"Backwards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes, she suddenly saw a little figure moving along the path she was looking at. She rubbed her eyes and looked again—the figure had disappeared, but instead she saw clearly in the moonlight two butterflies flitting about the same path, darting first backwards, then forwards, as if inviting ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Paxton!" cried Pepper, and he gave the cadet a quick shove backwards. Paxton bumped into Reff Ritter, lost his footing, and fell over the dress-suit case in the ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... investigator wishes to study an event in the past history of man, he may most readily call up the picture from the memory of nature, but if he desires to fix the time of the incident, he will be obliged to count backwards by the motion of the heavenly bodies. For that purpose he generally uses the measure provided by the sun's precession: Each year the sun crosses the earth's equator about the twenty-first of March. Then day ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... two hundred yards before the blue line saw them through the haze. The hill blazed and hissed in their faces. The massed infantry behind the guns found their marks. Men dropped right and left, sank in grey heaps or fell forward on their faces—some were knocked backwards down the slope. Yet without a pause ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... smiling, and he looked at the grim face of the old gardener, who walked slowly backwards as he drew ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... summons from the man made us prepare to descend, the full-grown owl making no effort to escape, but blinking at us, and making a soft, hissing noise. The goblin-looking younger one, however, gaped widely, and seemed to tumble over backwards from the weight of its head. It was so deplorable and old-looking a creature that it seemed impossible that it could ever grow into a soft, thickly feathered bird like the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Moving slowly backwards, he held out one hand the hand that had proved all kindness and comfort and, snapping a finger and thumb, clicked his tongue in a ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... rare, and their howling is only heard in the lonely night, and then even that sign of their fury is but a strange occurrence, until it is heard no more; so in Hazlet, the many-headed monsters, which breed in the slime of a fallen human heart, were one by one slain or driven backwards by watchfulness, and shame, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... (chaps. ii.): "Your wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what manner so ever ye will." Usually this is understood as meaning in any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St. George, in France, le Postillon); "Cursed be who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!" Some hold the Koranic passage to have been revealed in confutation ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Cathedral, with its gorgeous facade and lace-like spire, had a Red Cross flag waving over the nave while a wireless apparatus was installed on the spire. Sentries paced backwards and forwards on the uncompleted tower, which dominates the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... by moonlight. I had a moment of painful saisissement when I felt almost certain that we should run into my dear colleague Gros, who had grounded in a little gunboat at one of the worst bends of the river. We only saved him by dropping an anchor from the stern, and going backwards full speed. The Yangtze was bad enough, but we never used to go on at night, and there was no danger of collisions. This ship looks also as if she would go head over heels much more easily than the 'Furious.' I am waiting for Parkes and the General before I decide as to landing, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... with your Right-leg, keeping as much as may be your Arm back, and the Spear exactly to the Rear, sloaping the Pike to the same height as Shouldering; then bring with your Left-hand the Butt-end backwards, turning the Head with your Right; so quit it with that Hand, then taking hold on the Butt-end, Charge Breast high, keeping the Palm of your Hand open against the Butt-end, your Left-Elbow under the Pike, and your Left-toe in Line with the Spear; and when you Charge it must be directly ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Bigot stepped backwards. He was not sure but a poniard glittered in the clenched hand of Angelique. It was but the flash of her diamond rings as she lifted it suddenly. She ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the court, had pretended to be estranged from the Whigs, and had promised to act as a spy upon them; that he had thus obtained admittance to the royal closet, had vowed fidelity, had been promised large pecuniary rewards, and had procured blank passes which enabled him to travel backwards and forwards across the hostile lines. All these things he protested that he had done solely in order that he might, unsuspected, aim a deadly blow at the government, and produce a violent outbreak of popular feeling against ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were sufficient three Thugs would be allotted to every victim, so that on the signal being given two of them could lay hold of his hands and feet, while the Bhurtot or strangler passed the rumal over his head and tightened it round his neck, forcing the victim backwards and not relaxing his hold till life was extinct. The rumal or 'handkerchief,' always employed for throttling victims, was really a loin-cloth or turban, in which a loop was made with a slip-knot. The ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... making a complete circuit, through a needle introduced in acupuncture, through wires, and through the patient's mouth, found, by means of a multiplier of SCHWEIGHER with a magnetic needle, that the electro-magnetic rotation could be readily produced; at least so far as to effect small vibrations backwards and forwards. On repeating it with two needles, one of them run into an artery and another into a vein, or one into the medulla spinalis, at the neck, and another into an extremity, in a rabbit, no effect whatever took place.—Magendie's ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... Julian languidly—"Legs, in slang parlance, are sometimes known as 'pins,'- -therefore, when you say I 'pin' you down, you use an expression which is, like the 'mobled queen' in Hamlet, good. Be unpinned, good priest—and remember that you must be prepared to say your prayers backwards, next ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... that, after she was beyond the Manse, she repented not having gone in there, yet still she had no great alarm. However, about half way down the holm, the snow fell so thick as completely to blind her, and the wind drove her backwards and forwards so violently, that at last, she did not know where she was. The last thing she recollected, was finding herself under the rock; and as it sheltered her a little, she thought it best to sit down and regain her strength before ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... can't stir from the boy, they are giving him champagne every ten minutes; she has the nurse, and Spencer is backwards and forwards; I think they will pull him through, but it is a near, a very near touch. Good, patient, unselfish ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beach, and was, I believe, lifted up upon his legs by certain beachmen. I had my eye upon the boat, which was now near the shore; I had an idea that there was a man under it; I flung off my coat and hat, and went a little way into the sea, about parallel to some beachmen who were moving backwards and forwards as the waves advanced and receded. I now saw a man as a wave recoiled lying close by the boat in the reflux. I dashed forward and made a grip at the man, then came a tremendous wave which tumbled me heels over ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... ever-growing, long, slender and curved, and without enamel. Those of the upper jaw are directed upwards from their bases, so that they never enter the mouth, but pierce the skin of the face, thus resembling horns rather than teeth; they curve backwards, downwards, and finally often forwards again, almost or quite touching the forehead. Dr A. R. Wallace remarks that "it is difficult to understand what can be the use of these horn-like teeth. Some of the old writers supposed that they served as hooks by which the creature ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... darkness, except for the dim little paraffin hand-lamp the Sisters kindly lent me, which, for precaution's sake, had to be placed on the floor. Extraordinary noises emanated from those long uncarpeted passages, echoing backwards and forwards, in the ceiling, till they seemed to pertain to the world of spirits. The snoring of the men on the relief guard was like the groans of a dying man, the tread of those on duty like the march of a mighty army. Then would ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... their fox. Looking in that direction, they presently saw the summit of one of the highest of the range of hills that encircle the town of Cheltenham, covered with horsemen and pedestrians, who kept moving backwards and forwards on the "mountain's brow," looking in the distance more like a flock of sheep than anything else. Jorrocks, being all right again and up to anything, proposed a start to the wood, and though he thought they should hardly reach it before the hounds ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the Dictionary. For obvious reasons Polly did not care to read the Bible at present. "Robinson Crusoe" she knew already by heart, but found it slightly amusing trying to make something of the sentences read backwards. The Dictionary was her final resource, and she managed to pass many tedious hours working straight through it page after page. She had got as far as M, and life was becoming insupportable, when ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... the dining-room and sat down at the table, as much for the purpose of getting something for Kate as to eat myself. I was scarcely seated, when I was thrown over backwards, chair and all, and found myself lying on the floor, held ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... the dull rumble of traffic. Before the door of one of these tiny houses—one without a light in the little downstairs window—the cab had come to a standstill. Mrs Verloc's mother got out first, backwards, with a key in her hand. Winnie lingered on the flagstone path to pay the cabman. Stevie, after helping to carry inside a lot of small parcels, came out and stood under the light of a gas-lamp belonging to the Charity. The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... slowly backwards, giving the pictures such a farewell gaze as a lover gives his love. Outside on the landing, La Cibot tapped his bony arm. His rapt contemplations had put an ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... properly out of that idleness which leads to mischief. For on the afternoon of the fourth day, we broke one wheel of the ox cart and hay rack, while "coasting" in it. There was a long slope in the east field; and we coasted there, all getting into the cart and letting it run down backwards, dragging the "tongue" on the ground behind it: not the proper manner of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... day, which will be followed by others, is already complete. Everything is there. It is the most terrible attempt at a thrust backwards that has ever been essayed. Never has such a crumbling of civilization been seen. All that formed the edifice is now in ruin; the soil is strewn with the fragments. In one night the inviolability ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... all right, enough still to satisfy the uninitiated. But it was distortion in the wrong way! The top of the wheel, which goes fastest and ought to be most indistinct, is, in the fake, as sharp as any other part. It is a small mistake, but fatal. That picture is really at high speed - backwards! It is ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... their mysterious changes, in fulness of power and of consciousness, bathed in glory, which was as their native air now. They are witnesses of an immortal life, and proofs that His yet unpierced hands held the keys of life and death. He opened the gate which moves backwards to no hand but His, and summoned them; and they come, with no napkins about their heads, and no trailing grave-clothes entangling their feet, and own Him as the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a savage brute and often takes a delight in attacking those who have never done him any harm. There he was already, jumping over a ditch right into the middle of their path. He lowered his head and walked a few steps backwards. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... presently that the great weight of copper money was gone from her shoulder, and that it was evening, and that Chloris was coming down Mabel Place to meet her. Chloris was wagging her whole person from the shoulder-blades backwards; she never found adequate the tail that had originally been provided for that purpose. Jay stumbled up the step of Eighteen Mabel Place, and found at last the ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... of the carriage, perched on a kind of bar and holding on tightly to the springs, was Bland. Barefooted urchins often ride in this way, and appear to enjoy themselves until the coachman lashes backwards at them with his whip. I never saw a grown man do it before, and I should have supposed that it would be most uncomfortable. Bland, however, seemed quite cheerful, and I admired the instinct which led him to attach himself to Moyne's carriage. He made sure of being ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... somebody in. 'Course he wouldn't come himself. That would be too much to expect. But he actually said that if you decided to fetch Melviny he'd go and get her—an' from him that means a heap. I 'most fell over backwards when he suggested it, for you know how Martin ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... women," being of the Tanka tribe, were well situated for this purpose, for they had many relations of kindred and friendship all up and down the Canton river, and the business of the preparation of slave girls for the foreigners and for foreign markets (as the trade expanded) gradually extended backwards up the Canton river, until many of its boats were almost given over to it. "Flower-boats" were probably never unknown to this river, but, besides their use as brothels, they became stocked with little girls under training for vice, under the incitement ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... his hind legs, you will know what was being done to Umboo. When you try to teach your dog this trick, you generally take him where he can stand up in a corner, so he can lean against the wall and will not fall over backwards or sideways; for that is what he feels like doing when you ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... Each contributed his share of gas to inflate the painted balloon to which we all clung, in the expectation that it would presently soar with us to the stars. But it only went up over the out-houses, dodged backwards and forwards two or three times, and finally flopped down with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... heavy seal ring was displayed upon his white left hand. Mr. Braham having seated himself, deliberately surveyed the entire house, made a remark to one of his assistants, and then taking an ivory-handled knife from his pocket began to pare his finger nails, rocking his chair backwards and forwards slowly. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pockets of my dressing-gown, which, by the by, is far the handsomest piece of old brocade I have ever seen,—-a large running pattern of gold hollyhocks, with silver stalks and leaves, upon a rich, deep, Pompadour-coloured ground,—and, walking slowly backwards and forwards in my room, I continued,—"There never was, there never can have been, so happy a fellow as myself! What on earth have I to wish for more? Maria adores me—I adore Maria. To be sure, she's detained at Brighton; but I hear from her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... comes when poor little Cinderella sits alone of a night in the beautiful palace. The courtiers have gone home in their carriages. The Lord High Chancellor has bowed himself out backwards. The Gold-Stick-in-Waiting and the Grooms of the Chamber have gone to their beds. The Maids of Honour have said "Good-night," and drifted out of the door, laughing and whispering among themselves. The ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... scattered some more flowers over the altar and sat on the small stool for a while, murmuring the last prayers. He repeatedly held the palms of his hands over the flame of the tapers and rubbed his face with them. Then he walked round the altar three times, and, having knelt three times, retreated backwards to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... a row of trees near the town which he said his father had planted, and which, therefore, he never could look at but with emotion, though he passed them often as he went backwards and forwards on his little journeys to and from his birthplace. His father, he added, had once been a rich man, but had expended all his fortune to support one son. Unfortunately for himself as well as his family, his father ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... withdrew. Left to himself, the Admiral tossed, and turned, and fumed, and swore, lay still for a while, and then repeated the process backwards. After a time the bed-clothes began to prick him, and the heat to become a positive torture. He leapt out, and tore at the bell-rope, until it came away in his ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... threads to twist in the allotted space was so great that if it had now to be done, I should probably not attempt its accomplishment." His next step was to provide thin metallic discs, to be used as bobbins for conducting the threads backwards and forwards through the warp. These discs, being arranged in carrier-frames placed on each side of the warp, were moved by suitable machinery so as to conduct the threads from side to side in forming the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... guessed clearly their doom; abashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who were uncertain—rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking than the others, biting at their knuckles as they peeped upwards. There were those hopeful, yet searching fearfully backwards in the wilderness of memory, chasing and weighing their sins; and these last, even when their bliss was sealed and their steps set on an easy path, went faltering, not daring to look around again, their ears strained to catch ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... was not always old. She was not very old at the time of the 'adventure.' You remember, children, my telling you that during her husband's life, my grandmother and he used to spend part of the winter in the old house where she afterwards ended her days. My grandfather used to drive backwards and forwards to his farms, of which he had several in the neighbourhood, and the town was a sort of central place for the season of bad weather and short days. Sometimes he used to be kept rather late, for besides his own affairs, he had, like his son, ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... a greater length of time and with greater speed, so that, though we may be afterwards brought back to the right way, we cannot nevertheless arrive at the destined place as soon as if we had not moved backwards at all; so in philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... was generally yellow. It had two good seats inside, and a double one had a second seat, where two persons sat backwards. The cushion behind lifted up and disclosed a long narrow recess called the swordcase, because, when there were highwaymen on the roads, people kept their weapons there. There were sometimes two, sometimes one seat outside, called ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slowly, swinging his leg backwards and forwards and making the bed creak under his weight, "there aren't any giving or taking—it's ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... He went out backwards, to keep his promise. The brown woodland was gay with him for a day and a night; for he sang nearly all the time with unflagging spirits. But Jehane spent part of the interval in the chapel, with her ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... to myself, till a shout told me that not the ass, but Hassan had departed over the cliff's edge. Watching his opportunity and being, it was clear, a first-rate swimmer, he had flung himself backwards in the midst of the confusion and falling into deep water, promptly dived. About twenty yards from the shore he came up for a moment, then dived again heading for the island. I dare say I could have ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... somehow through the cleft, and sat down, shaking, upon the grass of the slope beyond; but, happening to throw myself backwards in the reeling faintness induced by my fright and the pain of my head, my eyes encountered a sight that woke me at once ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... sir, if I haven't seen him meself, many a night, sir, as he climbed the cliffs backwards ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... am not!" she said between her teeth. But the perspiration trickled down her hollow cheeks. Suddenly, unable to hide the horrible agony which was gnawing in her bosom, she uttered a short, harsh cry, and rocked herself backwards and forwards. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... woman answered. Olive started a step backwards; she would have fainted, but at the moment the words were spoken Mrs. Lawler's face was revealed in a beam of weak light that fell through a vista ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... repeated in a more mumbling and lower and less certain voice, "I think I have got hold of it. I go backwards again through the gate to the right, just as then I went to the left, and after that it cannot be very far, for I see those two rocks in front of me. Besides which," he muttered less and less coherently, "I ought to have remembered of course those very high and silent hills ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... had stamped there, still lingered on his face. Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled, then he began to hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than usual, and his shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left, in the most absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he abandoned himself to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he were the lifeless and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... with her. Matty hung on one arm, Alice on another, Sophy hopped backwards in front. Before she quite knew that she meant to do so, Beatrice had asked the Bells to join the tennis party that evening. They ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... situations." The artist, too, has his properties. And the recognition of this truth caused Massillon to say, "The great preacher has but one sermon, yet out of this he makes many—by giving portions of it backwards, or beginning in the middle and working both ways, or presenting patchwork pieces, tinted and colored by his mood." All public speakers have canned goods they fall back upon when the fresh fruit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... indirectly. As he brushed between two grass stems, the skin of his lips split asunder, and, when he entered the water again, that friendly element gently forced its way into the gap. Every forward movement that he made now eased his old worn skin a little backwards. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... up the saloon companion-way when the engines, easily heard from here, suddenly began a thunderous pow-wow; the ship lurched forward, and from the blackness of the open hatch above came a voice like the sudden clamour of sea-gulls. Then she was flung backwards and stretched, half-stunned, on the mat at the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... royal children brought their instruments of music, their menats and their sistra, and they rattled their sistra, and they passed backwards and forwards before His Majesty, saying, "Thy hands perform beneficent acts, O King. The graces of the Lady of Heaven rest [upon thee]. The goddess Nubt giveth life to thy nostrils, and the Lady of the Stars joineth herself to thee, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... "if it comes to love, and reminiscences of loving, that is precisely the region in which the exact truth is least frequently told. Maturity casts its prim and clear-cut shadow backwards upon the vague and glittering landscape of youth. Whether he speaks of books or of girls, the aged reminiscent attributes to himself a delicacy of taste, a singleness and constancy of affection, and a romantic fervour of ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... are. I expect Ushant has slammed the door on us long ago. Our little world is bounded by the four walls of the cabin. All day we lie and listen to the swish of the waves as they tumble past, and watch our dressing-gowns hanging on the door swing backwards and forwards with the motion. At intervals the stewardess comes in, a nice Scotswoman,—Corrie, she tells me, is her home-place,—and brings the menu of breakfast—luncheon—dinner, and we turn away our heads and say, "Nothing—nothing!" ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... knee; the men-at-arms tumbled backwards; Ebbo pressed the hand he held to his lips, and fainted away. The bugle sounded ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... separated from one another and show the sepals between them. [54] In the same manner bluebells vary in the size and shape of the corolla, which may be wide or narrow, bell-shaped or conical, with the tips turned downwards, sidewards or backwards. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... are more nearly parallel than is due to a radiation from the centre. These streaks have, also, been seen bent at right angles at the middle of their height, as a flame is by means of a blowpipe, precisely analogous to cometary rays being driven backwards to form the tail, as already described, thus indicating a common origin. If the moon had an atmosphere, we should, no doubt, see a greater display; but, having no rotating vortex to protect her from ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... one day, after being on duty at the races at Victoria Park, to the barracks. As I was passing the Adelaide Hospital he stopped dead. After a few moments of gentle persuasion I gave him a sharp touch with my spurs. He reared straight up and fell backwards on the road. Luckily my face escaped injury, but my chest and back were nearly flattened out. A few days in hospital put me all right, and I returned to duty. He chose a fit ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... already retired. They of course insisted upon seeing him; and he presently appeared, wrapped in a dressing-gown, and haughtily demanded their business with him at such an hour. The answer smote him as with a thunderbolt, and he staggered backwards, till arrested by the wall of the apartment, and then sank feebly, nervelessly, into a chair. Eagerly, after a pause, he questioned the intruders upon the nature of the evidence against him. Mr. Sharpe briefly replied that Edwards was in custody, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... already fixed in position to a support, it will be found very advantageous to use a hooked nozzle. The nozzle shown in the sketch is not hooked enough for this work, which requires that the flame be directed 'backwards towards the worker. With a little practice such a flame may be used perfectly well for blowing operations on the table, as well as for getting at the back of ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one." So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards. ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... had caught her arm. The girl stood still, staring and marvelling, while her mistress went noiselessly into the bedroom and sat down on the far side of the bed, leaning backwards till her head was near the pillows, which she took ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... organ balcony, and oaken altar-piece are tasteless and pagan. The font was the gift of Thomas Morley, in 1673, and is encircled by a favourite old Greek palindrome, that is, a puzzle sentence that reads equally well backwards ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Harley's going out yesterday has put him a little backwards. I called twice, and sent, for I am in pain for him. Ford caught me, and made me dine with him on his Opera-day; so I brought Mr. Lewis with me, and sat with him till six. I have not seen Mr. Addison these three weeks; all our friendship is over. I go to no Coffee-house. I presented a parson of the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... playing cards or walking backwards and forwards, and so have not seen one of the thousand pin-pricks with which your wife's self-love has been tattooed, you come and ask her in a whisper, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... am hitchin' the horse behind the wagon and to resoom backwards. The Reunion wuz put off a week and the Suffrage Meetin' wuz two days away, so I told Lorinda I didn't believe I would have a better time to carry Serepta Pester's errents to Washington, D.C. Josiah said he guessed he would stay and help wait on Hiram Cagwin, and I approved on't, for Lorinda ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... dream-experiences all seem to belong to a wholly different person from myself, a light-hearted, childish, careless creature, full of animation and inquisitiveness, buoyant and thoughtless, content to look neither forwards nor backwards, wholly without responsibility or intelligence, just borne along by the pleasure of the moment, perfectly harmless and friendly as a rule, a sort of cheerful butterfly. That is not in the least my waking temperament; but it fills ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the banks of the Missouri we turned to the West, when we had a few races with various success. We were afterwards led backwards and forwards at the pleasure of the buffalo herds. They crossed and recrossed our path until we had travelled to almost every point ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... essential defect of system. Under our modern policy, military power—though it may be the growth of one man's life—soon takes root; a succession of campaigns is required for its extirpation; and it revolves backwards to its final extinction through all the stages by which originally it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly impossible from the solitariness of the Roman power; co-rival nations who might balance the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... keep their seat under many difficult and dangerous circumstances, but they contend that the English generally have not sufficient command over their horses in making them obey every wish of the rider, whilst the accomplished French cavalier will make his horse go backwards, sideways, right, or left, in a direct line, will cause him to stop in an instant whilst at full speed, will make him bear on his near or off leg just as he chooses, or make him place either foot on a five franc piece, and in fact ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... creations is all the nearer to the truth of our life because it is so arbitrary and "impossible." He seems to go backwards and forwards with a torch, throwing knobs, jags, wrinkles, corrugations, protuberancies, cavities, horns, and snouts into terrifying illumination. But we are like that! That is what we actually are. That is how the Pillar of Fire sees us. Then, again, are we to limit our interest, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... was to see; for its whole orb was a-shimmer with enamel and white ivory and electrum, and it glowed with shining gold; and there were zones of cyanus [1802] drawn upon it. In the centre was Fear worked in adamant, unspeakable, staring backwards with eyes that glowed with fire. His mouth was full of teeth in a white row, fearful and daunting, and upon his grim brow hovered frightful Strife who arrays the throng of men: pitiless she, for she took away the mind and senses of poor wretches ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... and sailed for Headquarters, through darkness made visible by the fires blazing on the battlefield. No shooting. Got on the wires and found no news from Anzac nor more from de Lisle. Crossed backwards and forwards the best part of the night between my tent and the G.S. tent, but de Lisle had heard nothing definite enough to report. Brodrick still has fever. Ruthven has ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... during the fortnight in which he was carried backwards and forwards between his prison and the Bow Street Police-office, was able to maintain some outward show of manly dignity,—as though he felt that the terrible accusation and great material inconvenience ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... The huge vase swayed backwards and forwards; it seemed to be uncertain whether or no to topple over on to the head of one of the old men, but eventually determined to go the other way, and came crashing over towards the German poet, who darted out of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of distraction, for their husbands and their children, from whom they had been separated but a moment before, never more to be united: they stretched out their arms and entreated to be allowed to pass in order to rejoin them; but being carried backwards and forwards by the crowd, and overcome by the pressure, they sunk under without being even remarked. Amidst the tremendous noise of a furious hurricane, the firing of cannon, the whistling of the storm and of the bullets, the explosion of shells, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... from the bull in having a slighter and more graceful head, a slender neck, no hump; and the points of the horns do not turn towards each other at the tip, but bend slightly backwards, and they are much smaller; the legs too are of a purer white. The very young bull has the forehead narrower than the cow, and the bony frontal ridge scarcely perceptible. The horns too turn more ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Universe intelligible regards it as an eternal rhythm playing and pulsing outwards from spirit to matter (pravritti) and then backwards and inwards from matter to spirit (nirvritti). This idea seems implied by Sankara's view that creation is similar to the sportive impulses of exuberant youth and the Bhagavad-gita is familiar with pravritti and nirvritti, but the double character of the rhythm is emphasized most clearly ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... equally shapeless feather sandals of the blacks who "go Kurdaitcha," that is, as avengers of blood. I have nowhere else found this practice as to the shoes, which, after all, cannot conceal the direction of the spoor from a native tracker. {37b} The trick of driving the cattle backwards answers to the old legend that Bruce reversed the shoes of his horse when he fled from the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... may in its protection Hasten to my native country, To my mother's Island-dwelling, Fly to her that waits my coming, With a mother's grave forebodings." Farther, farther, Lemminkainen Flew and soared on eagle-pinions, Looked about him, backwards, forwards, Spied a gray-hawk soaring near him, In his eyes the fire of splendor, Like the eyes of Pohyalanders, Like the eyes of Pohya's spearmen, And the gray-hawk thus addressed him: "Ho! There! ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... of rag-dolls—a grey-headed, bent-back old veteran named Mr. Kight. I happened to be calling on the two old gentlemen on the Fifth of November last year, and, entering the kitchen, and while shaking hands with Joe (who always roars with laughter when he clutches your hand, and shakes it backwards and forwards as if he meant never to let it go) little Mr. Wells came fumbling to my side, laughing and chuckling, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... hand. Ethelberta gave it a subtle movement backwards to imply that he was not to retain the prize, and said, 'One whose inner life is almost unknown to you, and whom you have scarcely seen except ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... and summoned together the waves of a whole sea and sent them singing full in Tintaggon's face. Then from Tintaggon's marble front the sea fell backwards crying on to a broken shore, and ripple by ripple straggled back ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... climbed it. The first man leapt gallantly down among the defenders and fell on the flags of the courtlage, breaking his ankle. The second, as he poised himself on the coping, was picked off by a shot from the attics and toppled backwards. The others stood by the foot of the ladder bawling ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the one science by a hypothesis in the other naturally adds no weight to its probability, either for the one or the other. Besides, we must not overlook the fact that the very point in the history of the development of languages on which the investigation, as it looks backwards, must at present pause—namely, the existence of linguistic roots—presumes a faculty of abstraction which can not be thought ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... heard, in England, under his very nose, of himself! Among other absurdities, I had, shortly before this very conversation, heard a respectable Englishman affirm that such was the morgue aristocratique of this nobleman, that he compelled his wife and daughters to walk backwards, in quitting his presence, as is done at court! This was said of a man, whom I found to be of more simple, off-hand, unpretending, gentleman-like deportment, whose demeanour had more of the nice tact which neither offends by superciliousness, nor wounds ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... passing backwards and forwards." Lady Alexandrina said nothing further, but led the way into the other large room. That also was lighted, and there were in it four or live persons. Lady Rosina was reading a work on the Millennium, with a light to herself in one corner. Her brother John was asleep in an arm-chair, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is awful. I said to her, 'Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?' and she shouted like a fiend: 'For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!' She threw herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. That wicked ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Through the half-open doorway she saw a girl standing before an easel. She had laid down her palette and brushes, and with bold sure strokes of the pencil was sketching against time, leaning a little backwards, with her head in a critically observant pose. The voice ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Backwards and forwards they swayed, and first one was uppermost and then the other; but at length Ian worked his leg round the giant's and threw him to the ground. Then he called to the raven, and the raven came flapping towards him, and said: 'Put ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Vienna, they at last appeared in sight of that capital, while the care which they had taken to fortify their conquests, showed that their visit was not likely to be a short one. After a long and destructive circuit through every province of Germany, the stream of war had at last rolled backwards to its source, and the roar of the Swedish artillery now reminded the terrified inhabitants of those balls which, twenty-seven years before, the Bohemian rebels had fired into Vienna. The same theatre of war brought again similar actors on the scene. Torstensohn invited Ragotsky, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... tossing mane the eyes of his rider glared down at me as, laughing exultant, I wrenched savagely at the bridle until, whinnying with pain and terror, the great beast, losing his balance, crashed over backwards into the dust. Leaping clear of those desperate, wild-thrashing hooves, I found myself beset by divers fellows armed with staves, who closed upon me, shouting; and above these, her eyes wide, her full, red lips close-set, my lady looked down on me and I (meeting ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... they were moved, for the spirit of life was in them: but they never went back (see Ezek. i. 19-21). It should be the same with the soul: it should suffer itself to be moved and guided by the living Spirit who is in it, following His direction, and no other. Now this Spirit will never lead it to go backwards, that is, to reflect upon the creature, or to lean upon itself, but always to go forward, pressing continually ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... of course," flung back the guide. "You said this was mountain climbing backwards. It'll be that way ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... carved with initials, and indicating the boundaries of the respective properties, are encountered every eight or ten yards, into such narrow strips are the vineyards divided. Large carts with railed open sides are continually passing backwards and forwards to pick these baskets up, and when one of them has secured its load it is driven slowly—in order that the grapes may not be shaken—to the neighbouring pressoir, so extreme is the care observed throughout every stage of the process ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... to come—that he should put his foot on that street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master with such a stately, grave look!—only a dog, yet he could go backwards and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he—No, he would not think of that! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... their side the brush began to quiver. A moment later beside Cameron's face a hand carrying a rifle parted the screen of spruce boughs. Quick as a flash Cameron seized the wrist, gripping it with both hands, and, putting his weight into the swing, flung himself backwards; at the same time catching the body with his knee, he heaved it clear over their heads and landed it hard against a tree. The rifle tumbled from the Indian's hand and he lay squirming on the ground. Immediately as Jerry sprang ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... knew what to do for the best. But eventually she tried to take her mind in hand, for she was afraid of it, afraid of its age, afraid of the effect its age might eventually have upon her appearance. So she strove to train it backwards towards youthfulness. For now she was sure that she was not one of those fortunate women who have naturally young minds which refuse to grow old. She knew a few such women. She envied them almost bitterly. There was no need for them ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the breast so grimly that he maketh him bend backwards over the saddle behind, and so beareth him to the ground, legs uppermost, over his horse's croup, and trampleth him under his horse's feet. Lancelot was minded to alight to the ground to take him, but Briant of the Isles cometh and maketh him mount again perforce. The ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... 'adn't good regalia, An' our Lodge was old an' bare, But we knew the Ancient Landmarks, An' we kep' 'em to a hair; An' lookin' on it backwards It often strikes me thus, There ain't such things as infidels, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... he was singing ceased; a jerky, nervous shout attracted attention to what had happened; then the hush of anguish seized the horror-stricken spectators who watched the tragedy, and soon all was over. He tumbled backwards, and the sails all being loosened to air them and the topsail yard at the mast head, he fell over it, broke his fall on the foreyard, clutched at the reef points of the foresail, and then tumbled headfirst into the jolly-boat which lay at the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... because other men, and those few and far between, have laboured amid disbelief, ridicule, and error; needing again and again to retrace their steps, and to unlearn more than they learnt, seeming to go backwards when they were really progressing most: and now we have entered into their labours, and find them, as I have just said, more wondrous than all the poetic dreams of a Bonnet or a Darwin. For who, after all, to take a few broad instances (not to enlarge on the ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... the effort of your imagination, you are no longer conscious, to be obliged to say, in your distraction, to your distracted partner in woe, "Please lift your arm from my waist, you are pulling my head down backwards," is a ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... in returning it was not caused by his own fault. "Yet," say you, "although the player is not wanting in skill, because he did one part of his duty, and was able to do the other part, yet in such a case the game is imperfect, for its perfection lies in sending the ball backwards and forwards." I am unwilling to expose this fallacy further; let us think that it is the game, not the player that is imperfect: so likewise in the subject which we are discussing, the thing which is given lacks something, ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... is not a strong back to the seat. Fortunately if I fall asleep I shall drop forwards, not backwards." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... future for a race that habitually goes backwards?" he questioned, with a boyish gayety which she had never seen in him before. "How ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... big athlete would make history for some policeman, his friend could not doubt, before he got there. Rex had put his hand to this intoxicated plow and he must not look back, even when the prospect backwards was so bewilderingly attractive, so tantalizingly easy. He stammered badly when, at length, the silence which followed the soft voice had ...
— A Good Samaritan • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... happiness. Every morning she rose with the sun, and as she opened the door and let in the scent of the furze and the dewy grass, her whole being responded to the voice of Nature around her. She was constantly running backwards and forwards between Garthowen and the cottage. Nothing went well at the farm without her, and in the cottage there were a score of things which she loved to do for Sara. There were the fowls to be fed, the eggs to be hunted for, the garden to ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... (Sisymbrium, or Erisymum) grows by our roadsides, and on waste grounds, where it seems to possess a peculiar aptitude for collecting and retaining dust. The pods are downy, close pressed to the stem, and the leaves hairy with their points turned backwards. It is named by the French "St. Barbara's Hedge Mustard," and the Singer's Plant, "herbe au chantre," or "herbe au chanteur." Up to the time of Louis XIV, it was considered an infallible remedy for loss of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... laughing and crying at once, it seemed as if it was his joy which wept and his sadness which smiled. His first agitation dispelled, the predominating expression of his face was a dreamy and startled sweetness. He moved backwards from Gilbert and fell upon a chair at the end of ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Austrian officer, who had a cap on, and was therefore at the time off duty, strike, with his left hand, a young man who was on that side of him, with a blow which hit him on the face, and I suppose it was given with some force, for the young man who received it staggered backwards; and I observed that, as soon as he had recovered himself, another Austrian officer, who was the one at the head of the soldiers, and marching with them with his drawn sword, strike with it the same young man on the head, inflicting a wound on his forehead, from which blood began ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the movable kitchen cupboard, which was to be capable of containing grocery, pickles, crockery, and house-linen in the utmost compactness without confusion. Hetty, once more in her own dress, with her neckerchief pushed a little backwards on this warm evening, was seated picking currants near the window, where Adam could see her quite well. And so the time passed pleasantly till Adam got up to go. He was pressed to come again soon, but not to stay longer, for at this busy time sensible people ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... senseless they are. Crying she has lost the yellow gold, the bitch. What blockhead lost one penny? What is in the stomach of my purse this one minute? Three shillings—soferen—five pennies—half a penny—ticket railway. Hie backwards will I on Thursday on the surprise. No comfort is mine before I ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... W. was open or thinly wooded, and likely to be found so as far as the central downs and plains on the banks of the river Victoria. A new and very remarkable Ventilago was found this day.[*] I now again numbered the camps, continuing the series backwards, by a different character; this was numbered 77; the last, 76. The utility of these numbers along our surveyed line will be admitted, when the country is taken up, as they will not only serve to identify localities with the map, but may ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... have not been able to trace the thought to antiquity, this expression may have been the original of the celebrated axiom of Napoleon, which tells us that "revolutions never go backwards." At all events, such was the notion of Pliny Willoughby, Sen., as the namesake of the great Roman styled himself; and it was greatly admired by Pliny Willoughby, Jun., to say nothing of the opinions of Big Smash and Little Smash, both of whom ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... sunflowers, towards the light of royalty, as the bodies moved steadily on. Thus, on entering, the eyes were a little inclined to the right; as they got nearer to the meridian, they became gradually bent more aside; when opposite the table, every face, was full; and, in retiring, all were bent backwards over their owners' shoulders, constantly offering a dense crowd of faces, looking towards a common centre, while the bodies were coming on, or moving slowly off the stage. This, you will see, resembled in some measure ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... moment was at stake. The Senior Ministerial Whip is the danger-signal of the House of Commons; and the danger-signal was very much in evidence. Mr. Marjoribanks—of all Whips the most genial, even-tempered, and long-suffering, as well as the most effective—was to be seen, rushing backwards and forwards between the lobby and the Treasury bench, where, with Mr. Gladstone, he held whispered and apparently excited conversations. Meantime, there grew up in the House of Commons that mysterious sense of coming storm which ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... got worse instead of better. Where a clever effects-director might have started with the heavy sophisticated scent and switched to something lighter and airier as Jane was moved away from civilization, this one had done it backwards for some absolutely ridiculous reason. It finally got strong enough to distract me out of my characterization, and I came back to reality to realize once more that reality had been strong enough to cut into the concentration level of a halluscene. There was strong woman-presence in my room, ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... he uttered the words when the Marquis gained the side of the vehicle, and pulling up his horse till it almost fell in rearing backwards, he cried furiously, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... was brought to a stand before this assemblage, the Freigraf nodded his head and the guards in silence undid the thongs which pinioned together wrists and elbows, leaving the prisoner absolutely unfettered.—This done, the guard retreated backwards to the opposite wall, and Wilhelm stood alone before the seven sinister doomsmen. He expected that his examination, if the Court indulged in any such, would be begun by the Freigraf, but this was not the case. The last man to the left in the row had a small bundle of documents ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... shots were heard. Smoke curled up from among the rocks of the islet. The man at the helm and the man with the lead-line fell backwards into the boat. Ayrton's and Pencroft's balls had struck them both at ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne |
