"Backbone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not immediately go to Ballyards. Eleanor could not reply to his letter, but Mrs. MacDermott wrote that she was recovering rapidly from her illness and that the baby was a fine, healthy child. "A MacDermott to the backbone," she wrote. "It's queer work that keeps a man out of his bed half the night and won't let him go to his wife when she's having a child! Your Uncle William isn't looking well ... he feels the weight of his years and the work on him ... and he is worried about ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... that fatal combination of Spain and Africa, when the Vandals ensconced themselves in both provinces by 428 and the Vandal fleet (with Majorca and the islands for its bases) cut off Rome from her corn supplies and broke the backbone of ancient civilization, which was the Mediterranean sea? Not once alone in the history of Europe has the triumph of a hostile rule in Africa and Spain ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... had never seen her like that before; she had always been eight-and-twenty. But age became her well—she looked so benignly beautiful and calm and grand that I was awed—and quick, chill waves went down my backbone. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of the profession and of the public. Among his illuminating remarks about the drug system, I found two drastic statements, which should serve to lift the veil from the eyes of the chronic drug taker. These are, first, 'Take away opium and alcohol, and the backbone of the patent medicine business would be broken inside of forty-eight hours,' and, second, 'No drug, save quinine and mercury in special cases, will cure a disease.' In words which he quotes from another prominent physician, 'He is the best doctor who knows the worthlessness ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the rights of man. Withdraw these causes, and the effects would be rapidly reversed. Northern officers and men could not be trusted to fraternize with the slave-holding aristocracy, previous to the time when the backbone of the institution of Slavery should have been effectually broken; not because they are bad men, but because they are men, and would act, under similar circumstances, as men—alike Northern, Southern, and European men—have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Thumbling. "In my father's dairy they make such big cheeses, that once, when my father's mare fell into the press, we only found her after travelling seven days, and she was so much injured that her back was broken. So to mend that I made her a backbone of a pine-tree, that answered splendidly; till one fine morning the tree took it into its head to grow, and it grew and grew until it was so high that I climbed up to Heaven on it. There I looked down, and saw a lady in a white ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition, Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized arms and legs, And wonders within ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... than a ten-mile ride from that cabin to the same huge valley at the headwaters of the east branch, where he and Dexter and the boy had camped only a few days before. But it was a two days' journey around the backbone of that ridge alone, by trail. And even then, when he did locate the "Jenkinses," it took hours of quiet argument before Caleb could convince those shy and suspicious people that his errand was an honest one. Eventually they ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... on the carrier's shoulders. Some of the stronger men carried three by putting an extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair, these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the backbone of Henrietta's character, she could not help feeling as if she were an accomplice in his shiftiness and untruths when she typed and mailed his letters. She told herself that it was none of her affair, that she was no more than ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... chosen," he went on. "A feller that gives out when the road's hard, who hasn't enough backbone to stand a few days' heat and thirst. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... sees merely a complex of inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arrogant superficiality?—a ragged suit of motley for the naked and the shivering? A seeming dance of joy enjoined upon a sufferer? Airs of overbearing pride assumed by one who is sick to the backbone? And the whole moving with such rapidity and confusion that it is disguised and masked— sordid impotence, devouring dissension, assiduous ennui, dishonest distress! The appearance of present-day humanity is all appearance, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... become of the hounds, and the other hunters? The higher I climbed the more I liked it. After an hour I was sure that I could reach the rim by this route, and of course that stimulated me. To make sure, and allay doubt, I sat down on a high backbone of bare rock and studied the heave and bulge of ridge above me. Using my glasses I made sure that I could climb out. It would be a task equal to those of lion-hunting days with Jones, and it made me happy to realize ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... said Sir Terence: "I know him now better than you; he will stand, you'll find, the shock of that regiment of figures—he is steel to the backbone, and proof spirit." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... mind, sir," whispered Tom Fillot at the first opportunity; "cockerels is young game cocks, and we know as you're game to the backbone. You'll give him one p'r'aps 'fore he knows where ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... snowclad, upreared against the nearer sun, are seen the towering Andes; to the poet's eye, the Cordillera lies no huge backbone of earth; but lives, a Rhoetus or Enceladus of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the Venetians, but Mahommed II. brought it definitely under Turkish rule. In the War of Independence the Aetolians by their stubborn defence, culminating in the sieges of Missolonghi (q.v.), formed the backbone of the rebellion. Northern Aetolia remains a desolate region, inhabited mainly by Vlach shepherds. The south-western plain, though rendered unhealthy by lagoons, and central Aetolia yield good crops of currants, vine, maize ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... such instinctive aversion is at the bottom of the long exclusion of any serious discipline in the physical sciences from the general curriculum of Universities; while, on the other hand, classical literature has been gradually made the backbone of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Well, if it is appointed by heaven, so shall it be. Forget my words. They had no evil intent, for I was trying you, as my duty is. (Aside to attendant.) The sweetness of her glance dissolves my backbone. ...
— Judith • Arnold Bennett
... but two black lines and three dots, cased in a filament of jelly. The lines were destined for his backbone and stomach; the dots for his eyes and mouth. The latter was ready for immediate work, given only the impulse. As he sank slowly, head downwards, the impulse was supplied. Out from his neck there floated two sprays of gossamer network, of such delicate texture, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... dropped off to sleep again. Finally I awoke, and did not so soon fall asleep. Presently I found myself sitting up in bed with half a dozen extraordinary sensations contending for right of way along my backbone. What had startled me was the voice of a young woman, who could not have been standing more than ten feet from my bed. If the tones of her voice were any guide, she was not only a young woman, ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... everything," thought Christophe, remembering a jest of Diderot's: "the chief thing is a straight backbone." ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... dear Brott," he said, "have you considered the enormous gulf between your—views? The Countess owns great hereditary estates, she comes from a family which is almost Royal, she herself is an aristocrat to the backbone. It is a class against which you have declared war. How can you possibly come together on ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was like one of those ideal examples which military instructors take for their models when they wish to simplify a lesson upon terrain. Upon one side ran the long, high, and difficult range which is the backbone of England; upon the other the sea, and the sea and the mountains leant one towards the other, making two sides of a triangle ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... eyes on me you was more famous for your arm muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back in the days ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... English Unitarians included Dissenters of different tendencies and traditions, with a few recruits from the State Church. The 'Presbyterian' congregations, as they were not very strictly called, were the backbone of the 'body'; many of these, however, were very weak, and in the course of a few decades some were destined to follow those which had died out in the eighteenth century. Converts not infrequently lent new force in the pulpit, but ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... some unknown world, uttering a scream that resounds like a crash of lightning. The Big Horn, proudly perched on yonder crag, bids defiance to all living creatures. For fifteen miles this box canyon has cut through the backbone of the mountains and holds the clear waters as in the palm of one's hand. At the mouth of the canyon, where the waters flow calm as a summer lake, as though tired from their terrible journey, the rounded boulders, the white sands and quartz that have passed through, are resting, peaceful as the wild ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... blindfold. It is pitiful—most pitiful. No good-natured man will begrudge occasional holiday-makers their chance of seeing a good race. Rural and industrial Yorkshire are represented by thousands at Doncaster, on the St. Ledger day, and the tourists get no particular harm; they are horsey to the backbone, and they come to see the running. They criticize the animals and gain topics for months of conversation, and, if they bet an odd half-crown and never go beyond it, perhaps no one is much the worse. When the Duke of Portland allowed his tenantry to see St. Simon gallop five ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to give them a chance to show their grit and backbone. Maurice was of the opinion that they had come out of these conflicts with flying colors, and each victory seemed to renew their self confidence, as though that were the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... causing me to go the full limit of human suffering, those two devilish orderlies took hold of me, one by the head and the other by the feet, and without any leverage whatever to break the strain upon my backbone, they raised and then dumped me into the tub of ice-water below. I had always considered myself invulnerable to bodily pain, and from early youth had schooled myself against outward manifestation of suffering, no matter what the circumstances might be, but on this occasion ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... result of an increased expenditure in wages will be to crush the small factories and workshops, which are the backbone of the sweating System, and to assist the industrial evolution which makes in favour of large well-organized factories working with ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... has got to git an' I'd rather 'twould be the other!' 'Twa'nt that way with the palaverin' yaller-headed piece that yo' pa married arterwards. She'd a sharp enough tongue, but a tongue don't do you much good with a man unless he knows you've got the backbone behind to drive it. It ain't the tongue, but the backbone that counts in marriage. At first he was mighty soft, but befo' two weeks was up he'd begun to beat her, an' I ain't got a particle of respect for a woman that's once been beaten. Men air born mean, I know, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... by the assistants and given a lift on to his steed's back again—if the latter is still capable of bearing a man. If not, the dagger-man—"cachetero" he is called—arrives with a short arrow-headed knife, and severs the doomed beast's backbone at the neck with one short stab. There is no quicker death. The horse wilts like a rent air-balloon, and is ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... breath, like a child with croup. Antonia's father uncovered one of his long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically. From our bench we could see what a hollow case his body was. His spine and shoulder-blades stood out like the bones under the hide of a dead steer left in the fields. That sharp backbone must have hurt him when he lay ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... not at all forbid them to "behave like that." Not in the least. She almost encouraged them. She laughed and arched her eyes and flirted. But her backbone became only the stronger and firmer. Soft and supple as she was, her backbone never yielded for an instant. It could not. She had to confess that she liked the young doctors. They were alert, their faces were clean and bright-looking. She liked the sort of intimacy with them, when they kissed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... scarcely greater than those of the other Napoleonides, Joseph and Jerome. Nevertheless the reverses of his early life had strengthened that fund of quiet stoicism, that energy to resist if not to dare, which formed the backbone of an otherwise somewhat weak, shadowy, and uninspiring character. And now, in the rapid fall of his fortunes, the greatest adventurer of the nineteenth century showed to the full those qualities of toughness and dignified reserve which for twenty years had puzzled and imposed ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... because this business of backbone farming is the backbone of Business In General. As long as money is circulating freely Business In General, being merely an exchange in values, wears a clean shirt and the latest cravat. But let some foreign substance clog the trade channels and at once ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... down to where it makes its exit, etc. The blocks of ore thus first placed in position are, for obvious reasons, the most sterile. After the foundation is thoroughly laid the building of the "pile" is proceeded with, the larger blocks being placed in the center to form, as it were, the backbone of the pile; the smaller blocks of ore are arranged on the outside of these and in the interstices. The shape or form of the pile when completed is similar to a truncated cone, and when burning the kiln looks like a small volcano. When the kiln has been filled with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... out of the way, the leech called us to him to lend him a helping hand. Then I came to know that a fall unawares with her horse had been the beginning of my aunt's long sickness. She had at that time done her backbone a mischief, and some few months later a wound had broken forth which was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them, all right, believe me," muttered Jack. "But it'll have to be a scuttle policy. Those Huns are licked, yes, licked good and hard. They're just beginning to know it, too. We're proving too much for their backbone to stand. Well, two cars means we're going to have a double chance to get our little bucket ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... fingers, or tweezers, grasp the cut edge of the skin of the back and with the scalpel carefully separate it from the flesh as far as the middle line of the back from the head to the tail. Remove the exposed flesh to the backbone. With the knife, shears or fine tooth saw, split the head lengthwise a little to one side of the middle, leaving somewhat more than half. Do not sever the skin of the body where it comes to a point between the gills, and use great care when removing ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... to tell Hugh," he said at once. "A ring like that must cost a lot—Aunt Trudy wouldn't have any make-believe stones. You can't earn money without he finds it out and then there will be a pretty row. Hasn't Sarah enough backbone to face ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... real wolf. He was five feet long, which is a fine length for a wolf, even in Lithuania; he was very strong; he looked at you askance, which was not his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he occasionally licked Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short bristles on his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome leanness of a forest life. Before he knew Ursus and had a carriage to draw, he thought nothing of doing his fifty miles a night. Ursus meeting him in a thicket near a stream of running water, had conceived a high opinion of him ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... removing the heads; boil as previously indicated. Remove the backbone without destroying the shape of the fish. Serve, thoroughly chilled, on crisp lettuce leaves dressed with claret or French dressing. Prepare the latter ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... I remember a walking-stick even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks abroad (it was white in colour, with lines of small grey indentations, and he afterwards told me it was a shark's backbone); a corner-cupboard, too, painted over with ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... made a chill run down Adam Adams' backbone. He was beginning to see the Englishman in a new light. The man was a master of deception, not as clumsy in thought and action as he assumed to be. And he was ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... the icy fingers ceased trifling with his spine and that backbone began to develop—quoting Miss Phipps' description—at least one new joint to every foot. He suppled visibly. He expressed himself with feeling. He begged the honor of shaking hands with the great man from Boston. Then he shook hands ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... client, his father, and the young fellow is bent on imitating him. While he is very considerate of his mother and sisters, he has identified himself with his father's views, and has become a Northern man to the backbone. Even to a degree contrary to my advice, he insists on investing his means in ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... assistance, Kosovo has been able to privatize 50% of its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by number, and over 90% of SOEs by value. Minerals and metals - including lignite, lead, zinc, nickel, chrome, aluminum, magnesium, and a wide variety of construction materials - once formed the backbone of industry, but output has declined because investment has been insufficient to replace ageing Eastern Bloc equipment. Technical and financial problems in the power sector also impedes industrial development. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... such tonic for a man's nerve as a capricious wife and no such softener for his backbone as ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... small battle was fought in the streets on July 12 and the town was burnt; a troop of cavalry was added to the police force this month, and there was no lack of Filipinos willing to co-operate with Americans for a salary. The backbone of insurgency having been broken, the dollar proved to be a mightier factor than the sword in the process of pacification. Compared with former times, the ex-insurgents found in the lucrative employments offered to them by the Americans a veritable El Dorado, for never before had they seen such ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... numbered about fifty. Danton and {159} Robespierre were the two most conspicuous; among their immediate supporters not hitherto mentioned may be noted Carnot, Fouche, Tallien, and St. Just. A much larger group, of which the moderate Jacobins formed the backbone, were inclined to look to Brissot for leadership and are generally described as Girondins. This name came from the small group of the deputies of the Gironde, that represented perhaps better than any other, the best force of provincial liberalism but at the ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... portion of a yacht is, as in all other boats, termed the hull. The backbone of the hull is called the keelson. Attached to the keelson is a piece of lead, which is put in place to give the boat stability and power to resist the heeling movement created by the wind-pressure upon the sails. This is known as ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... and sallies were frequent, every house along the walls and in the suburbs soon showed bullet marks and the town of San Carlos was again partially destroyed by fire. Finally Morales defeated the besiegers, and in March, Macoris was taken by the government forces and the backbone of the revolution was broken. The insurrection had spent itself on account of lack of supplies and efficient leaders. Jimenez, financially ruined by his attempts to reestablish himself in power, again withdrew to Porto Rico. The government forces were unable ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... in his own realm, the supreme authority in things ecclesiastical as well as in things temporal. Such would have been the natural and obvious course for him to have taken. That is to say had he been a modern Anglican. But since he was not a modern Anglican, but a genuine Roman Catholic to his very backbone, like all the rest of his kingdom, he did not act in that imperious, off-hand way, but was very much distressed and concerned, as a loving son would be, who had incurred the displeasure of a generous father. Finally, in the thirteenth year of his reign, ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... delight av a shiny night,' frum a band that thought we was the second four comp'nies av the Lincolnshire. At that we was forced to sind them a yell to say who we was, an' thin up wint 'The wearin' av the Green.' It made me crawl all up my backbone, not havin' taken my brequist. Thin, right smash into our rear, came fwhat was left av the Jock Elliotts - wid four pipers an' not half a kilt among thim, playin' for the dear life, an' swingin' their rumps ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... in fact, that she thought she might almost reach out her arm and touch it—was Sugar-Loaf Mountain, round and high and big. And a little to the south was Backbone Mountain, and still farther along ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... what you have done will be known from one end of California to the other. You've got your choice. You've either got to let up on Standing or kill all three of us. Standing's got your goat. So have I. So has Morrell. You are a stinking coward, and you haven't got the backbone and guts to carry out the dirty butcher's work you'd ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... "He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent, "and they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir, as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of him in ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of an ancestry which, somebody or other of distinction once said—and very truly—is the backbone of the British Army. To put it briefly, if not gracefully, "what old Gamelyn didn't know about soldiering weren't worth knowin'!" He had the ten thousand and ten commandments of the King's Regulations always at his finger tips, and ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... was severe, and of the British officers, Major Money, and Lieuts. Gibson and Cape, were killed. Sumter lost few men, but he was himself wounded. The ball passed through the shoulder and carried away a small portion of the backbone. He was placed in a raw bullock's hide, fastened between two horses, and thus carried with a guard of five men ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... and shows how all up and down a feller's backbone there is plenty of soft spots, and he shows likewise that there is scattered around in different parts of a feller's territory something like two hundred and four and a half bones, any one of which is likely any minute to jar loose and go to pressin' on ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... and overgrown with mangroves to a depth of several miles, but the interior is an extremely mountainous region, containing elevations of over eight thousand feet. An irregular backbone connects all these great heights, and it itself is of no mean dimensions, being throughout well over three thousand feet above sea-level. Between the mountain-peaks, as may be imagined, there is little room for fertile plateaus, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... frequently relieve. The roots of the nerves supplying power to the breathing muscles lie just on each side of the spine, and this kind of rubbing stimulates these roots. It is not rubbing of the skin or backbone which is wanted, but such gentle treatment of the nerve roots on either side of the bone as makes them glow with genial warmth. This rubbing is of course better done on the surface of the skin. See that the patient is warm, then dip the fingers in cold ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... cried out hysterically, feeling herself all over. "Of course I'm hurt. I'm crippled for life. My backbone's broken; I shall have water on both knees, a glass eye and a mouth full of store teeth. But you don't care, you ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... for the cheap supply of "gentlemen's lounge-suits" for the so-called working-classes to lounge in. I know of no surer antidote to the spirit of Bolshevism. But let us not forget the claims of the middle classes, who are the backbone of the Empire. If Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY cannot help us in the direction I have indicated, then let Mr. KENNEDY JONES, on behalf of the Middle Class Union, put a hyphen to his name and open a shop for the sale of evening wear at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages. This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves, and the effort required of us to enter into their spirit, imply some degree of intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... into his veins: she frees his scars from the clotted gore, and penetrates them with froth from the moon. She mixes whatever nature has engendered in its most fearful caprices, foam from the jaws of a mad dog, the entrails of the lynx, the backbone of the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents, the sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the eagle, the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl in the Red Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... again, looking out upon our ordinary life, what shall we need to put backbone into life? What do we need to give a little more strength to it, to enable us to be braver and firmer and stronger? It is just that power of being able to take our own line against others; it is just that courage of our opinions; it is consistent with being perfectly humble, and ever ready to learn; ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... burst just in the nick of time to save the drooping theatrical interests which he controlled, and the fruit which these had borne steadily for the best part of five long years had been truly phenomenal. A patriot to the backbone, the bewildered proprietor obtained absolute exemption from the Tribunal, turned the first six rows of all his pits into stalls, and bought War Loan with both hands. It was after the second air-raid upon London that he decided to take a house in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to talk," laughed Belle. "Now, remember, boys—-though Dick doesn't need to have his backbone stiffened—-if you boys haven't pride enough in Gridley to carry you through anything, the Gridley High School girls are heart and soul in the game. If you lose the game to-morrow don't any of you ever show up again at ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... on up the Sweetwater for some time, and at last came to a place where the road left the river, and we had a long, hard hill to pull up. When we reached the top of this we were in the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the backbone of the American continent. To the north of us were some very high peaks white with snow, and to the south were some lower hills and valleys. The summit of the mountains was not quite as imposing as I expected, but it was the summit, and we were soon surely moving ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... above and beyond us. Custom, too, we worship, and decency and order. We fight unwillingly, and are very slow to anger; but we never let go. Witness the last four dreadful years; witness Europe from Mons to Gallipoli. The British private, soldier or sailor, has been the backbone of the fight for freedom. But I am a long way from my ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... that's all," says Reginald, "especially now cricket's beginning. We ought to turn out a good eleven with four old Wilderhams to give it a backbone, eh?" ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... o'clock, we halted on a platform which stretched to the base of the Moench, whose ridge or backbone rose before our eyes. Here a small grotto had been excavated in the ice in which I was bidden to rest myself, thoroughly well wrapped up. We were literally on the brink of a complete collapse, respiration failed us, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... animal on one side of the backbone we met (1) a compact layer of white fat 20 centimeters deep; (2) the cartilaginous ribs covered with blood vessels; (3) a stratum of flabby, stringy, white muscle, 60 centimeters high, apparently in adipose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... you've bin and told me. Say it over again now," thundered W. Keyse, "so as she can 'ear you. Tell me before 'er as wot she wrote them—these letters"—he rapped himself dramatically upon the breast-pocket—"and how you see her doing of it, before I kick your backbone through your hat." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... present the ultima Thule of the British military posts in North America. It borders on the great wilderness of the North, and on that backbone of primary rocks running from the Alleghanies, across the thousand islands of the St. Lawrence, to the unknown interior of the northern ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... She had been very good to him. He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the loser his revenge. If only she hadn't loved him; and it had been a soulless companionship, a quite sordid business. Anything rather than this! English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of guilt. To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel intensely mean. 'Shall I go up again?' he thought. The window-curtain moved. Then the shreds of light up there vanished. 'She's gone to bed,' he thought. 'I should only ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... efforts to bring the three little cousins nearer together, it was some time before they actually did become real friends: Mary, seeing that anything she could say against America aroused a fierce contradiction from Polly, slyly teased her whenever she could, and Polly, who was loyal to the backbone, grew more and more indignant, often on the verge of tears, rushing to her aunt or uncle with a tale of Mary's abuse of ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... CHINE. The backbone of a cliff, from the backbones of animals; a name given in the Isle of Wight, as Black Gang Chine, and along the coasts of Hampshire. Also, that part of the water-way which is left the thickest, so as to project above the deck-plank; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... skin of his face had so shrunk away that he could not close eyes or mouth—the latter, therefore, stood on a perpetual ghastly grin, and the former on an incessant stare. He had but one serviceable joint in his body, which was at the bottom of the backbone, and that creaked and grated whenever he bent. He could not raise his feet from the ground, but skated along the drawing-room carpet whenever he wished to ring the bell. The only sign of moisture in his whole body was a pellucid ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... him, 'do you go at wanst, an' I bid ye that when ye meet man or mortial, the foorst thing ye do is to show that fut that they know from the shtart who ye are. Now shtart, ye vagabone blaggard av a shpalpeen, or I'll kick the backbone shtrait up into the shkull o' ye. Out!' he says, flourishin' ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... your notion, old Tom, and I like it to the backbone. Deerslayer, do you get into the canoe, lad, and paddle off into the lake with the spare one, and set it adrift, as we did with the other; after which you can float along shore, as near as you can get to the head of the bay, keeping outside the point, howsever, and outside the rushes, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... nearly right on our works, we found two thirty-two-pound parrot guns stationed in our immediate front, and throwing shells away over our heads into the city of Atlanta. We had just begun to tell all the boys howdy, when I saw Dow Akin fall. A fragment of shell had struck him on his backbone, and he was carried back wounded and bleeding. We could see the smoke boil up, and it would be nearly a minute before we would hear the report of the cannon, and then a few moments after we would hear the scream of ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... "The Eskimo would have been wiped off the face of the earth but for that one man's work. He started the reindeer idea, he brought in a few himself, he got the Government interested an' now reindeer are the backbone of northern Alaska. Our steam whalers had driven the whales an' the walrus an' the seal so far north that the Eskimo couldn't reach them. They were slowly starvin' to death by hundreds when Uncle Sam stepped in. And your captain commandant, that's Bertholf, who I'm telling ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... been detached from the military service with the official sanction of their government, had thus entered the imperial army and received from the Mexican government their equipment and the advertised premium offered. They had formed the framework and backbone of the new regiments, for the equipment of which Maximilian had strained every nerve, going so far as to sacrifice ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... one place to another; and to enable it to do this, it has those strong contractile bundles of muscles attached to the bones of its limbs, which are put in motion by means of a sort of telegraphic apparatus formed by the brain and the great spinal cord running through the spine or backbone; and to this spinal cord are attached a number of fibres termed nerves, which proceed to all parts of the structure. By means of these the eyes, nose, tongue, and skin—all the organs of perception—transmit impressions or sensations ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... inch in thickness, in which are stuck his hatchet, his kiley or boomerang, and a short heavy stick to throw at the smaller animals. His hatchet is so ingeniously placed that the head of it rests exactly on the centre of his back, whilst its thin short handle descends along the backbone. In his hand he carries his throwing-stick and several spears, headed in two or three different manners so that they are equally adapted to war or the chase. A warm kangaroo skin cloak completes his equipment in the southern portions of the continent; but I have never seen ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... were two smaller isles, Riddarholm on the west and Helgeandsholm on the north, both severed from the city by a channel about fifty feet in width. Through the centre of the main isle ran a huge backbone of rock, beginning at the south and rising steadily till within a few feet of the northern shore. The summit of this ridge was crowned by the royal citadel, a massive edifice of stone, the northern wall of which ran ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... the stuff that's in us, and in twenty-five or thirty more of our kind. The stuff, the backbone, the heart that's in you, Bohannan! That's in me! In ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Cours de la Reine and the length of the quays. Even Hannah thought the situation might do. Hadria had begun her studies at the School of Music, and found the steady work not only a profound, though somewhat stern enjoyment, but a solid backbone to her new existence, giving it cohesion and form. Recreation deserved its name, after work of this kind. Any lurking danger of too great speculative restlessness disappeared. There had been a moment when the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... together, 'nd she was so purty I stowed away a mouthful, hardly thinkin'—'nd I run one o' these here main off-shutes from the backbone of a ten-pound cod, abeout tew inches up into the shrouds 'n' riggin' o' ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... present safe, and by St. Pancras, after what we saw in the church yonder I am inclined to agree with them. He looked a poor thing up under the roof there, the holy Father Dominic, didn't he, hanging up like a black spider from the end of his cord? Bah! my backbone aches ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... from her precious wee sphere. And he saw her outside of it, playing coquettishly, and to her own mind, seriously; playing bewitchingly her shallow role patterned after life, yet without once realizing the counterfeit. The Western country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanical backbone in common with the whole American race. And without being aware of it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy French girl was a sneer, a tolerant, good-natured ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... no-count buckskin, Wasn't worth two-bits to keep, Had a black stripe down his backbone, And was woolly like a sheep. That hoss wasn't built to tread the earth; He took natural to the air; And every time he went aloft He tried to leave ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... associating with these men, and hearing them play, I acquired a strong taste for music, and used very often to time my walks so as to hear on week days the anthem in King's College Chapel. This gave me intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes shiver. I am sure that there was no affectation or mere imitation in this taste, for I used generally to go by myself to King's College, and I sometimes hired the chorister boys to sing in my rooms. Nevertheless ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Paulist character are: first, personal perfection. He must respond to the principles of perfection as laid down by spiritual writers. The backbone of a religious community is the desire for personal perfection actuating its members. The desire for personal perfection is the foundation stone of a religious community; when this fails, it crumbles to pieces; when this ceases ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... golf-greens, cabinet members—nothing safe. Pouring their beastly filth into pillar boxes. Women one knows. Hussies, though! Want the vote—rot! Awful rot! Don't blame you for America. Wish I might, too. Good thing, my word! No backbone in Downing Street. Let the fiends out again directly they're hungry. No system! No firmness! No dash! Starve ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... in for when it is up I don't believe she knows herself, yet. She says woman to-day is in the most unsettled and uncertain state that any animal has ever been in since the first one, a mollusk, or something without a backbone started to get one. And that it will take time for woman to evolute into being the best kind of a human being she is capable of becoming, and that the next step in the evoluting is to get out of her head some of the foolishness put ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... Chris stood motionless. Then, with a sudden jerk, he seemed to stiffen his backbone. His face was bleak, but he pulled at ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... wasn't meant to be. But now, gentlemen, in this wonderful twentieth century, them old doctrines are as dead as Queen Anne. We've got submarines diving and roving along in the depths of the sea; we've got aeroplanes that fly up into the air; and we've got men, gentlemen, men of grit and backbone, men of courage and determination, that 'fear no foe in shining armour,' men like our friend Mr. Smith (roars of applause), who brave the perils of the deep and the chance of the empyrean, who take their lives in ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... one another, and at the mates. They were a jumbled lot, riff-raff of all the seas, Cape Verders, Islanders, a Cockney or two, a Frenchman, two or three Norsemen, and a backbone of New England stock. They looked at one another, and at the mates, with stupid, questioning eyes; and one or two of them nodded in a puzzled way, and the Cape Verders grinned with embarrassment. ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... von Hindenburg and the Chancellor were united in their ideas. This was the most successful strategic move the Chancellor had made, for the public had such great confidence in von Hindenburg that when it was learned that he was opposed to von Tirpitz the backbone of opposition to the Chancellor was broken. On the 28th as von Bethmann-Hollweg appeared in the Reichstag, instead of facing a hostile and belligerent assembly, he faced members who were ready to support him in anything he ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the circulation, I ran around the island a dozen times or so, and clambered across its rocky backbone as many times more—all of which was of greater service to me, as I afterward discovered, than merely to warm me up. In the midst of this exercise I wondered if I had lost anything out of my pockets while rolling over and over ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... even more is woman dependent upon her clothes for physical, moral, and intellectual support. An uncorseted body will soon make its influence felt upon the mind. The steel-and-whalebone spine which properly reinforces all feminine vertebra is literally the backbone of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... against them. The English archer's confidence in himself and his skill was indeed supreme. Before the shafts of his forefathers the flower of the French chivalry had gone down like rushes before a scythe, and from being a mere accessory to a battle the English archers had become the backbone of the force. Their skill, in fact, had revolutionized warfare, had broken the power of cavalry, and had added to the dignity and value of infantry, who had become, as they have ever since continued to be, the prime factor in warfare. Consequently the English archers and men-at-arms ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... abuse. Their voice, too, is now hoarse, and their bloated necks swell out; and their very abuse dilates their extended jaws. Their backs are united to their heads: their necks seem as though cut off; their backbone is green; their belly, the greatest part of their body, is white; and {as} new-made frogs, they leap ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... it was "the country," and fairly saturated with romance. Cousin Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought with him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was no suburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... tills the fields, manufactures all fabricated products, and carries goods to the ends of the earth. This active type mans navies, fills the ranks of armies, erects great buildings, and cut through the backbone of ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... to lead back to the true fold the wandering feet of his king. But, fail or speed in any result, so long as his castle held together, it should stand for the king. Faithful catholic as he was, the brave old man was English to the backbone. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... parts being those principally esteemed. A cod's head and shoulders, when in season, and properly boiled, is a very genteel and handsome dish. When cut, it should be done with a fish trowel, and the parts about the backbone on the shoulders are the firmest and the best. Take off a piece quite down to the bone, in the direction a, b, c, d, putting in the spoon at a, c, and with each slice of fish give a piece of the sound, which lies underneath the backbone and lines it, the meat of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... was to stiffen up the backbone of this little company, and to prevent the Western Union from frightening it into a surrender. He immediately sent a copy of Bell's patent to every agent, with orders to hold the fort against all opposition. "We have the only original telephone patents," ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... may wonder at the midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only three miles off. As to the facility with which mortals escape knowledge, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... influence in various degrees of civilization, down to the savagery of Kaffirs and Dyaks. We have succeeded in classifying their differences, and in spite of them we have found all the tales in substantial agreement. They are all built on the same general plan; the same backbone of thought runs through them; and between them all there is no greater divergence than that which in the physical realm separates mammal from bird, or bird from reptile. It is inevitable to conclude that even the most recently discovered folk-tale of them has ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... which shows what the ancestral toothed-whale was like, and at the same time seems to connect these thoroughly marine mammals with land-animals. Though already entirely adapted to an aquatic mode of life, the teeth, skull and backbone of Protocetus display so many differences from those of the later whales and so many approximations to those of primitive, carnivorous land-mammals, as, in a large degree, to bridge over the gap between the two groups. Thus one of the most puzzling of palaeontological ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... most anxious of enjoying. His father's friends there, however, did not appreciate his talents, and sad accounts were sent home of the perversity of his nature. He was a most courageous lad, game to the backbone. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Read it again and see if any of the words you know are nominatives or accusatives. This will often give you what may be called the backbone of the sentence; that is, subject, ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... was gone the child cried a good deal; and all attempts to pacify him failing, Margaret suspected a pin, and searching between his clothes and his skin, found a gold angel incommoding his backbone. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... want to see anyone; Miss Carrillo sent for me," said John, wondering if this would be the password and feeling a thrill go up his backbone at the thought he might be at ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... struggle to save the exemption was turned, in the United States, into a demonstration by the Irish, Germans and other anti-British elements. Innate hostility to England, the coastwise shipping interests, formed the backbone of the opposition to any repeal of this exemption, but the Taft Administration had held that the exemption did not conflict with the treaty (on the ground that the words "all nations" meant all nations except the United ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... corner, awoke her with a start, and after a hurried glance at the passengers, who appeared to be all asleep, she drew a small ivory-cased looking-glass from her bag, and proceeded to examine her features. Mr. Jorrocks awoke shortly after, and with an awful groan exclaimed that his backbone was fairly worn out with sitting. "Oh dear!" said he, "my behind aches as if I had been kicked all the way from Hockleyhole to Marylebone. Are we near Paris? for I'm sure I can't find seat any longer, indeed I can't. I'd rather ride two hundred ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Benjy was laid on the shelf, and his young brothers were still under petticoat government, Tom, in search of companions, began to cultivate the village boys generally more and more. Squire Brown, be it said, was a true-blue Tory to the backbone, and believed honestly that the powers which be were ordained of God, and that loyalty and steadfast obedience were men's first duties. Whether it were in consequence or in spite of his political creed, I ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes |
