"Backyard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the backyard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid. All ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... was tempted by the great plain that lay golden in the West. Idly, he let himself float down the mountain sides, in long descending diagonals, and suddenly found himself above a farm in the plain. In the backyard, children were playing; a man was sharpening a plowshare at a wheel, and out of the kitchen-shed there came a clatter of dishes and the voice of a woman in song. Seized by a sudden perverse humor, Charles-Norton swooped into the chicken-yard and ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... four. Their mother had lain down with a headache, having first ordered them to take their picture books and sit quietly in the parlour as good children should on a Sabbath afternoon. So they had noisily pretended to obtain the picture books and then quietly tiptoed out into the backyard, which was not so ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Harris, lying exhausted on her bed, in the first sweet relief of freedom from pain, merely covered with the counterpane, and not yet "put comfortable," hears a noise apparently proceeding from the backyard, and says, in a flushed and hysterical manner: "What 'owls are those? Who is a-'owling? Not my ugebond?" Upon which the doctor, looking round one of the bottom posts of the bed, and taking Mrs. Harris's pulse in a reassuring manner, says, with much admirable presence of mind: "Howls, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... fun, you know, and out of the spirit of mischief that's born in every daughter of Eve. Do you remember that Manx cat that wouldn't live in the house, notwithstanding all the bribes and corruption of Aunt Rachel's new milk and softened bread, but went off by the backyard wall to join the tribe of pariah pussies that snatch a living how they may? Well, I felt like Rumpy for once, having three 'goolden sovereigns' in my pocket and a mind ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... it, we found a ruin indeed. The German guns had beaten upon it until it was like a rubbish heap in the backyard of hell. Their malice had wrought a ruin here almost worse than that at Arras. Only one building had survived although it was crumbling to ruin. That was a church, and, as we approached it, we could see, from the great way off, a ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... carrying hoes and a pickaxe, and he stopped and asked her why she was crying so hard. She told him her grief, and he said he would gladly help her if he could, but he was only a well digger and could do nothing for her except to dig a well. She pointed out a place in the backyard, and he went to work and quickly dug ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... Sue were in the backyard of their home, making a big man of snow. There had been quite a storm the day before, and many white flakes had fallen. As soon as the storm stopped and the weather grew warm enough, Mrs. Brown let Bunny and Sue go out to play. And of course one of the first things they did, ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... chin thoughtfully, and let his gaze wander over the backyard in silence. The garden parts had not been spaded up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth, broken only by last year's cabbage-stumps and the general litter of dead roots and vegetation. The door of the tenantless chicken-coop ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... kindness to us Jim and me tried to do little odd jobs about the house for Mrs. Dawkins, but somehow it all turned to wormwood. We slipped out early one Sunday morning and begun siftin' the cinders in the backyard, but she caught sight of us and 'ollered so at Dawkins she woke up all the neighbours: "How can you lay there snorin', you great lazy good-for-nothing, and look on while the defenders of your country is wearin' themselves out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... in the middle of the night and stomping around like cattle. You'd better build a shed in the backyard and sleep there if you're so dumb you ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... fiddlesticks! Go and make yourselves of some use. You'll get nothing from me, for I haven't got it." So saying, he went through the kitchen with a step that forbade him to be followed. His eldest son, arriving over the backyard fence in a state of heat, was just in time to hear him. Lorne's apprehension of the situation was instant, and his face fell, but the depression plainly covered such splendid spirits that his brother asked resentfully, "Well, what's the matter ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fathoms. On the eastern side was a storehouse occupying the width of it, with a very fine cellar, from five to six feet deep. On the northern side were the quarters of Sieur de Monts, comfortably finished. In the backyard were the dwellings of the workmen. At the corner of the western side was a platform, upon which four cannon were placed, and at the eastern corner a palisade was constructed in the shape of a platform. There was nothing pretentious or elegant about these ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... call war action! Think of a writer, a business man, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, reduced to this fenced-in existence, when he had been the kind who got impatient if he had to wait for a train that was late! Shut yourself up in your own backyard with a man with a rifle watching you for twenty- four hours and see whether, if you have the brain of a mouse, prison- camp life can be made comfortable, no matter how many greasy packs of cards you have. And lousy, besides! At ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and cold, and the grass was covered with a light frost. He walked along briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up. The sky was ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the rear of the house, where the corral was, to get my horse, but found the gate fastened with chains and securely locked. The corral walls were built of adobe, and the two walls of it were a continuation of the side walls of the house, and its end wall formed an enclosure or backyard. My horse was there, and I found my saddle in one of the rooms of the building, hidden under a blanket. I entered the corral through the back door of the house, caught and saddled my horse, and then led him out to the street. ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... always worn an enormous diamond ring, and never having seen it nor heard of it since his death, I had reason to think he might have been buried in it. Procuring a spade, I soon located the grave in what had been the backyard and began digging. When I had got down about four feet the whole bottom fell out of the grave and I was precipitated into a large drain, falling through a long hole in its crumbling arch. There was no body, nor any ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Chrisehinising the Patagonians on condition they are not to come here and Chrischinise the Whitechapelians; of the letter to the Times from the tinker wrecked at Timbuctoo; and the dear Professor's lecture on the probabeelity of snail-shells in the backyard of the moon: but don't ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... short, white, embroidered frock, with its Dutch neck and wide, blue ribbon sash, she looked precisely like the pretty child that she had been when she and Marjorie played "house" together in the Raymonds' backyard. The blue silk stockings and heelless, blue kid slippers emphasized the babyish effect of her costume, and Marjorie had hard work to keep back her tears. But Mary could not read that sudden rush of emotion in the calm, uncritical face ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... the city skies aflame, Will have something better to talk about than an absent woman's shame, Will have something nobler to do by far than jest at a friend's expense, Or blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence. And this you learn from the libelled past, though its methods were somewhat rude — A nation's born where the shells fall fast, or its lease of life renewed. We in part atone for the ghoulish strife, and the crimes of the ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Then the Princess had a truly good heart: She was always kind to her pets. She never slapped her hippopotamus when it broke her dolls in its playful gambols, and she never forgot to feed her rhinoceroses in their little hutch in the backyard. Her elephant was devoted to her, and sometimes Mary Ann made her nurse quite cross by smuggling the dear little thing up to bed with her and letting it go to sleep with its long trunk laid lovingly across her throat, and its pretty head cuddled under the ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... living-room My aunt's dresses Barker's riding-horse The business street of the village A cabin in the mountains The office of a man approaching bankruptcy The Potters' backyard The second-hand store ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... front door, or go out at her back door and in again at his. Any meals, too, she might choose to have served alone would have to be carried round to her from the kitchen in Fritzing's half, either through the backyard or through ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a touch of tutorial stiffness in his gentle demeanour. He was pleased with the old house in the Rue Pirouette. On the ground floor he passed through the faint odours pervading the premises of the purveyor of cooked vegetables. Big pans of boiled spinach and sorrel stood cooling in the little backyard. Then he ascended the winding staircase, greasy and dark, with worn and bulging steps which sloped in a disquieting manner. The Mehudins occupied the whole of the second floor. Even when they had attained to comfortable circumstances the old mother had always declined to move ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... has an ending, and the Nepaug highway was no exception, except that instead of a dignified and impressive ending, it only narrowed to a grass-grown track, and finally pulled up in the backyard of the Nepaug Inn. The inn had stood in this same spot since the days of Washington, and there was a tradition that he had spent a night beneath its roof, though it puzzled even legend-mongers to invent an errand which could have ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... cavernous front door that was dark and rarely open. People used the side door into the ell sitting room, and the brick walk leading in a curved sweep to this doorway was free from grass. A high wooden lattice separated the front lawn from the backyard and sheds and stables, and about this lattice sprawled in luxuriant freedom rose vines and honeysuckle, just now faintly ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... Europe or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere. From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... by the foot of the staircase and along a line of cupboards to the kitchen. The window of this looked out upon a backyard piled with refuse timber, packing-cases, and plaster statuary broken and black with soot. Within, the hearth had been swept as if in preparation for us. On the dirty table stood a milk-jug with a news-sheet folded and laid across its top, a ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I'd like to know? It isn't a joke to be hurted so! An' how wuz I ever on earth to tell 'At the pretty flower which I stooped to smell In our backyard wuz the very one Which a bee wuz busily working on? An' jus' as I got my nose down there, He lifted his foot an' kicked for fair, An' he planted his stinger right into me, But it's nothin' to laugh at as I ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... midst of the excitement somebody saw Peleg Snuggers, the general-utility man of the school, hurrying across the backyard. ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... badly. We've never recovered a Kraden ship in good enough shape to give our techs something to work on. It might make a basic difference in the war, particularly if there was something aboard that'd give us some indication of where they were coming from. We've been fighting this war in our backyard for a full century. It would help if we could get into their backyard for a change. It's problematical how long we'll be able to hold ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... obvious duty was for every man to clean up his own backyard and repent of his sins. Every one should approximate the life of the Kingdom by living now as he would expect to live then. But, as we have seen from his sayings, Jesus went far beyond this. He demanded ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... did. It seems scrounging for fuel 'ad reached such a pitch in the village that people took their backyard fences in at night, 'an they 'ad posted a policeman on the station to prevent 'em sawing away the waiting-room. But our washing 'ad to be done, 'an I thought if I got the whole of this football team scrounging they might find something as everyone else 'ad overlooked. So I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... earth is small. But in each backyard, on each acre or square mile of earth, decisions may be made or are being made that determine survival, utility, order, beauty. The results of those decisions appear constantly in ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... In the backyard of the Bryant home, buried in debris, was a chicken coop, not a splinter awry. Within it was a goose sitting meekly upon a dozen eggs which ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... bored sergeant at the desk, passed out a cigar, lit one himself, expressed some innocuous opinions upon one or two topics of the day, and walked leisurely out of the precinct. He wanted to laugh. These pigheads had never thought to question his presence in the backyard of the house in Seventy-ninth Street. It was the way he had carried himself. Those years in New York, prior to the war, had not ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... distinction of cane and limp remained to him, consolations which he protracted far into the week—until Thursday evening, in fact, when Mr. Schofield, observing from a window his son's pursuit of Duke round and round the backyard, confiscated the cane, with the promise that it should not remain idle if he saw Penrod limping again. Thus, succeeding a depressing Friday, another Saturday brought the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... (One leaves these on, as a rule, till the double windows are brought up from the cellar, and one has to hunt all over the house for missing screws.) Sometimes one saw a few flashing lengths of new stovepipe in a backyard, and pitied the owner. There is no humour in the old, bitter-true stovepipe jests ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling |
