not reply to his letter, but Mrs. MacDermott wrote that she was recovering rapidly from her illness and that the baby was a fine, healthy child. "A MacDermott to the backbone," she wrote. "It's queer work that keeps a man out of his bed half the night and won't let him go to his wife when she's having a child! Your Uncle William isn't looking well ... he feels the weight of his years and the work on him ... ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... quality, imagined no doubt certain women onlookers, certain humiliated and astonished friends, and thought of the clothes he would wear and the gestures he would make. The nickname his English cousins had given this heir to all the glories was the "White Rabbit." He was the backbone of the war party at court. And presently he stole bric-a-brac. That will help posterity to the proper values of things in 1914. And the Teutonic generals and admirals and strategists with their patient and perfect plans, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Terrible Turner who had been willing enough for combat earlier in the morning—confessed with a grin that he was pretty glad Teeny-bits hadn't wrestled with him! "If I'd hit the floor as hard as Bassett did, I'd bet my backbone would have been broken into forty pieces," he said. "Oh, what a pippin ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... Varley which well-nigh caused him to give way to despair. For some time past he had been approaching the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains—those ragged, jagged, mighty hills which run through the whole continent from north to south in a continuous chain, and form, as it were, the backbone of America. One morning, as he threw the buffalo robe off his shoulders and sat up, he was horrified to find the whole earth covered with a mantle of snow. We say he was horrified, for this rendered it absolutely ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... smooth groinery of the Pennsylvania Station train shed: is it not the arching fronds of iron palm trees? Oh, to be a botanist of this vivid jungle, spread all about one, anatomist of the ribs and veins that run from the great backbone of Broadway! ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... find common principles of causation, therefore, constitutes the verification of every Natural Classification. The ultimate explanation of nature is always causation; the Law of Causation is the backbone of the system ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Adriatic to the North Sea and the Baltic. Their close union is due also to historical national and political conditions. Austrians have fought shoulder to shoulder with Prussians and Germans of the Empire on a hundred battlefields; Germans are the backbone of the Austrian dominions, the bond of union that holds together the different nationalities of the Empire. Austria, more than Germany, must guard against the inroads of Slavism, since numerous Slavonic races are comprised in her territories. There has ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a "mush of concession" through the process of dropping useless resistance, for the strength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of pitting one's own will against that of another is much greater than the strength we use when we indulge the habit. ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... with one of his winning smiles, that drew Owen to him so wonderfully, "let's exchange confidences a bit, just as far as you care to go and no further. First of all my name is Cuthbert Reynolds, and I'm from across the border, a Yankee to the backbone; and this is Eli Perkins, also an American boy, a native of the lumber regions of Michigan, and with his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... prey, that it was still haunting the mind of the airman and somehow the conditions just then confronting himself and Perk seemed to be very similar. He only hoped they would prove to be just as successful in their mission as Funston was when he carried Aguinaldo back to Manila, and thus broke the backbone of the native uprising against ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o' hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly, if not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by rampaging ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... sold or parted with in any way by the Chinese; they were "leased in perpetuity" so long as the ground-rent is paid, and remain for all municipal and such purposes under the uncontrolled administration of the nation which leased them. The land-tax may be regarded as the backbone of Chinese finance; but although nominally collected at a fixed rate, it is subject to fluctuations due to bad harvests and like visitations, in which cases the tax is accepted at a lower rate, in fact at any rate the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the other hand, is ecclesiastical to the backbone. Miss Deedy ruins her already feeble health with early mattins (she insists on the double t) and frequent fasts. Beyond an innocuous flirtation with the curate at decorations, or a choral meeting, Miss Deedy has as few sins as most of us to answer for; but, from her ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... figures before cigar-shops, and from this hung down a long piece of scarlet cloth, about a quarter of a yard wide, and long enough to trail on the ground a yard or two behind. This was ornamented with a fringe of eagles' feathers on each edge, like the backbone of a fish, and as it waved about nothing could be more superb. The savage dandies were evidently proud of their appearance, and to say that they were "got up regardless of expense" was simply a fact, for their wardrobes must have cost considerable sums—half a dozen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... movement toward free trade began in England, it was largely a movement of the middle classes and of the industrial interests of Great Britain. The great middle class of England, which furnishes the backbone and sinew of the nation, is essentially a moral class, and in appealing to it the political leader is always tempted to put forward the moral aspect of his theme, even if he has to twist his argument and his facts to find one. The manufacturers ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... they heave in the marchant service?" he roared. "Spring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't ye spring, I say, all of ye—spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!" And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... "when he started to git sleepy, he didn't gap ez wide ez he gen'ly does—an' I'm 'feered he's a-gittin' it now." An', sir, with that, she thess gathered up her apron an' mopped her face in it an' give way. An' ez for me, I didn't seem to have no mo' backbone down my spinal colume 'n a feather bolster has, I ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... what is doled out to me. But the old man, who had got the tip on my drinking, left me the three spikes and the data thereunto pertaining. Did it through his lawyers, unknown to my mother; said it beat life insurance, and that if I had the backbone to go and get it I could drink my back teeth awash until I died. Millions in the hands of my guardians, slathers of shekels of my mother's that'll be mine if she beats me to the crematory, another million waiting to be ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seem lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her traveling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... up and halted at the pit edge. My outfit were whites—Russians, French, Germans. But the others were black, brown, yellow—all the motley aggregation of races that formed the Red cohorts, the backbone of the Great Uprising. As the "At ease" order snapped out a babel of tongues rose on the air. Every language of Earth was there save English. The Anglo-Saxons had chosen tortured death rather than submission to the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... while I was thus trying to jerk my sleepy nerves on to action that I came upon a zigzagged trench. It was fully six feet deep and about a yard wide. It was of course an old Turkish defence running crosswise along the great backbone of the Sirt. I knew now that I was nearing the bay, for most of these trenches overlooked ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... was admirably disciplined and devoted to its commander. Four English, three Scottish and four French regiments, all choice troops, raised by permission of their sovereigns for the service of the States, formed the backbone of the force. On April 30 the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... difficulties, has had to give up his sport in disgust. This is the one serious defect of kites with tails, that they cannot adapt themselves to wind currents of varying intensities; whereas the tailless kites do so without difficulty. And in tandem flying, which is the backbone of the modern system, the weight of a half dozen or more heavy tails would be a serious impediment, to say nothing of the perpetual danger of the different tails ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... families for me, I don't approve of them," says 'e. 'E was a man of very 'igh principles, an' by politics 'e was a Radical. "No," says 'e, when 'e got talkin', "when a man can 'ave a family risin' into double figures, it shows 'e's got the backbone of a Briton in 'im. That's the stuff as 'as built up England's nime and glory! When one thinks of the mighty British Hempire," says 'e, "on which the sun never sets from mornin' till night, one 'as ter be proud of 'isself, an' one 'as ter do one's duty ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... the place state that all ala stones near where the imu was made in which the puhi was baked do not crack when heated, as they do elsewhere, because of the imu heating of that time. It is so even to this day. The backbone (iwi kuamoo) of this puhi is still lying on the pahoehoe where Aiai killed it with the three ala stones,—the rocky formation, about thirty feet in length, exactly resembling the backbone of an eel. The killing of this puhi by Aiai gave him fame among the people of Hana. Its ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... flashed from his eyes that the clerk shivered all down his backbone. He thought he would take his departure as quickly as might be, and drawing a little nearer, put down a coin upon the table ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall |
