"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down and sideways for some distance along the bluff, and were almost ready to give up, when a branch that Firetop was holding broke and he fell backward down the slope. He rolled over two or three times, and when he stopped rolling and sat up he was looking directly into the mouth of a great dark cave. A lot of stones and dirt came tumbling down with him, and, with that and some noise ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... twenty square miles for fifty hours, trying to find an opening to the south, south-east, or south-west, but all the leads ran north, north-east, or north-west. It was as though the spirits of the Antarctic were pointing us to the backward track—the track we were determined not to follow. Our desire was to make easting as well as southing so as to reach the land, if possible, east of Ross's farthest South and well east of Coats' Land. This was more ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... not confine itself to dealing with contagious disease. Its aid has been invoked to help the child who is backward in his school studies. With the recent extensions in the length of the school term and the increase in the number of years of schooling demanded of the child, has come a great advance in the standards of the work required. When the standards were low, ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... resistance, but when he tried to take her into her room, she bent her body backward, and thus pressed about his wrist. She ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Lucy was dead set on the procession idea. So in the end they done it so, an' Gran'ma Mullins's sobs fairly shook the house as they come through the dinin'-room door. Lucy was first with her father an' they both had their heads turned backward lookin' at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of the middles of things,—without beginning or end; we scientists are plunged suddenly upon a cosmos in the full uproar of eons of precedent, unable to look ahead, while to look backward we must ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... instantaneously seized with spasms in every muscle, nerve and tendon. His head was thrown backward and forward, and from side to side, with inconceivable rapidity. So swift was the motion that the features could no more be discerned than the spokes of a wheel can be seen when revolving with the greatest velocity.... All were impressed ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... the subject of Saint Paul, for whom, for the most part, art has found only the conventional trappings of a Roman soldier (a soldier, as being in charge of those prisoners to Damascus), or a somewhat commonplace old age. Moretto also makes him a nobly accoutred soldier—the rim of the helmet, thrown backward in his fall to the earth, rings the head already with a faint circle of glory—but a soldier still in possession of all those resources of unspoiled youth which he is ready to offer in a [92] moment to the truth that has ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... over. He tried to right himself, but without success. Down he went from an immense height, turning over and over. He lost his senses, and when he recovered them he found himself jammed in a cleft in a hollow tree. To get backward or forward was impossible, and there he remained until his brant life was ended by starvation. Then his jee-bi again left the carcass, and once more he found himself ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... world is set with thorns, O'er which poor pilgrims still must journey on; There are who walk it shod with iron sense, That crushes opposition like a vice, And puts aside the ready points like twigs Pressed backward in the woodlands by a child. There are who seem buoyed upward by some power Above the level of affliction's range, Until their term be run, and then they fall Into the bosom of the angel Death. And there are some whose tender ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... surely"; and that because there were so many weaknesses in me; yes, so many weaknesses in my best duties. For, thought I, how can such an one as I find mercy, whose heart is so ready to evil, and so backward to that which is good, so far as it is natural. Thus musing, being filled with fear to die, these words come in upon my soul, "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... In looking backward through the years of a long and active life I have seen varied relays of humanity, all of them acting their parts and filling their appropriate niches—great and small often standing shoulder to shoulder and engaged in the same strife. Many of them, my friends in childhood as well ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... This backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over Amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... steamer, the Trident, belonging to the General Steam Navigation Company. We found our dear little Victoria so grown and so improved, and speaking so plain, and become so independent; I think really few children are as forward as she is. She is quite a dear little companion. The Baby is sadly backward, but also grown, and very strong. I am so distressed about dearest Louise's still coughing, but she tells me it is decreasing. Only pray let her give way to her grief; much crying, even if it makes her cough for the moment, can do her no real harm, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... Afterwards, in looking backward, that evening seemed to Scott to stand out as a dream, unforeseen, yet not inconsequential. Nothing that had gone before appeared to him to be able to explain it. It just was, a fact without any planning or volition on his part. He had known ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... six-legged creatures about the size of a small lady-bird, covered with hairs, and possessing two strong forceps projecting from their heads. They are so formed that they cannot go forward, but move always backward by a series of jerks. As they live upon ants and are so strangely formed, they have to resort to stratagem in order to entrap their prey, and this they do by means of pits formed in the sand in which they live; into ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... me, but I worked hard all day with the others rowing backward and forward between the shore and the ship. When it became dusk they knocked off work, and the men went off to their huts, for it seemed that each of them had a wife, brown skinned or white. Seeing that nobody paid any attention to me, I went off to the little captain, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... aside as the big plane swung round and went down the field like a running plover. They watched it swing and come back, taking the air easily, thrumming its high, triumphant note. They tilted heads backward and followed it as Johnny circled, getting his altitude. They squinted into the sun to see the plane head straight away toward the Rolling R, its little wheels looking very much like the tucked-up feet of some gigantic bird, until it had dwindled to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... control over the minute details of human intercourse. I am no philosophic adviser to the rich; it is as the champion of the poor man that I detest socialism and all its works, for in the end it only leads backward to slavery. Every vote the workingman gives to a policy of wider state control is another link for the chains that are meant for his ankles, his wrists, and his neck. If the state is to take care of me when I am sick or old or unemployed, it must necessarily deprive me of my liberty when ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men who know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their lives if they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well at the Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato, pardon!) He arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Spanish War appeared, and through all these changes in the last chapter he had studied the book until he knew its contents as well as he knew his "two—times—two." He could recite the book forward or backward, read it upside down—as a book agent has to read a book when it is in a customer's lap—or sideways, and could turn promptly to nearly any word in it without hesitation. The more he studied it the more he loved it and admired it and believed in it. It ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... which an opening is obstructed, a door held fast, etc. A bar may be movable or permanent; a bolt is a movable rod or pin of metal, sliding in a socket and adapted for securing a door or window. A lock is an arrangement by which an enclosed bolt is shot forward or backward by a key, or other device; the bolt is the essential part of the lock. A latch or catch is an accessible fastening designed to be easily movable, and simply to secure against accidental opening of the door, cover, etc. A hasp ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ask, Dorothy?' returned the youth, taking a step nearer, to which she responded by another backward ere she replied. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... you in the fall all right—when you return," commented Rowland easily; but the other made no reply, and without a backward glance started at a rapid jog trot for the tiny settlement on ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... respects, every known branch of knowledge has improved with the lapse of ages; so that the more recent works are necessarily the best for entering upon the study. A historical sequence may be proper to be observed; but that should be backward and not forward. The earlier stages of some subjects are absolutely worthless; as, for example, Physics, Chemistry, and most of Biology, in other subjects, as Politics and Ethics, the tentatives of such men as Plato and Aristotle have an undying ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... the soft complacent chuckle La Mothe so greatly disliked, and putting the empty mug to his nose drew in the perfume of the wine with a deep breath. The lids drooped slowly over his shining eyes, and in the backward groping along the crooked byways which had led from Paris pavements to the mercy of Louis by way of an escaped gallows he forgot both La Mothe and Amboise. The voice of Paris the beloved, Paris the ever mourned for, was in his ears; the jargon of the Rue Maubert, the tinkle ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... dread thy conqueror's hand." [44]His hair all gravel, and all green his clothes, In doleful dumps the downcast Doctor rose, Then slunk unpitied from the hated plain, And inly groaning sought his couch again; Yet, as he went, he backward cast his view, And bade his ancient power a last adieu. So, when some sturdy swain through miry roads A grunting porker to the market goads, With twisted neck, splash'd hide, and progress slow, Oft backward looks the swine, and half disdains ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... have been so successfully taken to put these principles into effect. The progress has been by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical has been done; the action has been both moderate and resolute. Therefore the work will stand. There shall be no backward step. If in the working of the laws it proves desirable that they shall at any point be expanded or amplified, the amendment can be made as its desirability is shown. Meanwhile they are being administered ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... pleasure that he had led in the past. Pythagoras had already forbidden the folly of spoiling the present by remorse; and he, too, did not do this. It would have been repugnant to his genuinely Greek nature. Instead of looking backward with peevish regret, his purpose was to look with blithe confidence toward the future, and to do his best to render it better and more fruitful than the months of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shrilled the last word on the air with terrific emphasis, he threw up his arms like a man suddenly shot, and reeling backward fell heavily on the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and your mother's got hers in ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... structure. But the tail bears FIVE pairs of setae, and the dorsal spine is wanting, whilst, on the contrary, the frontal process and the lateral spines are of extraordinary length, and directed straight forward and backward. ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... puff like one of the machines. He threw out his great chest, pursed up his mouth and emitted his breath in little gusts between his lips, "Very good! Very good, my children!" he said, "Oil and electricity will carry us now, and we go forward, not backward!" ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the truth that in everything there is manifested a measured motion, to and fro; a flow and inflow; a swing backward and forward; a pendulum-like movement; a tide-like ebb and flow; a high-tide and low-tide; between the two poles which exist in accordance with the Principle of Polarity described a moment ago. There is always an action and a reaction; an advance and a retreat; a rising and a ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... to retrace his steps, but the warrior was too quick for him. He had taken his second step only, when his captor grasped the ankle of the foot that was rising from the ground, and drew backward with such force that ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... soil science similar to Ecotopia or Looking Backward. No better introduction exists to understanding farming as a process of management of overall soil mineralization. People who attempt this book should be ready to forgive that Hopkins occasionally expresses opinions on race and other social issues that ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... fell backward down the narrow stairs to the street. There was no cry from him, just the clatter of his shoes upon the stairs and the terrible subdued sound ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... following it. See how you can at some future time make one suggest the next, either by suggestion of sound or sense, or by mental juxtaposition. When you have found this dwell on it attentively for a moment or two. Pass it backward and forward before you, and then go on to the ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... self-contempt had risen to contend with physical trepidation. The song of the water and the rustle of the leaves where the breeze harped among the platinum shafts of the birches were pleading with this child-dreamer, and in his mind a conflict swept backward and forward. Paul did not at once see his brother, and the older boy stood over him in silence, watching the mental fight; watching until he knew that it was lost and that timidity had overpowered shame. His own eyes at first held only ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... middle of February, the General Staff seemed to have formed the opinion that the situation in regard to the Canal no longer gave cause for anxiety. The strength of the forces available for its defence, the backward condition of the enemy preparations, the route of the Senussi's army, and the approach of summer, all pointed to the improbability of active operations for at least some months to come. At this time also Sir Archibald Murray, ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... of Alexander or Napoleon when the bold and prophetic genius of Whitney, dealing with continents and nations as with parishes and neighborhoods, stretches his iron road around half the globe and shows you, moving forward and backward over its rails, the flux and reflux of a world's commerce and intercourse, a sublime tide of benefits and universal relations! What poet, what artist, what philosopher, what statesman, has equalled in grandeur these conceptions of science, or the splendid results which have followed ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... we see Irish John sitting quietly conversing with "Dora," and he must dance a jig! By some chance there may be a girl of his nationality on the place to dance with him; if not, he goes it alone—forward and back, shuffling backward and around; then dancing up as to his partner, and having gone through all the varied motions in grand heel-and-toe style, sits down again or rushes out of the hall door with his giggling laugh, and a loud round ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... of presenting a separate address. When they were forced to waive this claim, they refused to agree to any expression which imported that the Church of England had any fellowship with any other Protestant community. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and forward. Conferences were held at which Burnet on one side and Jane on the other were the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty, a compromise was made; and an address, cold and ungracious compared with that which the Bishops had framed, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... menacing looks, often making slight feints of butting or pushing forward; but they took care not to come into actual contact, knowing well that the slightest force might precipitate one or both from their perilous position. Neither could they attempt to walk backward or turn round on so narrow a spot. Thus they again stood quite still for above an hour, occasionally uttering low sounds, but neither ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the blow, while the dragon retreated backward some hundred paces or more, with the intention of coming back with greater force than before, and completing the victory he had almost won. Happily De Fistycuff divined the monster's purpose, and seeing one of the orange-trees ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... (1777), in D flat, opens with a graceful Allegretto, and closes with a Tempo di Minuetto, which, for the most part, points backward rather than forward. The slow movement, Adagio sostenuto, is, however, of a higher order than either of these. It has Beethovenish breadth and dignity, yet lacks the power of the Bonn master: those magic touches by which the latter makes us feel his genius, and secures gradation ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... this, broke out into bitter wailing, swaying slowly forward and backward, while her husband sat with his head bowed on his knees. Their first thought was of utter bereavement, for to these two lonely ones, and especially to the woman, the grandparent had been not only the sole member of their tribe they had known for years, but she had proved to them a help, at ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... hair. The rest of the men followed, O'Brien kicked and struggled, snarling and snapping at the hands that clutched him from every side. Little Johnny Sheehan broke out into wild screaming, but the men took no notice of him. O'Brien was bent backward to the deck, the tureen cover under his neck. Gorman was shoved forward. Some one had thrust a large ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... girls the man staggered backward and came up with a thump against the wall of the hut. From there he regarded them with eyes that ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... skilful Canadian to secure the prize. The other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had been; but quicker than a flash that creature was under water and well out of harm's way! The shot could have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... eggs, and tumbled backward down the melon-bed with the third egg in his mouth, and scuttled to the verandah as hard as he could put foot to the ground. Teddy and his mother and father were there at early breakfast; but Rikki-tikki saw that they were not eating anything. They sat ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... that barred some lordly scheme of life, but quarrels over political bones from which there is little or nothing wholesome to be picked only disgust. People tell me that the countryside must always be stupid and backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only townspeople had immortal souls, and it was only in the city that the flame of divinity breathed into the first men had any unobscured glow. The countryside ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... most clearly to the advancement of mankind towards that state of earthly perfection and happiness, from which they are yet so far distant, but of which their nature and that of the world they inhabit, are most certainly capable. It is at all times pleasing and instructive to look backward by the light of history, and forward by the light of analogical reasoning, to behold the gradual advancement of man from barbarism to civilization, from civilization toward the higher perfections of his nature; ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... to Clarisse Mergy in the evening. And from that time he went backward and forward between Amiens and Mortepierre, leaving the Growler and the Masher permanently on ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... her drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned, what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan. Poor Garth, anxiously watching her, almost ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... away two points!" he cried, as he knelt to take aim. Every one was well aware of the doctor's power of shooting, and waited the result with bated breath. The savage seemed to bend backward for the cast of the spear. At that moment the crack of the doctor's rifle was heard, and the right arm of the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... he got upon his feet. Then his breath and his strength seemed to come to him in a twinkling. With a backward snap of his arm he flung his second away. Then uttering a hoarse cry, he rushed like a mad bull at the lad ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... unwilling to do the murder, she chid them, and angrily vowed she would wake Alexander, and discover the conspiracy; and so, with a lamp in her hand, she conducted them in, they being both ashamed and afraid, and brought them to the bed; when one of them caught him by the feet, the other pulled him backward by the hair, and the third ran him through. The death was more speedy, perhaps, than was fit; but, in that he was the first tyrant that was killed by the contrivance of his wife, and as his corpse was abused, thrown out, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... pulling him backward and forward in this way amid shouts and curses and laughter, on the sudden they all started off from one another; for each had got nothing but a piece of clothing, a sleeve, cap, or shoe of the monster; he himself was nowhere to be seen. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the editor wrote, quite warmly, "for you to go backward. The demand for the number containing 'His Wife's Deceased Sister' still continues, and we do not intend to let you disappoint that great body of readers who would be so eager to see another number containing one of ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... I hope you won't be backward about saying so —you can always have it. We stint ourselves in some ways, but we have no desire to stint you. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was able to swim to one side of it where the beach shelved. Up that beach Ralph could not climb, however, for he was faint with loss of blood and shock. Indeed, his senses left him while he was in the water, but it chanced that he fell forward and not backward, so that his head rested upon the shelving edge of the pool, all the rest of his body being beneath its surface. Lying thus, had the tide been rising, he would speedily have drowned, but it had turned, and so, the water being warm, he took ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... joined them were from seven to eight feet deep and wide enough to permit the convenient passage of incoming and outgoing troops, and the transport of the wounded back to the field dressing stations. From the last reserve line they wound on backward through the fields until troops might leave them well out of range of rifle fire. Under Shorty's guidance I saw the field dressing stations, the dugouts for the reserve ammunition supply and the stores of bombs and hand grenades, battalion ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... instant the ship began to move backward. Then with increasing speed it pulled out of the grip of the long grass, and in another minute was floating on top of the water, at the edge ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... time, the repudiated Oriental capital of the ancient Czars, with her golden tiara and Eastern robe, has sat, like Hagar in the wilderness, deserted and lonely in all her barbarian beauty. Yet even now, in many a backward look and longing sigh, she reads plainly enough that she is not forgotten by her sovereign, that she is still at heart preferred, and that she will eventually triumph over her usurping ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... window as he slowly raised it, stepped out on to the leads, closed it again, and then, climbing over the balcony rails, lowered himself down till he could hang for a moment or two from the bottom of one of the iron bars, swing himself to and fro by his wrists, and then, with a backward spring, drop lightly on ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... special aspect of intelligence and that facility in it depends almost entirely on occupational habits and the accidents of education. Some have even gone so far as to say that we are not justified, on the basis of any number of such tests, in pronouncing a subject backward or defective. It is supposed that a subject who has no capacity in the use of abstract ideas may nevertheless have excellent intelligence "along other lines." In such cases, it is said, we should not penalize the subject for his failures in handling abstractions, ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... principle, which both impelled him to become all things to all men, with a view to their salvation, as he has been saying, and urged him to effort and self-discipline, with a view to his own, as he goes on to say. 'For the Gospel's sake' seems to point backward; 'that I may be a joint partaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach the Gospel to others, but to live on it and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... she murmured. She lifted one ringless hand and still without looking at him, pressed the third finger backward against ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... hard, as a marble, button, pebble, bead, the greatest care must be exercised. Try to make the object fall out. To effect this, turn the child's head downward with the injured ear toward the floor. Then pull the lobe of the ear outward and backward so as to straighten the canal. A teaspoonful of olive oil poured into the ear will aid in its expulsion. If after the oil is poured in, the head is suddenly turned as above described the object will fall out. A very effective way to remove a hard object is to take ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... of the South had finally pierced the centre of the Army of the North, and was pouring through the gap hot-foot to capture a city of strategic importance. Its front extended fanwise, the sticks being represented by regiments strung out along the line of route backward to the divisional transport columns and all the lumber that trails behind an army on the move. On its right the broken left of the Army of the North was flying in mass, chased by the Southern horse and hammered ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... not. I stood like one amazed and speechless, until she had passed clean out of sight. One thing remarkable came to pass. A spaniel dog, the favourite of young Master Bligh, had followed us, and lo! when the woman drew nigh, the poor creature began to yell and bark piteously, and ran backward and away, like a thing dismayed and appalled. We returned to the house, and after I had said all that I could to pacify the lad, and to soothe the aged people, I took my leave for that time, with a promise that when I had fulfilled certain ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... sketches "Hiver-Printemps," in the mournful English horn against the harp in "Hiver," in the chirruping hurdy-gurdy commencement of "Printemps." Unfortunately, the cantilena in the second number still points backward. But with the "Trois Poemes juives," the original Bloch is at hand. These compositions were conceived at first as studies for "Jezabel," the opera Bloch intended composing directly after he had completed the scoring of "Macbeth" in 1904. To-day, "Jezabel" still exists only in the libretto ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Looking backward for the generative source of that creative power of thought in him, from his own mysterious intellectual being to its first cause, he still reflected, as one can but do, the enlarged pattern of himself into the vague region of hypothesis. In this way, some, at ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... cry came from Cassyrus, who covered his face with his mantle and fled. The spell being broken, by common consent the great hall was once more in motion—St. George would never forget that tide toward all the great portals and the shuddering backward glances at the white heap upon the beetling throne. They fled away into the reassuring sunlight, leaving the echoless hall deserted, save for that breathing one ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... her head. "I don't dislike riding backward," she said, "if you don't mind having her sit beside you. Perhaps some one will leave the train by the time she comes back; then ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... that he did not retain his seat for more than a second after Mr. Bingle's entrance. In fact, he fairly leaped to his feet, frightening his visitor into a sudden, spasmodic movement of the hand in search of the door-knob and a backward shuffle of both feet at once. The little bookkeeper's alarm was groundless. Mr. Force came forward, beaming, his ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... no doubt but that the girl was in rather a dubious state of mind over it, but the silver dollar clinched her resolution, and she walked firmly off, without a backward glance in the direction of the gurgling Samuel Saul, which was the alliteral name ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... feels that evil is really overcome only by good. How different will be the reformatory zeal of this state of the spirit from that which preceded it. Formerly, no sooner was the subject of reform mentioned than the neck stiffened and the head tossed itself backward with the excitement of pride and combativeness, while the tongue poured forth whatever phrases anger might suggest. Now, how different is the attitude and expression, as with words of gentleness and love it strives to draw others to perceive the beauty ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... plain, with numerous small rivers and many lakes; agriculture is the chief industry; merino sheep are renowned; there are iron-founding, sugar-refining, and tanning works, and amber is found on the coasts; social institutions are very backward; still largely feudal; serfdom was abolished in 1824 only. SCHWERIN (34), on Lake Schwerin, is the capital. ROSTOCK (44), has a university; is a busy Baltic port, from which grain, wool, and cattle are shipped; has important wool and cattle fairs, shipbuilding, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid them; and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has been somewhere observed),** it can only be explained in the same way. He was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as more backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to have taken pains to conceal the impression. It is difficult, at all events, to think of him as unsociable, and his talents certainly had their amusing side. Miss Browning tells me that he made his schoolfellows ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... making good pastry lies in lightly mixing with a cool hand. If a spoon must be used, let it be a wooden one. Roll in one direction only, away from the person. If you must give a backward roll, let it be only once. Above all, roll lightly and little. The quicker the pastry ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... wherefores, as they make poor story-telling, and leave me, Basdel Morris, overlong in quitting the thicket about my tree. And yet the wise man always looks backward as well as forward when entering on a trail, and children yet unborn may blaze a better trace if they understand ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... the rear rank and file closers march backward four steps, halt, and dress to the right. The sergeant major aligns the ranks and file closers and again, taking post as described above, commands: FRONT, moves parallel to the front rank until opposite the center, turns to the right, halts midway ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece, that he stood stock-still, and neither came forward nor went backward, though he seemed rather inclined still to fly, than to come on. I hallooed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily understood, and came a little way; then stopped again, and then ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... come; and, afraid to touch the grand carpet with their feet, they leave rather vivid impressions in brown mud on the waxed floor, which is the very thing that Miss Campion does not want; and they throw themselves backward whilst they recite in the soft, liquid Gaelic the Confiteor; and then raise themselves erect, pull up their black cloaks or brown shawls with the airs and dignity of a young barrister about to address the jury, arrange the coif of shawl or hood of cloak around their heads, and then tell you—nothing! ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... eclipse, Pale cold his lips, The light of his hopes unfed, Mute his tongue, His bow unstrung With the tears he hath shed, Backward drooping his ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... I looked backward, across the court yard. The door of the big bamboo cage beneath the trees was open. I turned to the room again and looked once more. I knew now why the night guard's face was ash-colored, and why ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... sensible," commented the ambassador. He turned a page. "There's Darth. Its social system is practically feudal. It's technically backward. There's a landing grid, but space exports are skins and metal ingots and practically nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no town larger than twenty thousand people, and few approach that size. Most settled places are mere villages ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... of view of many men and women to-day. That is what the absence of a just and reasoned moral code has led to. And I am prepared, in spite of all protests, to affirm that it is not a step backward, but forward; that promiscuity is not as vile as prostitution—a prostitution which has been accepted, which has been defended by Christian people! It is less horrible for a human being to have the morals of an animal than the morals of a devil. We have to begin by rejecting the morality of fiends, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... formality; but the depth and perspective of the picture is not secured until the figure standing in the background is added. This produces from the foreground figure, through one of the seated figures, the transitional line which pulls the composition forward and backward and makes a circular composition of what was commenced upon a line ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... this, it is depressing to read of the dealings of the nations with each other, and with backward peoples—who have been well defined as peoples who possess gold-mines, but no efficient navy. Is it not generally taken for granted that it is the duty of more powerful and more enlightened nations to take the backward nations in hand, to exploit their resources, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... forms the enemy with which I have to contend, is not simply water, with an onward impetus communicated to it by the wind and tide, and a reactive impetus in the opposite direction,—the effect of the backward rebound, and of its own weight, when raised by these propelling forces above its average level of surface. True, it is all this; but it is also something more. As its white breadth of foam indicates, it is a subtile mixture of water and air, with a powerful upward action,—a consequence of the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... brother, father, or son, who were now joining in the chorus of "Blue forever!" that rang from tap-room to attic of the illumined hostelry. Levy, seeing Lord L'Estrange, withdrew his cigar from his lips, and hastened to join him. "All the Hundred and Fifty are in there," said the baron, with a backward significant jerk of his thumb towards the inn. "I have seen them all privately, in tens at a time; and I have been telling the ladies without that it will be best for the interest of their families to go home, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... still shorter one more to the purpose. Frankly, I believe you suspect me to have some latent and unowned inclination for you—that you think speaking is the only point upon which I am backward.... There now, it is raining; what shall we do? I ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... what does it mean?" she faintly gasped, shuddering backward with wondering dread as one of those tiny streams of strange blue moisture found its ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... devoted to a parade of all my sins I began to try to extract my personality from my coat, but when I pushed my arm up in the air to get the sleeve loose my knuckles struck the hard-wood finish and I fell backward on the cast-iron pillow, breathing hoarsely ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... close to old Mother Grouse that he was just about to spring up and rush upon her. Then all at once there was the most terrible noise. It was almost as loud as thunder, and it seemed to Tommy that the ground was rising right up in front of him. He was so startled that he fell over backward. And his heart thumped ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... don't know how it was instead of climbing up, I pushed him backward by mistake, and he went down with an awful crash into the next garden. We knew it was the garden belonging to No. 16 quite a large one it is for the hospital hasn't any. And when at last I managed to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... as I know," said the father, with a backward nod to indicate the antecedent of the pronoun. Following which, he said what lay uppermost in his mind. "I been allowin' maybe you'd come back this time with your head sot on lettin' ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a few years ago so backward in the race, is fast regaining her place amongst the nations. She is now reaping the benefit of her truly liberal (not Liberal) policy. Such were the abolition of the morgado (primogeniture) in 1834, the closing of the 1,800 convents ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton |
