"Back room" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poor shoemaker, with some erratic ambitions, or, if his son's word may be trusted, a man of a richly gifted and truly poetic mind. His wife was a few years older and a good deal more ignorant than himself; and when they set up housekeeping together, in a little back room, they rejoiced in being able to nail together a bridal bed out of the scaffolding which had recently supported a dead nobleman's coffin. The black mourning drapery which yet clung to the wood gave them ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the two-step in the back room of the post-office when the other clerk was out for lunch; he tried elaborate and ornate bows upon Aunt Melvy, who considered even the mildest "reel chune" a direct communication from the devil. The moment the post-office ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... Big Slim led the way into a back room. It was the same in which Bat had seen the Swiss playing the flute on the night of Nora's unaccountable visit. But Bohlmier was not at all musically inclined ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... opening it. "Listen. Here it is. 'The strangest thing has happened, brother! Susan went to London yesterday to get my fronts recurled at the hairdresser's, and she was waiting in the shop, when a lady came out of the back room, having been in there to get a little boy's hair cut. Susan was quite struck dumb when she saw her: She thinks it was poor erring Dolly; never saw such a likeness before, she says; could almost swear to her by the lovely pale gold hair. The lady pulled ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... Don Diego was playing poker every night in the back room of the White Camel pool hall. Gambling was supposed to be prohibited in the town, but this sanctum was regularly the scene for a game, which had the reputation of causing more money to change hands than any other in ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... conveyed to a small tavern near the wharf where the sloop lay. When the landlord was questioned where the men were who had him in custody, he refused to give any information. But there was a crowd of men and boys; and one of them said, "They are up-stairs in the back room." The landlord stood in the door-way, and tried to prevent Friend Hopper from passing in; but he pushed him aside, and went up to the chamber, where he found Levin with his hands tied, and guarded by five or six men. "What are you going to do with this ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... crouched on the cold stones or wandering in the fields among the snow, was more than he could tell; but hours had passed. The finger of the hall clock was close on twelve; a narrow peep of gas in the hall- lamp shed shadows; and the door of the back room - his father's room - was open and emitted a warm light. At so late an hour, all this was strange; the lights should have been out, the doors locked, the good folk safe in bed. He marvelled at the irregularity, leaning on the ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Literature," and author of "The War for the Union"; and Mrs. Botta, the Anne Lynch of earlier mention, had for a time a home there; and in the street Richard Watson Gilder dwelt later, and in No. 33, in a third-story back room, a young clerk named Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote his "Ballad of Babie Bell"; and there, at No. 84 which was the residence of Judge Daly, the African explorer Paul Du Chaillu wrote fiction and fact that by sceptical contemporaries was generally accepted as fiction. A block ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... undoubtedly lay in the back room, for they moved very softly around the head of the stairs, but once in front they let their tongues run loose again. I, who cared nothing for their babble when it contained no information, walked slowly about the room and ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... let me try to let that back room upstairs: the woman next door has got hers let unfurnished to an elderly woman and her husband for two shillings a week. If we could get someone like that it would be better than having an ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of variations for it as the Andante of his "Kaiser Quartet." Griesinger tells us, too, that as often as the warm weather and his strength permitted, during the last few years of his life, he used to be led into his back room that he might play it on the piano. It is further related by Dies that, during the bombardment of Vienna in May 1809, Haydn seated himself at his instrument every forenoon to give forth the sound of the favourite song. Indeed, on May 26, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... hur-rt him. They'se no wan to stop his pay. He goes up to th' cashier an' dhraws his forty-wan-sixty-six jus' th' same whether he's sick or well, an' whether he's pulled th' box reg-lar or has been playin' forty-fives in th' back room. But whin ye come to castin' aspersions on th' ar'rmy, be hivens, ye'll find that I can put me thumb on this showcase an' go ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... prayers, and signs of the cross. The boy had till then been well-behaved and trustworthy. Arriving three days before at the town, he had not gone to his relations, had put up at the hotel, and gone straight to the club in the hope of finding in some back room a "travelling banker," or at least some game of cards for money. But that evening there was no "banker" there or gambling going on. Going back to the hotel about midnight he asked for champagne, Havana cigars, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... joined the Good Templars, so it is all the same. You see my chum and me have been going to a private gymnasium, on the west side kept by a Dutchman, and in a back room he has all the tools for getting up muscle. There, look at my arm," said the boy, as he rolled up his sleeve and showed a muscle about as big is an oyster. "That is the result of training at the gymnasium. Before I took lessons I hadn't any more muscle than you have got. Well, the dutchman was going ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... he drove directly to General GRANT'S thirty-two thousand dollar cottage in the Park. GRANT was not there yet, but Mr. P. did not expect that he was. There being a butler and some cooks on hand, Mr. P. considered them sufficient, and had his baggage taken right up to the second story back room. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... make the soda fountains a disheartening place to the average male. He likes a dark, low-ceilinged, and not too obtrusively sanitary place to take his ease. At McSorley's is everything that the innocent fugitive from the world requires. The great amiable cats that purr in the back room. The old pictures and playbills on the walls. The ancient clocks that hoarsely twang the hours. We cannot imagine a happier place to sit down with a pad of paper and a well-sharpened pencil than at that table in the corner ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... up the little back room in the attic as his workshop, and from thence a net-work of wires soon ran throughout the house. Not only had every outside door its electric bell, but every window was fitted with a burglar alarm; moreover no one could cross the threshold of any interior room without registering the fact ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... hot out-of-doors; after lunch Sanin was about to take leave, but they told him that on such a day the best thing was to stay where one was, and he agreed; he stayed. In the back room where he was sitting with the ladies of the household, coolness reigned supreme; the windows looked out upon a little garden overgrown with acacias. Multitudes of bees, wasps, and humming beetles kept up a steady, eager buzz in their thick branches, which were studded with golden blossoms; through ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... not be much in the way of gewgaws just yet," said Anne drily. "It will be dull enough in some back room of ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hour or perhaps an hour passed, and one or two hurrying forms came in at the door and sped up the stairs from some errand of mercy; then the night watchman came and fastened the door and went away again, out somewhere through a back room. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... that our marriage is impossible. You are a mother; you will understand why I reveal the obstacle which stands between us—not to him, but to you.' She rose saying those words, and opened the folding-doors which led from the parlor into a back room. After an absence of a few moments only, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... be. I've watched you five nights now, and all I can make out is that you favour certain numbers and keep on winning. Now the ten of us game-owners have got together, and we want to make a friendly proposition. We'll put a roulette-table in a back room of the Elkhorn, pool the bank against you, and have you buck us. It will be all quiet and private. Just you and Shorty and us. What do ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the house, the front part of which was used as a shop, they were received with great civility by a woman who was officiating at the counter, and, upon their desire to speak with her husband, were shown by her into a back room, used as a parlor, and requested to be seated. Her husband, she said, had stepped out a short time since, though, already, gone longer than she expected, and would certainly be back in a few moments. Her prophecy was correct, for, sure enough, they were hardly seated before ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... back room of a thermopolium not far from this spot was discovered a graffito of part of the first line of the AEneid, in which the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... knick-knack and half hidden under heaps of hats and boots and shoes, bookcases, secretaries, chests of drawers, mattresses, lounges, and bedsteads, to the stairway of a loft similarly appointed, and to a back room overflowing with glassware and crockery. These things are not all second-hand, but they are all old and equally pathetic. The melancholy of ruinous auction sales, of changing tastes or changing fashions, clings to them, whether they are things that have never had a home and have been on sale ever ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Arabian story had an ointment which, put upon his right eye, enabled him to see through the walls of houses. If the Arabian despot had passed along a narrow street leading into a main thoroughfare of London one night, just before the clock struck twelve, he would have beheld, in a dingy back room of a large building, a very strange sight. He would have seen King Charles the First seated in friendly converse with ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... the English lady; he wished to see the English lady. 'Enter then and ascend, if you please,' returned the peasant woman, in French likewise. He did both, and followed her up a dark bare staircase to a back room on the first-floor. Hence, there was a gloomy view of the yard that was dull, and of the shrubs that were dead, and of the fountain that was dry, and of the pedestal of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... harm shall befall you;" and so saying she took them both by the hand, and led them into her cottage. A good meal of milk and pancakes, with sugar, apples, and nuts, was spread on the table, and in the back room were two nice little beds, covered with white, where Hansel and Grethel laid themselves down, and thought themselves in heaven. The old woman had behaved very kindly to them, but in reality she was ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... evening after this accident and these rescues, Dr. Lanham said to Mrs. Lanham and Susan and Mr. Williams, who happened to be there again, that a boy was wanted in the new drug-store in the village, to learn the business, and to sleep in the back room, so as to attend night-calls. Dr. Lanham did not know why this Jack Dudley wouldn't ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... jerusalem. I did not much like going back, but the moment I recovered breath, I resolved not to make bad worse by staying longer away: but at the door of the room, I met Mrs. Thrale, who, asking me if I would have some water, took me into a back room, and burst into a hearty fit ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... and Larry pounded around the casement until it was all clear. The rectangular opening was fairly large. We could see a dim basement room of dilapidated furniture: a door opening into a back room; the girl; nearby, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... I wasn't thirteen at the time. The coat wasn't an old one, either," he explained with retrospective complacency; "no, sirree, he had just bought it, and he made me take it off after I'd tried it on and sit down at the table in that back room there—it's all just as he left it—and eat supper with him—the best supper I ever had in my life before or since, you may take my word for it. Then when I'd finished he gave me a dollar and told me to go out and rent a bed—" He broke off, glanced about the room with the pride of ownership, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... she, and giving him the candle, pointed to the back room; then drowsily resumed her nest on the buffalo robe. Pepillo took the feeble light; nodded, but did not immediately follow directions. He set the candle down upon the floor in front of the bar, so that its faint flicker, unobserved by the woman, made objects barely visible in the ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the back room of the restaurant. When the coffee came Jerry rose to explain the purpose of the meeting. "Our problem," he began, "may amount to nothing at all. Or it could turn out to be mighty nasty. Hen and I thought it was ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... creature, probably the porter's wife—entered, followed by two other women, the last two wearing the same cut of prim black waist and skirt, and the same pattern of white wristlets and collar. We then carried the two soldiers upstairs to a back room, where the old servant had filled a kind of enamel dishpan with soapy water. Very gently and deftly the beefy old porter and his wife took off the fouled, blood-stained uniforms of the two fighting men, and washed their bodies, while she who had opened the door stood ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... nothing but treachery and the pox, for when our money is gone, they are every moment threatening to inform against us, if we will not get out to look for more. If anything in this world be like Hell, as I have heard it described by our clergy, the truest picture of it must be in the back room of one of our alehouses at midnight, where a crew of robbers and their whores are met together after a booty, and are beginning to grow drunk, from that time until they are past their senses, in such a continued horrible noise of cursing, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... the street from Karen Lawrence's antique-shop. The windows were dark, but Karen was waiting inside the door for him. He entered quickly, mindful of the All-Seeing Eye across the street, and followed her to a back room, where Mrs. Jarrett and Dorothy Gresham were. All three women regarded him intently, as though trying to decide whether he was friend or enemy. There was a long silence before Mrs. Jarrett spoke, and when she did, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... fixed to take place at any time within six months, and meanwhile the opponents industriously practise. The scene of the duel is usually the back room of some beer-hall, with locked doors between the duellists and the police. The latter know very well what is going on, but shut their eyes to it. The opponents take their places at about a yard and a half distance from advanced foot to advanced foot, and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... at the plans all the afternoon. I see how to contrive the fireplace in the back room, that we could not have in the first set, and make them cheaper, too. My father has really made a point of that old decrepit Hailes being moved from Marksedge; and Mary, he, and Richardson mean Inglewood to be ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then," she said. "I want you and Hope to see that his visit is a good one. Hope took your things into the back room, Teddy, so you'll find everything ready for you ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... barely time to enter the hotel, before the street became entirely blockaded by an amazing crowd desirous to see. The hotel was unfortunately situated on a corner, so that it was soon besieged on two sides. I was shown to a large back room on the second floor; and I had no sooner squatted down on my mat, than the people began to come upstairs quite noiselessly, all leaving their sandals at the foot of the steps. They were too polite to enter the room; but four or five would put their heads through the doorway at once, and bow, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... had fallen asleep Edna bore him into the back room, and Robert went and lifted the mosquito bar that she might lay the child comfortably in his bed. The quadroon had vanished. When they emerged from the cottage Robert bade ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... newspapers. Parties, if you reckon them by voting strength, are great masses of men who, because they can't vote any other ticket, vote the ticket that was prepared for them by the aforesaid arrangement in the aforesaid back room in accordance with the aforesaid understanding. A boss is the manipulator of a "machine." A "machine" is that part of a political organization which has been taken out of the hands of the rank and file of the party, captured by half a dozen men. It is the part that has ceased ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... a note to Don Sebastian by a messenger he could trust, and soon after dark met him, as he appointed, at a wine-shop on the outskirts of the town, where they were shown into a small back room. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... Mr. Tredgold, gratefully. "I came to see the captain about a card-table I've discovered for him. It's a Queen Anne, I believe; one of the best things I've ever seen. It's poked away in the back room of a cottage, and I only discovered it ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... he said. "I came straight out of a Bedfordshire village, and was boarded out at a sergeant's house. He put fourteen of us in a back room with a tiny window, and charged us 14s. 9d. a week out of our pay of 15s. The food! I should smile. In case we overdid our eating, meals were never placed on the table until just before we had to parade at Wellington Barracks ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... older than her husband, but very probably his junior, cheerily pointed out to me the local improvement she had made by transferring the cooking-range from the front room, looking on the highway, to the back room looking into the garden. 'It is pleasanter, don't you think?' she said, 'to sit out of the kitchen; and then, with the kitchen at the back, one can always leave the door open. That is my idea!' We assured her we thought it an excellent idea and most creditable to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... politics?" interrupted Nelson, "I merely tell you there are indictments which have been in my office for five years and are yet to be tried, and that your case is going to take its turn." Nelson passed into the back room, leaving ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... is a gentleman of the most honorable record, but a perfectly rabid collector, who had made every effort to secure the cameo before you bought it; who, moreover, could have seen Mr. Claridge working in his back room, and who has perfectly easy access to Mr. Claridge's roof. If we find it can't be none of these, then we must look ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... went back to the tavern from which they had set off to fight the duel, and ordering a good dinner to be served in a back room, they amused themselves with killing flies, as they talked over the events of the day, and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Martin found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing black eyes. Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the little back room that served for kitchen and dining room. The front room served as bedchamber and living room. Overhead was the week's washing, hanging in festoons so low that Martin did not see at first the two men talking in a corner. They hailed Brissenden and his demijohns with acclamation, and, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... subject all day as he walked to and fro across the shop, encumbered with several large pieces of bedroom furniture which they had been unable to get into the back room; he pondered it, too, as he stood on his doorstep, with his pen behind his ear, and feasted his eyes delightedly on the hurly-burly of Parisian commerce. The clerks who passed with their packages of samples under their arms, the vans of the express companies, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... exceedingly restricted and is usually limited to two. The front room, which is larger because the width of the passage goes on increasing, is the abode of a male, superior in size to the other sex; the less spacious back room contains a female. I have already drawn attention in an earlier chapter to the wonderful problem submitted for our consideration by this breaking up of the laying into couples and this alternation of the males and females. Without calling for other work ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... wooden shoes!" they began with a volley of stones against the windows. I ran to see where Berenice was. It had been previously agreed among us, that she and her guests, and every female in the house, should, on the first alarm, retire into a back room; but at the first shout of the mob, Lady de Brantefield lost the little sense she ever possessed: she did not faint, but she stiffened herself in the posture in which she sat, and with her hands turned down over the elbows of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five years without having earned a penny. And yet they clung together, ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Tom that he would call and see the man who advertised for a person "with a small capital to enter a light, genteel business." He found the place after awhile—a small back room, scantily furnished, with a few packages lying on a solitary counter. There was a man of about thirty-five in attendance, who seemed to have nothing ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... and I heard him say he didn't care what Hawley's orders were, he was going to sleep inside; if the girl didn't like it she could take the other room. I didn't know what to do—oh, I was so afraid of him; but what he said gave me an idea, and I went into the back room, and put up a bar across the door. When he came in he tried the door; then he spoke through it, but I never answered; and finally he lay down and went to sleep. I sat there in the dark so long, and when I heard you—I—I thought it must be ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... disposal until the store was empty; she had a nervous feeling that they would all know what she was looking for. Slowly the group melted away, till there was no one left except the proprietor, who had gone into the back room to look after some seed corn, and Silas, the young farmer, who had thrown himself down into a chair to read his paper at his leisure, and was not noticing Lucyet. Eagerly she opened the printed sheet. She caught her breath in the joy of assurance. There it was—"Spring." It stood out as if it ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... like to know what she was doing in that dirty little jeweller's shop, going into the back room and all," mused the spinster regretfully. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... wet poster from the yellow walls. When I arrived at Number 6, Harcourt street, I saw black-clad Mrs. Sheehy-Sheffington, in somewhat agitated absorption of thought, coming down the worn steps of the old Georgian house. In the upper back room, earnest young secretaries worked in swift silence. One of them, a curly-haired girl with her mouth o-ed about a cigarette, puffed unceasingly. At last Harry Boland, secretary ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... the third step from the landing when the door of the back room opened, and a little, gray figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out stealthily. She was plainly ready for the street, an intention understood by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton's red cocker spaniel, who was capering about her in the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... son was murdered, or he was a murderer. The crime falls upon us, and the disgrace of it, no matter how you look at it." The Elder sat in the back room at the bank, where his friend had been arguing with him to withdraw the offer of a reward for the arrest. "It's too late, now—too late. The man's found and he claims to be my son. You're a kindly man, Mr. Ballard, but a ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... drew near how much fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... spectator as if they were playing at leap-frog and were expecting a companion to come and take a jump. Never did "young" art, never did subjective freshness, attempt with greater success to represent those phases. But these three fine works are hung over the tops of doors in a dark back room—the bucket and broom are thrust behind a curtain. It seems to me, nevertheless, that a fine Filippo Lippi is good enough company for an Allori or a Cigoli, and that that too deeply sentient Virgin of Botticelli might happily balance the flower-like irresponsibility of Raphael's ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... merchant dwelt who had wine to sell, they were directed to an inn near the minster. Here in a back room they found a short, stout man, wearing a red cloth cap, who was seated on a pillow between two kegs. In front of him stood a number of folk, gentry and others, who bargained with him for his wine and the silks and embroideries that he had to sell, giving the latter to be handled and samples ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... filling faster than ever!" said Crossthwaite, as that evening we returned to Mackaye's little back room. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... two above the roof-level of this glowed—two luminous rectangles in the blackness of darkness—the windows of the back room on the second storey; and out of these came floating still the song, the laughter, and the jabbered French he had heard in the house next door. It did not take him long to make up his mind. Gripping the swaying supports ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... before, been torn. And Mr. Williams had the courage to accept their offer, notwithstanding the fact that the war continued with unabated bitterness. In 1707 the town voted to build him a house "as big as Ensign Sheldon's, and a back room as big as may be thought convenient." This house is still standing (1902), though Ensign Sheldon's, the "Old Indian House in Deerfield," as it has been popularly called, was destroyed more than half a century ago. The Indian House stood at the northern ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... President, a considerable period was allowed to elapse before the selection of his successor, with the government resting in the quorum of apostles meanwhile, even for a term of years. As soon as I arrived in Salt Lake, Apostle Snow asked me to a private interview (in the same small back room of the President's offices), inquired about the financial negotiations that I had been conducting, and asked me whether it was not essential to the success of our business affairs that as soon as possible the Church should elect a President, empowered ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... chill and snowy day, the 2d of December, 1777, the adjutant-general appeared at the house and bade Mrs. Darrah to prepare the upper back room for a meeting of his friends, which would ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... more than roses, and chrysanthemums, and fires to satisfy Daisy, who, forgetting the little back room in the dressmaker's shop whence she came, and remembering only the delights of the Continent and the excitement of Monte Carlo, and the honor, as she thought it, of having a real live earl in her party, tossed her head a little and said she wished ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... of a little back room opened at these words of Rose, and there stood Camille, with his arm in a sling, pale and astounded, but great joy and wonder working in ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the future was a serious one. They were nearly dollarless again, and even Roland felt that Elizabeth could not be appealed to for some months at least. Denasia was facing the sorrowful hopes of motherhood. For three or four months she could not sing. They restricted themselves to a small back room in a Second Avenue boarding-house, and Roland searched the agencies and the papers daily for something suitable to his peculiar characteristics and capabilities, and found nothing. There was a great city full of people, but not one of them wanting ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... chair, ordered another clerk to get water and spirits of ammonia quick. His arm was still around her when Patrick Berry strayed in from the back room. Berry's eyes narrowed. He looked the girl over from head to foot, surveyed Ted Holiday also with sharp scrutiny and knitted brows. The clerk returned with water and dashed off for the ammonia as ordered. Madeline's eyes opened slowly, meeting Ted's anxious ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... forage cap as a souvenir of the place. By the time we had poked around the neighbourhood and inspected the other Sehenswuerdigkeiten of the town it was lunch time and we joined an officers' mess in the back room of a little cafe on the square, and then, to kill time, sat in front of another cafe and had coffee and ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... is a little way down town, near Washington Square. It did not take Psmith long to reach it, and by the judicious expenditure of a few dollars he was enabled to obtain an interview with Billy in a back room. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... afternoon during last summer, the large auction rooms seemed asleep, and the auctioneers were knocking down the various lots in a listless manner. In a back room, on the first floor, two or three lots of old silk, ecclesiastical vestments, were lying ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... his idleness he wandered into the back room of the cobbler's shop near by, where the butter-seller from the corner, the maker of artificial flowers for graves, and the cobbler himself were gathered, and listened without protest to such talk as would have roused him once to ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a green damask sofa, and two green arm-chairs opposite to each other at the two sides of the fireplace. The room was altogether green, and was not enticing. In shape it was nearly square, the very small back room on the same floor not having been, as is usual, added to it. This had been fitted up as a "study" for Mr Vavasor, and was very rarely ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... a poor hert that never rejoices!" he would say, at the conclusion of such a nightmare interview. "But I must get to my plew- stilts." And he would seclude himself as usual in his back room, and Archie go forth into the night and the city quivering with animosity ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentleman who occupied the other back room next to that of Fico? Miss Husted was sure that he was a descendant of the noble refugees from France, who emigrated during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. The romance of this appealed highly to her. Monsieur Pinac was always silent when questioned on this point, but Miss Husted was ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... schoolmaster to put the money in. He said he had a system for buying only the tickets with prime numbers, that won't divide by anything, and that it must win. He said it was a mathematical certainty, and he figured it out with the schoolmaster in the back room of a saloon, with a box of dominoes on the table to show the plan of it. He told the schoolmaster that he himself would only take ten per cent of what they made, as a commission for showing the system, and the ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... had brought the malady, Henry Esmond's first thought was of alarm for poor Nancy, and then of shame and disquiet for the Castlewood family, lest he might have brought this infection; for the truth is that Mr. Harry had been sitting in a back room for an hour that day, where Nancy Sievewright was with a little brother who complained of headache, and was lying stupefied and crying, either in a chair by the corner of the fire, or in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... later, Margaret was coming down from the nursery. Merton had announced, as bedtime drew near, that he "felt a pain;" and Margaret had no difficulty in tracing it to Mrs. Peyton's careless indulgence. She stole down quietly to the cheerful back room where Frances and Elizabeth sat with their sewing, and begged for some simple remedy. Frances rose with alacrity. "Checkerberry cordial is what you want, Miss Margaret," she said. "I've made it for ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... mother and sister approached the bed and greeted the visitor. "How are you, Bernhard?" asked his mother; "you will be all alone with your father this evening. There is a great musical meeting, and Rosalie is to play. We have moved the piano into the back room, Mr. Wohlfart, that Bernhard may not be disturbed by ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... had that, for I remember him counting it in the back room of the hotel. There was more, too; I heard him telling Silverthorn there was about seven thousand in all. Silverthorn wanted him to put it all back in the bank, but Dale said there was just enough for him to meet his pay-roll—that he owed ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... outside, with their joggerfies, and arithmetics, and spellers, and slates bound in red flannel under their arms, and swallowed hard as they looked. Whenever anybody went in for a penny's worth of yeast and opened the door, that had a bell fastened to it so that Mrs. Plotner could hear in the back room, and come to wait on the customer, the smell of wintergreen and peppermint and lemonsticks and hot taffy gushed out so strong that they couldn't swallow fast enough, but stood there choking ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... wealth and epicurean pleasure, demands churches for the rich and churches for the poor,—if the lines of society must be drawn somewhere,—let those architects be employed who understand, at least, the first principles of their art. I do not mean those who learn to draw pictures in the back room of a studio, but conscientious men, if you cannot find sensible men. And let the pulpit itself be situated where the people can hear the speaker easily, without straining their eyes and ears. Then only will the speaker's voice ring and kindle and inspire ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... back room, which was a kind of combination living room, kitchen and bedroom. A door led from the rear into a back yard littered with empty packing cases, garbage cans and waste paper. After taking a look around the yard he locked the back door noiselessly. There was no other apparent exit from the kitchen-bedroom ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... seized there by a man of the name of Platt, and that, in order to save himself, he fired a pistol loaded with powder and wadding only, which wounded the said Platt in the groin. Young Watson was, however, seized and taken up stairs into a back room, and the front doors of the shop and the windows were closed. During the confusion Platt escaped over a back wall of the premises, and as young Watson was left in the house a prisoner at large, he walked into a front room, opened a window that looked ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... was not locked, and the safe was in the front room on the second floor. In the back room the police were concealed, and were listening intently to the movements of the burglars. Should the latter discover them they were ready for an immediate attack, but they hoped the visitors would get to work first. In this ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... as though fearful that somebody might see him, and will steal softly into a back room and pull from beneath his bed a good cheap blanket—worth about $3—and spread it out lovingly ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... Lowther at home? Of course Miss Lowther was at home at such an hour. The girl said that Miss Mary was alone in the breakfast parlour. Miss Marrable had already gone down to the kitchen. Without waiting for another word, he walked into the little back room, and there he found his love. "Walter," she said, jumping up and running to him; "how good of you to come so soon! We didn't expect you these two days." She had thrown herself into his arms, but, though he embraced her, he did not kiss her. "There is something the matter!" she said. "What ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... out to greet the visitor and conducted him into a back room. Reed and Harris were left to the contemplation of their own mixed thoughts. Presently Harris, whose eyes had been dilating for some moments, broke out in a hoarse whisper: "Listen! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... basket; both of them retreat pell-mell into a rear apartment, and, holding the door ajar, peep curiously through to see what I am going to do. While my attention is directed for a moment to something down the street, one daring soul darts out and bears the basket of oranges triumphantly into the back room. For this heroic deed I beg to recommend this brave woman for the Victoria Cross; among the golden lilies of the Celestial Empire are no doubt many such brave souls, coequal with Grace Darling or ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang in vain. The hall, indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped through the letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from the back room. That was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All was quiet in the house: could they have haled the intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes which it had taken me to dress and to drive to the spot? That ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... scraps of paper. She watched a moment and then lifted the baby and stood up so that she might make more sure of the identity of a tall gentleman she saw approaching. She only looked at him for a few seconds and then she left the parlour quickly and went to the back room where she had been aware of Mr. Jenkinson's voice rumbling amiably along as ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... At the back of the house is a trellis with a grape-vine running over it, and the top of it is just under one of the second-story windows. You can climb up that trellis, Thomas, and lift up that window-sash very carefully, so's not to make no noise, and get in. Then you'll be in a back room, with a door right in front of you which opens into Mr. and Mrs. Green's bedroom. There's always a little night lamp burning in it, by which you can see to get about. In the corner, on your right as you go into the room, is a table ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... door of a back room about twelve feet square, furnished in the plainest manner, uncarpeted, except for a strip that was laid, like a ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... as could be, save for a faint gleam from the fanlight; but Frank could have gone blindfold, and dashing over the marble floor to the foot of the staircase, he bounded up two steps at a time, reached the door of the back room, beneath which shone a line of light, and turned the handle sharply. As he did so, there was a dull sound within, and the light ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... down to pay the reckoning, while d'Artagnan and Planchet stood at the street door. The host was in a lower and back room, to which Athos was requested ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the big level north of the camp. They'll head straight for that break because they'll hit it before they hit the basin. An' Givens an' Link will send 'em through, to hell—an' then some. An' them damn fools, Davies an' Harris, is layin' in the back room of the Wolf, paralyzed by that forty-rod that Big Jim Lafflin has been slippin' over the bar to 'em. They won't know they're alive until this time tomorrow, an' then they'll be so scared that they'll just keep right on hittin' the forty-rod for fair! I reckon we've got ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cornfields and vineyards, I went to a little baker's shop in search of a roll, and there realized the hospitable spirit of these good Briards. The mistress of the shop very kindly invited me into a little back room, and regaled me with excellent household bread, Brie cheese, and the wine of the country, refusing to be ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... saw I did not listen to such talk, treated me very rude. One Saturday I saw quite a number of men into his place, and I went in also. Saloons in Kansas generally have a front room to enter as a precaution, then a back room where the bar is. I didn't get farther than the front, for Mart came hastily, taking me by the shoulders and said: "Get out of here, you crazy woman." I was ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of his back room, on the stool between two tallow candleflames, leather scented strongly, when the wanderer stood before him, in the image of a ball that has done with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... great variety of furniture in different parts of it. There were chairs and tables, a bookcase with a desk below, a loom in one corner by a window, and a spinning-wheel near it. Then, there were a great many doors. One led out into the back yard, one up stairs, one into a back room,—which was used for coarse work, and which was generally called the kitchen,—and one into a large store closet adjoining ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... But how are we to do it? "Have State and Federal branding of the cases as they go into or come out of storage," says one—an excellent plan, to be sure by which the grocers could buy one case of fresh, eggs and a back room full of storage goods and do Elijah's flour barrel trick ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... to bed I wrote her a polite note, begging her to leave the closet. She did so, but she went into another back room, and consented to take coffee for her breakfast. Wishing to make her dine and sup with me, I was dressing myself, and preparing to proffer my request in such a way as to make a refusal impossible, when young Cornelis was announced. I received him smilingly, and thanked ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... were taken out of the box they were placed on the shelves in Mr. Mugg's store. This was in a back room, for the toys had yet to be sorted and looked over, to make sure each one was all right, before they were put in the front part of the store ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope
... proof on the status of a flickering foreign war, the Hardscrabbler's daughter, in a quiet back room farther down the block, slowly sipped more gin; and gin is fire and fury to ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cigars and Scotch. Oh, I assure you, you'll find me quite as gentlemanly about not locking them up as you have been, sir. I should make a few changes, of course; nothing radical, however. And, really, that little back room of mine is very cozy. What would come hardest for you, I suppose, would be the getting up at seven-thirty; but with a good ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... out our presents in the dining-room, and they take up all the table, so there will be no dinner until they are distributed. I've lighted the lamp, dear, to make it look more festive. Hope you don't mind? It was just the least thought in the world gloomy in that back room this morning." ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... night there," said Inez. "He fixed me a bunk on an old lounge in the back room. An' next morning a girl I useter see at Mother Beasley's seen me and brought me over here. She ain't well now and her money's about run out, I reckon. Say! did youse ever find them two greenies youse was lookin' ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... "It was in the back room turned to the wall," he said. "I took it out, thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decoration might buy it," and he turned away, not liking to hear my praise of it; for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised nor abused. "I painted it before I knew ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... last put on her stockings and slipped on a morning gown of white pique, and thrusting the tips of her feet into her gray canvas slippers, she ran into her dressing-room, a back room looking out on the rear of the house. She had had it hung plainly with an ecru drill with blue stripes, and it contained only furniture of varnished pine—the toilette table, two presses, and two chairs. It revealed, however, a natural and delicate coquetry which was ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... back room they were packing a lovely bridal dress, going off the following Saturday ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... right well dis evenin'," he said, evasively, but when Sherman persisted he was ushered into a back room where sat the redoubtable captain, all the fierceness of his burnside whiskers, the austerity of his West Point manner, melted in the indignity of sneezes ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... out, but we're in too deep to run resks of gettin' him mad 'fore we know for sure. Let's think it over for a week. Inside of that time some of us'll hint to him, polite but firm, you understand, that we've got to have something on account. A week from to-night we'll meet in the back room of my store, talk it over and decide what to do. What ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ghastly, with the sweat starting from his brow, staring down at the result of his fearful work. From the front Captain Sanders and his amazed lieutenant came hurrying. Together they lifted the stricken and bleeding man to his bed in the back room and started a soldier for the doctor on the run. The sight of this man, speeding down the row, bombarded all the way with questions he could not stop to answer, startled every soul along that westward-facing front, and sent men and women ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... advent of five of the old fellows who had obtained furloughs and ridden in from the Soldiers' Home for the express purpose of assuring him of their support, as the vindicator of their honor, wringing his hand and cheering on the fight. They retired with Cap into the back room and emerged shortly, beaming and refreshed. They had no votes to cast in the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... In a little back room of a saloon three young men were sitting. They were talking earnestly, for all that two of the three showed they had taken altogether too much liquor to be ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... any one here," he said, in a hoarse, panting whisper. "The police are after me. I have fought for an hour, and run over a mile, and I'm dead beat—I can go no farther. Let me hide in the back room, and tell them you haven't seen any ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... obediently withdrew from public life, spending most of his days in the back room of the big store, where a few sympathizing friends were always ready to bear him company; and the word went out that he had, in despair, given up camping on Miss Minnie's trail and gone ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... and his wife are in the back room," announced Mrs. Prescott. "They would like to ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... advice. Examine him carefully. Don't do it before us. Well wait here. You take him into the back room. You'll be more likely to get a confession out of him alone. Ask him how he dared to admit people and leave them alone in this room. Don't ask him if he has done it. Take it for granted. Tell him you KNOW someone has been here. Press him. Tell him that a full confession ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... into the doorway, or rather into the angle of a door leading into the back room. The piano had stopped; while wondering what to do next my attention was suddenly attracted by a conversation to which I had to listen; it was impossible to move away. "So she is going to sing, is she? Well, we will see if this great and only true Italian method will ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... called an hour earlier—eight o'clock; he drank a cup of cold tea and ate a piece of dry toast in a back room. The dining-room was full of servants, who laid out a long table rich with comestibles and glittering with glass. Mrs Norton ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... waiting for him in the little back room—the lamp was on the table—and when they sat down to dinner she began the tale of her day's doings. But she hadn't got farther than the fact that they had asked her to stay to tea at Queen's Gate, when her tongue, which always went quite as fast as her thoughts, betrayed ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... up a magazine and seated himself. It was twenty minutes ere Dick came out from that back room. Then the chums started out for ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... line of art. His servant greeted the callers and made them at home, expressing much regret at the absence of his master, who was "out of the city," etc. Meanwhile, Thorwaldsen was hard at it in a back room, to which only the elect were admitted. The King of Bavaria, a genuine artist himself in spirit, who spent much time in Rome, conceived a great admiration for Thorwaldsen. He walked into the atelier where the sculptor was at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Hotel!" she cried admiringly. "But this place is too grand for us, child. Can't we have some back room in the attic, that's ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... come in," exclaimed Benjamin, as he ushered the digger into the back room, where such chops as had escaped the voracious appetite of Jake Ruggles ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... The back room, which, for nearly six long, weary weeks Laura had occupied on the second floor was characteristic of the place and the class of lodgers who lived there. For years the house had been falling into general decay, with no attempt at repairs. The ceilings ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... then left them alone, while he went to inquire how soon they could have an audience with the great sibyl. Having told Mrs. Warne who her visitors were, the usher hurried over to my office and informed me. I instantly called my stenographer, and we proceeded quickly to the back room, where we took our seats ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... power, its seeking is lowering enough; but when it is besought from the enlightened voter himself, "the scurvy politician" becomes a reality painfully frequent. Soliciting the ballot over a glass of green corn juice in the back room of a country grocery, or flattering the cara sposa of the farmhouse, with squalling brat upon his knee, is scarcely calculated to make the best of men more of "an ornament to society." Constant contact with sharpers and constant ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... children. She lived at No. 2 Pool's Place, Quaker Court, Spitalfields, in the utmost poverty. When the policeman came to her, he found her with six of her children literally huddled together in a little back room, with no furniture but two old rush-bottomed chairs with the seats gone, a small table with two legs broken, a broken cup, and a small dish. On the hearth was scarcely a spark of fire, and in one corner lay as many old rags as would fill a woman's apron, which served the whole family as ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... cigars as tardily as if he had had to cross a Rubicon in the back room. Two were lighted, and the Surgeon settled himself ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... constantly throwing their goods away for the benefit of their customers. They always sell at a "ruinous sacrifice;" yet snug fortunes are realized here, and many a Fifth avenue family can look back to days passed in the dingy back room of a Bowery shop, while papa "sacrificed" his wares in front. Sharp practice rules in the Bowery, and if beating an unwilling customer into buying what he does not want is the highest art of the merchant, then there are no such salesmen ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... been the first thought of both men that Palmer was suffering from fright—that something seen, heard or imagined in the back room had deprived him of his senses. Acting on the same friendly impulse both ran after him through the open door. But neither they nor anyone ever again saw ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... and books had been the solace of lonely years, and he could easily see that he had pleased them with his songs. He went home to the dreary rookery out on Prairie Avenue and laughed at the howling wind. The bare grimy walls and the dim kerosene lamp, even Sam's unmelodious snore in the back room, sent no gloom to his soul. It had been a happy evening. It had cost him a hard struggle to restrain the emotion which he had felt at times; and when he withdrew, soon after the trumpets sounded tattoo, and the ladies fell to discussing him, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... dinner of turkeys, roast beef, mince pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies, plum and suet pudding, doughnuts, cheese, and every other good thing you can think of, the children went into the back room for a frolic. There were aunt Hannah's three oldest girls, and uncle Joshua's four big boys, William Parlin and his sister ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... Customs, however, fared better than that; they were given a small house, into which they packed themselves as best they could. The I.G., who refused to accept any special privileges, slept in a tiny back room and cheerfully ate the mule, which was hatefully coarse while it was fat and unutterably tough when it grew lean. Indeed, his marvellous adaptability to difficult conditions was soon the talk ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon |
