"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place; but there was another change. Little by little, her eyes recovered their natural living expression—then slowly closed. She tottered backward from the table, and lifted her hands wildly, as if to grasp at something which might support her. Mr. Rayburn hurried to her before she fell—lifted her in his arms—and carried ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... to lay about her, with her whip, in a way that proved extremely unpleasant. Wolf-in-the-Temple, against whom her assault was especially directed, received some bad cuts across his face, and Ironbeard was driven backward into the ford, where he fell, full length, and rose dripping wet and mortified. Thore the Hound got a thump in his head from Gunbjor's stalwart elbows, and Skull-Splitter, who had more courage than discretion, was pitched into the water with no more ceremony than if he had ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... are going to catch it," whispered Grace, as she began stepping backward toward her place, which she did not quite reach. She sat down on Hazel instead, raising a titter among the girls near by who had witnessed the mishap. But the interruption was brief. The girls were too much interested in what was ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... But Marcy, beside being a sturdy fellow, knew how to stand up for his rights. He braced his foot firmly against the curbstone and met the shock of the collision so vigorously that those who would have sent him headlong into the street were sent backward themselves, and came very near going head first down the stairs that led ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... men. The chain of links which once bound stage to stage of human history is somewhere for ever broken; and as we retrace, in the memory of the race or in that of individual, the Ariadne-clue which we here call 'the unity of History' it vanishes somewhere beyond our vision into the dark backward and abysm of time. True, of late Archaeology and Anthropology have cast their search-lights into the darkness, piercing a little deeper than of old into the mists that surround the origins of our civilization; but before that dimly illuminated region of pre-history there ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... menstruation should sometimes prove fatal to woman. On this he rose up in his place and cried: "Wata['][n] Thanks! I'm glad some of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me." He fairly shook with joy at the thought, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the Grubworm ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... cannon of Alexandria fell, indeed, before a British fleet, but Gallipoli had been fortified by German engineers, and its guns were the Krupp cannon. The British fleet found itself opposed by unsurmountable obstacles. Looking backward it seems possible, that if at the very start Lord Kitchener had permitted a detachment of troops to accompany the fleet, success might have been attained, but without the army ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... great trades-unions of the world file past, one with the odd word 'Russia' on its banner; another boasting itself 'Germany'—this with a particularly bumptious and self-important young man walking backward in front of it, in the manner of a Salvation Army captain, and imperiously waving an iron wand; still another 'nation' calling itself 'France'; and yet another boasting the biggest brass band, and called 'England.' Other smaller bodies of nobodies, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... tails reachin' a'most to the ground, and a shinin' black hearse with a score of plumes on the top, and half a dozen men with silk hatbands walking alongside it, right away from the station to the churchyard yonder." And Allison threw a backward glance over the billowy golden cornfields, which separated the village from the church by a quarter of a mile, where the grand tower reared its head as if keeping watch over the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... me, and began, as I thought, to sing, but in a very fragmentary way. I afterwards found that they were in conversation. I spoke to them, and, concealing my fears, endeavored by various signs to intimate my friendly disposition. They were not very backward in meeting my advances; and yet I soon discovered that, although they were two to one against me, they were as much alarmed as I; whereupon I became greatly reassured. It was not long before we had exchanged presents of wild fruits, and they had begun, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... assembled on the third floor corridor. The president elect was drawn in an express wagon, except down the stairs between floors. Out of consideration for the weight of his chains the defeated candidate was allowed to ride in a barouche, alias a rocking- chair. But he objected to riding backward, and the barouche would not move the other way round, so he accepted the arm of the leader of the band and walked, chains and all. The vice-president walked from the start. At intervals of five minutes one or both of the successful candidates made speeches. The defeated candidate ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... could easily resume the movement from Memphis, by way of Oxford and Grenada, to Jackson, Mississippi, or down the ridge between the Yazoo and Big Black; but General Grant would not, for reasons other than military, take any course which looked like, a step backward; and he himself concluded on the river movement below Vicksburg, so as to appear like connecting with General Banks, who at the same time was besieging Port Hudson from the direction ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... interfere with our plans altogether. A party as small as ours may live for months without a red-skin happening to light on us, but if there were many more they would be certain to find us. There would be too much noise going on, too much shooting and driving backward and forward with food and necessaries. We want it kept dark till we thoroughly prove the place. So I made them all take an oath this morning that they would keep their heads cool, and I told them that if one of them got drunk, or said a word about our ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... by its reactionary prejudices and its sensitiveness on the subject of slavery. Nothing can be imagined more ridiculously provincial than the sophomorical editorials in the Southern press just before the outbreak of the war, or than the backward and ill-informed articles which passed for reviews in the poorly supported periodicals ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... supposing he saw Tatyana; just as he pulled the trigger, she came to one of the windows of the little wing and descried him beneath the apple-tree. She had scarcely time to ask herself, 'What is he doing under the apple-tree bareheaded in such weather as this?' when he fell backward like a sheaf of wheat; but she felt at once that something tragic had happened; and she rushed downstairs, out into the enclosure.... She ran up to Nezhdanof.... 'Alexis Dimitritsh, what is the matter?' But darkness had already come over him. Tatyana ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... command of the London Company itself some of the Indian youths had been adopted by the settlers and were being educated in the Christian faith. So unsuspecting were the people that they loaned the savages their boats, as they passed backward and forward, to formulate their plans ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... weren't innocent!" I exclaimed. "They are going to institute a divorce march," I continued. "'Lohengrin' or 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' played backward. They have not settled which it is to be taught in the nursery with ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... hold Benton back, but he broke loose from his keepers, and was moving rapidly upon his foe. When he saw Benton nearing him, Foote sprang into the main aisle, and retreated toward the Vice President, presenting a pistol as he fled, or, as he afterward expressed it, "advanced backward." In the meantime Benton had been so obstructed by the sergeant-at-arms and others that Foote, if disposed to shoot, could not have done so without firing through the crowd. But Benton, with several senators hanging to him, now proceeded round the lobby so as to ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... o'clock, I was awakened by two armed grenadiers entering the room. The one said some words to the other, pointing to us at the same time, and then went out; and he that remained began walking backward and forward between our beds, as a sentinel on his post, without seeming to pay great attention to us. Had there been curtains, I should have tried to regain my slumber; but not being able to sleep in such company, I rose and awoke my companion, who seeing the grenadier ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... is more obscure or uncertain, than that of the first kings of Egypt. This proud nation, fondly conceited of its antiquity and nobility, thought it glorious to lose itself in an abyss of infinite ages, which seemed to carry its pretensions backward to eternity. According to its own historians,(400) first, gods, and afterwards demigods or heroes, governed it successively, through a series of more than twenty thousand years. But the absurdity of this vain and fabulous claim is ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... bars); petit tour forward with opposite ladies (four bars); right and left (eight bars); advance again; the ladies return to own places, and the gentlemen pass again round each other to their own ladies (four bars); petit tour backward (four bars). Side couples ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. The front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. Without a word or a look of reproach, Napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aids and generals rushed to his side. Forward again over heaps of dead ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... give you a couple," said the Lonesome Duck, and began waddling about in a small circle. It went around the circle to the right three times, and then it went around to the left three times. Then it hopped backward three ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... flushed, for the picture that her companion had so simply drawn of a gay officer of the garrisons had once been particularly grateful to her imagination, though experience and disappointment had not only chilled all her affections, but given them a backward current, and the passing image had a momentary influence on her feelings; but the mounting colour was succeeded by a paleness so deadly, as to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of horses and auto-car precipitated by the sudden stop of the tally-ho. Mirage effects are common on the western plains, and if Ormsby had not been familiar with them he might have marveled at the striking example afforded by the backward look. In the rapidly increasing perspective the six horses of the tally-ho were suddenly multiplied into a troop; and where the station agent had stood on the platform there seemed to be a dozen gesticulating figures fading into indistinctness, as ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... inscribed with the motto, 'The Charter. No surrender. Liberty is worth living for and worth dying for.' On the left, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God;' while on the back of the car was inscribed, 'Who would be a slave that could be free?' 'Onward, we conquer; backward, we fall.' Eight banners were fixed (four on each side) to the car, inscribed, 'The Charter.' 'No vote, no muskets.' 'Vote by ballot,' 'Annual parliaments,' 'Universal suffrage,' 'No property qualification,' 'The payment ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... weight, and Lord Ulswater spurring his steed violently at the same instant that Wolfe so sharply and strongly curbed it, the affrighted animal reared violently, forced the rein from Wolfe, stood erect for a moment of horror to the spectator, and then, as its footing and balance alike failed, it fell backward, and rolled over and over ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose this nation to be surrounded by a number of weak and unenlightened states, always quarrelling, badly and corruptly managed, like Mexico and some of the Central American republics. Would it not be better for the world if this strong, enlightened nation took possession of its backward neighbours, even by force of arms, and taught them how to live and how to make the best of their neglected resources and possibilities? Would not these weak nations be more prosperous and happier after incorporation with the strong nation? Is not Egypt better ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... of disarmament which needs to be taken up and which only a world congress can take up must be the arming of barbaric or industrially backward powers by the industrially and artillery forces in such countries as efficient powers, the creation of navies Turkey, Servia, Peru, and the like. In Belgium countless Germans were blown to pieces by German-made guns, Europe arms Mexico against the United States; China, Africa, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... slight backward jerk of his small head at the footsteps on the other side of the skylight would insist in his awful, hopelessly gentle voice that he knew very well what he was saying. Hadn't she given herself to that man while ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... ominous silence on deck succeeding his words, then a murmur of voices and the banging down of a hatch. Next came a loud splash, and Mark dashed to the cabin window to look-out for that which he felt sure he would see. And there it was—the body of a man floating slowly by, and then on backward in the schooner's wake, the body of one of the blacks, with wild upturned eyes set in death, and, as it seemed to Mark, a look of horror and appeal in the stern, staring face, gazing heavenward, as if asking ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... And so, that day, Peter was the last one. If Blair or I had fallen or been overcome by the cold,—which is what we know must have happened,—we would have been seen by Peter, of course. But when he gave out, no one looked backward." ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... best imaginative-pictorial verse itself. The first appearance of Clarimonde; the scene at her death-bed and that of her dream-resurrection, have, I dare affirm it, never been surpassed in verse or prose for their special qualities: while the backward view of the city and the recital of what we may call Serapion's soul-murder of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... KNEW that the end had come. Only the wisdom of the occult would dare to suggest that from her child mate, squaring his sturdy young shoulders against the world as the flying train sped on its way, some wave of desperate, inchoate thinking rushed backward. There was nothing more. He would not come back running. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... crowned and throned, he wove his spell, Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled, With unconsidered miracle, Hedged in a backward-gazing world; Then taught his chosen bard to say: "The King was ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... man I'll try," thought Jack. "I'm getting mad!" The man of whom Jack spoke came up the street. He seemed an unlikely subject. He was so straight he almost leaned backward; he was rather slender than thin; and was uncommonly well dressed. In fact, Jack said to himself: "He looks as if he had bought the meeting-house, and was ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... a buck—curling his hair backward over his ears something like a girl's, and going out, morning, noon, and night, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... Backward swung Flamby's foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his shin. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society grapple with issues in which no one can ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... know us, no more than we do now remember those who have been before. Christ said of John, "he was a burning and shining light;" "he was," saith he, but now he is not. But Christ may always say, "I am the light and life of men." Man is; but look a little backward, and he was not; you shall find his original. And step a little forward and he shall not be, you shall find his end. But God is "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." But oh! who can retire ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Turning backward from these evidences of Lowell's ripening powers to his early poems, astonishment at his versatility is the first emotion produced. It is hard to believe that the 'Biglow Papers' slid from under ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had for some reason or other never quite thoroughly learned his tables. The teacher had suggested that somebody might help him, and a boy had volunteered to come early to school in order that he might teach the boy who was backward. A great many teachers have discovered that the strongest motive which they can find for good work in the field of English is to be found in providing an audience, both for the reading or story-telling, and for the English composition. The idea which ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... and can take no other food but that." This is the Original Sin, inherited, innate, unacquired; for this are "babes span-long" to suffer, as the famous or infamous preacher declared. "Where, or at what time, was I ever innocent?" he cries, and hears no answer from "the dark backward and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... which was printed a number—34. She looked around and saw her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass of carriages, cabs and motor cars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirt-front danced backward before her; and next she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... letter came. The mission sent two of their native helpers; but these had not left Beirut before a second delegation arrived, more urgent than the first. The native helpers were followed in May by Messrs. Smith and Whiting, who soon saw that they had been too backward to credit the sincerity of these men. The hope of political advantage had been abandoned, but their decision and their numbers had steadily increased. The men were about one hundred and fifty, and among them were ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... removed and the girl watched with fascinated gaze, and with an awful sense of apprehension. Presently the object was revealed. It was a pair of scissors with the handle wrapped about with a small handkerchief dappled with brown stains. She took a step backward, raising her hands to ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... lovers were the appellants in this tourney, and from every realm knights rode to break a lance in honour of their dame. Frenchman and Norman and Fleming; the hardiest knights of Brabant, Boulogne and Anjou; each came to do his devoir in the field. Nor was the chivalry of Nantes backward in this quarrel, but till the vespers of the tournament was come, they stayed themselves within the lists, and struck stoutly for their lord. After the four lovers had laced their harness upon them, they issued forth from the city, ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... horses nibble leaves, and they expected Whitey to nibble the leaves of this branch; but his ravenous condition did not allow him time for cool discriminations. Sam poked the branch at him from the passageway, and Whitey, after one backward movement of ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... The fork-horn caught one backward slanting glimpse of him and fled just as the wolf's teeth clashed a bare inch short of his hamstring, and Breed was off in pursuit of an animal whose speed matched his own. This prey was no awkwardly galloping steer but a nimble beast that swept ahead in twenty-foot bounds, and ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... time was five years! Looking backward, each five years of his life seemed but a yesterday. It was eight times five years ago that a sweet-faced girl had first filled his life, as Nada filled Jolly Roger's now, and through the thirty years since he had lost her he could still hear her voice as clearly as though ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... up, wild with hope and enthusiasm. "Then we are saved!" she cried. "Blessed be he who betrayed my secret! And I doubted your courage, my Wilkie! At last I can escape from this hell! This very night we will fly from this house, without one backward glance. I will never set foot in these rooms again—the detested gamblers who are sitting here shall never see me again. From this moment Lia ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... mischief-maker on Sir John's right, who owes her diamonds to Guy Johnson. La! What a gossip I grow! But it's county talk, and all know it, and nobody cares save the Albany blue-noses and the Van Cortlandts, who fall backward with standing too straight—" ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... they exerted on the passing mariner, but from the perils that awaited him on shore. Even to this day, in certain outlying islands, danger lingers: and the civilised Paumotuan dreads to land and hesitates to accost his backward brother. But, except in these, to-day the peril is a memory. When our generation were yet in the cradle and playroom it was still a living fact. Between 1830 and 1840, Hao, for instance, was a place of the most dangerous approach, where ships were seized and crews ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insects are always much worse, and more numerous, when the spring is backward, and the floods are higher than usual. From close observation, I believe the larvae are deposited during high water on the rocks, when, as soon as the water falls, the heat of the sun hatches the insects. I have remarked large stones, which ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... cold, and in striking contrast with the cold and damp March air of Washington. From Jacksonville we went in a steamboat up the St. John's River to Enterprise. Florida was the part of the United States to be first touched by the feet of white men, and yet it seemed to me to be the most backward in the march of progress. It was interesting chiefly from its weird and valueless swamps, its sandy reaches and its alligators. It is a peninsula, dividing the Gulf of Mexico from the ocean, and a large part of it is almost unexplored. The part we traversed ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... andirons with his rough, thick soled boot to which shreds of manure were clinging, "the trouble with it is that good or bad porridge, it all leaves the same taste in the mouth arter you've once swallowed it. I've had my pleasant trespasses in the past, but when I look backward on 'em now, to save my life, I can't remember anything about 'em but some small painful mishap that al'ays went along with 'em an' sp'iled the pleasure. Thar was the evening I dressed up in my best clothes an' ran off to Applegate to take a yellow haired circus lady, in pink skirts, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped his open-armed advance, and sent him backward into old Toothsome the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up and became convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust over a man's head. Jaffers clutched at it, ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... the familiar landscape sweeping backward past the windows of the express train. She knew it all by heart, the low hillocks crowned with clusters of shaggy oaks still thick with unshed leaves, the strips of salt marsh with the haycocks like gigantic beehives, the peeps of blue sea, sail-dotted or crossed by a thin line of smoke, and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... fellow-man. Now, the condition of pardon for sin is contrition; this contrition contains essentially a firm purpose that looks to the future, and removes in a measure, the liability to fall again. But with the sins here in question that firm purpose not only looks forward, but backward as well, not only guarantees against future ill-doing, but also repairs the wrong criminally effected in the past. This is called restitution, the undoing of wrong suffered by our neighbor through our own fault. The firm purpose to make restitution is just as essential to ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Lawrence Croft, shut up in his little room at the end of the yard, would be more so. He had sat at his window, waiting, and waiting. He had occasionally seen Mr Keswick come out on the porch, and with long strides pace backward and forward, and he knew by that sign that he had yet no message to bring him. He had seen the Midbranch carriage drive into the yard; he had seen Miss March come out on the porch, and speak to the driver, and ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... I sat silent, thinking. Then the king spoke again in a great voice: "Nay, Mopo, be not so backward; shall I sit warm and see thee suffer cold? What, my councillors, rise, take the hand of Mopo, and hold it to the flame, that his heart may rejoice in the warmth of the flame while we speak together of this matter of the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... off and eluding the third, he leaped to the chandelier in the hall and with a giant swing wrapped his legs about the fellow struggling with Eva. Literally throttling him, he pulled him backward over the balcony railing for a fall clear ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... stereotyped madness of the conquest of Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the moment the prosecution of it in person, he intrusted it to his favorite, Admiral Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and backward, presumptuous and irresolute, who had already lost credit by the mistakes he had committed and the reverses he had experienced in that arena. At the very juncture when Francis I. confided this difficult charge to Bonnivet, the Constable de ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mutual anxiety of never again meeting was now removed. If his heart, instead of being bruised, had been absolutely broken, still honour, conscience, the glory of his house, his individual reputation, alike urged him not to be cold or backward at such a moment. He advanced, therefore, with a due mixture of grace and warmth, and congratulated them on their arrival. At this moment, Lady Fitz-pompey's carriage was announced. Promising to return to them in an instant, he hastened to his cousin; but ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... says Cloete. Oh yes. And to-day take this, you dirty cur. . . He hits straight from the shoulder in sheer rage, nothing else. Stafford goes away spinning along the bulk-head. Seeing this, Cloete steps out and lands him another one somewhere about the jaw. The fellow staggers backward right into the captain's cabin through the open door. Cloete, following him up, hears him fall down heavily and roll to leeward, then slams the door to and turns the key. . . There! says he to himself, that will stop you from ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... is L'Abbe, spelled backward. His last years were spent near New Berlin, beside a lonely waterfall, where he had a flower garden, and kept bees. His grave was four miles south of New Berlin, until relatives came and removed his ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... principal's bell. School is "in" for the preliminary exercises. Afterward there are to be the tree and ice-cream for the good children. In their anxiety to prove their title clear, they sit so straight, with arms folded, that the whole row bends over backward. The lesson is brief, the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... such betokens, not their worth, That whets it!... Love, respect for me, have waned; But I will right that. We've good chances still. You must return foot-hot to Quatre-Bras; There Kellermann's cuirassiers will promptly join you To bear the English backward Brussels way. I go on towards Fleurus and Ligny now.— If Blucher's force retreat, and Wellington's Lie somnolent in Brussels one day more, I gain that city sans ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... saddle bow. He let the reins fall loosely on Prince Rupert's neck, and as the hoofs rang on the frozen road, thrust his hands for warmth into his coat. In another dress, with his dark hair blown backward in the wind, he might have been a cavalier fresh from the service of his lady or his king, or riding carelessly to his death for the sake of the drunken ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... distance, the loon, who evidently was a fine judge of the reach of his spear, shot it forward quick as a lightning-flash, in marvelous contrast to the wonderful slowness of the preparatory poising, backward motion. The aim was true to a hair-breadth. Tom was struck right in the centre of his forehead, between the eyes. I thought his skull was cracked. Perhaps it was. The sudden astonishment of that outraged cat, the virtuous ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... leaped to the south-east, and the storm ended swiftly as a broken wave sinks backward from the shore; in the strange deep silence after the tumult the mother sighed, ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... the pool being but narrow, was able to swim to one side of it where the beach shelved. Up that beach Ralph could not climb, however, for he was faint with loss of blood and shock. Indeed, his senses left him while he was in the water, but it chanced that he fell forward and not backward, so that his head rested upon the shelving edge of the pool, all the rest of his body being beneath its surface. Lying thus, had the tide been rising, he would speedily have drowned, but it had turned, and so, the water being warm, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... said Renine. "Mathias de Gorne would have needed a regular apprenticeship before his backward progress could have equalled his ordinary gait; and both his father and he must have been aware of this, at least as regards the zigzags which you see here since old de Gorne went out of his way to tell the sergeant that ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Poor and backward by European standards, Albania is making the difficult transition to a more modern open-market economy. The government has taken measures to curb violent crime and to spur economic activity and trade. The economy is ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and commercial advantages to the United States. I hope for even this for the sake of repose and independence, if we come off with honor. We owe nothing to any of the European governments. What has Blair been running backward and forward so often for between the two Presidents? Has it not been clearly stated that independence alone will content us? Blair must have understood this, and made it known to his President. Then what else but independence, on some terms, could be the basis for further conference? I believe ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... you, great gods! I make my last appeal: Or clear my virtue, or my crimes reveal. If wand'ring in the maze of life I run, And backward tread the steps I sought to shun, Impute my error to your own decree: My FEET are guilty: but my HEART ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... o' that!" Mr. Crow warned, taking a step backward. "Won't do you any good to talk sweet to me. I've got the goods on you. A dozen witnesses have heard you plottin' to murder. Throw up your hands! Up with 'em! Now, keep 'em up! An' stop laughin'! You'll soon find out you can't murder a man in cold blood, ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... out brave young men who longed, while providing for themselves, to restore the influence of their country in India, shaken as it had been by the ill success of Dupleix, Lally, and Law. The native princes, on the other side, were not backward in availing themselves of this new species of wardog. A Frenchman was worth his weight in gold; even an Anglo-Indian the race is now relegated to the office-stool fetched, we may say, his weight in silver. But men of the latter class, though not ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... something else, squatted himself in front of one of the guests, and presenting the meat, which he held with both his hands (males and females officiating), desired him to help himself. If the guest appeared backward in the attack, he was pressed, in the politest terms, to eat. "Now, I pray you, tear away with a good will;"—"I am glad to see you eat so strongly;"—"Come now, stuff yourself with this fine piece of fat bear." And stuff himself ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... good to hear the fire roarin' when it's stormin' bad. Ther' ain't no tellin' when this'll let up." He jerked his head backward ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... little daughter, And she was given to me To lead me gently backward To the Heavenly Father's knee, That I, by the force of nature, 5 Might in some dim wise divine The depth of his infinite patience To this ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... verses (with the exception of some still earlier ones written in 1856 to the sweetheart who became his wife), which were addressed to his friend and comrade E. M. Allen, subsequently the husband of Elizabeth Akers, the author of "Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight." The lines to E. M. A. were printed in the "Saturday Press." Because they are the first of our author's verses to appear in ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs. Cordis had seen her backward glance, and noted her steps grow slower with a complacent smile. It was this which emboldened him, in spite of the short acquaintance, to venture on the line ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... surprise to the gang-leader, who expected least of all to be attacked in his own territory. He retreated backward, still clutching the kites, and divided between desire to fight and desire to ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... distant memory, but no matter—recognized Poland, the Parisienne, with the painted face and the violent scent. Trampy took a step backward. He expected a scene, though he owed her nothing, after all; but she did not seem angry, no. On the contrary, she looked at him with a roguish eye. She knew of Trampy's marriage, no doubt, as she knew of his conquests, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... log from beside the hearth and sat on the driest end of it, while their guest occupied the stool. The young man, without turning away from his discontented, peevish brooding over the fire, vaguely reached backward for the whiskey-bottle and Uncle Billy's tin cup, to which he was assisted by the latter's hospitable hand. But on setting down the cup his eye caught sight of ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... toward formulated knowledge will be less rapid by induction, but it will be real progress with no backward steps. It may well be doubted whether, with average minds, real scientific knowledge is attainable except by a strong admixture of inductive processes. Perfection in the form and structure of our concepts is not to be attained by children nor by adults, but the ideal ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... perhaps, the quantity of faith which moves mankind. The study of Robert Boyle emphasizes some divisions among mankind. Some are content to look backward, to be satisfied with the achievements of the past, to rely on accepted systematization, doctrine, and explanation. Others, while dissatisfied with the past, have no guide to lead them anywhere. Still others, ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... comforted him a little, the poor fellow began to walk backward and forward between the door and the window in a manner that showed that he still wanted more deceptions of the same sort in order to arrive at the perfection of moral philosophy which the faithless beauty preached to him. Then, after two or three ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... castle entrance, and in his cartridge bag was my oil-can and rag-bag. I asked him for them, and he threw them to me rather clumsily. Trying to catch them I twisted for the second time the ankle I had hurt that morning. Fred mounted and rode out through the echoing entrance without a backward glance, and I sat down and pulled my boot off, for the agony was ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... steps, I rushed for him and kicked out with all my strength, when his face was level with my knees. The toe of my heavy shoe caught him solidly in the neck, and he went over backward almost in a complete somersault, landing with a crash upon the main deck just outside the window of Mr. Trunnell's room. He was stunned by the fall, and I hastened down to seize him before he could recover. Just as I gained the ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... The backward fall of the patient clearly explains the mechanism of production of the fissure, and throws light on the production of an oblique fracture such ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... as sea-sickness. Where the horizon opened widely, it pleased me to watch the curious effect of the rapid movement of near objects contrasted with the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from a right-hand window, for instance, the fences close by glide swiftly backward, or to the right, while the distant hills not only do not appear to move backward, but look by contrast with the fences near at hand as if they were moving forward, or to the left; and thus the whole landscape becomes a mighty ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... at the center of each limb, approximately two inches, and half an inch thick. The cross-section of this part was elliptical. At the center of the bow the handgrip was about an inch and a quarter wide by three-quarters thick, a cross-section being ovoid. At the tips it was curved gently backward and measured at the nocks three-quarters by one-half an inch. The nock itself was square shouldered and terminated in a pin half an inch in diameter and an ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... thus contrived, the mother and son went one morning to see Master Peter, who made them welcome; for traders, as you know, are never backward in this respect. They caused great quantities of all kinds of silk to be displayed before them, and chose what they required; but they could not agree upon the price, for James haggled on purpose, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... "I do not care to hear thee talk. Sing me all thy songs. I am hungry as a wolf for songs. Why, Nicholas, I must have songs! Come, lift up that honeyed throat of thine and sing another song. Be not so backward; surely I love thee, Nick, and thou wilt sing all of ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... some steps backward, for she had nearly fallen into Raoul's arms. Raoul, having shut the door, followed Bathilde into the room. Their two names, exchanged in a double cry, escaped their lips. Their hands met in an electric clasp, and all was forgotten. These two, who had so much to say to each other, yet remained ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... Street. The "Forward Liberal Club," opened in Great Hampton Street, October 30, 1880. A "Junior Liberal Club" celebrated their establishment by a meeting in the Town Hall, November 16, 1880. The Conservatives, of course, have not been at all backward in Club matters, for there has been some institution or other of the kind connected with the party for the last hundred years. The Midland Conservative Club was started July 4, 1872, and has its head-quarters ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... his stick. His white head, shaded by his limp black hat, was bent down close to them. There was a slow, pondering expression on his face, but an excited gleam in his eye. Presently, he pointed backward toward a little unhewn log shanty that served as a barn, and rising with unwonted alacrity, ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock |
