"Backwoodsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked for something racier and of a more puckery flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the West,—like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my tea bar-foot," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons are good,—but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in a shirt" (ironical). ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... seems as though the boy felt the consecration of a high destiny from the very dawn of his intelligence, and it set him apart, secure amid the temptations and safe from the vices that corrupt many men. In the rough garb of the backwoodsman he preserved the instincts of a gentleman. He was the companion of bullies and boors. He shared their work and their sports, but he never stooped to their vulgarity. He very seldom drank with them, and they never heard him speak an oath. He could throw the stoutest in a wrestling match, and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... the voyagers, who crossed over. They proved to be the three Kentucky hunters, of the true "dreadnought" stamp. Their names were Edward Robinson, John Hoback, and Jacob Rizner. Robinson was a veteran backwoodsman, sixty-six years of age. He had been one of the first settlers of Kentucky, and engaged in many of the conflicts of the Indians on "the Bloody Ground." In one of these battles he had been scalped, and he still wore a handkerchief bound round his head to protect ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... vigorously like any backwoodsman (had chewed it originally because she'd heard it cured toothache, then had kept up the habit because she ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... there, was another evidence of the great advantage, which, he began to feel with hopeless rage, the man who had stolen that thing from him which he prized most highly, had over him. The negro was his servant. Servants meant prosperity, prosperity meant power. Backwoodsman as he was, Joe Lorey knew that perfectly. His face gloomed ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... threw down Dunce's reins, and started off towards the high ground, striding over heather and furze, with his free backwoodsman's step. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... place which is called Aihen-loh, 'the glade of oaks;' and at night-fall he heard the plash of water, and knew not whether man or wild beast made it. And not daring to call out, he tapped a tree-trunk with his axe (some backwoodsman's sign of those days, we may presume), and he was answered. And a forester came to him, leading his lord's horse; a man from the Wetterau, who knew the woods far and wide, and told him all that he wanted to know. And they slept side ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... not a large city, but it seemed a crowded metropolis to Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all seemed familiar, because they were a part of the world ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... upon his shoulder he carried his "roer"—a large smoothbore gun, about six feet in length, with an old-fashioned flint-lock,—quite a load of itself. This is the gun in which the boor puts all his trust; and although an American backwoodsman would at first sight be disposed to laugh at such a weapon, a little knowledge of the boor's country would change his opinion of the "roer." His own weapon—the small-bore rifle, with a bullet less than a pea—would ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... but an idle fancy; but still it is pleasant and refreshful to think of such a life as Byron has sketched as the life of Daniel Boone. Not in misanthropy, but from the strong preference of a forest life, did the Kentucky backwoodsman keep many scores of miles ahead of the current of European population setting onwards to the West. We shall feel much indebted to any reader who will tell us where to find anything more delightful than the following stanzas, to read after an essay ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Davenant returned to Paris, consoled himself by finishing the first two books of his "Gondibert," and then, despairing of a restoration, embarked (in 1650) from France for Virginia, where monarchy and the rights of Charles II were unimpaired. Fate, however, had not destined him for a colonist and backwoodsman. His ship, tempest-tossed, was driven into an English port, and the poet was seized and carried close prisoner to London. There the intervention of Milton, the Latin Secretary of the Council, is said to have saved his life. He was kept in the Tower for at least two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as a backwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notion that he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wondered if both of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor as they ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... who manfully accommodated themselves to their primitive surroundings. As has been well remarked by Mr. MacMullen,[56] "While they learned to wield the axe and swing the cradle with the energy and skill of the roughest backwoodsman, they retained their polished manners, their literary tastes, their love for the beautiful and the elegant; and thus exercised the most beneficial influence upon their rustic neighbours. In the absence of schools, of churches, of most of the refining influences of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... leathern coat and leggings of a North American hunter, or trapper, or backwoodsman; and well did he deserve all these titles, for Jasper Derry was known to his friends as the best hunter, the most successful trapper, and the ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... increase of their own substance, the influx of wealthier neighbors, and the general improvement of the country around them, they were allured by pride to do that to which they never would have been impelled by suffering. The gratuitous exposure to the climate, which the backwoodsman seems rather to court than avoid, is a subject of common remark. No extremity of weather confines him to the shelter of his own roof. Whether the object be business or pleasure, it is pursued with the same composure ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... the provincialism which demands attention and a "place in the sun." Carlyle's scorn and Macaulay's contempt were indeed as irritating as they were unjust, for America had gone a long way since the rough backwoodsman, Andrew Jackson, came to the Presidency by almost ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows and face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a backwoodsman." He remained, however, but a year or two in all at Philadelphia—then the seat of national government—and afterward became a planter in Tennessee, fought duels, subdued Tecumseh and the Creek Indians, winning finally the great opportunity ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... 1830 he removed to his new home, and in November 1831 his fourth child was born. This baby boy received the name of James Abram Garfield. Little did the humble backwoodsman dream that the name he lovingly gave his child would one day be on the lips of millions of his fellow-countrymen; that it would rank with those of princes, kings, and emperors; and that it would be linked for ever with the history of the ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... princely mansions of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log cabins of the backwoodsman, the name of Arthur is equally known and cherished as ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... of consequence that occurred on my way to John Miller's, where I arrived on the following day, and was received by the veteran with the rough kindness of a backwoodsman. He was a gray-haired man, hardy and weather-beaten, with a blue wart, like a great beard, over one eye, whence he was nicknamed by the hunters 'Bluebeard Miller.' He had been in these parts from the earliest settlements, and had signalized ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... up and fighting like a man, than that he should run, and disgrace the family." I have no thought from the nature of the conversation as told to me by Enoch that my father made this remark with any intention of its being repeated to me. It was sudden and spontaneous, and just the way the old backwoodsman felt. But I never forgot it, and it helped me several times. For, to be perfectly frank about it, and tell the plain truth, I will set it down here that, so far as I was concerned, away down in the bottom of my ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... its branches in an Indian canoe; then the first faint changes, the building of one or two little French fur traders' hamlets, the passing of one or two British officers' boats, and the very rare appearance of the uncouth American backwoodsman. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... the genial backwoodsman of the science of my young days, who did more to open out new tracks in the scientific forest than most men, would have been much surprised to learn that he was preaching the doctrine of the Cabbala, pure and simple. According to this modification of Neoplatonism ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... conspicuous one in the annals of our country. And yet there are but few who are familiar with the events of his wonderful career, or who have formed a correct estimate of the character of the man. Many suppose that he was a rough, coarse backwoodsman, almost as savage as the bears he pursued in the chase, or the Indians whose terrors he so perseveringly braved. Instead of this, he was one of the most mild and unboastful of men; feminine as a woman in his tastes and his deportment, never uttering a coarse word, never allowing ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... me add an illustrative instance related to me by the distinguished Methodist, Dr. David P. Durbin. Standing near the platform from which he was to preach at a camp-meeting, he observed a powerfully built young backwoodsman who was manifestly there with no better intent than to disturb and break up the meeting. Presently it became evident that the young man was conscious of some influence taking hold of him to which he ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... theme I understand,' said the President. 'I know all about trees in right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress. He then proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... some of the spirits and watched her revive. He warmed her hands and chafed her feet before the fire which the backwoodsman had made. As she came back to consciousness, Charlton happened to think that he had no dry clothes for her. He would have gone immediately back to the buggy, where there was a portmanteau carefully stowed under the seat, but that the Inhabitant had gone out and he was left alone with ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... a mixture of something rather pleasant in them. Roaming about in the woods with hatchet in hand, like a backwoodsman, followed by a troop of dogs; starting up of birds, snakes, hares and foxes, and examining the various kinds of trees, flowers, and birds' nests, was at least, a change from the monotonous drag and pull on shipboard. Frequently, too, we had some amusement and adventure. The coati, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... than allow their inmost thoughts to assume control. He himself, already initiated by the awful vigil with terror, was beyond both of them in this respect. He had reached the stage where he was immune. But these two, the scoffing, analytical doctor, and the honest, dogged backwoodsman, each sat trembling in ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... the legal profession will naturally ask me, how could this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the forest or on the farm and the flatboat, without culture or training, education or study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... repaired to Georgetown, the nearest British post, which was then under the command of one Captain Ardesoif. Attired as a plain backwoodsman, James obtained an interview with Ardesoif, and, in prompt and plain terms, entered at once upon the business for which he came. But when he demanded the meaning of the British protection, and asked upon what terms the submission of the citizens ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... days who, however, responded warmly to his friendliness and loved him much. This story was current. He had for some time been a famous man and was subjected to much persecution from sight-seers which he bore good-naturedly. Standing one day at the Craigie House gate he was accosted by a lank backwoodsman: "Say, stranger, I have come from way back; kin you tell me how I kin git to see the great North American poet?" Longfellow, entering into the humour of the situation, gave to the stranger his ready bow and responded: "Why, I am the great North American poet," at the same time inviting ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... while ago I met an Englishman in a railway carriage, who suggests himself as a kind of contrast to this warlike and vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R———, but had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied the post of Inspector of Nuisances,—a rather puffy and consequential man; gracious, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with it a Power which, by the light of our own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, I think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is that of any other nation. No one can care less for a lord than the backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom heard them spoken of; but I will not allow that any Englishman has a profounder envy of a lord than has the average American who has lived long years in a European capital and fully learned ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... "Rattlesnake Jack." He was over fifty years of age, and weighed about 160 pounds, at the time he and I worked together. He was a good talker, and had but few equals at throwing the three cards. He looked like the greenest sort of a backwoodsman when he had his "make-up" on. He was not the bravest man in the world, but he was not afraid of snakes, and could make some good big bluffs with his long six-shooter. He is now living in West Virginia with his ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... nature, the simple backwoodsman came to regard God as his only master and, like the Swiss patriot, would bow his knee to none other. Men were left free to adopt such religious views and tenets as they chose, and the generous laws protected every man alike in ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... with himself, the young man pounded vigorously on the puncheon door. No one came to open to him. Loudly he called in the hearty manner of the backwoodsman: ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... soon banished all other thoughts, and I rode on with perfect indifference through a scene, that, under other circumstances, would have captivated my entire attention. All the stories that I had heard of mishaps in these endless prairies, recurred in vivid colouring to my memory, not mere backwoodsman's legends, but facts well authenticated by persons of undoubted veracity, who had warned me, before I came to Texas, against venturing without guide or compass into these dangerous wilds. Even men who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... other frontiersman. The wild country in which we dwelt and across which we wandered was in the far west; and there were of course many features in which the life of a cattleman on the Great Plains and among the Rockies differed from that led by a backwoodsman in the Alleghany forests a century before. Yet the points of resemblance were far more numerous and striking. We guarded our herds of branded cattle and shaggy horses, hunted bear, bison, elk, and deer, established civil government, and put down evil-doers, white and red, on ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and, what surprised him beyond measure, was three women in one of the sleds who had come to make dinner and took possession of his shanty. They worked with a will. The logs were hauled and built into heaps and fire set, and every art the backwoodsman knows was used to make them burn. As ashes were scraped they were shovelled into the boxes on the sleds and started for Magarth's, returning with small loads of boards. With so many hands the small clearance was, late in the afternoon, put in such a shape that ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... over again and enjoyed and still sometimes dream. In this I was always hunting and fighting, often in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom I admired, somewhere in the background, but I have never really seen her. Sometimes I was a stowaway on board ship or an Indian hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather some companion. My daythoughts were not about the women round about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were almost impersonal. I went on, at any rate, from myself to what I thought the really ideal and built up a very beautiful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... as we also say, a 'countryman.' 'Savage,' too, or, as we ought to write it, salvage,[9] is nothing more grim or terrible than one who dwells in sylvis, in the woods—a meaning we can appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the adjective sylvan. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original type of a savage! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,' however, have become quite absorbed in their moral sense—and this by a contortion that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... within whose wide extent all the elements of society, civilized and uncivilized, were to be found—where the great city could be traced to the infant town—where villages dwindle into scattered farms—and these to the log-house of the solitary backwoodsman, and the temporary ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... the quaint reminiscence of my old friend and the quainter way he had of telling it. The rude dialect of the backwoodsman might have seemed oddly out of place, there, but for the quiet, unassuming manner and the fine old face of Uncle Eb in which the dullest eye might see the soul ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... had Fulk expected to be made the confidant of his vehement admiration for Emily Deerhurst. The gentle lady-like girl impressed the backwoodsman in a wondrous manner. It seemed to him, as if his wealth would have real value, if he could pour it ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Then came the compact, boxy, buggy, buttoned-up vehicle of our friend the pedler—a thing for which the unfertile character of our language, as yet, has failed to provide a fitting name—but which the backwoodsman of the west calls a go-cart; a title which the proprietor does not always esteem significant of its manifold virtues and accommodations. With a capacious stomach, it is wisely estimated for all possible purposes; and when opened with a mysterious but highly ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... cried the colonel, again turning about. 'Nothing will serve her but to show how a backwoodsman's daughter can live in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... employs,—to Generals and Dictators, as well as to the most ragged Pampa- Cossack in their pay. Our language is incapable of expressing the idea conveyed by this term; and the Western qualification "backwoodsman" is perhaps the nearest approach to a synonyme that we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... of the suits he had bought at seven that morning was quite right for immediate use; so there he was in his old lounge suit, baggy at knees and elbows and liberally bestrewn with lint. Her glance fell from his mussy collar to his backwoodsman's hands, to his feet, so cheaply and shabbily shod; the shoes looked the worse for the elaborate gloss the ferry bootblack had put upon them. She advanced because she could not retreat; but never had she ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... escape me in this way, you morose backwoodsman,' retorts Lady Tippins. 'You shall not evade the question, to screen your friend Eugene, who has made this exhibition of himself. The knowledge shall be brought home to you that such a ridiculous affair is condemned by the voice of Society. My dear Mrs Veneering, do let ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... I had but one meal." He could not get any food, for he dared not use his gun nor build a fire for fear his foes might find out where he was. He reached the fort in safety, and was of great service in beating off the attacking party. This is only one of the many narrow escapes of this fearless backwoodsman. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... settlements, and extended their scattered posts along the whole course of the two vast rivers of that continent. Even at this day, far away on the upper waters of these mighty streams, and beyond the utmost limits reached by the backwoodsman, the traveler discovers villages in which the aspect and social usages of the people, their festivities and their solemnities, in which the white and red man mingle on equal terms, strangely contrast with the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'T won't be inconveniencing you, because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' " ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the expert in the psychological wilderness. This is like one of those Redskin stories where the noble savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinket dropped by the way. I have always ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... a newly settled country offers endless opportunities for the humor which turns upon incongruity, it is also true that the new country offers countless occasions for the humor which turns upon the sudden glory of superiority. The backwoodsman is amusing to the man of the settlements, and the backwoodsman, in turn, gets his full share of amusement out of watching the "tenderfoot" in the woods. It is simply the case of the old resident versus the newcomer. The superiority need be in no sense a cruel or taunting ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... He did not know where he was; there was no sign of habitation—or even occupation—anywhere. He had been too terrified to notice the direction in which he had drifted—even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge of a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewildered state, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow tree near him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, which ran away. But the same association ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... enormously long; many of them would have seemed extremely old-fashioned to an ordnance officer. But every gun was like an additional limb to those practised marksmen, who knew little of firing in platoons, but everything of the patient accuracy which gives the backwoodsman his unerring aim. The assailants carried the latest weapons approved of by the War Office, and manipulated them with the faultless unison and unswerving harmony that would have compelled the compliments of a commander-in-chief ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... he sighted up the tree, took a chew of tobacco, and walked away. For several days he went through the same performance, until at last one day he brought out his trusty axe and made the chips fly. Soon the chestnut was lying prone on the ground pointing away from the house. What this old backwoodsman did was to wait until a strong wind had sprung up, blowing in the direction that he wanted the tree to fall, and his skilful chopping with the aid of the wind placed the tree exactly where he ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... got himself up in what he thought a proper costume for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his waist, and ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... must know, happened to be an only child—a most uncommon circumstance in backwoods life—your backwoodsman, like your poor woodcutter, who makes such a figure in old-time story-books, rarely stopped short of a baker's dozen, as a replenisher of the earth. Such being the case, "Pap" and "Mam" must need, of course, do their very utmost to make their one chub as troublesome as six, in order ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... knife he hollowed a grave, where he placed the body, still wrapped in its deerskins. He noted on a finger of one hand a gold ring, a queer possession for a backwoodsman. This he took off and dropped into the pouch which hung round his neck. "I reckon it'd better go to Mis' Hanks. Jim's gal 'ud valley ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... been fought, there is no specific law upon the subject beyond that in the Decalogue, which says, "Thou shalt do no murder;" but duelling every where follows the steps of modern civilisation; and by the time the backwoodsman is transformed into the citizen, he has imbibed the false notions of honour which are prevalent in Europe and around him, and is ready, like his progenitors, to settle his differences with the pistol. In the majority of the States the punishment for challenging, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... with the old backwoodsman, Finn returned to Virginia, just in time to close the eyes of the kind old Quaker. He found that his old friend had expected his return, for he had sold all his property, and deposited the amount in the ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... of the morning, while yet the faint mists clung over the brook and the warmth of the camp-fire was attractive, the Boy proclaimed his find. Jabe had asked no questions, inquisitiveness being contrary to the backwoodsman's code of etiquette; but his silence had been full of interrogation. With his mouth half-full of fried trout and cornbread, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... use of emigrants, by a Backwoodsman," is one of the pleasantest and most sensible little books of the day. It is worth all the "great big books" upon the same subject, and, strange to say, has scarcely a spice of the leaven of party wickedness in its pages. The information is in a facete but earnest vein, and we cheerfully ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... 'The Tools to him that can handle them.' . . . Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom notwithstanding the peaceful Sower will follow, and as he cuts the boundless ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Anonymous Annotators.—Can any of the correspondents of "NOTES AND QUERIES" point out to a literary Backwoodsman, like myself, any royal road towards assigning to the proper authors the handwriting of anonymous annotations in fly-leaves and margins? I have many of these, which I should ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... faithful follower of Uncle Jeff: he was a hardy backwoodsman, whose gleaming axe had laid many monarchs of the forest low. Though only of moderate height, few men could equal him in strength. He could fell an ox with his fist, and hold down by the horns a young bull, however furious. He had had ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... about, however, to withdraw his eye from the tube, something—a mere dim speck—arrested his attention. Quickly dropping the glass, and as rapidly rubbing the large lens and carefully adjusting the joints, he raised it again, as a backwoodsman does his rifle with an Indian for a mark. For full five minutes the pirate stood as motionless as the crag beneath him, intently glaring through the tube at the speck in the distance. At last he let the glass fall at his side, and pulling out his watch with a jerk, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... West, with the intention of settling there, and he will, he tells us, go first to Detroit, whence he will be able to send Harold forward to your farm. The boy himself is delighted at the thought, and promises to return an accomplished backwoodsman. John joins me in kind love to yourself and your husband, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... convulsing him with laughter. One of the Russians had succeeded in thrusting his head through the narrow opening at the top of the inverted hopper. Here he stuck. To the boy, he resembled a backwoodsman encircled by a ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... independent mind, wedded to a character of so much strength, singleness, and purity, pursued its own path of self-improvement for more than half a century, part gymnosophist, part backwoodsman; and thus did it come twice, though in a subaltern attitude, into the field of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once began the work of preaching. Being possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West. His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and graces to offend the plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was emphatically one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave theological theories ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... was a big backwoodsman of twenty, whose life had been as obscure as that of a domestic animal. He was rough of manner and slow of speech, and just now, owing to a combination of physical confinement and mental torture ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the word was equivocal and the boy beside himself. For Hugh had wrenched the staff from him and was holding the hand that gripped the stiletto, while the lad, with streaming tears, plunged, whined and gnashed at the backwoodsman. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... is a kind of education of mental discipline, differing from that of the school-room, but not less effective in giving vigor to the mind, quickness of apprehension, and habits of close observation. Boone was regularly trained in all that made him a successful backwoodsman. Indolence and imbecility never produced a Simon Kenton, a Tecumthe, or a Daniel Boone. To gain the skill of an accomplished hunter requires talents, patience, perseverance, sagacity, and habits of thinking. Amongst other qualifications, knowledge of human nature, and especially ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... of about a minute, the latter raised himself up, and allowed the blanket to slip from over his head, which now appeared bound round with a piece of calico, fringed with gouts of congealed blood. The backwoodsman cast a side glance at the Indian, but it was only a momentary one, and he allowed his gaze to revert to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... before they were in sight of the cross-roads store that had been robbed. It was a part of a small frame dwelling-house, set in the midst of the yellow sunlight that brooded over the plain. All the world around it seemed to the young backwoodsman to be a big cornfield; but there was a garden close at hand, and tall sunflowers looked over the fence and seemed to nod knowingly at Barney, as much as to say they had always suspected him of being one of the burglars, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... believe, from Virginia. He was a dark, eager youth, with a mop of black shiny hair that he was always tossing back, bright glowing eyes, a great enthusiasm of manner, and an imagination alert to catch fire. The backwoodsman seemed attracted to the boy by this very quick and unsophisticated bubbling of candid youth; while the boy most evidently worshipped his older companion as a symbol of the mysterious frontier. The Northerner was named Rogers, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Hawk-Eye was not much of a backwoodsman, after all," said Frank, who was in the habit of commenting upon and criticising every thing he read. "Why did he leave his extra powder-horn in his canoe, when he knew that the Hurons were all around him? You wouldn't catch Dick ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... all I said, Toinette," he hastened to explain. "You will forgive, I know, for I was sorely hurt to find that some one else had done the duty that was plainly mine. Surely no rude backwoodsman is to come between ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... Parson Collins, shrewd backwoodsman, ready for fight or prayer. He suffers at the hands of desperadoes, but is dauntless, and always gets the better of his partner in a trade. His white mule Ma'y Jane, is the only creature that ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... myself, is another phase of life. Peter is at once a Highlander, a Canadian, a trapper, a backwoodsman, and a coaster. His daughters are half Scotch and half Indian, and have many of the peculiarities of both races. There is even between these sisters a wide difference in intellect, appearance, and innate refinement. The doctor has apparently abandoned his profession for the study of nature, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Herr Carovius, "but after all you can't afford to be a backwoodsman. Music is supposed to ennoble a man even externally. By the way, there is a rumour afloat that it is a symphony with chorus. How did you happen upon the idea? The laurels of the Ninth will not let you sleep? I ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a sort of backwoodsman's life, and if there are treasure-vaults in this place I think we shall be able to get at them, however thick and heavy the stones may be on the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... which you have travelled to take a view of the works. The slope of this outer ridge runs down to a meadow. The Rebels have cut down the tall trees, and made a line of rifle-pits. The logs are piled one above another, as the backwoodsman builds a log-fence. There is a space five or six inches wide between the upper log and the one below it. They have dug a trench behind, and the dirt is ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... minute. His sensations were curious; divided between joy that Lucia was certainly free in this quarter, and a vehement desire to knock down, horsewhip, or otherwise ill-use the Honourable Edward Percy. Of course, this was a savage impulse, only worthy of a half-civilized backwoodsman, but happily he kept it down out of sight, and his companion ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... to the new-comer with a pretty lack of ceremony. He looked more than ever like a backwoodsman, but it was quite evident that he was pleased with his surroundings. He shook hands with her almost reverently, and smiled in a quiet, well-satisfied way. But, having nothing to say, he did not vex himself to put it into words—a trait ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the house was as smooth as a polished window-pane. For nearly two score miles this current, which eventually found its way into the Penobscot, wound through the leafless woods, past an occasional opening, where, perhaps, the humble cabin of some backwoodsman stood. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... the horrors of campaigning, and to take you through the stirring scenes of "War on a White Sheet." It would be equally absurd for a lecturer on, say, "The Life and Habits of a Microbe," to be dressed in the garb of a backwoodsman; but I was once obliged to deliver a lecture on "Art" in ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we have known a black-bearded backwoodsman, whose mere voice and presence would quell any riot among the lumberers,—yet this man, nicknamed by his employees "the black devil," confessed himself to be in secret the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... measurement of the man is that with a sublime reliance on God, he conducted an immense nation through the most tremendous civil war ever waged, and never committed a single serious mistake. The Illinois backwoodsman did not possess Hamilton's brilliant genius, yet Hamilton never read the future more sagaciously. He made no pretension to Webster's magnificent oratory; yet Webster never put more truth in portable form ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... from Boston, who saw a wild animal in every thicket, and repeatedly leveled their guns at some bear or panther, which turned out to be neither more nor less than a bush or tree-stump. They pestered our guide with all sorts of simple questions, which he, with a true backwoodsman's indifference, left for the most part unanswered. After about an hour, we found ourselves on the borders of a long and tolerably wide swamp, formed by the overflowings of the river, and which stretched for some five miles from north to south, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various |
