"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that held him there. This wouldn't do. He backed away a little from Willems and Aissa, leaving them close together, then stopped and looked at both. The man and the woman appeared to him much further than they really were. He had made only about three steps backward, but he believed for a moment that another step would take him out of earshot for ever. They appeared to him slightly under life size, and with a great cleanness of outlines, like figures carved with great precision of detail and highly finished by a skilful ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the stags from Haeckeberga came forward to show their wrestling game. There were several pairs of stags who fought at the same time. They rushed at each other with tremendous force, struck their antlers dashingly together, so that their points were entangled; and tried to force each other backward. The heather-heaths were torn up beneath their hoofs; the breath came like smoke from their nostrils; out of their throats strained hideous bellowings, and the froth oozed down ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... to wait. A corner of the book had gone into the master's eye; he clapped his hand to it, and for a moment seemed lost in suffering. The next, he clenched for the boy a man's fist, and knocked him down. Cosmo fell backward over the form, struck his head hard on the foot of the next desk, and lay where ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... can hardly hope to reproduce. The shortcomings of youth are so pitilessly, so glaringly apparent. Not a rag to cover them from the discerning eye. And what a veil has fallen between us and the years of our offending. There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities. How loud and shrill the voice of the girl at our elbow. How soft the voice which from the far past breathes its gentle echo in our ears. How bouncing the vigorous young creatures ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... leaned her head forward on both hands, swaying her body slowly backward and forward for a few seconds; then taking the poker, she gave the coals a great flourish, which made the sparks fly to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... American Magazine. May "Threatened Collapse of Bergson boom in France." Current Opinion. July "The Banning of Bergson." Independent. Dec. "Bergson Looking Backward." Literary Digest. "Bergson on Germany's Moral ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... /bak'w*rd k*m-bat'*-bil'*-tee/ /n./ [CMU, Tektronix: from 'backward compatibility'] A property of hardware or software revisions in which previous protocols, formats, layouts, etc. are irrevocably discarded in favor of 'new and improved' protocols, formats, and layouts, leaving the previous ones not merely deprecated but actively ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... music changed and with it the girl's mood. She gave her head a little backward jerk and blinked the moisture from her eyes angrily. What was the matter with her? Surely she was the most ungrateful girl in the universe. If there was sorrow in the world for her then it must be of her own making. She had been shown almost unbelievable ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... In a backward stroke Miss Amelia's fingers, big and bony, struck my cheek a blow that nearly upset me. A red wave crossed her face, and her eyes snapped. I never had been so surprised in all my life. I was only going to tell her the truth. What she had said was altogether false. Ever since I could ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... through glass beads, only succeeds in making himself ridiculous. To be afraid to speak what is in your mind for fear you will make yourself unpopular, to be too cautious to mention the fact that you are having a new latch put on your front gate for fear that you might be over-communicative, to be backward in taking sides for fear of committing yourself to a losing cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelligence, but in the estimation of brainy folks it is a species of feline ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... resolved, after much deliberation, to enforce his legal rights to the utmost. The bailiff was sent to warn the backward tenants to come in with the rent, and he everywhere received the same answer—'We will pay no rent till our grievances are redressed.' Now all the missiles of the law were showered on the recusants—notices to quit, latitats, processes for arrears, &c. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the extent of aid I ever received from my husband in any of my domestic difficulties. He is a first-rate abstractionist, and can see to a hair how others ought to act in every imaginable, and I was going to say unimaginable case; but is just as backward about telling people what he thinks of them, and making everybody with whom he has anything to do toe the mark, as ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... Niemeyer, "Beobachtungen," etc., II.,350. "A very worthy man, professor in one of the royal colleges, said to me: 'What backward steps we have been obliged to take! How all the pleasure of teaching, all the love for our art, has been taken away from us by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Saturday," she said and turned to go. She longed to look back towards the kitchen where she felt sure that Elizabeth must have been wistfully listening, but Mrs. Page and Sadie following her to the door, gave her no chance for even a backward glance. ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... Monsieur; adieu, good sir Monsieur. Exit BURGESS. Then burst with tears, unhappy graduate; Thy fortunes still wayward and backward been; Nor canst thou thrive by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... and the drops to be given which sustained the life of the dying Minorite in the adjoining room. It made him uneasy, and when anxiety had once taken root in his heart it sent its shoots forward and backward, and he remembered many things in which Eva had been different the day before. Why had she whispered so long with Herr Pfinzing and then looked so sorrowfully at him, Biberli? Why had Frau Christine come not less than ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bottom with the hook! But Baptiste would show that fish his mistake. He pulled, pulled, stood up to pull; there was a sort of shake, a sudden give of the rope, and little Baptiste tumbled over backward as he jerked his line up from ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... even looking at them during the process. (*25) Another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible. (*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he counted all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred millions of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Nostrils and the Soft Palate.—The air finds its way to the lungs through the mouth or through the two openings in the nose called the nostrils. From each nostril, three small passages lead backward through the nose. At the back part of the nasal cavity the passages of the two sides of the nose come together in an open space, just behind the soft curtain which hangs down at the back part of the mouth. This curtain is called the soft ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... with familiar and domestic details. A nation has no individuality. No single phrase can fairly sum up the characteristics of a people. But a town is like one face picked out of a crowd, a face that shows not merely the experience of our human span, but the traces of centuries that go backward into unrecorded time. In all this slow development a character that is individual and inseparable is gradually formed. That character never fades. It is to be found first in the geographical laws of permanent ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the centre of which was a summer-house. To the heart of this shrubbery led three paths, one of which Stafford discovered quite close at hand. The sound of gravel under his feet gave him an idea, and he began walking backward till he came to the shadow of a tree, and then, simulating the sound of retreating footsteps, ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... future," he cried, leaning forward with an expression of solemn warning, "The future is in our own hands, ladies and gentlemen of the city of Plattville. Is it not so? We will find it so. Turn it over in your minds." He leaned backward and folded his hands benevolently on his stomach and said in a searching whisper; "Ponder it." He waited for them to ponder it, and little Mr. Swanter, the druggist and bookseller, who prided himself on his politeness and who was seated directly in front, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... stand, the grass is glowing; Doubtless you are passing fair! But I hear the north wind blowing, And I feel the cold night-air. Can I look on your sweet faces, And your proud heads backward thrown, From this dusk of leaf-strewn places With the dumb woods ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... move forward; those just behind followed suit and so on to the rear. The result was that I saw a wave of compression, of the same sort as a sound-wave in air, move through the throng. The individual motions were forward but the wave moved backward. No better example of a wave of this kind could be devised. Now the actions and reactions between the air-particles in a sound wave are purely mechanical. Not so here. There was neither pushing nor pulling of the ordinary kind. Each person moved forward because his mind ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the attraction to be a Mohar! Thy chariot lies there [before] thee; thy [strength] has fallen lame; thou treadest the backward path at eventide. All thy limbs are ground small. Thy [bones] are broken to pieces. Sweet is [sleep]. Thou awakest. There has been a time for a thief in this unfortunate night. Thou wast alone, in the belief that the brother could not come to the brother. Some grooms entered ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... round, and glared vindictively on the poor old Hall, which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace; and, with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backward, as if not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are not riveted to railroad ties but the spikes are driven close to each rail so that the heads hook over the edge and hold the rail down without absolutely preventing its movement forward and backward. Why should rails be laid in ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... platoon of ancestors appears to have been moved backward or forward, en bloc not, we may be sure, capriciously, but in obedience to some law that we do not understand. I know a man to whose character not an ancestor since the seventeenth century has contributed an element. Intellectually he is a contemporary of John Dryden, whom naturally ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... nor goes forward, nor goes backward, nor remains as it is; It sleeps not, rises not: known ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... backward. Now the prow of the war canoe was less than half a length from the stern of ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... and another person; but it should seem that other persons were not named; and Barter tells you that Hicks and another person (who afterwards proved to be Nelthorp) are promised to be entertained, and ordered to come in the evening. But not to go backward and forward, as he has done in his evidence, denying what he afterwards acknowledged that he saw anybody besides a little girl; that he pulled down the hay out of the rack for his horse; that he eat anything but cake and cheese that ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Mesopotamia's possessions. Among these, perhaps, were those indispensable wonder-workers among the flowers, the better bees of Persia. And this may be the reason why, these many centuries later, our bee experts still recommend that, if we wish to increase the strength and productivity of a backward hive of bees, we buy and introduce into the hive an Italian queen. Her ancient and still prepotent virility can almost invariable be relied upon to transfuse the colony with new and fruitful vigor. An "Italian" queen, is it? We wonder, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... in the Rathskeller. It was almost deserted, and the waitresses were all in the garden, running forward and backward under the trees. From outside came the sound of voices and glasses clinking; and close by, from the ledge, the slow trickle of the beer through the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... a dry piece of wood was placed in contact with the heated metal, combustion took place. M. Covlet and I then dipped our hands into vessels of the liquid metal, and passed our fingers several times backward and forward through a stream of metal flowing from the furnace, the heat from the radiation of the fused metal being at the same time almost unbearable. We varied these experiments for upward of two hours; and Madame Covlet, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... socially than that relating to the value of the home. The best protection of the home must come from its moral efficiency and this cannot be obtained if people are unwilling to face reasonable and constructive criticism of the present working of the home. It is natural for the adult looking backward to his childhood to assume too much for the home, and then to transfer his emotion and his sense of the value of his home experience to the present family as an institution. With this enormous prejudice he refuses to see how often the family influence is morally and socially bad. It would surprise ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... The first speaker rolled backward down the levee, half a dozen following. The old man sat unmoved. Presently a little woolly head peered over ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... one of the large drawing-rooms of the palace, walking irritably backward and forward, with several little notes crumpled together in his hands, and a plain black domino dress for the masquerade of the ensuing night spread out ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the stair without one backward glance, like the good gentleman he is; and the Doweys are left together, with nearly the whole room between them. He is a great rough chunk of Scotland, howked out of her not so much neatly as liberally; and in his Black Watch uniform, all caked with mud, his kit and nearly all ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... situated, remote both from tide-water and from the great river by which the Western States found their way to the Gulf of Mexico, was singularly unfitted to progress under the conditions of communication in that day; and it long remained among the most backward and primitive portions of the United States. The admiral's father, after his long experience there, must have seen that there was little hope of bettering his fortunes. Whatever the cause, he moved to Louisiana in the early years of the century, and settled ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... way is to stand up, reach forward with the 30-pound 16 1/2-foot oar, throw all the weight on it, falling backward into the seat. After half an hour of this exhausting work they must rest 15 to 20 minutes. The long, steady, strong pull is unknown ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... his long sword; I unsheathed mine; after a minute or two I lunged rapidly, and wounded him in the breast. He jumped backward, exclaiming that I had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... forms the straight, south coast of the east end of the island, from which the sinuous body extends westward. This analogy is made still more striking by two long, finlike strings of keys, or islets, which extend backward along the opposite coasts, parallel to the main body of the island." But all such comparisons call for a lively imagination. It might be likened to the curving handles of a plow attached to a share, or to any one of a dozen things that it does not at all clearly resemble. Regarding ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... former Soviet republics, Kazakhstan has vast oil, coal, and agricultural resources. Kazakhstan is highly dependent on trade with Russia, exchanging its natural resources for finished consumer and industrial goods. Kazakhstan now finds itself with serious pollution problems, backward technology, and little experience in foreign markets. The government in 1992 continued to push privatization of the economy and freed many prices. Output in 1992 dropped because of problems common to the ex-Soviet ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the Snow and his friend will then place their canoe into the water with its bow facing the river as it comes down to meet them. They will paddle hard against the river, for the Matchi Manitu (bad spirit) beneath the waves will draw them backward toward the place where the water is ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... holding up to my gaze a painted loaf? I am manacled, wounded, bleeding, dying! What consolation is it to know, that they who are seeking to destroy my life, profess in words to be my friends?" If the liberties of the people have been betrayed—if judgement is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off, and truth has fallen in the streets, and equality cannot enter—if the princes of the land are roaring lions, the judges evening wolves, the people light and treacherous persons, the priests covered with pollution—if we are living under a frightened ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... mistress rose, the three women shrank instinctively backward. To one understanding it, the act was pathetically familiar. An instant later, however, the Princess cried out, "Caroline! It is you, then?" and so turned deathly white and reeled a little till old Masha came to ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of his. And never in his life had he experienced such a burst of thankfulness as he did at that moment. His heart was too full to speak. Prudence smiled gravely as she watched this whole-hearted token of her mother's loyalty to a friend. Nor was Sarah backward ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... threads stretched from Mrs. Popper's clothing to the bulging curtain of the cabinet. Imagine his surprise when he saw that she had simply freed her foot from the shoe, which I was carefully holding down, and with a backward movement of the leg was reaching out into the cabinet behind her chair and was doing the rapping ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... thankful for to me!" said Manuel. "How shall I leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the Banks? Now you are a fisherman eh, wha-at? Ouh! Auh!" He bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips to get the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... withdrew backward with as much alacrity as if he had received an Imperial decree ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... day after to-morrow, 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 ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... and the idea of touching helplessness which her presence inspired. Her long, fringed eyelashes rested upon her cheek, and her short, glossy curls were never more becomingly arranged than now, when stepping backward a pace or two, Mrs. Kennedy stopped a moment to admire her again ere going below where her ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... courtly manners, the irrepressible boyish recklessness and the big heart. Our only authentic descriptions of him are of a Peter Warren many years older; our only even probable likenesses are the same. But let us take these, and reckoning backward see what a man of such characteristics must have been like in his ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... supervision proceeds along the line of building such a teacher up, of making her strong where she is weak, of giving her initiative where she lacks it, of inculcating good methods where she is pursuing poor ones, of inducing her to come out of her shell where she is backward and diffident. In other words, the great work of the supervisor is to elicit from teachers their most active and hearty response in all positive directions. It should be understood by teachers—and they should know that ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... Sea islander? Almost as he lunged he had leaped backward around the corner of the house and run for the covered ditch. Once in that covert, he did not "lurk" to any great extent. He crawled away as rapidly as his hands and knees would carry him, reasoning that the boys would, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... their feet again, this time backward along the boat. As they picked themselves up, Seldar Glav was shaking his head, sadly. "That was the ship going up," he said; "the blast must ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... help you," Maurice said, politely; adding to himself, "Damn—damn—!" Stepping backward, he lifted the front wheels, and with Lily's help pulled the perambulator on to the little porch and over the threshold into the house—which always shone with immaculate neatness and ugly comfort. He kept his eyes away from the sleeping face on the pillow. Together ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... at the scene in the poor little house, his thoughts flying backward over the years. A sudden sharp, impatient whistle roused him, and he strode hastily back to ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... backward, putting her hands to her face. Then, as the echo of his footsteps died away on the stairs, she fell on her knees, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... Petter all looked out of the window, and beheld the Greek scholar engaged in pushing the baby carriage backward and forward under the shade of a large tree; while, on a seat near by, the maid Ida sat reading a book. Now passing nearer, Mr. Tippengray stopped, and with sparkling eyes spoke to her. Then she looked up, and with sparkling eyes answered him. Then together, ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... porter in a green livery, girt about with a cherry-coloured girdle, garbling of pease in a silver charger; and over head hung a golden cage with a magpye in it, which gave us an All Hail as we entred: But while I was gaping at these things, I had like to have broken my neck backward, for on the left hand, not far from the porter's lodge, there was a great dog in a chain painted on the wall, and over him written in capital letters, BEWARE THE DOG. My companions could not forbear laughing; bur I recollecting ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... very misty recollection of what took place; but I do recollect seeing the prisoners well on the way back, hearing a cheer from our men, and then, hammer in one hand, bayonet in the other, fighting my way backward along with my comrades. Then all at once a glittering flash came in the air, and I felt a dull cut on the face, followed directly after by another strange, numbing blow, which made me drop my bayonet, as my arm fell uselessly to my side; and then with a lurch ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... Moriarty, all this is quite asy, and requires nothing but a determined heart and a sound head: but the difficulty is to baffle the sentinel that is below, and who is walking backward and forward continually, day and night, under the window; and there is another, you see, in a sentry-box, at the door of the yard: and, for all I know, there may be another sentinel at the other side of the wall. Now these men are never twice on the same duty: I have friends enough ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... subjects, your plain lust and pleasance, as it is in your said noble letters worthily contained. Certain, true liege man is there none, ne faithful subject could there non ne durst tarry or be lachesse [backward] in any wise to the effectual prayer and commandment of so sovereign and high a lord, which his noble body paineth and knightly adventureth for the right and welfare of us.] Our most dread, most sovereign Lord, and noblest King, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... but the moment it is stopped, I start up and am instantly wide awake. We had reached a smaller station where the train usually stops for a few minutes only, when, to my surprise, there was a great deal of pushing and sliding of the cars backward and forward, and we halted for an extraordinarily long time. I was just getting up to learn what was going on, when the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... so, a sight met their eyes that drew from both a simultaneous cry, while both at the same instant retreated several paces from the spot, elevating their guns as they went backward. ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... reflected, surprised by the piercing insight, the triumphant answer of the spirit to the backward dragging surge of circumstance. "A woman suffers—always more than ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... discovery and with a plan for putting it to use as a means of escape, Jack, unable to turn about in the narrow passage, worked his way backward until the projection of his feet into emptiness warned him he had reached the room. Then he let himself down and, when once more with his companions, explained the nature ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... birds on which his observations were made—in the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in Concord—were hatched on the 4th of July,[10] and forsook the nest on the 18th. My birds were already fifteen days old, at least, and, unless they were to prove uncommonly backward specimens, ought to be on the wing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in no haste. Day after day passed. The youngsters looked more and more like old birds, and the mother grew ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... army, hastily mobilized on the German frontier east of Paris, could be reformed on the Marne. The great German machine drove rapidly down the valleys over the wide and splendid roads, forcing the English backward toward the sea and spreading out to meet the French front so hastily interposed between it and Paris. In this way the German line became extremely long before the Battle of the Marne began. The Kaiser's ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... old gentleman. "Can any thing be the matter, I wonder?" and he gave another steady pull on the reins. The wagon was jerked forward with such a wrench as almost to throw him backward. There was no doubt that something was ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the last enumeration in Mississippi, where this crime was committed, indicated that 64 per cent. of the colored children had had no schooling during the past year. That in Charleston County, South Carolina, another backward State in Negro education, there was expended on the public education of each white child $20.2; for the colored child $3.12; in Abbeville County $11.17 for the white, 69 cents for the colored child. ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... excitement of the evening before, the promise of an Extra Day, the detailed preparation—all this had disappeared. Being of yesterday, it was no longer vital: certainly there was no necessity to consult it. They looked forward rather than backward; the mystery of life lay ever just in front of them, what lay behind was already done with. They had lived it, lived it out. It was in their possession therefore, part ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... one who promised to become a formidable political rival. The arguments and eloquence of such men as Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and Grey, constitute a splendid armory, from which the enemies of England can forever draw admirable weapons with which to assail her Indian policy; and they have not been backward in making use of this mighty advantage. No one, who has ever sought to defend England's course in the East, but has had experience of the difficulties which those great men have placed in the way of a successful vindication ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... about me, and wished them to come in for the evening or to dinner or to pass a Sunday afternoon in our little bower, as often as they could find it agreeable. Mrs. Pinkerton made no open objections, but I knew the company of my friends was not congenial to her, and so was reluctant and backward in my invitations to them. Besides, they were apt to be chilled and disconcerted by the widow's stately presence and rebuking ways, and were disinclined to make themselves quite at home with us. Fred Marston and his wife had been quite driven away. Mrs. Pinkerton ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... waiting for my opportunity to interrupt him when he interrupted himself. He stopped, with a bewildered look. He put his hand to his head, and passed it backward and forward over ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... up the lines, gave a backward glance to the bed of the wagon, high piled with large bundles, and turned Betsy toward Medicine Woods. Through the crowded streets and toward the country they drove, when a big red car passed, a man called to them, then reversed ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... as the group from Bethany stood for a moment midway of the marble steps to look forward to the shining altar and backward at the surging crowd, some one lifted the skirt of Mary. "What meanest thou," she exclaimed, turning to face a Temple guard. "He hath lifted my skirt," was her angry explanation as her brother and the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... laborers on both the estates under my management have been considerably reduced since freedom, yet the grounds have never been in a finer state of cultivation, than they are at present. When my work is backward, I give it out in jobs, and it is always done ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... paused, looking backward in thought, seeing and hearing things which, for the honour of others, it was kindest not to repeat. The carriage moved slowly, the horse slackening its pace in climbing the last steep piece of hill which leads to the pond on ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Arrived at that spot—it is on the top of a high, bleak ridge among the Apennines—there was a general alighting from the carriages for the mutual saying of the last words of farewell. Of course an immense amount of bowing, with backward steps according to true courtly fashion, went to the due uttering of these adieux on that spot of the high-road over the Apennines. Unfortunately, there chanced to be a heap of broken stones for the mending of the road which encroached a little on the roadway. And it so happened that His Imperial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Tor-town, they demanded the constables' assistance, who was with the utmost reluctance prevailed on to accompany them in making this search; Squire Gary being a gentleman so universally beloved by the whole parish, (to which he always behaved as a father,) that every one was very backward in doing any thing to give him the least uneasiness. Did gentlemen of large estates in the country but once taste the exalted pleasure of making the whole neighbourhood happy, and consider how much honest industry they might support, how much misery ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... did not hear or did not want to, for she was approaching the man without a backward glance in their direction. Though not knowing just what was about to happen, the girls followed ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... him up in his arms and moving carefully towards the door. "We'll get him, Johnny; an' all the rest, too, when——" The voice died out in the direction of Jackson's and the marshal, backing to the front door, slipped out and to one side, running backward, his eyes on ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... indirect for individuals singly or associated together, it is proper for the State and not for individuals to take hold of it.—According to this rule the limits of the public and private domain can be defined, which limits, as they change backward and forward, may be verified according to the changes which take place in interests and preferences, direct ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... man fell under the deadly hail of fire from the hulk, but as fast as they fell others took their places, until at last, under their furious exertions, the little steamer began to quiver, and then moved slightly backward off the boom. There was an ominous cracking of timber for a few seconds, as some part of her splintered planking caught in the obstruction, and then, with a rending, tearing noise, it gave way, and the launch slid into the water of the bay, shipping a ton or two of it over her ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... it might sink down through his "harn-pan" (his skull). His personal appearance seems to have been almost indescribable, not bearing any likeness to anything in this upper world. But as near as I can learn, his forehead was very narrow and low, sloping upwards and backward, something of the hatchet shape; his eyes deep set, small, and piercing; his nose straight, thin as the end of a cut of cheese, sharp at the point, nearly touching his fearfully projecting chin; and his mouth formed nearly ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... to thrill with the desire to know how it would feel to run backward on the track in front of the moving engine. He had had a brief glimpse of the possibility of that bliss as he crossed the track one day when the train was coming in; and the more he thought about it, the surer he felt that some day he would have to do it. He was well acquainted ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... these glories intoxicated the poor fairy; her eyes shone; they heard her little feet moving impatiently under the table as though seized by a dancing frenzy. And in effect, dinner over, when they had returned to the studio, Constance began to walk backward and forward, now and then half executing a step, a pirouette, while continuing to talk, interrupting herself to hum some ballad air of which she would keep the rhythm with a movement of the head; then suddenly she bent herself double, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... short. Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the lift, and given a sign to the attendant. The door slammed and all I could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi's ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Thee, that I might learn Thee? For in my memory Thou wert not, before I learned Thee. Where then did I find Thee, that I might learn Thee, but in Thee above me? Place there is none; we go backward and forward, and there is no place. Every where, O Truth, dost Thou give audience to all who ask counsel of Thee, and at once answerest all, though on manifold matters they ask Thy counsel. Clearly dost Thou answer, though all do not clearly hear. All consult ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... stroke the steam-way on the right begins to open. The steam-way on the left is now in communication with the exhaust port E, so that the steam that has done its duty is released and pressed from the cylinder by the piston. Reciprocation is this backward and forward motion of the piston: hence the term "reciprocating" engines. The linear motion of the piston rod is converted into rotatory motion by the ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... long enough to notice the flesh-marks. The calf was a dark red except for a white stripe which covered the right side of his face, including his ear and lower jaw, and continued in a narrow band beginning on his withers and broadening as it extended backward until it covered his hips. Aside from his good color the ranchman was pleased with his sex, for a steer those days was better than gold. So the cowman rode away with a pleased expression on his face, but there is a profit and ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... might creep sooner, if he were not impeded by clothing. He should be allowed to spread himself upon a blanket every day for an hour or two, and to get on his knees as frequently as he pleases. Often he needs a little help to make him creep forward, for most babies creep backward at first, their arms being stronger than their legs. Here the mother may safely interfere, pushing the legs as they ought to go and showing the child how to manage himself; for very often he becomes much excited over ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... his bit of bun in silence, and after twirling his hat-crown for a few seconds hitched out of the door with a backward glance and muttered remark which must have been ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... as I declined, in my impatience, to take my eyes off the road, he brought me out a bowl of some hot fluid and something on a plate, which I got through with quickly enough, for the cool evening air had sharpened my appetite. I rested the bowl on the broad bench beside the door, while Hiram went backward and forward with ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... imperial Prince saw this he started backward; but the fettered man cried, "Oh, come to me, I beseech you, in the name of the ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... portions of Rowe's account look backward and forward: backward to the Restoration, among whose critical controversies the eighteenth-century Shakespeare took shape; and forward to the long succession of critical writings that, by the end of the ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... unfurled against the Jews. Province after province took it up. In Bulgaria, Servia, and, above all, Roumania, where, we were told, the sword of the Czar had been drawn to protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place of Moslem atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America could ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... and fro, like a well-trained sentry,—its "round" being the curved crest of the sand-ridge, from which it did not deviate to the licence of an inch. Backward and forward did it traverse the saddle in a longitudinal direction,—now poised upon the pommel,—now sinking downward into the seat, and then rising to the level of the coup,—now turning in the opposite direction, and retracing in long, uncouth strides, the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... be a woman from Languedoc).[12] Oh, yeu be yur, be'e! an' I've avoun thee to las, arter all this yur traepsin' vurwurd an' backward. Cans thee now, yeu rascal; cans leuk me ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... amplecti, apply ourselves with that readiness we should: idleness, love of liberty, immodicus amor libertatis effecit ut diu cum perfidis amicis, as he confesseth, et pertinaci pauperate colluctarer, bashfulness, melancholy, timorousness, cause many of us to be too backward and remiss. So some offend in one extreme, but too many on the other, we are most part too forward, too solicitous, too ambitious, too impudent; we commonly complain deesse Maecenates, of want of encouragement, want of means, when as the true defect is in our own ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... going, and all communication was done by telegraph—seemingly easy enough; but one must not discount the slow Chinese methods of doing things. Most of the troops were twelve days away, and in China—in backward Yuen-nan especially—to mobilize a thousand men and march them over mountains a fortnight from your base is not a thing to be done at a moment's notice. By the time they would arrive, it might have been possible for all the foreigners to ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... furious at that. He sprang backward two or three feet, then drawing a huge knife made with it a savage lunge at me. I seized his wrist, and after a brief struggle wrenched the knife from his hand, but still holding his wrist told him that unless he grew quiet I should have to box ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... comfortably in the armholes of his waistcoat, the minister, with that familiar trick of his, balancing on one foot and suddenly throwing his slight weight forward on the other. "A bundle of nerves," people called the Doctor: to stand still would have been a penance to him; even as he swayed backward and forward in talking, his hand must be busy at the seals on his watch chain and his shrewd glance travelling over a dozen things you would never dream so clever a man would take notice of. It was a prospect of moderate commercial activity ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... hour when the effulgent lights of the future cast their reflections backward on the soul; the hour when the soul ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... Looking backward to the first quarter of this century, it is hardly too sweeping an assertion to say that, with a single exception, there was little that was important in the way of painting outside of France and England. There were ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... guessed at, though the world knew that the rivers of France and Flanders ran with blood. The Germans attacked in masses and successive waves, and paid the penalty of their desperate strategy. For though the British, and later the French, lines were bent backward for miles, and gaps were occasionally torn in them by the foe's furious attack, the Allied defensive withstood the onslaught and after a month of the most terrific struggle the world has ever seen, both British and ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... fleeting moment during which the officer from Auburn was searching Daddy's room, her hand went backward quickly and reassuring fingers touched the dwarf's face concealed by her ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... gave a single bound backward, hiccoughing with fright. His legs staggered beneath him. The keys jingled together in his fevered hand with a sinister sound. And, for twenty, for thirty seconds, despite the din that was being raised and the electric bells that kept ringing through the house, he stood there, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... found the little company gathered once more on the ship, with nothing to do but rest and remember their homes, temporal and spiritual—homes backward, in old England, and forward, in Heaven. They were, every man and woman of them, English to the back-bone. From Captain Jones who commanded the ship to Elder Brewster who ruled and guided in spiritual ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... pain, spat blood from gashed lips, and shook his head like a lion wounded in the mouth. He ran backward a few feet to recover himself, and then, with a mad cry, rushed at Westerfelt and caught him by the throat. Westerfelt tried to shake him off, but he was unsuccessful. He attempted to strike him in the face, but Wambush either dodged the thrusts or caught ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... them to the other side of the mountain, thus forming a road in the wet snow, which, should it afterward freeze, would be sufficiently hard to bear the horses. This plan was promptly put into execution; the sleds were constructed, the heavy baggage was drawn backward and forward until the road was beaten, when they desisted from their fatiguing labor. The night turned out clear and cold, and by morning, their road was incrusted with ice sufficiently strong for their purpose. They now set out on their icy turnpike, and got on well enough, excepting that now and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Looking backward, she almost wondered how she had endured the agony of love and suffering and sacrifice which had been compressed into a single year. She wished sometimes that they had let her die when she was so ill—let her slip easily out of the world while the delirium ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... him. So he dropped all his arrows, which until now he had carried in his right hand, and thrust his club like a slung-shot into the other's face. With a yell of pain and surprise the Navajo tumbled backward into a bush, while Tyope darted forward in the direction of the Rito. Behind him sounded the hoarse cries of the wounded man, loud yells answering. They came from four sides; all the pursuers were running at full speed to the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which made it a main object to overthrow their government. The trail of finance runs over the whole story, but ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... his wet hair plastic, and easily obtained the long, even sweep backward from the brow, lacking which no male person, unless bald, fulfilled his definition of a man of the world. But there ensued a period of vehemence and activity caused by a bent collar-button, which went on strike with a desperation that was downright savage. ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows, the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said; and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our children the multiplication table forward or backward. We could not understand the doleful strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and has been using it ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... relieved by the country. Whether it was Patrick himself or one of the dragoons I cannot say, but it is said, he who used the martyrs head thus, being got up unto the top of the garrison house there, a little after when easing him over the battlement, fell backward over the wall, and broke his neck, which ended a wicked life by a miserable ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... call conquering the world, Ratio?" Then, as he followed the Bear's example, he caught a backward glimpse out of the corner of ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... great pains to rear it. These young specimens were flat, grey, six-legged creatures about the size of a small lady-bird, covered with hairs, and possessing two strong forceps projecting from their heads. They are so formed that they cannot go forward, but move always backward by a series of jerks. As they live upon ants and are so strangely formed, they have to resort to stratagem in order to entrap their prey, and this they do by means of pits formed in the sand in which ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... perfection, and closely resembled the pictures we are accustomed to see upon the fans which ladies use even to the present day. Their little airs of sylvan simplicity were very pretty; and the gallant gentlemen were not backward in their part. They bowed and simpered until they resembled so many supple-jacks, pulled by ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... were in a condition to understand anything, for the sudden attack had bewildered them to a certain extent, Neal was lying face downward upon the sand, and being slowly dragged backward. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... his part was not wanting to the tide of success which flowed in upon him, nor backward in assuming that authority which the present exigency had put into his hands. Besides the general popularity attending his cause, a new incident made his approach to London still more grateful. In the present trepidation of the people, a rumor arose, either from chance or design, that the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... through the ruined door and one of the back windows. Uncle Eb lifted the leaning door a little and shoved it aside. We heard then a quick stir in the old house—a loud and ghostly rattle it seems now as I think of it—like that made by linen shaking on the line. Uncle Eb took a step backward as if it had ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... writhing mass of dead, dying, wounded and living, scrambling blacks and whites, was a thing for devil's joy. At the bottom of the pit the heap was ten feet deep in moving flesh. In vain the terror-stricken blacks scrambled up the slippery sides through clouds of smoke. They fell backward and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... 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 ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... touched him. "I do, Steve. Don't be in a hurry, my lad. There are some things in life that are worth a deal more than money,—things that money cannot buy. Let money take a backward place." Then he voluntarily asked about the processes of spinning and weaving wool, and in spite of his prejudices was a little excited over Stephen's startling statements ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... troop that held the crest of the hill, that contended in a mighty struggle with the invading Normans. This way and that way the battle surged. Now it seemed they would drive them back after all, now they themselves were carried backward. Norman and pirate were mixed strangely together in this fierce conflict. We expected each moment that the signal for us to join the fray would ring out, but it came not. It seemed to us that Samson, greedy of honour for his men, desired to claim the total glory of the victory. But we knew ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar |
