"Backward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but this time it was not an adagio, but a joyous and triumphant allegro, with which he sought to dispel the melancholy and quench the tears flowing in his troubled heart. He walked backward and forward in his room, and from time to time stood before the sofa upon which his graceful greyhound, Biche, was quietly resting. Every minute the king passed her sofa, Biche raised her beautiful head and greeted her royal friend with an intelligent and friendly glance and a gentle wagging ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... soul, Jerry, I am tired to death. Seven times have I been backward and forward to that abominable privateer, and now my tea is ready, and I am ordered to go ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... chairs into the centre of the floor, and placing them beneath the gas jet he stepped backward and tilted his head to one ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... fail, miss, be near. Ledoux manqua tomber la renverse, Ledoux almost fell over backward; et voil que nous avons manqu de prir tous, and now we have all come very ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... not burn brightly in the livid day. The little there was to eat was warmed and eaten. When, afterwards, the rolls were called, there were silences. Mr. Ready-to-halt, Mr. Faint Heart, Mr. Fearing, and also Mr. Honesty, really too ill to march, were somewhere on the backward road to Winchester. Length by length, like a serpent grey and cold, sluggish, unburnished, dull, and bewildered, the column took the road. Deeply cut the day before by the cavalry, by Garnett's brigade, and by the artillery, the road was horrible. What had been ridged snow ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... moonbeams instead of hot hoecake. Besides, I have to see everybody safely tucked in before I can leave. Aren't they all a precious houseful of early-to-bed chickens? The old Sweeties have forgotten there is such a thing as the moon and Stonie hasn't—found it out—yet." And with a mischievous backward glance, Rose Mary led the way up the lilac path to the Briars on top of the hill just as the old bell sounded two wobbly notes, their uncertainty caused by the rivalry of the General and Tobe over the pulling ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... mighty God! The waters saw thee come; Backward they fled, and frighted stood, To make ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... marriage laws of the Australians; and (2) the nature and origin of such among their ideas and practices as may be styled 'religious.' As far as what we commonly call material civilisation is concerned, the natives of the Australian continent are probably the most backward of mankind, having no agriculture, no domestic animals, and no knowledge of metal-working. Their weapons and implements are of wood, stone, and bone, and they have not even the rudest kind of pottery. But though the natives are ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... their scoffs, hootings, or all they could say to him, but still continued crying: "Who will change old lamps for new?" He repeated this so often, walking backward and forward in front of the palace, that the princess, who was then in the hall with the four and twenty windows, hearing a man cry something and not being able to distinguish his words, owing to the hooting of the children, and increasing mob about him, sent one of her women slaves ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... times uneasily. At length he arose, not hurriedly, but with a deliberate motion, threw his arms behind him, and, bending forward, with his eyes cast down, paced the length of the store two or three times, backward ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... indeed Thorleif whom I saw as the deadly faintness of utter weariness and want of food came over me, and I sank. The Danes had hardly lost sight of me from the ships, for they had drifted backward and forward on the tide as I drifted, and I was never more than a mile from them. Until the tide turned to the eastward there had been no wind of any use to them, and that which came with sunset was barely enough to give them steerage way. So they had watched me for ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... flowing tide shall turn Backward to its fountain head, Dearest nymph, ere thou shall mourn, Thy too ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... successfully taken to put these principles into effect. The progress has been by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical has been done; the action has been both moderate and resolute. Therefore the work will stand. There shall be no backward step. If in the working of the laws it proves desirable that they shall at any point be expanded or amplified, the amendment can be made as its desirability is shown. Meanwhile they are being administered ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... trouble in catching the ball. He changed his position a foot or two and prepared to take it. Just before it reached him he made a sudden backward move and then leaped desperately into the air, thrusting ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... rush! The lowered horns within an inch of Jarocho, and Fray Joseph Maria running with the consecrated wafer to the doomed man! At that precise moment there was a rifle-shot, and the bellowing brute rolled backward into the arena—dead." ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... like this dragging their few possessions in carts can easily be imagined. One family after another would find that they could not make further progress, and when a hill was reached the human teams would have to be doubled up. In this way, by travelling backward and forward, some progress was made. That day's march was marked by constant additions to the stragglers who kept dropping by the way. When the main body had made their camp for the night, some of the best teams were sent back for ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... race? Hence impious thought! Still led by GOD'S own Hand, Mankind proceeds towards the Promised Land. A time will come (prophetic, I descry Remoter dawns along the gloomy sky), When happy mortals of a Golden Age Will backward turn the dark historic page, And in our vaunted race of Men behold A form as gross, a Mind as dead and cold, As we in Giants see, in warriors of old. A time will come, wherein the soul shall be From all superfluous matter wholly free; When the light body, agile as a fawn's, Shall sport with grace ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... and went, staggering rather than walking, to the door and disappearing into outer darkness without a backward glance. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... some respects little better than a madman in a strait-waistcoat of habit, public opinion, prudence, or the like. Scepticism began at length to make itself felt, but it spread slowly and was shy of proclaiming itself. The orthodox party was not backward to charge with sorcery whoever doubted their facts or pitied their victims. Bodin says that it is good cause of suspicion against a judge if he turn the matter into ridicule, or incline toward mercy. The mob, as it always is, was orthodox. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... When he arrived there, he repeated to the man in charge of the slaves, "Mr. Rumo will lose his money," and shortly after he took advantage of a favourable moment, and, folding his arms, he threw himself backward into the ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... young man—blindfolded, groping backward in the chambers of his darkened soul, and trying to escape out of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Relations Polite Conversation Awful Warnings It's oh, to be out of England—now that Spring is here Bad-tempered People Polite Masks The Might-have-been Autumn Sowing What You Really Reap Autumn Determination Two Lives Backward and Forward When? The Futile Thought The London Season Christmas The New Year February Tub-thumpers I Wonder If . . . Types of Tub-thumpers If Age only Practised what it Preached! Beginnings Unlucky in Little Things Wallpapers Our Irritating Habits Away—Far Away! "Family Skeletons" The Dreariness ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... way leads forward; the wrong way backward. Unto your choice bring wisdom. Within four angles of prominence lies your life. Leo rising, Cancer culminating. To your house Mars brings trouble but Venus overrules. You will bear a man child of exceeding greatness. Art is your talent; your hands your best possessions. See to it that ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... the choice lies between arthroplasty, the removal of a wedge of bone which includes the joint, or, in patients who are still growing, of a wedge from the femur above the level of the epiphysial cartilage. Backward displacement of the tibia, genu recurvatum, and genu valgum ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... feet, but sank down again, before any of the sleepy passengers had observed her motion. In a few moments she was calm. Her long habits of firm, energetic action began to resume sway: she compelled herself to look forward into the future, and not backward into the past she was so resolutely leaving behind her. Strangely enough, it was not her husband that she found hardest to banish from her thoughts now, but Raby. She could not escape from the vivid imagination of the dear child running ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... of such a thing. From the most cultured centers of population to the remotest villages, public opinion fervently approves and applauds the education of women, and even the most backward peasants send their daughters to the cities and go to the greatest sacrifices imaginable in order to make it possible for them to ascend to the highest pinnacles of knowledge. Though ignorant rustics, they reason in their own ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... is absolutely divided into apartments about the size of a mail-coach, and calculated to hold eight persons. The result is thirty-two seats where an American car of equal length and weight would hold at least fifty, and of the thirty-two passengers, one-half must inevitably ride backward. I believe the second-class cars are more sociable, and mean to make their acquaintance. I should have done it this time, but for my desire to meet some one with whom I could converse, and Americans and Englishmen are apt ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... who loved too well And died—I may not tell How glad she seemed. My neighbors, young and old, With backward glances lingered as they went; Only upon one face was all content, A sorrow comforted—a peace untold. I watched them through the swinging gate—the dawn Stayed till ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... sun and moonshine rained their light On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight Round Troy; but while this ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... general headquarters—how many of them are now alive? They were the men who fought in Alsace and Lorraine, when whole battalions were decimated under a withering shell-fire beyond the endurance of human courage, and who marched forward to victories, and backward in retreats, and forward again over the dead bodies of their comrades and corrupting heaps of German dead, in an ebb and flow of warfare which made the fields and the woods one great stench of horror, from which there came back madmen and maimed creatures, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... condition of pardon for sin is contrition; this contrition contains essentially a firm purpose that looks to the future, and removes in a measure, the liability to fall again. But with the sins here in question that firm purpose not only looks forward, but backward as well, not only guarantees against future ill-doing, but also repairs the wrong criminally effected in the past. This is called restitution, the undoing of wrong suffered by our neighbor through our own fault. The firm purpose to make restitution ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... benefit by the school course. It was a matter to be settled entirely at their discretion. I have carefully re-read your papers, and compared them with your form record, and I come to the conclusion that you are backward and ill-instructed in many subjects, but that you are not idle or stupid. I shall make arrangements for you to have special coaching in mathematics, Latin and chemistry until you can keep up with the rest of the Form. I find ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... reasons enough why Barneveld could not himself leave the country in the eventful spring of 1610. It must be admitted, however, that he was not backward in placing his nearest relatives in places of honour, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wonderful things which had been found in digging near Cuzco; but most interesting of all to me were the deformed crania—some flattened to almost an incredible extent on the top, others elongated backward to an amazing degree, others still with the central part of the skull deeply depressed, so as to form two globular swellings at the sides. Others, again, had been squeezed so as to form an angular ridge longitudinally on the summit. One skull particularly interested ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... University studies, in my real budding manhood, I had voluntarily cut myself away from the usual erotic diversions of youth. Precocious though I was in purely intellectual development, I was very backward in erotic experience. In that respect I was many ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... hands with her! And that horrible packet is in my hand! Where shall I put it? How can I hide it?" Before her eyes gleamed the brilliantly lighted, ashen forehead of the dead man, helplessly bent backward and sideways, as the whole body was suspended in the hands of the undertakers, over ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... reducing the naval forces to two frigates, two schooners, and about a dozen gunboats, the essential wants of the colony would be duly answered, in ordinary times; and some of the vessels might then be destined to pursue hydrographical labors in the Archipelago, which, unfortunately, are in a most backward state, whilst others could be sent on their periodical cruises against the Moros. By this means, at least, the navy department would be greatly simplified, and cease to be eternally burdensome to the government. With regard to the superfluous gunboats, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... upon the backward view, Let us look forward into sunny days, Welcome with joyous heart the victory, Forget what it has cost thee. Not to-day, For the first time, thy friend was to thee dead; To thee he died when first he ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from cooperation and from contrast Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... matches from my armpit and felt them. They seemed perfectly hard and dry. Stooping down into a crevice of the rocks, I tried one of them. To my delight it took fire at once. I lit the candle, and, with a terrified backward glance into the obscure depths of the cavern, I hurried in the direction of the Roman passage. As I did so I passed the patch of mud on which I had seen the huge imprint. Now I stood astonished before it, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... London with their minds full, their talk and gestures full, their very clothing charged with the suggestion of the urgency of this pervasive project of alteration. Some indeed carried themselves, dressed themselves even, rather as foreign visitors from the land of "Looking Backward" and "News from Nowhere" than as the indigenous Londoners they were. For the most part these were detached people: men practising the plastic arts, young writers, young men in employment, a very large proportion of girls and women—self-supporting women or girls of the student class. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a girl whose face and form were sufficient to excuse the infatuation of a man of Brodsky's type. Surmounting a figure built on heroic lines, her noble head seemed as if it must be drawn backward by the weight of her hair; which she wore without any of the elaborate side-curls then in fashion, but parted, and coiled low upon her neck, in unconscious harmony with her classic type. Her creamy skin, her great, blue ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... beginning of a tale like this, because its roots reach too far back into ancient history. If, on the other hand, you elect to start at the end and work backward the predicament confronts you that there wasn't any ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... Consideration, my Lord, is of them that sit revolving within themselves the mountainously mouse-productive problems of the overtoppingly catastrophic backward ages of empurpled brain-distorting puzzledom: for puzzles, as I have elsewhere said, come in rattle-boxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... the savage half-breed, Malayan looking sailor, and, to carry out his messmate's simile, seemed to regularly worry him as he bore him backward. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... extraordinary and utterly unwarranted stories of Guicciardini, Giovio, and Bembo, which will presently be considered. Gregorovius does this with a reluctance that is almost amusing, and with many a fond, regretful, backward glance—so very apparent in his manner—at the tale of villainy as told by Guicciardini and the others, which the German scholar would have adopted but that he dared not for his credit's sake. This is not ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... deoxydated, the heat that originally came from the oxydation would be precisely reabsorbed. But this heat of itself cannot overcome the stronger affinity which now chains the fuel to the oxygen. It must go forward, not backward, about its business, forever and ever. It may pass, but not cease. The sharp-eyed Faraday has been following far away this Proteus, with a strong suspicion that it changes at last into gravity, in which shape ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Hundredth Street is a house decrepit with a disease of the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it. To Average Jones' inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the secrecy of a senile indifference. He hesitated to pull at its ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... features of the head are, the great width and elongation of the face, the depth of the molar region, the branches of the lower jaw being very deep and extending far backward, and the comparative smallness of the cranial portion; the eyes are very large, and said to be like those of the Enche-eko, a bright hazel; nose broad and flat, slightly elevated towards the root; the muzzle broad, and ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... the longer, the far-off glories, a pillar of light which will move before you for ever. Oh, how many of the hopes that guided our course, and made our objective points in the past, are away down below the backward horizon! How many hopes we have outgrown, whether they were fulfilled or disappointed. But we may have one which will ever move before us, and ever draw our desires. The greater vision, if we were only wise enough to bring our lives habitually under its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... moment the Adamant began to steam backward; but the only effect of this motion, which soon became rapid, was to swing the crabs around against her sides, and carry them with her. As the vessels were thus moving the great pincers of the crabs were ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... / bore the knights so fast Onward past each other / as flew they on the blast. Then turned they deftly backward / obedient to the rein, As with their swords contested / the ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... seemed perfectly to understand every word that was addressed to him. He pricked his ear; his eye glanced backward with loving intelligence. He pawed the ground impatiently—he would not be off until Nell gave the signal, but when it came there was no doubt that he would fly swiftly over the ground. Joe, the other colt, stood near expectantly. His turn was to come, he knew. For him, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... not reach the enemy. Bill Moody's long arms were flung around the struggling fiddler, and a pair of brawny guides had Corey pinned by the elbows, hustling him backward. Half a dozen men thrust themselves between the would-be combatants. There was a dead silence, a scuffling of feet on the bare floor; then the danger was past, and a ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the road, and we had driven unaware into the midst of them. The horses were distracted, and made blindly for the gate, though they seemed much more likely to run into the posts than to get through the gate, I thought. The boy seemed to think this, too, for he shot backward, turned a somersault in the air, ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... with my hurts, I clung the more tenaciously, my face buried in his foul-smelling jacket, but at last he wrenched one arm from my desperate embrace; there was a sudden blinding shock that hurled me backward into the road: lying thus helpless, my antagonist leapt to kick the life out of my defenceless body, but I saw him reel suddenly and whirl about, grasping at an arm that spouted blood between his hairy fingers, while he stared at the girl ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... one of the world's most technologically advanced telecommunications systems; as a result of intensive capital expenditures since reunification, the formerly backward system of the eastern part of the country has been modernized and integrated with that ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... affliction could come to her! Marry Gabriel! The man who had planned to seize her and make her his wanton! He ground his teeth and glared at Quinnox as if he were the object of his hatred, his vicious jealousy. The captain stepped backward in ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... At this time those who are disposed to play on his feelings may almost throw him into a fit, his emotion and agitation are so great at what he supposes to be the distressful cries of his young. He hurries backward and forward, with hanging wings, open mouth, calling out louder and faster, and actually screaming with distress, until he appears hoarse with his exertions. He attempts no offensive means, but he wails, he ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... grotesque caricature of what really happened, will cause the man to think next morning what a remarkable dream he has had. These extruded astral bodies are almost shapeless and very indefinite in outline in the case of the more backward races and individuals, but as the man develops in intellect and spirituality his floating astral becomes better defined and more closely resembles his physical encasement. Since the psychical faculties of mankind are in course of evolution, and individuals are at ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... the iron box was fitting the keys into the double locks. Then he drew the lids backward, and the two gasped at a glitter of precious stones that lay beneath a black velvet cloth Hunsa stripped from ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... his trigger, Drake gave backward a step into the doorway. Merryfield's clutch toward his right hand missed the gun, fastening instead on the sleeve of his heavy coat. Swearing wildly while the woman and children screamed behind ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... hand, and Sir Launcelot knew him well. Then they let run their horses with all their mights, and each knight smote the other in the middle of his shield. But Sir Gawain's spear broke, and Sir Launcelot charged so sore upon him that his horse fell over backward. Then Sir Launcelot passed by smiling with himself, and he said, "Good luck be with him that made this spear, for never came a better into my hand." Then the four knights went each to the other and comforted one another. "What say ye to this adventure," ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of one whom he had always regarded as a model servant, Kenneth turned round as if about to make a wrathful outburst. As he turned, the light from the open door fell full on his face and now for the first time Roberts saw the visitor's features. With a startled exclamation the man fell backward. For a moment he was so surprised that he could not speak. Then, in an awe-stricken ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the houseboat turned almost in its own length. Rick watched the shore through squinting eyes, and the moment he saw the boat's forward motion cease, he dropped the big anchor over. The wind caught the houseboat again and drove it backward into the cove while the anchor line ran out. When he had enough line out for safety, Rick snubbed it tight around a cleat, held the taut line between thumb and forefinger until he was sure it had none of the vibrations caused by a dragging anchor, and then hurried ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... though I be very backward to admit strange things for truths, yet I am not very forward to reject them as impossibilities, and therefore I would not discourage any from making further Inquiry, whether or no there be Really in Rerum natura, ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... possible," said the Giant, "for it is too far away from here, and you could not get to it. On a great hill in the forest stands a church, and in the church is a well, and in the well there is a duck, swimming backward and forward on the water; and in the duck is an egg, and in the egg is my heart; so you had best give up your ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... listening. She was thinking. Of what? Of several things, perhaps, but certainly of how to beat a retreat. I guessed it by the movement of her sunshade, which was nervously tracing figures in the turf. I signalled to Lampron. We retired backward. Yet it was in vain; the charm was broken, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as they existed in the Virginia of the eighteenth century seem, moreover, to have been sharply broken and ended. We cannot trace our steps backward, as is possible in most cases, over the road by which the world has traveled since those days. We are compelled to take a long leap mentally in order to land ourselves securely in the Virginia which honored the second George, and looked up to Walpole and Pitt as ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... then," said the mother evasively, bending down to kiss Keith, who had snuggled up to her during the preceding talk. Then she put her hand through his waves of almost flaxen hair, bent his head slightly backward, looked straight into his ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... that he must be Thurot, but a second look convinced him that he was a much taller and darker man. Just as the British crew sprang on board a rifle bullet struck him on the chest, and, throwing up his sword-arm, he fell backward on the deck, when the rest of the crew, retreating, shouted out that they yielded. One of the men aft immediately hauled ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... stair without one backward glance, like the good gentleman he is; and the Doweys are left together, with nearly the whole room between them. He is a great rough chunk of Scotland, howked out of her not so much neatly as liberally; and in his Black Watch uniform, all caked with mud, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... before face to face with the stern necessity of more spiritual power and life. We were shown by the Holy Spirit that there is but one route to the promised land and that is by crossing the Jordan. Death was inevitable if we would come into this abundant life. We paused and reflected, looked backward and forward, but there was no alternative—death was our doom. One day while I was absent from home, and dear companion was left alone, the Lord spoke to her so plainly that she had one cherished idol that must necessarily ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... the protection of the brain, which bears convincing proof of the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator, is the antero-posterior, or forward and backward curve of the spinal column. Were it a straight column, standing perpendicularly, the slightest jar, in walking, would cause it to recoil with a sudden jerk; because, the weight bearing equally, the spine would neither yield to the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... went away, after some heavy compliments that seemed to amuse Yasmini prodigiously, helping along the man who had drunk sherbet and who now seemed inclined to weep. They dragged him down the stairs between them, backward. Yasmini waited at the stair—head until she heard them pull him into a gharri and drive away. Then she turned to her ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated? ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... as she frequently was in her close proximity to our noisy race, she darted off like a flash, forward or backward, upward or downward, never turning, but dashing in any direction opposite to the quarter from which the disturbance came. On the rare occasions when she was not frightened, she seemed unable to tear ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... he gave a single bound backward, hiccoughing with fright. His legs staggered beneath him. The keys jingled together in his fevered hand with a sinister sound. And, for twenty, for thirty seconds, despite the din that was being raised and the electric bells that kept ringing through the house, he stood there, wild-eyed, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... vortex their shattered cohorts reel. 'Fix bayonets!' At once our lines bristle with burnished steel. 'Charge!' And our gallant regiments burst through the feu d'enfer. Before their furious onset the rebel hosts give way; And, surging backward, hide again within the forest's shade, Whose mazes dark and intricate our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the St. George to bring away the corpses of the admiral and others, but they found the decks had been entirely swept away. Nothing could exceed the hospitality and kindness with which the Danes treated the few who were thrown upon their shore. Nor was the Danish government backward in generosity. The dead were buried with military honours, and the survivors were sent to England without exchange. The following letter from Major General Tellequist, given in his own language, sufficiently shows the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... McGee, glancing backward, saw the take-off and the zoom. "The poor fish!" was his mental comment. "If he shows that kind of stuff to this squadron they'll be needing a lot of replacements—or yelling ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him? Will not the whole household—the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid-servant ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... inquired into their treatment, and they told him they fared hard on account both of provisions and lodging, for they were not allowed any bedding, or blankets, and the provisions had not been regularly dealt out, so that the modest or backward could get little or none, nor had they been allowed any fuel to dress their victuals. The prisoners in New York were very sickly, and died in ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... little girl whose life had been spent in slums and reformatories, the big spaces and silences were more appalling than the wildest hours of traffic on misguided State Street. She had a strange inclination to walk down hill backward that she might not see what other ascension ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of Master Silas toward his fellow-creatures. Never hold me unjust, Sir Knight, to Master Silas. Could I learn other good of him, I would freely say it; for we do good by speaking it, and none is easier. Even bad men are not bad men while they praise the just. Their first step backward is more troublesome and wrenching to ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Thine own strong arm still led, Let me never backward tread, Panic-driven in base retreat, The path the Master's steadfast feet Unswervingly, if bleeding, trod Unto ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... seems, is "un peu fou." Victorine greets him in the mornings in voluble French, and he in return bows elaborately and pretends to drop the milk. We have watched the process from an upper window. Victorine takes a step backward, her hand flies to her heart, and, as she afterwards informs us, "her blood gives but a turn" at this exhibition of British wit. We have been wondering whether it would be judicious to teach her to say, "Get ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... blade out; the wounded man sank backward, his mask-string breaking. He was the one whom I had thought him—Francois ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... required lightning to follow them and something like mind-reading to anticipate them. Three times her blade met Rothgar's squarely, and deftly turned it aside. The big warrior gave a grunt of approval and tried a more complicated pass. Her backward leap, the sudden doubling of her body, and the excited clawing of her free hand, were not graceful swordsmanship, certainly, but her steel was in the right place. The next instant, she even drew a little clink from one of the Jotun's ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... same proposition, except that the proportion of American shipping business done by foreign companies is much greater than the proportion of insurance business done by foreign companies. Since the Civil War the American mercantile marine instead of growing with the country has gone steadily backward, until now the greater part of our shipping is done in foreign bottoms. Aside from the other disadvantages of such a condition, the payment of such great sums for freight to foreign companies is a direct economic drain. An estimate that the yearly freight bill amounts to $150,000,000 is probably ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... some brief interval of rest, Backward to look on her far-stretching past. To see how much is conquered and repressed, How much is gained in victory at last! The shadow is not lifted,—but her faith, Strong from life's miracles, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... monuments of Egypt, and in the lake-habitations of Switzerland, much diversity in the breeds; and that some of these ancient breeds closely resemble, or are even identical with, those still existing. But this only throws far backward the history of civilisation, and shows that animals were domesticated at a much earlier period than has hitherto been supposed. The lake-inhabitants of Switzerland cultivated several kinds of wheat and barley, the pea, the poppy for oil and flax; and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... hold the world together," returned Eli; and then he was silent, his eyes fixed on Doll's eloquent ears, his mouth working a little. For this progress through a less desirable stratum of life caused him to cast a backward glance over his ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... transplanting. Holding the slip with its tip between thumb and fingers, a strong forward stroke plowed a furrow in the mellow, dry soil; then, with a backward movement and a downward thrust, planted the slip, firmed the soil about it, leaving a depression in which the mother poured about a pint of water from another gourd dipper. After this water had soaked away, dry earth was drawn about the slip and firmed and looser earth drawn over ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... prak@rti takes place when the karmas of all puru@sas collectively require that there should be such a temporary cessation of all experience. At such a moment the gu@na compounds are gradually broken, and there is a backward movement (pratisancara) till everything is reduced, to the gu@nas in their elementary disintegrated state when their mutual opposition brings about their equilibrium. This equilibrium however is not a mere passive ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... to hit either the edges or the rollers—a very necessary safeguard. As the tree is slowly lifted by the windlasses, the guy-ropes are loosened, as needed. The tree will pass obstructions, such as trees by the roadside, but in doing so it is better to lean the tree backward. When the tree has arrived at its new place, the two timbers are placed along the opposite edges of the hole so that the hind wheels can be backed over it. The tree is then lowered to the proper depth, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... the frosty Samoyeds and Eskimo, the Samoans, the Andamanese, the Zulus, and the Japanese, as well as among Celts and ancient Greeks—can we be absolutely certain that the story has not been diffused and borrowed, in the backward of time. Thus the date and place of origin of these eternal stories, the groundwork of ballads and popular tales, can never be ascertained. The oldest known version may be found in the literature of Egypt or Chaldaea, but it is an obvious fallacy to argue that the place of origin ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... his feet, and was dimly aware that she had slipped backward into the corner of the sofa, and that he was bending above her in alarm. With an intense effort she straightened herself, and reached out for the paper, ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... who had been there said, "there are the Koreans, an able if backward people, to be considered—they will increase with the spread of our sanitary methods among a population which was reduced by a primitive hygiene and by maladministration. And as to our people going to the mainland of Asia, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... face on matters. A renewal of the convention of 1818 would probably be agreed to by the Senate, but no concession in the form of a treaty would be acceptable. His words were emphatic. "One inch of ground yielded on the northwest coast,—one step backward from the claim to the navigation of the St. Lawrence,—one hair's breadth of compromise upon the article of impressment would be certain to meet the reprobation of the Senate." In this temper of parties, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... of this woman, rather than the woman herself. Had it not been for the support afforded by the statue round which he had thrown his arms, colder even than the marble itself, Henri would have fallen backward headlong into ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Gregory found his way blocked by Weasel-face. The islander's hand was fumbling at his belt. Gregory's fist snapped his head backward. The man's hands flew up, but not in time to block the vicious blow which caught ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the glory of the backward peoples of the earth that they are adopting the forms and methods of education which have made Western civilization the touch-stone of the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... from the blow, while the dragon retreated backward some hundred paces or more, with the intention of coming back with greater force than before, and completing the victory he had almost won. Happily De Fistycuff divined the monster's purpose, and seeing one of the orange-trees of which the hermit had spoken, he picked an orange ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... to him his own; and he had not far to look for what justified the fallacy. In 1881, for instance, as one among many illustrations, an English general at Standerton formally assured the Boers that the Vaal would flow backward through the Drakenberg Hills before the British would withdraw from the Transvaal. Three successive Secretaries of State, three successive High Commissioners, and two successive Houses of Commons deliberately endorsed that official ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... sounding thump! It backward swung, And set in motion by the blow, Swayed menacingly to and fro. "Ha! you will fight! A quarrelsome chap, I knew you were! You'll get a rap! I'll crack your skull!" A headlong jump; Another ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole |
