"Backbone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England never hesitated, when the Belgian frontier was crossed, but moved with such extraordinary speed that within four days after its declaration of war its standing army was crossing the channel, and within a fortnight it had landed upon French soil the two army corps which constituted the backbone of her ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... I'm afraid I'm not over-orthodox. You see, I've knocked about a bit and seen something of other men's beliefs. The love of God is the backbone of my religion, and all that doesn't go with that, I discarded long ago. If Christianity doesn't mean that, it doesn't mean anything. I've no use for the people who think that none but their own select little circle will go to heaven. Such Gargantuan smugness takes one's breath away. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... 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
... 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
... a mighty swar, He didn't mince nor chew it; For when he spoke, 'most usual, It had a backbone tew it. He sed he'd find a healthy plan Tew square things with the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... look at the backbone of a fish, you can see that it is made up-of many little bones. Your own spine is formed in much the same way, of twenty-four small bones. An elastic cushion of gristle (gr[)i]s'l) fits nicely in between each ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... Brand answered. "For myself it is true that I am a democrat, but then I am only a journalist. I have noticed that the few nobles who remain in Theos are aristocrats to the backbone. I believe that you ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Royal Hotel is as familiar as that of the Railway Hotel, and passes unnoticed and ungrowled at, even by bush republicans. The Royal Hotel at Bourke was kept by an Irishman, one O'Donohoo, who was Union to the backbone, loudly in favour of "Australia for the Australians," and, of course, against even the democratic New South Wales Government of the time. He went round town all one St Patrick's morning with a bunch of green ribbon fastened to ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... that she was unimproved. His professional training told him that, and he threw into the work all the skill that he possessed. He suddenly became conscious that he had lost some of the assurance in himself which had been the backbone of his former successes, but it took him a short while to comprehend fully his own incapacity. As he drove over the miles of snowy road into town, after an evening at her bedside, the truth became a conviction in his mind. His heart ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... hardened and her backbone stiffened involuntarily the moment she had her first glimpse of Prouty. Invariably it had this effect upon her and to-day was no different from any other. Her eyes narrowed and her nerves tightened as though to meet the attack of an advancing enemy when at ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... the first Darwin of antiquity, for he is said to have begun his creation from below, and after passing from the invertebrate to the sub-vertebrate, from thence to the backbone, from the backbone to the mammalia, and from the mammalia to the manco- cerebral, he compounded man of each ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... radical traditions, partly derived from the reform agitation, and constantly rebelled against dictation from their rich customers. The farmers, dependent on their landlords and closely allied with them in defending the corn laws, proved more submissive to influence, and constituted the backbone of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... isn't everything," thought Christophe, remembering a jest of Diderot's: "the chief thing is a straight backbone." ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... carve this joint by cutting across the ribs, parallel with the backbone, but that is cutting with the grain; and meat, especially beef, seems more tender if cut across ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... the place. He looked in every hole, and tore up the mud with his sharp nose. At last he found something white; he picked the mud from around it, and then pulling hard, he brought out a joint of the backbone, and flew with it back ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... vitality throughout your entire system. I'm going to give you arms and legs like pillars. I'm going to work on every inner muscle as well, toning up your liver, your heart, etc. You'll have a snap to your step and a flash to your eye. You'll feel the real pep shooting up and down your old backbone. You'll stretch out your big brawny arms and crave for a chance to crush everything before you. You'll just bubble over ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the bullet," said Amos. "Grazed the top of the lungs and came to the surface near the backbone. Lord, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan. Within Dewa, Mutsu, and the island of Yezo, the aboriginal Yemishi had been held since Yamato-dake's signal campaign in the second century A.D., and though not so effectually quelled as to preclude all danger of insurrection, their potentialities caused ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the manuscript with that combined gentleness and grace which I have endeavored to cultivate in my demeanor, and to suggest, in the tenderest way, that he should be content to write, and not publish? He got up, stiffened his backbone, placed his conventional hat hard upon his head, gave a look of mingled mortification and wrath, and hurried away without saying a word. That man, I assure you, will be my secret enemy to the day of his death. He is no doubt a literary authority ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... over, and he shuddered; but it was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after, lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone alone ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... entirely. I'm letting you the room chape as dirt, Bet Granger, 'cos I've took a fancy to you, honey; and that's as true as my name is Molly O'Flaherty. 'Tis the Irish you have about you here, love—'tis them as is thrue to the backbone as is your neighbors, dear. Fight for you! honey,—oh, yes, we'll fight. Them boys, why they're Mother Bunch's boys now. There, honey, there's your room, and as purty an attic as heart could wish. A shilling a week! Why, it's chaper than dirt! Now then, I must ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... tempting price of thirty thousand pounds for the Pretender dead or alive, but every adherent of the luckless Jefferson Davis of that day was in peril of life and wholesale confiscation. The House of Hanover not only broke the backbone of the Rebellion, but mangled without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... a definite end in view—marriage, let us say, or an elopement,—secret correspondences, the surmounting of garden walls, the bribery of servants, are in the picture. But in a small sweet idyll, with no backbone of intention to it, these things are inartistic. And Vernon was, above and before all, an artist. He must go away and he knew it. And his picture was not finished. Could he possibly leave that incomplete? ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... served on every free-lunch counter in the U.S. Before Prohibition, free-lunch cheese was the backbone of ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... went with me, it was Emily. I am sure he felt bound to be on guard all the time against any young officer's attentions to his poor little sister-in-law,' said Ada, with her Maid-of-Athens look. 'The smallest approach brought those hawk's eyes of his like a dart right through one's backbone. It all came back to me to-night, and the way he used to set poor ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... athlete; he was no sooner down than up. So, when the bull came down from his rearing, and turned to massacre his assailant, he was behind him, and seizing his tail, twisted it, and delivered a thundering blow on his backbone, and followed it up by a shower of them on his ribs. "Run to the gate, Zoe!" he roared. Whack! whack! whack!—"Run to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... clapped 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 when you had your ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... holding up in the air the powerful Jarasandha, began to whirl him on high. And, O bull of the Bharata race, having so whirled him in the air full hundred times, Bhima pressed his knee against Jarasandha's backbone and broke his body in twain. And having killed him thus, the mighty Vrikodara uttered a terrible roar. And the roar of the Pandava mingling with that death knell of Jarasandha, while he was being broken ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... brain of mine hasn't been thinking a few things about you? Why, Margaret, you need me even more than I need you, though I need you more than I'd dare try to tell you. You need just such a man as me to give you direction and purpose—REAL backbone. Primping and preening in carriages and parlors—THAT isn't life. It's the frosting on the cake. Now, you and I, we're going to have the cake itself. Maybe with, maybe without the frosting. BUT NOT THE FROSTING ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... all by degrees be levelled down. This latter line of conduct would be practicable, and had this beautiful attraction,—that it would save for his own present use that charming balance of ready money which he still possessed. Had Altringham possessed any true backbone of friendship, he might now, he thought, have been triumphant over all ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... what I want to do. Put it in such a disagreeable way that your backbone'll stiffen up a bit and give us something to start with. If I make you mad all the better—so long as you don't go back to fools like Gardner, who never hesitate to give a fellow like you a sample of what that drug'll ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... to time. But he is one of the old-fashioned yeomen of Gloucestershire—a gentleman, if ever there was one—a type of the best sort of Englishman. Alas! that hard times have thinned the ranks of the old yeoman farmers of the Cotswolds! They are the very backbone of the country; we can ill afford to lose them, with their cheery, bluff ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... non-Zionists may succeed in defeating their opponents; they can never dispense with Zionism which is a driving force in American Jewish life. The victory may perch on the banners of the Zionists but they can never forego the assistance of the non-Zionists who still form the backbone of American Jewry. Representing the common longings of the Jewish people throughout the world, Zionism should serve as a leaven, quickening and stimulating the Jewish activities of this country, and rescue them from the greatest danger of Diaspora Judaism, the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... 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 ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... silence again until his face grew purple and his breath came in gasps. "Tom," he began, and there was no backbone left in his voice, "what do you-all ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... were driven upon the French coast by storms and took no part in the battle—making a total (without the galleys) of about 64 fighting ships. Then there were 35 or more pinnaces and small craft, and 23 urcas or storeships of little or no fighting value. The backbone of the force was the 60 galleons, large, top-lofty vessels, all but 20 of them from the merchant service, with towering poops and forecastles that made them terrible to look upon but hard to handle. On board were 8,000 ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of mind that he went to Dyson's house. This much the ex-detective would urge in his favour. To his neighbours he was an awe-inspiring but kind and sympathetic man. "If you want my true opinion of him," says Detective Parrock, "he was a burglar to the backbone but not a murderer at heart. He deserved the fate that came to him as little as any who in modern times have met with a like one." Those who are in the fighting line are always the most generous about their adversaries. Parrock as a potential target for Peace's revolver, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... 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
... better on the stage—on the stage, I mean, of another theater than the theater of this world—it is far better to wear a fine coat and to talk a fine language, than to walk the boards shod with a pair of old shoes, or to get one's backbone gently polished by a hearty dressing with a stick. In one word, you have been a prodigal with money, you have ordered and been obeyed—have been steeped to the lips in enjoyment; while I have dragged my tether ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Cuttle are related to the Snail and Whelk, they have no shell. Their bodies are naked. Neither do they grow a backbone, or skeleton; but, inside the body, the Cuttle has a plate of chalk, which you may find on the shore. Some kinds have a long strip of transparent substance, like a large feather. Fishermen use the smaller kinds of Cuttle as bait. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... object of their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism. The twin chains, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the country down the centre, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... useful on some other occasion. The second was to ask whether I was an Irishman. I suppose the air of modesty about my appeal must have struck him. I satisfied the Director-General that I was English to the backbone, and he made some inquiries as to my student career, finally desiring me to hold myself ready for examination. Having passed this, I was in Her Majesty's Service, and entered on the books of Nelson's old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital, about a couple ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... squirmed emotionally up and down his backbone, but he affected a disdainful appearance of patience in view of the importance of his and his poppa's positions compared with the ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban
... Professor Whitney does not find it entirely easy to reduce what I have written to a skeleton of logical sequence, but whether the fault is mine or his, remains surely to be proved. There may be a very strong logical backbone in arguments which make the least display of Aldrich, while in others there is a kind of whited and sepulchral logic which seldom augurs well for what is ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... 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 filled ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... watchin' the corners to prevent losses like this that eats up the profit, and not go around with his sleeves rolled up and his jaw slewed, lookin' for a fight. And if he starts one he's got to have the backbone and the gizzard to hold up his end of it, and not let 'em put a thing like this over on him. Why wasn't you in the wagon last night ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... begun, and they continued till darkness grew apace. At length Le Beau Disconus struck such a blow that the giant's right arm was shorn off. Thereupon Maugis fled, but Le Beau Disconus ran swiftly after him and with three stern strokes clove his backbone. Then Le Beau Disconus smote off the giant's head, and went into the town; and all ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... ceased to be love letters in any sense of the word. They dealt chiefly with the "Cub," and even there Benham felt presently that the enthusiasm diminished. A new amazing quality for Amanda appeared—triteness. The very writing of her letters changed as though it had suddenly lost backbone. Her habitual liveliness of phrasing lost its point. Had she lost her animation? Was she ill unknowingly? Where had the light gone? It was as if her attention was distracted.... As if every day when she wrote her mind was busy ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... or alter me,' she rejoined with a light laugh. 'I am Irish to the backbone. Now, my boy, you really must not keep me any longer with all this nonsense about Mollie. I have to go up to Rosendale, you know; Mrs. Cardell begged me to sit with her a little, and I am late now. Mollie will give you your tea. Come—have you forgiven your mother?' passing her white ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... complexity of aims and of legislative machinery. Primarily Factory Acts aim at regulation of quantity of labour. Reductions of the working-day forms a backbone of this legislation. A twelve-hour day, ten, nine, eight, covering wider classes of workers and applied to a larger number of industries, marks the line of movement. With each advance the basis of protection ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... not see. I tried, convulsively, to hold the tree up, but it was too late; a sudden gust of air swept by, and down it rushed, with a roar like a whirlwind, and leaving my cousin untouched, struck me full across the loins, broke my backbone, and pinned me to the ground in mortal agony. I heard one wild shriek rise from the flower fairies, as they fell each from the lily cup, no longer of full human size, but withered, shrivelled, diminished a thousand-fold, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... R.A., sought to persuade the overworked Leech to take a holiday, he added, just to drive the matter home: "If anything happened to you, who are the 'backbone of Punch,' what would become of the paper?" At which Leech smiled, says his biographer, and retorted, "Don't talk such rubbish! Backbone of Punch, indeed! Why, bless your heart, there isn't a fellow at work upon ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... moment Uncle 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
... says, it happens that the principal functions of the soul do act erroneously. His treatment consisted of emetics, purges, opening the veins under the tongue, blisters, issues, and shaving the head, followed by a cataplasm upon it, the backbone anointed with a very choice balsam of earthworms or bats. One prescription for melancholia contains no less than twenty-seven ingredients, to be made into a decoction, to which is to be added that sine qua non, the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes. What do you think? Backbone! But I never had any particular feeling for bones. We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed. I found it that trip. I lifted a box one end ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... frost of winter brought the festival of hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... speak was Ballard. His eyes glanced round with an indomitable expression of scorn and indignation, which, as Diccon whispered, he could have felt to his very backbone. It was like that of a trapped and maimed lion, as the man sat in his chair with crushed and racked limbs, but with a spirit untamed in ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this woman will stan' up fur me when I gin myself up fur State's evidence, ef I put ye on the track fur findin' Bubby? He's thar all right yit, I'll be bound—well an' thrivin, I reckon. He hev got backbone, tough ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... an argument to which John's slow mind could not supply an answer. Conservative to the backbone in all his notions, like most Sussex people, be their politics what they may, the law of progress was no law to him, but rather rebellion to the divine appointments, and that Jack should wish to be anything else but a shepherd like his ancestors was to him as inexplicable and incomprehensible ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... instruct a person older than yourself, do you—you-with the brains of a butterfly, the acumen of a bat; the backbone of a jelly-fish. You can tell me something, can you? I was managing governments when you were sitting in your high chair, drumming on a tin plate with a spoon." Her voice boomed like a gun. "You dare to tell me how a government ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... from the faction of Catholics to the backbone. After his abjuration just as much as at his accession, the League continued to exist and to act against him. The legate, Gaetani, maintained that the bishops of France had no right, without the pope's approval, to give an excommunicated prince absolution; he opposed the three ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to have a claim to a place in their houses, if they were successful, than to work for its security. It was with great difficulty that Sir A. Milner as late as September 18 obtained his consent to the dispatch of a few regulars to Kimberley to form the backbone of a defensive force. He seems to have retained almost to the end, in spite of all indications to the contrary, the belief that the war would be averted or at least that the Orange Free State would not join in it. Yet in this he erred in good company. Mr. Balfour said that ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... white laborer shall have his turn too. But I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take. I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... good offices of the Battalion H.Q., given an Intelligence job with our new Division; and the experience I had gained with the 50th Division was not wasted as I had feared it might be. Also there went with me from the 149th Infantry Brigade four highly-trained observers who formed the nucleus and backbone of the 42nd Divisional observers. On returning to the 7th N.F. I lost my acting-captaincy and became second in command to C Company. Also I had to part with many good friends in the old Brigade: some of them I was destined never to meet again. Lieut. E.W. Styles who was attached to the 149th ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... by Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III., the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of that class, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion, when the meaning of this was ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... 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 ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... different stuff from that soft slob Hooker," he said. "I did think that Hook had some sand and spirit, but I've changed my mind; he has just about as much backbone as a jellyfish. He can talk and blow, but it's all wind. You're a fellow with genuine spirit and pride; nobody wipes ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... Sherman platform as the only means whereby to rescue the country from total destruction, and if we mistake not, our backbone will prove sufficiently strong to enable us to look the issue full in the face, without a shudder. It is our bounden duty, and that of every other patriot and well-wisher of the South, to at once signify an unconditional acceptance of the measures perfected ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... woman, scarcely to be described as beautiful, yet undeniably attractive. Obviously a daughter of the well-to-do, one of that American type which flourishes in families to which American politicians unctuously refer as the backbone of the nation. Outwardly, gazing riverward through the dusty pane, she bore herself with utmost serenity. Inwardly she was ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... The clouds of hot steam at once stopped their snarling, as well as their tearing at the bodies of the children, and, before they could do any further injury, Shakoona with one blow cut through the backbone of one, severing the spinal cord, thus rendering him powerless to move. The other one sprang at her ere she could disengage the axe for another blow. The wolf's object had been to catch her by the throat, but she had quickly ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... mean merely "one," but one and all. "On n'a que sa parole" does not mean "Noblesse oblige," or "I am the Duke of Billingsgate and must keep my word." It means: "One has a sense of honour as one has a backbone: every man, rich or poor, should feel honourable"; and this, whether possible or no, is the purest ambition of the republic. But when the Eugenists say, "Conditions must be altered" or "Ancestry should be investigated," or what not, it seems ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... an age he could not tell what was happening. He heard a thousand throats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edge of the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulder and saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. He had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, and hands clutching at the tilting guide bars. The fenestrations in the further float flashed ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... give me every detail—the number of the room they met in, the exact hour, and all that. What I like to get in a report of a secret meeting is absolute accuracy in small matters, so that those who were there will know it is not guesswork. That always takes the backbone out of future denials. I'll mention ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... smiling). 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
... one more complicated, more delicate, and hence incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted unpleasantly upon those in power at Whitehall. Methods of procuration must therefore be devised of a nature such as to insure that neither trade nor Admiralty should suffer—that they should, in fact, enjoy what the unfortunate ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... deep. Crabbe imitates Pope because everybody imitated him at that day. He adopted Pope's metre because it had come to be almost the only recognised means of poetical expression. He stuck to it after his contemporaries had introduced new versification, partly because he was old-fashioned to the backbone and partly because he had none of those lofty inspirations which naturally generate new forms of melody. He seldom trusts himself to be lyrical, and when he does his versification is nearly as monotonous as it is in his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... one 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 ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the brook, some rocks marked the end of the fine Springhaven sands and the beginning of a far more rugged beach, the shingles and flint shelves of Pebbleridge. Here the chalk of the Sussex backbone (which has been plumped over and sleeked by the flesh of the valley) juts forth, like the scrags of a skeleton, and crumbles in low but rugged cliffs into the flat domain of sea. Here the landing is bad, and the anchorage ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a "mush of concession" through the process of dropping useless resistance, for the strength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of pitting one's own will against that of another is much ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... a period of silence in the Russian-Jewish press. [1] The rank and file of the Russian Jewish intellectuals, who formed the backbone of the reading public of this press, became indifferent to it. Living up conscientiously to the principle of a "fusion of interests," they failed to recognize the special interests of their own people, whose only duty they thought was to be Russified, i.e., obliterated ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... asleep in a nook behind the metal refuse-can, when the strange cat ventured to ascend the steps of the porch, his appearance was so unwarlike that the cat felt encouraged to extend its field of reconnaissance—for the cook had been careless, and the backbone of a three-pound whitefish lay at the foot ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... fact, I cannot understand those fellows on my sub-committee. Sometimes they are—if anything—too civil. A bit servile, in fact. Then they turn out and look as though they would like to make their teeth meet in my backbone. They sulk, and whisper in groups, and snicker. I am getting sick of it. I must get rid of them. By Jove! there's David Rennes, the painter. I thought he was at Amesbury—with the Carillons, doing Agnes's portrait. It can't be finished. She said ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... Norway's new king. Not that it is the first time a sovereign has been, so to speak, "custom-made." An eligible foreign prince is tendered a seat upon an ancient throne; the form is old, but the spirit, how new! Republican though she is to the backbone, Norway has elected to be governed by monarchical methods, fearing with her isolated and primitive peasantry, to put the machinery of control into the hands of the people themselves. She must have a king, but he shall be of a ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... I have also told him much about my old friend and 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 ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... said it was "simply absurd" to suppose it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science" or "reveal any truth of profound significance;" in 1884 he said of the same theory, that "it formed the backbone of all the previous literature upon instinct" by Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Fiske, and Spalding, "not to mention their numerous followers, and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... most horrible of all, amidst the low murmur of dread which arose from the Mullahs and Ibrahim, a skeleton hand suddenly darted out, holding a knife and pointed to a small, round, black spot close to the dark backbone. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... were relying on Gethryn to effect some improvement. He was in the Sixth, the First Fifteen, and the First Eleven. Also a backbone was included in his anatomy, and if he made up his mind to a thing, that ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... covered with it, and it has been used as a dado on the library wall of a well-known naturalist. It makes an excellent binding for certain books. Among fishes the shark provides a skin used in a variety of ways. The shagreen of the shark's ray is of great value. Canes are made of the shark's backbone, the interstices being filled with silver or shell plates. Shark's teeth are used to decorate the weapons of various nations. The magnificent scales, nearly four inches across and tipped with seemingly solid silver, of the giant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... watched the two men, physically so dissimilar, climb the rocks and start out the south side of the cove. At first her eyes followed them lazily, but soon she grew interested and worried. Hall was leading Billy up what seemed a perpendicular wall in order to gain the backbone of the rock. Billy went slowly, displaying extreme caution; but twice she saw him slip, the weather-eaten stone crumbling away in his hand and rattling beneath him into the cove. When Hall reached the top, a hundred feet ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... club-footed Puritan, in his mad scheme of vengeance and party power, had overlooked the Covenanter, the backbone of the South. This man had just begun to fight! His race had defied the Crown of Great Britain a hundred years from the caves and wilds of Scotland and Ireland, taught the English people how to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... moved also by the desire to plant a new England beyond the seas. They made, in fact, no profits; but they did create a branch of the English stock, and the young squires' and yeomen's sons who formed the backbone of the colony showed themselves to be Englishmen by their unwillingness to submit to an uncontrolled direction of their affairs. In 1619, acting on instructions received from England, the company's governor summoned an assembly of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Conservatives to adopt the policy of Home Rule—a propaganda on his part to which the episode of Lord Carnarvon bears witness, and which was advocated by him in the National and Contemporary Reviews in 1884 and 1885. It may well be that the political groundlings who are at present the backbone of the Sinn Fein movement will, when they gain political experience, alter their views in as complete a manner. One can draw an English parallel to this movement in Ireland. There are in the former, as in the latter, country a certain ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the Parsis themselves on the subject of their nationality and position in India. The Hon. Mr. P. M. Mehta considers them as natives to the backbone. Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, M.P., is of the same opinion, whilst a certain ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant
... seventeen years since Elizabeth had married James Sheldon in the face of the most decided opposition on the part of her family. Sheldon was a handsome, shiftless ne'er-do-well, without any violent bad habits, but also "without any backbone," as the Ingelows declared. "There is sometimes hope of a man who is actively bad," Charlotte Ingelow had said sententiously, "but who ever heard of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... exploits supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the novel an air of documentary realism. What's more, Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... America. But he isn't a bad lot, this Valverde, though he is a queer one. He speaks English like a native and has ways that at times make me think he is half American. But he isn't—he is a heathen clear to his backbone, with a heathen heart and a heathen temper. When he takes a dislike to a man he's going to make it hot for him some day or other. It seems that he is particularly sore against the government now because of a certain expedition sent up there a little ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... world's version first! Men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions where other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tell me how much I resembled him, being, so they said, a Montressor to the backbone; and this I took to mean commendation, for the Montressors were a well-descended and well-thought-of family, and the women were noted for their beauty. This I could well believe, since of all my aunts there was not one but was counted a pretty woman. Therefore I took heart of grace ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... medium. There are—we have their own authority for believing it—men who would be republicans, though their niece was married to a royal duke. Walpole, we must admit, was not of the number. He was an aristocrat to the backbone. He was a gossip by nature and education, and had lived from infancy in the sacred atmosphere of court intrigue; every friend he possessed in his own rank either had a place, or had lost a place, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a long and unusually severe one, but by March it seemed reasonable to suppose that its backbone was broken. Nan had preferred the care of the conservatory to the duller and less interesting work of dish-washing, and Miss Blake, in letting her take her choice, had only exacted the promise that her charge was not to be neglected. ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... pickerel or haddock, sprinkle with salt, stuff and sew with No. 8 cotton thread. Cut four or five diagonal gashes on each side of backbone and lay in strips of fat salt pork. Have the gashes on one side come between gashes on the other. The fish may be skewered in the shape of the letter S, or placed in an upright position on a well-greased ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... 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 ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... up at her windows. 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,' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in every hole and even tearing up the mud with his sharp beak. Presently he uncovered something white, and as he picked the mud from about it, he saw it was a bone, and pulling hard, he dragged it from the mud—the joint of a man's backbone. Then gladly he flew back with ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... people went to the deer after they were killed. Two of us who went after the blood of the deer were shot." The crows on the other side of the canyon, called, "Which men got killed?" The first crier replied, "The chaparral cock, who sat on the horn of the deer, and the crow, who sat on its backbone." The other called out, "We are not surprised that they were killed; that is what we tell you all the time. If you will go after the dead deer you must expect to be killed." "We will not think of them longer; ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... autumn sheaves: that the teeth grow by the operation of some natural (or physical) law, and that their apparent and undoubted fitness for cutting and grinding is not purposeful but coincident; that the backbone is divided into vertebrae because of the antecedent forces, or flexions, which act upon it in the womb. And Empedocles proceeds to the great evolutionary deduction, the clear prevision of Darwin's philosophy, that fit and unfit arise alike, but ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... river flows between the mountain ranges which form the great backbone of Burma, every mile of the journey is ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... descent was the basis and backbone of the whole property system. All land, except in the newest countries, together with the bulk of the more stable kinds of property, was ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... with us. There's a blue garrison in it; but they're very weak, and the town itself is for the King to the backbone. They've sent a deputation to our Generals, and invited us there; and there are gentlemen there, who have come from England, with sure promises of money and troops. The truth is, Michael, we never were really in a position to ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... covered with creepers. We stowed the tins in readiness, and then brought our prisoner down, and told him what to do when the time came. I guess thet thet nigger knew thet ef he didn't play straight he was a dead coon. Tia sat down jest behind him, and every now and then touched his backbone with the muzzle ev her pistol—jest ter show him she was keepin' awake. At the same time he wasn't unwillin', for he hed told us thet he and his dead mate were not Baian's men—they were slaves he had captured from a town he had raided somewhere ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... came back, and he brought recruits, famous recruits; he changed their backbone and made 'em dogs of war, fit to set their teeth into anything; and he brought a guard of honor, a fine body indeed!—all bourgeois, who melted away ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... a good deal with the dirigible, but mostly of the non-rigid type, which was a type "without a backbone" and was as uncertain, so that its general non-dependability turned French attention to ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the pillars. It contains such parts as are necessary for life, and which consequently ought to be placed in the centre, and shut up in the securest place. Therefore two rows of ribs pretty close to one another, that come out of the backbone, as the branches of a tree do from its trunk, form a kind of hoop, to hide and shelter those noble and tender parts. But because the ribs could not entirely shut up that centre of the human body, without hindering the dilatation of the stomach and of the entrails, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... fair and easy. There ain't no manner o' hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly, if not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... d'etat of 1851; and his gifts for war were 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 ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 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 the shell as it went ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... some courage for a youth of his disposition to make up his mind to beard the lion in his den—or, in other words, to approach Mr. Blake in his office. For Sam, while bold enough when his two hulking cronies were about, had no real backbone of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... Apennine Mountains, the backbone of Italy; and amid their highest peaks, where the snow lies all the year long, and whence streams flow into the two seas, dwelt the Sabines, an important people, from whom came the mothers of the Roman state. There is a legend concerning ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... true. He remembered that the repairs, which were the backbone of Paasch's trade, began to come in slowly on Monday. Paasch always began the week by making a pair of boots for the window, which he sold at half price when the leather had perished. In his eagerness for work, he had forgotten that ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... is to remain east and compete in civilization. He has worked with tremendous energy and great single-mindedness, and has often been undiplomatic in his criticisms, thus incurring some enmity. But, upon the whole, his theory is the very backbone of Indian education, and in fact we are ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... packer wrapped up and protected one article after another. I had been compelled to abandon a visitation of the West and of the small communities everywhere, and I was sorry. But here in a microcosm I thought I saw the simple reality of the backbone of all America, a symbol of the millions of the little plain people, who ultimately make possible the glory of the world-renowned streets and institutions ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... you ever guard the cattle when the night was inky-black, And it rained, and icy water trickled gently down your back Till your saddle-weary backbone fell a-aching to the roots And you almost felt the croaking of the bull-frog in your boots — Sit and shiver in the saddle, curse the restless stock and cough Till a squatter's irate dummy cantered up to warn you off? ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... "I've walked my legs off to-day already; you'll find 'em back in the road here! Had nothing to eat since morning; wore myself down lean as a rail; felt for the last two hours as though there was nothing but my backbone between me and eternity! No, sir-ree! I wouldn't walk that fur out of my way for a herd of deer. If I had a horse to ride ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... to get within half a mile of dry land. Then, leaving the boat, Flinders and Brown walked along a bank of mud and sand to the shore, to examine the country. Flinders ascended one of the foot-hills of the range that forms the backbone of Yorke's Peninsula, stretching north and south ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... 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 to the brain, which acts as a ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 the ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Sir Francis," Geoffrey said as he shook his old commander's hand, "but I am English to the backbone still. But my story is too long to tell now. You will be doubtless too busy tonight to spare time to listen to it, but I pray you to breakfast with me in the morning, when I will briefly relate to you the outline ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... not worth while to teach me any thing, the fruit of which instructions could be only reaped by the next ship I might belong to. All they wanted of me was the good-will of my muscles, and the use of my backbone—comparatively small though it was at that time—by way of a lever, for the above-mentioned artists to employ when wanted. Accordingly, when any embroidery was going on in the rigging, I was set to the most inglorious ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... with conviction on his own initiative. Whether or not he is making a mistake has nothing to do with the main thing, and that is that Gerald, for the first time in his rather colourless career, seems to have developed the rudiments of a backbone out of the tail which I saw so frequently either flourishing defiance at me or tucked sullenly between his hind legs. I had quite a talk with him last night; he behaved very decently, and with a certain ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... anybody can stand! There isn't one of the old great nobility he hasn't alienated, or one of the minor barons, the landholders and industrialists, the people who were always the backbone of Gram. And it goes from them down to the commonfolk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggared except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... and a few jeered. To no one did Adam pay any heed. Past the house of Newton Towne, past the store of Ed Green, past the wide lawn of Henry Foust, walked Adam, his hands clasped behind his back, as though to make more perpendicular than perpendicularity itself that stiff backbone. Henry Foust ran down the steps and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... most extravagant of the claims of the Mormon leaders had influence. One man, when he heard an elder in the midst of a sermon "speak with tongues," in a language he had never heard before, "felt a sudden thrill from the back of his head down his backbone," and was converted on the spot. John D. Lee, of Catholic education, was convinced by an elder that the end of the world was near, and sold his property in Illinois for what it would bring, and moved to Far West, in order to be in the right place when the last day dawned. Lorenzo Snow, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to the schoolmaster, his head went up and his backbone straightened. He drew from his pocket a small key of polished steel. It was the key to Zion! He held it toward the light so that it could be seen from all parts of ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Bertram's recommendation that the poor girl should be taught some honest trade; but encountered a scowl from Colonel Mannering's darkening eye (to whom, in his ignorance of the tone of good society, he had looked for applause) that made him ache to the very backbone. He shuffled downstairs, therefore, as ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of speaking 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
... a half for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthwise, take out the backbone, and put them to soak in vinegar. Then before serving them let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and putting them on a dish pour over them a good mayonnaise ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... unpleasant, or that he, for his part, thinks meanly of them as a race, though on inquiry you find that he is so little acquainted with their characteristics that he is astonished to learn how many persons whom he has blindly admired and applauded are Jews to the backbone. Again, men who consider themselves in the very van of modern advancement, knowing history and the latest philosophies of history, indicate their contemptuous surprise that any one should entertain the destiny of the Jews as a worthy ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... they are wonderful. Why, man alive, you have put backbone even into me—I who have been a jelly-fish all my life—and last night, when I heard you explain to that young fellow that he must not let his wife be his conscience, I got a sudden glimpse of things. You've been my conscience all ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... says she and Kitty are going to a dance at Buckton's country house to-night. You may call that right and proper, sir, but I don't. The way married couples live to-day is an outrage on common decency. If you had any backbone you'd make your wife behave herself. She is more of a belle, sir, right now than before you married her. She is crazy for excitement, and the whole poker-playing, wine-drinking set she goes with is on the road ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... than Hildegarde; it is less formal. Well, then, Gretchen, I can't explain it, but this new order of things has given me a tremendous backbone." He crossed the room to her side. "You ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... 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 at the risk of substituting an eager ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... would you put the woods into his hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's the backbone of Jonathan ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... relief was heard but misunderstood. He might be saved after all. The stock had started to go down and there seemed no reason why it should stop. As he intended to purchase no more it was fair to assume that the backbone was at the breaking point. The crash was bound to come. He could hardly restrain a cry of joy. Even while he stood at the ticker the little instrument began to tell of a further decline. As the price went ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... the action of the subconscious mind to take in and reason and argue in its own deductive way upon things of which you are not at the moment consciously thinking. Therefore it is that the realisation of that great promise of redemption, which is the backbone of the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelations, is according to a scientific law. It is not a hocus-pocus business, it is not a thing which has been arranged this way and might just as well have been arranged in ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... shorn of his locks, dropped into impotence and insignificance. In February, 61, during the debate on the Clodius affair, he made his first speech in the Senate. Cicero, listening with malicious satisfaction, reported that "Pompey gave no pleasure to the wretched; to the bad he seemed without backbone; he was not agreeable to the well-to-do; the wise and good found him wanting in substance;" [7] in short, the speech was a failure. Pompey applied for a second consulship. He was reminded that he had been consul eight years previously, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... them are better understood. One of the most remarkable and numerous of these Triassic Reptiles seems to have been an animal resembling, in the form of the head, and in the two articulating surfaces at the juncture of the head with the backbone, the Frogs and Salamanders, though its teeth are like those of a Crocodile. As yet nothing has been found of these animals except the head,—neither the backbone nor the limbs; so that little is known ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... on every table—from the "Sir Loin," said to have been knighted by Charles II. when in a merry mood, to the "Baron of Beef," which is, like a "saddle" of mutton, two loins joined together by the backbone. This enormous dish is not within the range of ordinary mortals; but the Queen always keeps up the custom of having one wherever she may be, at Windsor, or Osborne. Beef may be said to be the staple flesh of England, and is procurable by every one except the very poorest, whilst it is not ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... slaves had been brought to this country. The major part of all the cotton, corn, cane, potatoes, tobacco, and other agricultural products, were planted, cultivated, harvested and prepared for, and, not infrequently, marketed by, the slaves. In fact, they were the agricultural backbone of the South. Since cotton forms the largest, and has been the most important agricultural product in the South, I think a hundred and nine years of its production will prove interesting and valuable: In 1791, 8,889 bales were produced, and the second cotton mill built at Providence, Rhode ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... took dem spurs an' put em underneat' o' Caesar's saddle, So dey'd press down in his backbone soon ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... foreign races, creeps back nearer home; that the cultivation of unwholesome appetites has its final reckoning with the stomach which has been made to serve it. For, after all, man is a spiritual being, and not a mere living money-bag jumping from profit to profit, and breaking the backbone of human races in its ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... feet, looking into his face and crying piteously. He stooped down and stroked it, shuddering as his hands came in contact with its emaciated body. Its fur was saturated with rain and every joint of its backbone was distinctly perceptible to the touch. As he caressed it, the starving ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... not found that out—but if you hadn't had something more than goodness inside your head you wouldn't have got so much as a cent out of me again. Saidie's a good woman and a blamed fool, too, but you're different; you've got a backbone in your body, and I'll be hanged if that ain't why I'm leaving ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the backbone of the fish, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of Hoffmann's to Fouque's country-seat near Ratenow, and Nathanael was recognised by Fouque as meant for himself. Das Majorat is, as already stated, a lasting memorial to his old great-uncle, Voethoery; the moral backbone of the story—the evil destiny attaching to the successors of a man whose ambition aimed at founding a powerful family by an act of injustice to his youngest son—reminds the reader forcibly of the purpose that runs through Hawthorne's House with ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... grandeur, 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
... d'Orleans often laughed at her pride, called her Madame Lucifer, in speaking to her, and she admitted that the name did not displease her. She always received his advances with coldness, and a sort of superiority of greatness. She was a princess to the backbone, at all hours, and in all places. Yet, at the same time, her timidity was extreme. The King could have made her feel ill with a single severe look; and Madame de Maintenon could have done likewise, perhaps. At all events, Madame la Duchesse d'Orleans ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unbidden another of the expensive three- for-a-dollar cigars so that his feelings might be soothed. Grimshaw would curl his lip in a sneer and mutter: "The cheap skate. The skunk. No man with half the backbone of a man would take it out of the harmless creatures. He's that kind that if he didn't like you, or if you criticised his grammar or arithmetic, he'd kick your dog to get even . . . or poison it. In the good old days up in Colusa we used to hang men like him just to keep ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the foothills into the mountains beyond. Starlight came upon him in a saddle between the peaks, still plodding up by winding paths to the higher altitudes that make the ridge of the continent's backbone. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine |
