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More "Backwards" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children and their thousands of cattle which, in execution of the plot, had travelled this path some days before. Either the impi had not yet arrived, or it had gone by some other road. Weary as she was, Noma followed the old spoor backwards. A mile or more away it crossed the crest of a hog-backed mountain, from whose summit she searched the plain beyond, and not in vain, for there far beneath her twinkled the watch-fires of the army ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... out to a level again, as I hoped against hope that it would, the road grew steeper with each quarter-mile, so steep that it seemed as if the car must take to running down hill backwards. But always it went forging steadily up on the strongest speed with a dependable, bumbling noise, never once faltering, though the Col di Tenda wasn't as steep a gradient as this. Certainly, after one's faith in the car has stopped wobbling, there was a kind of wild pleasure ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Academy, who now leaves us, took his dinner here. We had a long philological tete-a-tete. He is opinionative, as he has some title to be, but very learned, and with a juster view of his subject than is commonly entertained, for he traces words to the same source—not from sound but sense. He casts backwards thus to the root, while many compare the ends of the twigs without ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... land; the crookedness of the ditches, by keeping the water stagnant, added to, rather than relieved, the wetness of the soil. Farms were much scattered, and to enable the occupiers to get at their land, lanes wound backwards and forwards from field to field, covering ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Pergolese's music, is one of profoundest and yet sweetest sorrow. Luini's genius was not tragic. The nearest approach to a dramatic motive in his work is the figure of the Magdalen kneeling before the cross, with her long yellow hair streaming over her shoulders, and her arms thrown backwards in an ecstasy of grief.[393] He did well to choose moments that stir tender sympathy—the piety of deep and calm devotion. How truly he felt them—more truly, I think, than Perugino in his best period—is proved by the correspondence ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... was fine, and Owen walked backwards and forwards every day with Mr Fluke. One day a box arrived marked private, and addressed to S. Fluke, Esquire. On glancing at the contents, Mr Fluke had it again closed, and that evening he went away earlier than usual, a porter carrying the box to the nearest coach-stand. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... flung herself on the floor, her feet tucked under her, her hands clasped round her knees, swaying backwards and forwards in a tempest of excited feeling, hardly knowing ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... laugh he grasped its roots and twisted it from the Very Young Man's hand. A second more and they came together again, and the Very Young Man felt his antagonist's powerful arms around his body, bending him backwards. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... but just begun. Good God! he was beaten! Good God! by this enemy who would not kill him or be killed. He uttered a sound which was a choking shriek and hurled himself forward. 'Twas his last stroke and he knew it, and my lord Duke struck his point aside and it flew in the air, and Sir John fell backwards broken, conquered, exhausted, but an unwounded man. And he fell full length and lay upon the heather, its purple blooms crushed against his cheek; and the sky was of a sweet pallor just about to glow, and the first bird of morning sprang ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this, as well as the amusements of our people, during the monotony of daily travelling: as, for instance, the captain rolling oranges along the ground, as prizes for running, or his mounting a camel himself, or riding backwards, etc.—anything ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... incapacity, who made the character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits—sent a thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas Peckham, to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over backwards all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the thrill passed off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the eyes grow moist like a woman's, and there is also a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... the small-pox," she said with a jerk of her thumb towards the inside of her cart, "some say it's the plague! If it is, I sha'n't be allowed to come into Paris to-morrow." At the first mention of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped hastily backwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague, he retreated from her as ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... the dogs were yelping and scratching; but the bipeds had gone more scientifically to work by countermining from above, sinking shafts downwards at various points, till at last they reached his inner chamber, when he scuttled out, and, charging backwards at the dogs with all his spines erected, he soon sent them flying, howling most piteously; but a Gondee axe hurled at his head soon put an end to his career, for a porcupine's ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... was exchanged between the father and son, as she went backwards, screaming, "Betty—I say, Betty, you idle slut, where are you?" as if determined to vent ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... these there is great plenty. The buffaloes differ very considerably from the horned cattle of Europe in several particulars; their ears are much larger, their skins are almost without hair, their horns are curved towards each other, but together bend directly backwards, and they have no dewlaps. We saw several that were as big as a well-grown European ox, and there must be some much larger; for Mr Banks saw a pair of horns which measured, from tip to tip, three feet nine inches and a half, across their widest diameter, four feet one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... very few years ago we had no vehicle except a single horse chaise for me to go backwards and forwards to Calcutta. That was necessarily kept on the opposite side of the river; and if the strength of the horse would have borne it, could not have been used for the purposes of health. Sister Marshman was seized with a disease of the liver, a disease which proves fatal in three ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... often takes a delight in attacking those who have never done him any harm. There he was already, jumping over a ditch right into the middle of their path. He lowered his head and walked a few steps backwards. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... bland as sunshine. "Yaas, Miss Lucy. I 'spects dar'll be some excommunication fer me. Marse Fauquier sho' do favour Old Marster in dat.—He don' never forgit! 'Pears ter me he'd better come home—all dis heah congratulatin' backwards an' forwards wid gunpowder over de kintry! Gunpowder gwine burn ef folk ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... true to its heedful winding up, left its post precisely at the given moment; along its well-oiled route, slid noiselessly towards its mark; and, aiming at the hand of Una, to ring one clangorous note, dully smote the intervening brain of Bannadonna, turned backwards to it; the manacled arms then instantly up-springing to their hovering poise. The falling body clogged the thing's return; so there it stood, still impending over Bannadonna, as if whispering some post-mortem terror. The chisel lay dropped from the hand, but beside the hand; the oil-flask ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... from the sea prospect and looked backwards over the lagoon to the island. She could make out the broad green glade beside which their little house lay, and a spot of yellow, which was the thatch of the house, just by the artu tree, and nearly hidden by the shadow of the breadfruit. Over woods the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... ad lib way they operated, remembering the courses, the tests, the procedures practiced until they could do them backwards blindfolded. When they tangled with a Red, the Solter co-ordinates went out the hatch. They navigated by the enemy. There were times during a fight when he had no more idea of his position than what the old ladies told ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... tell you? I shall lose all dignity in your eyes—if indeed I ever had any to lose—as I lost it in my own. The terrible sickness, you understand.... That, and the din of the bell, and being flung up and down, backwards and forwards. No rest, not for a moment. I prayed, I tried to fight my way out of the buoy, between the bars, to throw myself into the sea. The sea was rising visibly, and the spray of the waves broke over me, drenching me; the salt ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... been considered amazing that Protestantism having accomplished so much should have fallen backwards so soon, and yielded almost undisputed sway in vast regions to the long dominant church. But in truth there is nothing surprising about it. Catholicism was and remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into hundreds of warring and politically impotent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... death be caused by a vehicle through the breaking of the [animal's] nose-bridle, or through breaking of the yoke, or the like, or from its running backwards, the owner is ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... threads to twist in the allotted space was so great that if it had now to be done, I should probably not attempt its accomplishment." His next step was to provide thin metallic discs, to be used as bobbins for conducting the threads backwards and forwards through the warp. These discs, being arranged in carrier-frames placed on each side of the warp, were moved by suitable machinery so as to conduct the threads from side to side in forming the lace. He eventually succeeded in working out his principle with extraordinary skill and success; ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... command, he repeated his desire of withdrawing, and took God to witness, that what he proposed was solely for the quiet of his honoured patron and beloved friend. "Enough," cried the unfortunate Renaldo, "the measure of my woes is now filled up." So saying, he fell backwards in a swoon, from which he was with difficulty recovered to the sensation of the most exquisite torments. During this paroxysm, our adventurer nursed him with infinite care and tenderness, he exhorted him to summon all his fortitude to his assistance, to remember ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... we begin, as it were, at the other end, and trace things backwards from the present, instead of forwards from the remote past, it cannot be denied that Darwin's investigations have made it exceedingly probable that the vast variety of plants and animals have sprung from a much smaller number of ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... coming out of the yard, and looking round on the envious chaps who were watching me—it was as bad as getting married—at least, I should think so, never having been in that predicament myself. I have escaped that dilemma, for," he concluded, "when a man is always going backwards and forwards between two points, what is the use of a wife, a coachman could never be much more than half married. Now, if the law—in the case of coachmen—allowed two wives, that would be quite another story, because he could then have the ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... as the most emotional would go, some even adding: "Charleston's a graun city, nae doot, an' I'm hopin' ye'll like it fine if you leave us," which last proved to me that such an one secretly prayed for my remaining. The true Scotchman is like the Hebrew language—to be understood, he must be read backwards. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... stranger in green, very deliberately putting his foot on the ladder, and descending, until no part of his person but his head was seen. "Here I go, literally cutting the waves with my taffrail," he added, as he descended backwards, and seeming to take great pleasure in laying particular emphasis on the words. "Adieu, my friend; if we do not meet again, I enjoin you never to forget the rats ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... is, as avengers of blood. I have nowhere else found this practice as to the shoes, which, after all, cannot conceal the direction of the spoor from a native tracker. {37b} The trick of driving the cattle backwards answers to the old legend that Bruce reversed the shoes of his horse when he fled from the ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... oftener. Every time I leave you I count up the hours that must pass before I see you again. But I expect most, if not all, of the visitors will be off presently. Most of 'em have been there the regulation fortnight; a good many come backwards and forwards; they're the city men, the money men. My father is closeted with them for hours every day—that big scheme of his seems to be coming off satisfactorily. It's a railway to some place in Africa, and all these fellows—the Griffenbergs, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... than of benevolence in giving him one, which presided in the act. When the ass had eaten his macaroon I pressed him to come in. The poor beast was heavy loaded, his legs seemed to tremble under him, he hung rather backwards, and as I pulled at his halter it broke short in my hand. He looked up pensive in my face. 'Don't thrash me with it; but if you will, you may.' 'If I do,' said ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the broad and lofty chamber set apart for occasions of import, the Abbot himself was pacing impatiently backwards and forwards, with his long white nervous hands clasped in front of him. His thin, thought-worn features and sunken, haggard cheeks bespoke one who had indeed beaten down that inner foe whom every man must face, but had none the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not remained whole, for he was wounded in two places. So soon as Perceval espied them, he smiteth his horse of his spurs, lance in rest, and smiteth Aristor right through the breast with such force that he maketh him lose his stirrups and lie down backwards over the hinder bow of the saddle. After that saith he: "I am come to my sister's wedding, of right ought it not to ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see at the brink an elk or doe, with head poised, watching us as we drifted. We passed here and there a lonely cabin, to set my thoughts wandering backwards to my youth, and here and there in the dimples of the hills little clusters of white and brown houses, one day to become ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by our owner's agent, and altogether we found Nassau very jolly: so much so, that we felt almost sorry when 'time' was called, and we had to prepare for another run. In fact, it was pleasanter in blockade-running to look backwards than forwards, especially if one had been so far ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... only some letters written to Justinian and Theodora by Theodahad and his wife, vaguely praising peace, and beseeching the Imperial pair to restore it to Italy; letters which, as it seems to me, may be applied with about equal fitness to any movement of the busy shuttle of diplomacy backwards and ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... was standing when struck, and fell backwards, his rifle falling at the same time and striking the shin. The ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... strike him on his thickly-covered body, the attacks are usually made about the head. A man who wantonly threw an axe at a male bear as he passed, wounded him, whereupon the beast rushed at him, the man fell backwards over a fallen tree, and, in so doing, tore off a sharp-pointed knob of wood, which he thrust down the bear's throat, and so killed him; not, however, before he had received his own death wound from the hind ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... therefore at the time off duty, strike, with his left hand, a young man who was on that side of him, with a blow which hit him on the face, and I suppose it was given with some force, for the young man who received it staggered backwards; and I observed that, as soon as he had recovered himself, another Austrian officer, who was the one at the head of the soldiers, and marching with them with his drawn sword, strike with it the same young man on the head, inflicting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... heard in the passage; a bolt was withdrawn, Katie drew quickly back, and next moment the door was thrown open. A flood of light streamed out, and two weird and startling figures were outlined sharply against it. Instinctively Dorothy shrank backwards with a sense of wonder and fear. Standing on its hind legs in the doorway was a bear, and by its side a dwarf with an immense head covered with a great crop of hair, and with long arms and a broad chest which ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... mechanically, with a strange unsteadiness, swaying and stumbling like a drunkard. He resented the warder's attempt to help him up the steep, narrow steps leading to the courtyard; but as he reached the highest step a sudden giddiness came over him, so that he staggered and would have fallen backwards had the warder not ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... An' our Lodge was old an' bare, But we knew the Ancient Landmarks, An' we kep' 'em to a hair; An' lookin' on it backwards It often strikes me thus, There ain't such things as infidels, Excep', per'aps, ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... and I watched. One ran the point of his fork into the table-cloth; another balanced her spoon on the tea-cup; a third told backwards and forwards the rings on her fingers, as duly as a friar tells his beads. As such actions sometimes are the symptoms of mental occupation, I began to anticipate the brilliant results of so much thinking. I cried, hem! in hopes to rouse them to expression—and ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... saw her spring to her feet and rush towards me. Escape was impossible, for behind me were high boulders that I could not climb. She came on with hoarse, coughing grunts, and with desperate courage I fired my remaining barrel. I missed her clean. I took one step backwards in the hope of getting a cartridge into my rifle, and fell, scarcely two lengths in front of the furious beast. She missed me. I owed my safety to that fall. And then suddenly I found that she had collapsed. I had hit her after all. My bullet went ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... Dupont agreed from the rear. "It was designed for the most abominable crime of making men and women go backwards instead of forwards. And last night it attained the ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... intention," Tallente remarked thoughtfully, "to kill the young man. A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took him with me to the lookout. I suppose he was tactless and I lost my temper. I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that piece of rotten paling, you ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... impossible to forget, the cupboard of shadows never wholly closed, shadows which at any moment might steal out and encompass his darkening life? He sat there motionless, and his thoughts travelled backwards. There were many things in his life which he had forgotten, but never this. Every word that had been spoken, every detail in that tragic little scene seemed to glide into his memory with a distinctness and amplitude ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with his fist in the face of his intended victim; but the young officer parried it, and was about to follow up the movement with a blow, when Monsieur Rubempre rushed in between them, struck the assailant such a blow that he went over backwards. In fact, the man was too much intoxicated to stand ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... we go up, up, up, And here we go down, down, downy, And here we go backwards and forwards, And here ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... beautiful about a universal popular excitement of a generous character, let the object of it be what it may. The great desiring heart of man, surging with one strong, sympathetic swell, even though it be to break on the beach of life and fall backwards, leaving the sands as barren as before, has yet a meaning and a power in its restlessness with which I ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... made no effort to stake. After a moment's hesitation she yielded up her place, and moving backwards, seated herself upon an empty divan. Rapidly the thoughts began to form themselves in her mind. Her delicate eyebrows drew closer together in a distinct frown. After that first shock, that queer turmoil of feeling, beyond analysis, yet having within ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rascal rapid ran; Peter Piper picked a peck of prickly pears from the prickly-pear trees on the pleasant prairies," and many others still in use traditionally among the school-children of to-day, together with linguistic exercises of nonsense-syllables and the like, pronouncing words backwards, etc. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... outstripped by the antelopes, which on gaining the other extremity of the circle were driven back and pursued by the fresh hunters. They turned and flew, rather than ran in another direction; but there too, they found new enemies. In this way they were alternately pursued backwards and forwards, till at length, notwithstanding the skill of the hunters, they all escaped, and the party after running for two hours returned without having caught any thing, and their horses foaming with sweat. This chase, the greater part of which was seen from the camp, formed a beautiful ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... anti-popular about it—nothing even tending to infringe the rights and liberties of the several States—while it was clearly a statesmanlike measure from the national standpoint, tending at once to restore the public credit and cement the Union. But Jefferson read backwards into this innocuous and beneficent stroke of policy the spirit which he justly perceived to inform the later and more dubious measures which ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... knew this song of TAMMAS'S. A shout of laughter went up from the whole gathering. The stranger fell backwards into the sty a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Will now, indeed I'm afraid he will soon forget his Welsh, he is speaking English so easy and smooth. Come here, Ann," the old man called, as his daughter passed busily backwards and forwards spreading the snowy cloth and laying the tea-table. "The lady ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... soon, for the antelope was being dragged along, growing more helpless and its struggles more faint moment by moment, while the body of the crocodile was disappearing backwards down the slope of ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... thought was of the man crouching beside and clinging to him, the quick following instinct to free himself of this check to his movements. He was still on his knees, with the man on his left side; without attempting to rise he twisted round and backwards, and drove his fist full force in the other's face; the man's head crashed back against the trench wall, and his limp body collapsed and rolled sideways. His mind still running in the groove of his set purpose, before ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... listened,—because the language of the woman was not the language of a common woman, but the language of a lady of rank.(2) Then he determined at all hazards to get one glimpse of her face; and he crept round the house, backwards and forwards, peering through every crack and chink. And at last he was able to see;—but therewith an icy trembling seized him; and the hair of his head ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... new-born puppies, which had been removed two or three times from her, and her anxiety was excessive, as she tried to find out if they were all present, or if any were still missing. She kept puzzling and running her eyes over them backwards and forwards, but could not satisfy herself. She evidently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure was too large for her brain. Taking the two as they stood, dog and Demara, the comparison reflected no great honour on the man....' According to ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... the subject that in order to demonstrate the action of the imagination upon us, you are going to ask him in a moment to think: "I am falling backwards, I am falling backwards. . . ." Tell him that he must have no thought but this in his mind, that he must not reflect or wonder if he is going to fall or not, or think that if he falls he may hurt himself, etc., or fall back purposely to please you, ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... round; grand rond to the left (four bars), then back again to the right (four bars), employing the second step of the Cellarius. Each couple does the petit tour forwards, and backwards, still using the second step, and repeating it three times to the right—then resting a bar; three times to the left—then resting another bar; which occupies eight bars of the music. These figures may be considered as preliminary. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... become very drunk and talkative, had offered to sing two or three songs, to make two or three speeches, and had ultimately fallen backwards, on his chair being drawn away, from which position he was unable to get up, and little Larry's brother was now amiably engaged painting his face with lampblack. Mrs. Keegan the while was sitting in her ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... they are fit for writing on they are subjected to a second process, called madema. A smooth plank of areca-palm is tied horizontally between two trees, each ola is then damped, and a weight being attached to one end of it, it is drawn backwards and forwards across the edge of the wood till the surface becomes perfectly smooth and polished; and during the process, as the moisture dries up, it is necessary to renew it till the effect is ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the second time. That upset the Marquis to such a point that he said "Damn," which is the only English word he knows, and when Victorine looked horribly surprised, he dived into his waistcoat pocket and fished out the ring. Then he took her hand, pulled off her glove backwards, and pushed it on to the first finger he came to, which happened to be the middle one! He just said he hoped she would wear it for his sake; and when she exclaimed, "Mais, monsieur! ce n'est pas sur ce doigt que vous devez mettre la bague!" he hardly ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... out yesterday has put him a little backwards. I called twice, and sent, for I am in pain for him. Ford caught me, and made me dine with him on his Opera-day; so I brought Mr. Lewis with me, and sat with him till six. I have not seen Mr. Addison these three weeks; all our friendship is over. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... contriver of this detestable invention, to bring him all the acknowledgments; and, when he showed himself unwilling to do so, he dealt him a violent blow in the face. Priscus, unable to resist the blow dealt by a man of such bodily strength, fell backwards upon the ground, trembling and affrighted. Believing that Longinus had discovered the whole affair, he confessed; and, the whole trick being thus brought to ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... required impetus to the car. The engine-room, being well provided with scuttles, was chosen as the scene of our operations. A brace of magazine rifles were fixed through two of the scuttles in such a way that the recoil of the shots would urge the car in an oblique direction backwards, so as to clear or almost clear the planet, allowance being made for the forward motion of the latter in its orbit. Needless to say, the barrel of each rifle was packed round so as to keep the air in the car from escaping ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... may be wafted nearer to their God. Whatsoever forces act upon us, if we put the helm right and trim the sails as we ought, they will carry us to our haven. And whatsoever forces act upon us, if we neglect the sailor's skill and duty, we shall be washed backwards and forwards in the trough of the sea, and make no progress in the voyage. 'Then had the Church rest'—and grew lazy? 'Then had the Church rest'—and grew worldly? Then was I happy and prosperous and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... non curat lex, our law-makers delight in very small jokes. When Mr. CECIL BECK, as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, delivered HIS MAJESTY's reply to the Address the House of Commons was chiefly interested in watching how he would accomplish the feat of walking backwards from the Table to the Bar. More than once in past history the task has proved too much for the man who essayed it, and the orderly retreat has degenerated into a shambling rout. But there was no such hitch to-day. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... it, when it moves slowly. A wave, but without wind! a current, but with no fall! all the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it, the winding stream will ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... vast Hungarian plain. It is so utterly featureless as to be even without landmarks. Except for the signs of the heavenly bodies, a man might, in a fit of absence, turn round and fail to realise whether he was going backwards or forwards. Right or left, it is all the same monotonous dead level, with scarce an object on which to rest the eye. Here and there a row of acacia-trees may be seen marking the boundary of an estate, and near by the sure indication of a well in the form of a lofty pole balanced transversely; ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... wondering for what earthly purpose he could want them. The same afternoon I descried the venerable warrior approaching the house, with a slow, stately gait, ear-rings in ears, and spear in hand, with this highly ornamental pair of shoes suspended from his neck by a strip of bark, and swinging backwards and forwards on his capacious chest. In the gala costume of the tasteful Marheyo, these calf-skin pendants ever after ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Administration building they saw a man in the center of the court looking up through the building at the great dome which seemed to pierce the sky. He leaned farther and farther back until he fell backwards and lay there on his back still gazing intently upward. A number of people rushed up to him horror stricken, as if he had just fallen from the top of the dome and they expected to see him a crushed mass. As they began to close up around him he ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... that during the times of the Danish incursions St. Benedict travelled backwards and forwards through France and Italy, and brought with him during his seven journeys artificers in glass and stone, besides costly books and copies of the Scriptures. The chief end and aim of monastic life, both of monk and nun, in those early days was to embroider, paint, and illuminate ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... those grovelling instincts which we saw manifested in the lives of others. Each contributed his share of gas to inflate the painted balloon to which we all clung, in the expectation that it would presently soar with us to the stars. But it only went up over the out-houses, dodged backwards and forwards two or three times, and finally flopped down with us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... says (chaps. ii.): "Your wives are your tillage: go in therefore unto your tillage in what manner so ever ye will." Usually this is understood as meaning in any posture, standing or sitting, lying, backwards or forwards. Yet there is a popular saying about the man whom the woman rides (vulg. St. George, in France, le Postillon); "Cursed be who maketh woman Heaven and himself earth!" Some hold the Koranic passage to have been revealed in confutation of the Jews, who pretended that if a man lay with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... with or without the aid of cramps or artificial pressure. If the joint is to be made without cramping, the two surfaces of the timber are warmed so as not to chill the glue. The surfaces are then glued and put together and rubbed backwards and forwards so as to get rid of the superfluous glue. They are then ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... Agni at the place pointed out by the parrot, and witnessing the curse denounced upon him, the gods, feeling a compassion for the poor creature, blessed him, saying, 'In consequence of thy being a parrot, thou shalt not be wholly deprived of the power of speech. Though thy tongue has been turned backwards, yet speech thou shalt have, confined to the letter K. Like that of a child or an old man, thy speech shall be sweet and indistinct and wonderful.' Having said these words unto the parrot, and beholding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... extremely fine parallel ribs, which are quite absent in the female. In the females, however, of all three species of Oryctes, a slight grating or stridulating sound is produced, when the abdomen of a softened specimen is pushed backwards and forwards. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... composed of numerous separate plates, so jointed together that whilst the amount of movement between any two pieces must be very limited, the entire column acquires more or less flexibility, allowing the organism as a whole to wave backwards and forwards on its stalk. Into the exquisite minutioe of structure by which the innumerable parts entering into the composition of a single Crinoid are adapted for their proper purposes in the economy of ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... Puranic period (which name we employ loosely to cover such sects as are not clearly modern) we pause for a moment to cast a glance backwards over the long development of the trinity, to the units of which are devoted the individual Pur[a]nas. We have shown that the childhood-tales of Krishna are of late (Puranic) origin, and that most of the cow-boy exploits are post-epic. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... requite. rearrange, recombine. Adj. interchanged &c. v.; reciprocal, mutual, commutative, interchangeable, intercurrent[obs3]. combinatorial[Math, Statistics]. recombinant[Biology, Genetics]. Adv. in exchange, vice versa, mutatis mutandis[Lat], backwards and forwards, by turns, turn and turn about; each in his turn, everyone in his turn. Adj. substituted &c. v.; vicarious, subdititious[obs3]. Adv. instead; in place of, in lieu of, in the stead of, in the room ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... polished out of sight, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over. The steps had been freshly sanded, and a little lemon-tree nodding in one of the windows made the rusty old house look quite inviting. A stout little woman with a big market-basket, bumped into me and apologized, for I had stepped backwards to get a better look at the upstairs windows. The stout little woman set down her basket on the steps, took a bunch of keys from a pocket under her big, white, starched apron, selected one, turned to me, smiled, and asked, "Mebbe, Sir, you wasn't looking for apartments, I dunno?" Then ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... door on the left opens and Madame Nerisse appears backwards, still talking to Monsieur Nerisse, who is invisible in ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... college appoints a crew of eight strong scull pullers or oarsmen and one small coxswain or steersman to pilot a long narrow boat called a skiff or shell. The coxswain calls the strokes and is generally the coach and commander of the crew. Unlike in a canoe, the pullers face backwards, and the one nearest the coxswain is called the "stroke oar", because all the other oars watch him and match his stroke. The racing takes place on the river which runs through Oxford, and since because of the oars the river is ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Bigot stepped backwards. He was not sure but a poniard glittered in the clenched hand of Angelique. It was but the flash of her diamond rings as she lifted it suddenly. She almost ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... gentleman could have been there unless he also had run; but just in time to see him as he was coming on,—and also to see in the dark glimmering of the slight uncertain moonlight that the two men were behind him. He retreated a step backwards in the corner, resolving that when Mr. Kennedy came up, they two would go on together; for now it was clear that Mr. Kennedy was followed. But Mr. Kennedy did not reach the corner. When he was within two doors of it, one of the men had followed him up quickly, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... little inkstand is the very pest of my life; it keeps tumbling over backwards every minute, and pouring the ink all over, and making me swear (which is really a pity), and is, in short, invaluable; and I am so much more obliged to you than I was even at first for it, now that I know, I hope, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... fish, and which he kept in his drawing-room in order to insure an equable temperature. The additional weight of the maiden, combined with the impetus with which she hurled herself upon him, caused the precarious piece of furniture to give way, and the body of the unfortunate student was hurled backwards into the tank, in which his head and shoulders were firmly wedged, while his lower extremities flapped helplessly about in the air. This was the last straw. Extricating himself with some difficulty ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had been tossed backwards and forwards between the two raging factions. His feelings, languid and unsteady as they always were, drew him to the Girondists; but he was awed by the vigor and determination of the Mountain. At one moment he held high and firm language, complained that the Convention was not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of something. The next thing that struck us was a tub of salt water, which came like a cannon ball and broke against the hood affair, and spattered on deck like a crockery shop. We climbed down again backwards, and sat on the floor with emphasis, in consequence of stepping down a last step that wasn't there, and cracked the back of our heads against the edge of the table. The Maori helped us up, and we had a drink with him at the expense of one of the half-casers mentioned in the beginning ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... whole tribes, and the need of them had become so urgent, that orders were issued to shoot any attempting to desert, while parties of the regiment were continually passing backwards and forwards between Dunquah and Mansu as guards over the convoys. To relieve the pressure, 94 men of G and C Companies left Dunquah on the 13th with ninety-four 50-lb. loads, and, reaching Mansu the same day, started next morning ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... what sort of satisfaction she could claim, unless she wants to punish me by the 'Lex talionis', which would be hardly practicable without a repetition of the original offence. If she had not liked the game, all she had to do was to give me a push which would have sent me backwards." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Frenchman: it happened I can't tell you how: And, Grandfather, hear, if you love me, and put aside prejudice now": He never says "Grandfather"—Tom don't—save it's a serious thing. "Well, there were some pits for the rifles, just dug on our French- leaning wing: And backwards, and forwards, and backwards we went, and at last I was vexed, And swore I would never surrender a foot when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thinking the sun to have set were filled with delight at the prospect of Partha's laying down his life. Indeed, thy warriors, not seeing the sun, were filled with gladness. All of them stood, with heads thrown backwards. King Jayadratha also was in the same attitude. And while the ruler of the Sindhus was thus beholding the sun, Krishna, once more addressing Dhananjaya said these words, "Behold, the heroic ruler of the Sindhus is now looking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... (where nobody has now the spirit to get up any theatricals!), and the "Kennel" (as Jane Turton called it) where I used to get flags and rushes, and where Trouve, dear Trouve! will never swim again! And then the Iron Church from which I used to run backwards and forwards not to be late for dinner every evening, with the "tin" roof that used to shake to the "Tug of War Hymn,"—and then more dust, and (it must be confessed) dirt and squalor, and back views of ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... if we know better, it is only because other men, and those few and far between, have laboured amid disbelief, ridicule, and error; needing again and again to retrace their steps, and to unlearn more than they learnt, seeming to go backwards when they were really progressing most: and now we have entered into their labours, and find them, as I have just said, more wondrous than all the poetic dreams of a Bonnet or a Darwin. For who, after all, to take a ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... that the boasted excellence of all classical education is in nothing so conspicuous as in the fact that Greek and Latin cannot be converted into money as readily as vulgar fractions and a bold handwriting. Being a woman, as I have observed, Mrs O'D. would have read the argument backwards, and stood out for the rule-of-three against Sophocles and "all his works." I simply replied, with that dignity which is natural to me, "I am proud of my knowledge of life; I do recognise in myself the analyst of that strange mixture that ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... he stood with her, and on the spot. He was one of the first to leave the church; he made for the churchyard gate, and walked slowly backwards and forwards by it, with throbbing heart till she ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... vessels and nothing more. The sun set, a great illuminated bubble, submerged in one vast bank of rosy suffusion; it grew dark; after tea all were on deck, the people sang hymns; then the moon set, a moon two days old, a curved pencil of light, reclining backwards on a radiant couch which seemed to rise from the waves to receive it; it sank slowly, and the last tip wavered and went down like the mast of a vessel of the skies. Towards morning the boat stopped, and when I came on deck, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to the guest-room when he suddenly caught sight of the maid, gliding soundlessly before him along a corridor. He called to her, and hurried after her. Then she turned half-round, and flattened herself against the wall like a spider; and as he reached her she sank backwards into the wall, so that there remained of her nothing visible but a colored shadow,—level like a picture painted on the plaster. But the shadow moved its lips and eyes, and spoke to ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... oars hard, missed the water with his right and fell backwards to the bottom of the boat. His two feet stuck up ridiculously. Priscilla laughed. The boat, swept forward by the tide, grounded softly on the sea wrack which covered ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the Aztecs strive to climb the walls. These were of no great height but, as they showed their heads above the parapet, they were shot down by the Spanish arquebus men, or struck backwards by the weapons of the Tlascalans. Failing to scale the walls, they tried to batter down the parapet with heavy pieces of timber. But the stonework was too strong, and they then shot burning arrows into the palace, and hurled blazing torches over ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... hay, bags of corn, and loads of firewood. The soldiers were in hourly expectation of an attack, and for four successive nights they slept fully accoutred, and with their loaded muskets beside them. All night long lights were seen to move busily backwards and forwards among the diggers' tents, and the solid tread of great bodies of men could be heard amid the darkness. Lalor was marshalling his forces on the slopes of Ballarat, and drilling them to use such arms as they possessed—whether ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... the brain of a young Chimpanzee, which he had dissected immediately after its death, gave a series of photographic drawings, showing that when the parts are all in a fresh state, the posterior lobe of the cerebrum, instead of simply covering the cerebellum, is prolonged backwards beyond it even to a greater extent than in Gratiolet's figure, 56, and, what is more in point, in a greater degree relatively speaking (at least in the young state of the animal) than in Man. In fact, "the projection is to the extent of about one-ninth of the total length of ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... and troth I'm glad of it; and so I have: that may be good luck in troth, in troth it may, very good luck. Nay, I have had some omens: I got out of bed backwards too this morning, without premeditation; pretty good that too; but then I stumbled coming down stairs, and met a weasel; bad omens those: some bad, some good, our lives are chequered. Mirth and sorrow, want ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... of Clermont Ferrand,[391] says that some foreign tapestries are "pictured" with the summits of Ctesiphon and Nephates, "wild beasts running rapidly across void canvas, and also by a miracle of art, the Parthian of wild aspect with his head turned backwards." This might be a description of a Chinese composition, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... conducting such bargains. A Circassian maiden, eighteen years old, was the first who presented herself; she was well dressed, and her face was covered with a vail. She advanced towards the German, bowed down, and kissed his hand: by order of her master, she walked backwards and forwards in the chamber to show her shape, and the easiness of her gait and carriage: her foot was small, and her gesture agreeable. When she took off her vail, she displayed a bust of the most attractive ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... let it go at that. Robert was a man of different mould. In his hands, the slender supposition had been turned into certainty. By immense labour and research he built a bridge from the first Turold of whom any record existed, backwards across the dark gap of the past. He traced the wanderings of his ancestors through different generations and different counties to Robert Turold, who established himself in Suffolk forty years after the last Lord Turrald ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Chesapeake bay and its tributaries, where the canvass-back and red-heads resort in such numerous quantities every fall. A species of mongrel water-dog, or often any common cur, is taught to run backwards and forwards after stones, sticks, or other missiles thrown from one side to the other. In his activity and industry in this simple branch of education, within the comprehension of any dog, consists the almost incredible art of ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... for these two little children as they trudge along over the prairie, so troubled and so cold. My dear brother being older than I, and the chief party interested, generously took most of the blame to himself, and comforted me as well as he could, running backwards in front of me to shelter me from the wind, and assuring me he would tell father all about it, and he would forgive us. I have carried in my heart of hearts for sixty years the image of that beautiful, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... that an ape-like ancestor developed into man, on the principles of natural selection; then his development has taken place in a manner directly contrary to the acknowledged law of natural selection. He has developed backwards; his frame is in every way weaker; he is wanting in agility; he has lost the prehensile feet; he has lost teeth fitted for fighting or crushing or tearing; he has but little sense of smell; he has lost the hairy covering, and is obliged to help himself ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... were built by Larboard Starboard, Esq.; and the engines, as a matter of course, were put on board by Messrs Boiler & Rodd; Erebus Carbon, Esq., supplied, at the current rates, the necessary fuel; and at all hours of the day the vessels ran backwards and forwards, carrying customers to Mr Montague Whalebone's hotel, and lodgers to the new tenements, which soon began to rise around it in all directions. Lowriver took amazingly, and rose rapidly in public estimation; the boats filled well, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... by the moonlight, and perhaps a little by the fears of those who looked upon it, the quadruped was quite quadrupled in size. Disputing their passage too; for its movements made it manifest that such was its design. Backwards and forwards, up and down that curving crest, did it glide, with a nervous quickness, that hindered any hope of being able to rush past it—either before or behind—its own crest all the while erected, like that of the dragon ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... across the forms, but it has been effectively used in that way, following always the lines of the warp and weft of the stuff. Even in that case the successive lines of stitching should be all in one direction—not running backwards and forwards—or it will result in a sort of pattern of braided lines. The reason for the more usual practice of following the outline of the design is obvious. The stitch lends itself to sweeping, even to perfectly spiral, lines—such as occur in Greek wave ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... sorting table was set up and they went to work with a will that was backed with enthusiasm and hope. The result of their digging was turned into the sieve, which was suspended by a rope from a cross bar, with handles on one side. The digger would swing it backwards and forwards until all the loose fragments of earth were broken off and nothing remained but the small stones like line gravel. These were then carried over and dumped on the sorter's table, who examined them carefully and placed anything promising to one side. But for three weeks ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Insarov: 'I'm dying... Good-bye, my poor girl! good-bye, my country!' and he fell backwards on to ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... gradually down, or a bad man drawn gradually up, he set forth, with a great deal of detail, a great deal of vividness, a modern wobbler, a human pendulum, and simply noted down, as it were, his slow swinging backwards and forwards. His hero, an evil liver, a modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice, was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the wall ten feet thick? He looked again. It was not a vaulting, that was clear; and it could not be anything but a wall. There was some comfort in that. He drew back a little, put the lamp into the lantern again and got out backwards. The passage was bright; he ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... sun, but rather made more hard and sad therewith. Also their philosophers that they call Gymnosophists stand in most hot gravel from the morning till evening, and behold the sun without blemishing of their eyes. Also there, in some mountains be men with soles of the feet turned backwards, and the foot also with viii toes on one foot. Also there be some with hounds' heads, and be clothed in skins of wild beasts, and they bark as hounds, and speak none other wise: and they live by hunting and fowling: ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... table of boards and trestles stood by the foot track, and the stretchers were laid on it as they came in, and the wounded had their first bandaging and dressings there. McClane took up his place by this table, and the stretcher bearers went backwards and forwards between the ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... and you do seem to know," responded the boy, trying the bow to make sure it would not shoot backwards. "Well, sis, you're a brick and Tavia, well, she is brick-dust, at any rate, but Jack—well he is Jack, and that is all there is to it. I'm going to ask father to let him carry Bugles next week. What little he could earn would do something ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... with nature, in which if anything goes wrong through any distortion or depravity, either by any irregular motion or disordered condition,—as if, for instance, a person were to walk on his hands, or to walk not forwards but backwards,—then he would evidently appear to be flying from himself, and to be putting off his manhood, and to hate his own nature. On which account, also, some ways of sitting down, and some contorted and abrupt movements, such as wanton or effeminate men at times indulge in, are contrary to nature. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... a king. His head was quite turned. He shouted aloud for joy, and swung his legs backwards and forwards as he ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than impressive, and it is to be feared that they waited for the precentor's weekly performance with a delighted expectation ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... still, from which other tentacles were now projecting, and began pushing my way back from the edge of the pit. I saw astonishment giving place to horror on the faces of the people about me. I heard inarticulate exclamations on all sides. There was a general movement backwards. I saw the shopman struggling still on the edge of the pit. I found myself alone, and saw the people on the other side of the pit running off, Stent among them. I looked again at the cylinder, and ungovernable terror gripped me. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... the lieutenant roared at the corporal. Wims, misunderstanding, released the cylinder a fraction of a second before the corporal did and the corporal went tumbling backwards, knocking the lieutenant off the platform and ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... Life of Arnold: 'We are all in the midst of confusion,' Arnold writes from Laleham, 'the books all packed and half the furniture; and on Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this dear place, this nine-years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to look backwards. Forward, forward, forward, should be one's motto.' And thus Arnold moved to Rugby, and made history! There are times when the landlord's gate ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... see me back. Good people, mind you, one and all, according to their lights; God-fearing, law-abiding, nothing questioning, one and all. I shall soon expect to see the earth stand still and roll backwards. Yes; there they trot upon life's highway, chained together, dragging each other along; not one of them dares stop to pick a flower lest the others should tread on his fingers and toes. And they are so swaddled up in customs and conventions, baby-learned ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... fetched in, that the little Victims had to wait; and that was the DINNER misery I spoke about, and a very grievous affair it was. Sometimes they had actually to wait several minutes, with nothing to do but to fidget on their chairs, lean backwards till they toppled over, or forward till some accident occurred at the table. And then, poor little things, if they ventured to get out their knuckle-bones for a game, or took to a little boxing amusement among themselves, or to throwing ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... long time ago, and if I mistake not, it was in the month of August, 1354, that the valiant Genoese captain, Paganino Doria[6] by name, utterly routed the Venetians and took their town of Parenzo. And his well-manned galleys were now cruising backwards and forwards in the Lagune, close in front of Venice, like ravenous beasts of prey which, goaded by hunger, roam restlessly up and down spying out where they may most safely pounce upon their victims; and both people and seignory were panic-stricken with fear. All the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... The little foot moved backwards and forwards a good while, and when Nannie did speak, she spoke almost as if she were ...
— Nanny Merry - or, What Made the Difference • Anonymous
... over again. He did, it is true, make some progress in natural science. He studied physics and rushed rapidly backwards from forces to molecules, and from molecules to atoms, and from atoms to electrons, and then his whole studies exploded backward into the infinities of space, still searching ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... occult investigator wishes to study an event in the past history of man, he may most readily call up the picture from the memory of nature, but if he desires to fix the time of the incident, he will be obliged to count backwards by the motion of the heavenly bodies. For that purpose he generally uses the measure provided by the sun's precession: Each year the sun crosses the earth's equator about the twenty-first of March. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... who often went backwards and forwards between Venona and San Bonifacio, and who served both him and the Good Knight; but those treacherous spies always serve one better than the other, and this one hoped for the ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... a question! Know the trail? Haven't I climbed that mountain so many times that I could go up it backwards ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... who dwelt at Gaza. It was his business to go with caravans, backwards and forwards, across the desert to Suez, to take care of the camels. He had a wife and one young son, ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... who beholds the beloved with awe, falls back in adoration, and forces both the steeds on their haunches; again the evil steed rushes forwards and pulls shamelessly. The conflict grows more and more severe; and at last the charioteer, throwing himself backwards, forces the bit out of the clenched teeth of the brute, and pulling harder than ever at the reins, covers his tongue and jaws with blood, and forces him to rest his legs and haunches with pain upon the ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... from round her, and, pushing her slender, white-robed figure gently backwards, gazes searchingly into her calm ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... we can bear, that ordinary conditions are slipping away from under us, that in another moment reason or life itself must snap with the strain; and all these feelings I then underwent. At last I moved, moved backwards from the figure. I dared not attempt to pass her. Yet I could not at first turn away from her. I stepped backwards, facing her still as I did so, till I was close to the fireplace. Then I turned sharply from her, sat down ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... there are the rowing boats, which carry passengers incessantly backwards and forwards between the river-banks. So long as the season remains at its height they are bedecked with a number of little flags of red cotton-cloth, or even of simple paper. The rowers, moreover, have been instructed to sing all the time the native songs which are accompanied by a ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... in time. I think they used to get quite excited themselves at last. Our old gardener, who used to watch the races with great interest, told me once that he "'ad seen one of the little dawgs a'jumpin' backwards and forwards over that 'ere bit of wood (the highest and most perilous jump), and a'practisin' by hisself!" He was a very clever "little dawg," but I don't think he ever reached such a pitch of intelligence as to ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... threateningly, and one of Ben's supporters gave her a gentle push backwards. In three minutes the bar was in a complete state of pandemonium. The three members of "The Gallows Ring" fought two men and a woman, for Mr. Dawes merely stood in a corner ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... you go back?" he asked of the trusty messenger, the man who spent his days, year in and year out, speeding backwards and forwards across Europe, carrying instructions to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... seemed in a great state about our safety, and said, 'Keep together, old man.' 'All right,' I said; but the next moment Crewdson had turned to try and walk on. I felt to separate, or take our eyes off it, meant an attack, so walked backwards; but it no sooner saw that I was a pace or two nearer it than Crewdson than it came on me like a very whirlwind. I had been reading Psalm xci. in the rain that morning, and how grandly it was fulfilled! By a God-given instinct I dropped my haversack and your fieldglasses, ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... bottom boards, the rattle of the check, the strong curve of the rod. It all takes place in a swift moment. You are on your feet and playing your fish as if by instinct. The Jock Scott had attracted this fish, and the familiar process was followed—the stepping ashore, the retreat up the bank backwards, the rod well curved all the while, and the fish held hard, since there was doubly rapid water below, and it must be kept sternly in hand. The gillie did not take up the gaff now, and my hopes were dashed, for it meant that he ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... lifted his head and stared at them. Eileen had slipped behind Stella and had begun to retreat backwards. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... The butler entered backwards, protesting, between two men who did not take off their hats. They were in riding-boots and cloaks, and splashed from the road. They had pistol butts ostentatious in their side pockets, and one carried ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... of extraordinary strength and dexterity. He could throw over the Loulle gate a 48-pound cannon ball as easily as a child could throw its ball. He could fling a stone from one bank of the Rhone to the other where it was two hundred yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... between her hands, bent it gently backwards, looked at me gravely, and said: "You have been ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... fell, and their force wavered, as a man stops to get his breath; but the forces behind them came leaping over their falling brethren, and came charging straight into our ranks. I was at that instant inside the square, when I noticed our men shuffling backwards. Some say Colonel Burnaby issued an order for the men to fall back, but I did not hear it. Burnaby rode out apparently to assist our skirmishers, who were running in, hard pressed: all but one succeeding in getting ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... beings. Flaming gas-jets threw it all into strong satanic light and shade. At the corner of a dingy alley Rose could see a fight going on; the begrimed ragged children, regardless of the April rain, swooped backwards and forwards under the very hoofs of the horses, or flattened their noses against the windows whenever the horses ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... come back as a peal of laughter. There is an echo in Woodstock Park which repeats the word twenty times. Again sometimes, as in the Alps, the sound-waves coming back rebound from mountain to mountain and are driven backwards and forwards, becoming fainter and fainter till they die away; ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... There's another way!" Now he has climbed to the top of a pine, Fastened the reins to the summit, and crossed himself, Turning his face to the sun's bright decline. Thrusting his head in the noose ... he has hanged himself! 210 Horrible! Horrible! See, how he sways Backwards and forwards.... The Barin, unfortunate, Shouts for assistance, and struggles and prays. Twisting his head he is jerking convulsively, Straining his voice to the utmost he cries, All is in vain, there is no one to rescue him, Only ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... stones at the bottom could not be seen, except just at the edges: I do not know how I got over. I remember going in, and thinking that the horse was lifting his legs up and putting them down in the same place again, and that the river was flowing backwards. In fact I grew dizzy directly, but by fixing my eyes on the opposite bank, and leaving Doctor to manage matters as he chose, somehow or other, and much to my relief, I got to the other side. It was really nothing at all. I was wet only a little above the ankle; but it is the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... employed in drawing little carts with fish, vegetables, &c., to market. Previous to the year 1795, such dogs were also employed in smuggling; which was the more easy, as they are exceedingly docile. The dogs were trained to go backwards and forwards between two places on the frontiers, without any person to attend them. Being loaded with little parcels of goods, lace, &c., like mules, they set out at midnight, and only went when it was perfectly ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... confident Sally; and at the same moment, as if the very caution against the accident was the cause of it, the blade of her scull did not dip into the water. The oar meeting no resistance, its loom, or handle, came back upon the bosom of the unfortunate Sally, tipped her backwards—up went her heels in the air, and down fell her head into the bottom of the boat. As she was pulling the stroke oar, her feet almost came in contact with the rosette of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for anybody's happiness, they make use of your argument to conclude that it is not what the Bible requires. How I have heard that urged—that God intended his creatures to be happy—as a reason why they should disobey him. They lay hold on the wrong end of the argument and work backwards." ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... were receiving Mrs. Pratt and the two Misses Pratt in the drawing-room. Selina and Ada Pratt were fine, handsome young women, with long upper lips, who wore their smart sailor hats tilted backwards to show their bushy fringes, and whose muff-chains, with swinging pendent hearts, silk blouses and sequin belts and brown boots represented to Mrs. Gresley the highest pinnacle ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... have been thrown. Perhaps being lighter and of larger bulk than the other things, it might have been jerked farther off, and rolling away got jammed in the casks or cases. My search proved to me that it could not be close beneath the kelson; I therefore felt backwards and forwards everywhere I could get my hand. I tried to recollect whether I had, when last taking a biscuit out, fixed on the head tightly or not. Having smashed it in, in order to broach the cask, it was not ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... getting the diagonal threads to twist in the allotted space was so great that if it had now to be done, I should probably not attempt its accomplishment." His next step was to provide thin metallic discs, to be used as bobbins for conducting the threads backwards and forwards through the warp. These discs, being arranged in carrier-frames placed on each side of the warp, were moved by suitable machinery so as to conduct the threads from side to side in forming the lace. He eventually succeeded in working out his principle with extraordinary ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... lowered his head and charged like a buffalo. Fair in the middle he caught that white man, causing him to double up, fly backwards and land with a most resounding splash in the deepest part of the muddy sluit. Here I may remark that, as his shins are the weakest, a Hottentot's head is by far the hardest and most dangerous part of him. Indeed it seems to partake of the nature of a cannon ball, for, without ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... with a violent surprise. He was suddenly grabbed from behind. A powerful arm gripped him like a vise, pinioning his own right arm to his side, while a big hand was clapped over his mouth, forcing the lad's head violently backwards with a jolt which for the moment he ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... who was seated on the taffrail, sprang on his feet, but was instantly knocked down with a war-club and flung backwards into the sea, where he was despatched by ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... close in his ear its deep savage growl, wrung forth partly by the agony of death, partly by thirst for blood. At length the bear's resistance grew weaker, and the dark blood streamed freely upon the snow; he tottered; and one powerful thrust hurled him backwards over the edge of the precipice. At the same instant Sintram stood by the Baron of Montfaucon. Folko said, drawing a deep breath: "But I have not yet the prize in my hands, and have it I must, since fortune has given me a claim to it. Look, ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... they thought these poor little creatures were properly fledged, preparations were made for the execution of their intended plan. The old birds flew backwards and forwards about the nest, and expressed, as well as they were able, the sorrow and affliction they felt on being robbed of their young. Billy and his two sisters, however, paid no regard to their piteous moans; for they took the nest, with three ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... as he listened,—because the language of the woman was not the language of a common woman, but the language of a lady of rank.(2) Then he determined at all hazards to get one glimpse of her face; and he crept round the house, backwards and forwards, peering through every crack and chink. And at last he was able to see;—but therewith an icy trembling seized him; and the hair of his ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... the person who came to consult the oracle. After these preliminaries, he descended into the cave by a narrow passage. This place could be entered only in the night. The person returned from the cave by the same narrow passage, but walking backwards. He appeared melancholy and dejected; and hence the proverb which was applied to a person low-spirited and gloomy, "He has been consulting the ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... another; but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter. It must be neither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough to make a substantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not to yield or give; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards and forwards; and it must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there need be no stooping or reaching too high. These are the conditions which a really good book must fulfil; simple, however, as they are, it is surprising how few volumes comply ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... may be summarized as follows, working backwards from a time when the Gregorian tradition was in existence beyond ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... archery. Major Pountney retired far away into the park, a full quarter of a mile off, and smoked a cigar under a tree. Was it for this that he had absolutely given up a month to drawing out this code of rules, going backwards and forwards two or three times to the printers in his desire to carry out the Duchess's wishes? "Women are so d—— ungrateful!" he said aloud in his solitude, as he turned himself on the hard ground. "And some men are so d—— lucky!" This fellow, Lopez, had absolutely ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... which the workmen would cross and recross, and do a great deal of the bridge-building work, being raised and lowered to the required position by the shear legs. Some feet above the two-inch rope ran an electric wire with a motor engine which propelled the car backwards and forwards. Thus we may almost say that the first conveyance across the Zambesi was an electric tram. And the passengers (particularly on the first journey) were not pleased with the trip. They shrank with pardonable ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... size seems to be more necessary, because otherwise there ought to be some reflexion of movement backwards when it passes from a smaller particle to a larger one, according to the Laws of Percussion which I published some ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... when Harald had been before it a while, fell he sick and betook himself to his bed; & he caused his tent be placed away from other tents so that he might have the ease that he should not hear the noise and disquiet of the host. Backwards & forwards to him oft fared his men, craving his counsel, and this was noted of the townsfolk who argued rightly that something had befallen the Vaerings, and thereon set they spies to discover what it might be. When the spies were come back even into ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... I believe so, but it was the Lord's-Prayer backwards then. Pray, what was that you were chattering ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that he seemed almost to lean backwards, with his forehead thrown forward, and the piercing eyes looking out from under their heavy brows, and his diminutive stature coupled with the imposing bearing, combined to make a very peculiar and vivid impression on me. Griffiths afterwards translated his laconism for me ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... subsequent operations, thrice washing his hands in spring water, he places nine black beans in his mouth, and walks out. These he throws behind him one by one, carefully guarding against the least glance backwards, and at each cast he says, 'With these beans I ransom myself and mine.' The spirits of his ancestors follow him and gather the beans as they fall. Then, performing another ablution as he enters his house, he clashes cymbals of brass, or rather ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... you formerly fixed there into the head of the cork. This will support the bird's head admirably. If you wish to lengthen the neck, raise the cork by putting more cotton under it. If the head is to be brought forward, bring the cork nearer to the end of the box. If it requires to be set backwards on the shoulders, move back ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... real pity for these two little children as they trudge along over the prairie, so troubled and so cold. My dear brother being older than I, and the chief party interested, generously took most of the blame to himself, and comforted me as well as he could, running backwards in front of me to shelter me from the wind, and assuring me he would tell father all about it, and he would forgive us. I have carried in my heart of hearts for sixty years the image of that beautiful, bright-eyed, unselfish brother; ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... tedious drudgery of dividing timber by the old fashioned hand-saw is well known. To avoid it, some ingenious person suggested that a number of saws should be fixed to a frame in a mill, so contrived as to work with a reciprocating motion, upwards and downwards, or backwards and forwards, and that this frame so mounted should be yoked to the mill wheel, and the saws driven by the power of wind or water. The plan was tried, and, as may readily be imagined, the amount of effective work done by this machine-saw was immense, compared with ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... at that: "This is worse than a dog's life! We—you 'n me—are no more to them selfish creturs in there"—nodding backwards at the passenger cars—"then the ingine that draws 'em. I'm sick o' freezin' an' slavin' an' bein' despised by men no better 'n I be! How a man of any sperrit 'n' ambition ken stan' it fur twenty years as you hev, ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... with a firm, well-sanded hand as she spoke, and before could spell your name backwards, she had skinned and dressed it, and had given the remnants to poor hungry Fidel. "Now, my boy," she said gayly to Jan as she worked, "you get together some twigs and dead leaves, and you, Big Eyes," she added to Marie, "find some stones by the river, and we'll soon have ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... has in consequence plenty to do to keep his eye on them, and in the course of the day he walks over his farm half-a-dozen times at least. Very few ordinary working farmers walk much less than ten miles a day on the average, backwards and ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... life henceforth a dreary and tenantless mansion, Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrowful faces. Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely he said it, "Let not him that putteth his hand to the plough look backwards; Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its fountains, Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead and the hearths of the living, It is the will of the Lord; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of his fellows. The latter, in response to this, had raised his crowbar, as if he meant to strike Abe on the head, and Abe, lurching backward on the railing in order to avoid the blow, had lost his balance and fallen backwards. Under ordinary circumstances this would have meant nothing worse than a drop into the pit below, but, as ill-luck would have it, one of the cauldrons of molten steel was being swung along the arc of the pit ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... NUX VOMICA.—Symptoms: Muscular twitching, constriction of the throat, difficult breathing and oppression of the chest; violent muscular spasms then occur, continuous in character like lock-jaw, with the body bent backwards, sometimes like a bow. Treatment: Give, if obtainable, one ounce or more of bone charcoal mixed with water, and follow with an active emetic; then give chloroform in teaspoonful doses, in flour and water or glycerine, every few minutes while the spasms last, and afterwards ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... for whom I writ an order for a ship to transport him to Flushing. He supped with my Lord, my Lord using him as a person of honour. This evening too came Mr. John Pickering on board us. This evening my head ached exceedingly, which I impute to my sitting backwards in my cabin, otherwise than I am used to do. To-night Mr. Sheply told me that he heard for certain at Dover that Mr. Edw. Montagu did go beyond sea when he was here first the other day, and I am apt to believe that he went to speak with the King. This day one told me how that at the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... seemed endless. But at last there was renewed vibration in the tree. Keeko raised her eyes again. Marcel was moving backwards, and there, right at the broken head of the tree, the fleshless skull with its magnificent antlers was set up in ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... before the hearth, on which a few clods of peat, smouldering slowly with some scarcely dry sticks on the top of them, served as an apology for a fire, and threw out the smallest possible heat to warm the shrivelled palms held up ever and anon before it. As she sat, occasionally rocking herself backwards and forwards, she sang, in a voice which sometimes sounded high and shrill, till it rose into almost a shriek, and then again sank down into a long-continued moan. She uttered words often with great rapidity, though even the poor creature herself might scarcely ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... when you work it backwards. But just think, Simmonds," he added, "what problems the police will have to face, if gloves like these become fashionable ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... ever, and have been coming several times to kiss his royal paw, but I am so terribly frightened at the mouth of his cave, to see the print of my fellow-subjects' feet all pointing forwards, and none backwards, that I had not resolution enough ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... to America, and exceedingly anxious to prevent a rupture. His intimacy with Dr. Franklin, and his position with the Ministry, induced him to undertake a mediation between them; in which his sister seemed to have been associated. They carried from one to the other, backwards and forwards, the several propositions and answers which passed, and seconded with their own intercessions, the importance of mutual sacrifices, to preserve the peace and connection of the two countries. I remember that Lord North's answers ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... all Manlius, a man of consular rank, strong of body and full of courage, fell in with two of the enemy. As one of them lifted up his battleaxe, Manlius cut off his right hand with his sword, while he dashed his shield into the other's face, and threw him backwards down the cliff. After this he stood upon the wall, and with the help of those who assembled round him, beat off the rest, for not many had reached the top, or effected anything commensurate with the boldness of the attempt. Having thus escaped the danger, the Romans threw their sentinel down the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... very like her; her sails were loose and bulging out with the land breeze, while from the sounds which reached us it was evident that her crew were heaving up the anchor preparatory to sailing; boats were moving backwards and forwards over the surface of the calm water of the harbour, on which the moon shone with a refulgence which enabled us to see all that was taking place. The anchor was shipped, the sails were sheeted home, and the privateer slowly glided out ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... pointsman with respect to every linear yard of the platform edge, whether her train is going to come up there; and they ask each other questions, and give prismatic information; and then the train for Paradise (let us say) comes reluctantly backwards into the station with friends standing on its margin, and prudence seizes her valise and goes at a hand-gallop to the other end, where the nth class is, and is only just in time to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... of her calmer-minded daughter that probably the roads would be far more full of peril than their own house could ever be, if they strictly shut it up, lived upon the produce of their own park and dairy, and suffered none to go backwards and forwards to bring the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the Loulle gate a 48-pound cannon ball as easily as a child could throw its ball. He could fling a stone from one bank of the Rhone to the other where it was two hundred yards wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... odd and unaccountable as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a charwoman's or housemaid's business of scouring the floor. Both his little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... Venus was slowly but surely leaving the bank of mud. Suddenly she gave a twist and then ran backwards rapidly, and then the power ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... going. Joe heard him swear. The Chief felt the utterly helpless sensation of a man in a car when his brakes don't work. But a moment later the braking rockets did flare briefly, yet still too long. The Chief was not only stopped, but drifting backwards toward the Platform. He evidently tried to turn, and he spun as dizzily as Joe had done. But after a moment he stopped—almost. There were, then, two red-painted things in space, somewhat like giant water-spiders floating forlornly ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... is simply Miles spelled backwards," Dundee explained. "Possibly because he considered it the sophisticated thing to do, Miles used an assumed name at the party at which he met Nita Leigh—and married her under that name shortly afterward. Even the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to the foot of a bare green valley, which wound upwards and backwards among the hills. A little stream came down the midst and made a succession of clear pools; near by the lowest of which I was aware of a drove of shaggy cattle, and a man who seemed the very counterpart of Mr. Sim making a breakfast upon bread and cheese. This second drover ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accompanied by three others, with an equal number of men in each. They first got hold of the rattan, and then, landing, they gently drew him forth from his hiding-place. He offered no resistance, merely wagging his tail backwards and forwards, and I could scarcely persuade myself that he was a monster capable of eating a man at a meal. The Dyaks first made a strong lashing fast round his mouth, to prevent him from biting, and then secured ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... could go down stairs backwards after dark, and look into a mirror you held in your hand, and see something, I don't know what, but I'm going to try it. I'll try it just to know what I'd see, or to find out what would happen. He said something was ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... see me about these times. I am generally found seated on a cigar-box in the chimney-corner, my chin in my hand, rocking backwards and forwards (weaving, you used to call it) in a despairing way, and now and then casting a picturesquely hopeless glance about our dilapidated cabin. Such a looking place as it is! Not having been ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the ideas of Plato, or rather in the single idea of good. His followers, and perhaps he himself, having arrived at this elevation, instead of going forwards went backwards from philosophy to psychology, from ideas to numbers. But what we perceive to be the real meaning of them, an explanation of the nature and origin of knowledge, will always continue to be one of the first problems ...
— Meno • Plato
... inkstand is the very pest of my life; it keeps tumbling over backwards every minute, and pouring the ink all over, and making me swear (which is really a pity), and is, in short, invaluable; and I am so much more obliged to you than I was even at first for it, now that ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... explored the Nile for coal and precious metals in the interest of Mehemet Ali. After the death of this pasha, Pethrick visited El-Obeid in Kordofan as a trader, and remained there for five years. In 1853 he ventured upon an enterprise relating to the ivory trade. For this purpose he travelled backwards and forwards upon the White Nile and the Bahr-el-Ghazal for a period of six years, reaching some of the important affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Jur and the Jalo, or the Rol. Returning to England, he was commissioned to undertake a relief expedition to help Captains Speke and ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... on the stone and watched the Mohar, who slowly and silently paced backwards and forward in front of her. This incessant to and fro of her companion at last became unendurable to her sensitive and irritated nerves, and suddenly raising her head from her hand, on which she had rested ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brought? A rich, full tide of life and happiness. Every morning she rose with the sun, and as she opened the door and let in the scent of the furze and the dewy grass, her whole being responded to the voice of Nature around her. She was constantly running backwards and forwards between Garthowen and the cottage. Nothing went well at the farm without her, and in the cottage there were a score of things which she loved to do for Sara. There were the fowls to be fed, the eggs ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... so conspicuous as in the fact that Greek and Latin cannot be converted into money as readily as vulgar fractions and a bold handwriting. Being a woman, as I have observed, Mrs O'D. would have read the argument backwards, and stood out for the rule-of-three against Sophocles and "all his works." I simply replied, with that dignity which is natural to me, "I am proud of my knowledge of life; I do recognise in myself the analyst of that strange mixture that makes up human chemistry; ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... their way through a maze of small ill-looking streets, slowly enough, for there were children all over the road; not infrequently a big dray forced them to proceed backwards. Masters noted that Christopher never expected the legitimate traffic should give way to him. They emerged at last on a crowded thoroughfare of South London, where small shops elbowed big ones and windows blazed with preposterous advertisements. There were trams too, and scarcely room ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... like the life of Savage as possible. That is a known and familiar tale, and its effect on the public mind has been very great. Many of the incidents in the true history are readily made dramatical. For instance, Savage used to walk backwards and forwards o' nights to his mother's window, to catch a glimpse of her, as she passed with a candle. With some such situation the play might happily open. I would plunge my Hero, exactly like Savage, into difficulties and embarrassments, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Briefly stated, the law is as follows: The two parents of each living being contribute on the average one-half of each inherited quality, each of them contributing one-quarter of it. The four grand-parents furnish between them one-quarter, or each of them one-sixteenth; and so on backwards through past generations of ancestors. Now, though, of course, these numbers are purely arbitrary, applying only to averages, and rarely true exactly of individual cases, where the prepotency of any one ancestor may, and often does, upset the balance ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... backwards. "Why, yes. It's sudden, but ... why, yes. I could use more capital, and I want a crack salesman. I'll trade—if you're quick on the trigger. I've got two or three people interested so ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... javelins against the lower part of the body, which was undefended. Magellan, wounded in the leg by a poisoned arrow, gave the order for retreat, which, begun in good order, soon changed into such a flight, that seven or eight Spaniards alone remained at his side. With much difficulty they kept moving backwards, fighting as they went, in order to reach the boats. They were already knee-deep in the water when several islanders rushed all together upon Magellan, who, wounded in the arm, was unable to draw his sword; they gave him ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... but Frederick had made a junction with his army, bringing his force up to fifty thousand. During the whole of September there were marches and counter-marches, Frederick pushing Daun backwards, and preventing him from besieging any of his fortresses, and gradually cutting the ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... much lowly bowing as they stood on the highway. The Duke, not unmoved, bowed lowly in return, but unfortunately backing as he did so, tripped himself up with characteristic awkwardness, and tumbled backwards on a heap of broken stones prepared for the road, with his heels in the air, and exhibiting to his unfaithful Tuscans and ungrateful Duchy, as a last remembrance of him, a full view of a part of his person rarely put ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... justify Napoleon's hitherto-unjustified taunt that we are a nation of shopkeepers.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant'—good! I sat down to a table and wrote out that conclusion, and then I worked backwards, keeping well in view the idea of 'restraint.' But that quality which is little sister to restraint, and is yet far more repulsive to the public mind than vehemence, emerged to misguide my pen. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... whatever in the way to break a fall; so that a single false step might have landed him in eternity, for if he had fallen he must have been dashed into atoms on the floor so far below. The gentlemen saw he was nervous, and advised him as he descended the ladder backwards not to look down into the abyss below, but to keep his eyes fixed above, and following this excellent advice, he got down safely. He always looked back on that adventure in the light of a most horrible nightmare and with justification, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... a small white Georgian dining-room, with every appurtenance of almost Sybaritic luxury. The only light in the room was thrown upon the table by two purple-shaded electric lamps, and the servants who waited seemed to pass backwards and forwards like shadows in some mysterious twilight—even the faces of the three diners themselves were out of the little pool of light until they leaned forward. The dinner was chosen with taste and restraint, the wines were not only costly but rare. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... next instant she checked herself with a violent start that nearly threw her backwards. The man at the step who stood waiting to assist her was ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... pleasant enough spot in the daytime, but not many persons cared to go by it when the sun was down. And in all the years Pat was going backwards and forwards, he never once came home except by the high-road till this unlucky evening, when, just at the place where the two roads part, he got, as one may say, ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... angles to it, or in the plane of the two cotyledons, which were still in close contact. The basal leg of the arch at the time when the filament was affixed to it, was already bowed considerably backwards, or from the cotyledons; had the filament been affixed before this bowing occurred, the chief movement would have been at right angles to that shown in the figure. A filament was attached to another buried ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... junction of Milner Walk and the road to White Chateau; then detonating bombs which were not already detonated; then carrying S.A.A. from one spot to another about twenty yards away. I left Corporal Chamley in charge of the first dump, where the men left their equipment. I went backwards and forwards myself. On one occasion, while I was at the junction of Milner Walk and the road, General Stockwell appeared. He asked me what we were doing; I told him; he expressed himself satisfied and proceeded ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... slyly looking in another direction, swayed herself backwards and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge; till, moved by amatory curiosity, she turned ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Remove leaf by leaf from the stalk, examining for insects. Pass the leaves backwards and forwards through clean water until all sand is removed. Fold in a wet cloth and keep in the ice-box until it is used. The lettuce leaves should be dried when ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... his head, when Denham sprang forward and discharged his pistol at the Frenchman. The bullet struck him on the right arm and the weapon fell to the deck. Mr Evans, recovering his sword, gave him a thrust, which sent him backwards among his men. The fall of their leader discouraged the French, who giving way, the English found themselves in possession of the brig. The cable, as had been agreed upon, was immediately cut. Hands were sent aloft to loose the fore-topsail, and the head of the prize coming ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... students usually get some taste of old Latin is Terence, in whose plays, though they are from Greek originals, something is heard of that rippling movement which has lived through the ages and still survives in Italian conversation. Reaching backwards from Terence we come to Plautus and Ennius, and then to Nvius (B.C. 274-202), who composed an epic on the first Punic war. He lamented even in his time the Grecising of his mother-tongue. He wrote an epitaph upon himself, to say ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... she sprang for a match. It broke with the quick movement she made to kindle it, and she snatched another as if a fiend were after her. It flashed and went out. Oh the terror, the terror! The darkness seemed alive with fearful presences. The lurid glare of her own eyeballs flashed backwards into her brain. She tried one more match; it kindled as it should, and she lighted another lamp. Her first impulse was to assure herself that nothing was changed in the familiar objects around her. She held the lamp up to the picture of Judith Pride. The beauty looked at ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... prince, but I never had such a trial as in the presence of Paoli. I have already said that he is a great physiognomist. In consequence of his being in continual danger from treachery and assassination, he has formed a habit of studiously observing every new face. For ten minutes we walked backwards and forwards through the room, hardly saying a word, while he looked at me, with a steadfast, keen and penetrating eye, as if ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Moving slowly backwards, he held out one hand the hand that had proved all kindness and comfort and, snapping a finger and thumb, clicked his tongue in a murmur ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the anchorage as an anchorage, the wind, what with these hills and gullies, is like Mulligan's blanket, always coming and going; and by fits an' starts as the ague took the goose; and likewise backwards and forwards, like Boscastle fair: so that our cables be twisted worse than ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... or, rather, an oblong circle, on the ground; then one at a time rose up, and made long speeches, which they did in a manner peculiar to themselves. The speaker, during his harangue, keeps running backwards and forwards within the oblong space, using the most violent but appropriate gesticulation; so expressive, indeed, of the subject on which he is speaking, that a spectator who does not understand their language can form a tolerable ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... said nothing as yet, but had been walking backwards and forwards, with his head down, and his hands in his pockets, turned suddenly round to Mary, and said, "I have been thinking we can soon know if your knife is in the nest. We only want a polemoscope for ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... were damp with sudden sweat as he unclasped them from the pistol-butt and let the weapon fall; sweat was on his forehead, and a heaviness on his chest as if a man sat on him. He felt backwards through the open door with one foot, like an old man distrustful of his limbs, and steadied himself with his shoulder against the jamb, for there was a trembling in his knees. He knew that he had saved himself from the drop into eternal ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... important periods, he leaves them undeveloped, and often undetermined. It is diverting to hear him rail at Lord Halifax and others, for the very kind of double-dealing which he relates coolly of himself in the next page. Had he gone backwards, he might have given half a dozen volumes of his own life, with similar anecdotes and variations. I am most surprised, that when self-love is the whole groundwork of the performance, there should be little or no attempt at shining as an author, though he was one. As he had so much wit too, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... itself in Hardy's shoulder. The smart of this second wound seemed to fairly rouse my shipmate, and before I could do anything to help him his ponderous fist darted out with the force of a six-pound shot, catching the miserable Corsican fair in the centre of the face and dashing him backwards, with a shriek of pain, across the table. This blow settled the affair; there was no more fight left in either of the brothers—indeed I had unconsciously gripped my prisoner's throat so tightly, while watching ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... place by the galley where the rice is cooked, nor Bombay, nor Calcutta, nor even London, will be any more for me. 'How shall I be sure,' I said, that the Gods to whom I pray will abide at all?' This I thought, and the Rewah dropped her nose as a hammer falls, and all the sea came in and slid me backwards along the fo'c'sle and over the break of the fo'c'sle, and I very badly bruised my shin against the donkey-engine: but I did not die, and I have seen the Gods. They are good for live men, but for the dead. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... to Wilkie, expressed his gratification at finding him so young a man. We experienced a similar feeling on first seeing the poet Montgomery. He can be no young man, who, looking backwards across two whole generations, can recount from recollection, like Nestor of old, some of the occurrences of the third. But there is a green old age, in which the spirits retain their buoyancy, and the intellect its original vigour; and the whole appearance of the poet gives ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... uplifted in lurid anathema, answered him, and in a couple of seconds Kelly himself lurched into him, nearly hurling him backwards. "And is it yourself?" cried the Irishman. "Then help me to hold the damned young scoundrel, for he's fighting like the devils in hell! Here he is! Get ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... walked up and down the room, asking Nelle if she would not have him for a cook, he took the plates out of the cupboard and began to rub them on a corner of the shirt. Then the good Nelle fell into a chair and slapped her knee with her hand as she rocked herself backwards and forwards. At last the table was spread; the plates shone round and bright as the moon in water, while the pewter forks beside ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... ruse being practised by a dumb creature, that is supposed to have no other guide than instinct. But I had seen the 'bay lynx' of Louisiana do some 'dodges' as cunning as that,—such as claying his feet to make the hounds lose the scent, and, after running backwards and forwards upon a fallen log, leap into the tops of trees, and get off ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the assumed name of Lancy de Vere. In order the better to hide the object of his journey, Lancy de Vere (as we shall now call him, though our readers will be able at any moment to turn his name backwards) has given it to be understood that he is travelling merely as a gentleman anxious to see America. This naturally baffles all ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... They were in the passage outside the room. They paused at the door. The door opened. There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on. The door closed once more, and the pungent reek of a strong cigar was borne to our nostrils. Then the footsteps continued backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, within a few yards of us. Finally, there was a creak from a chair, and the footsteps ceased. Then a key clicked in a lock and I heard the rustle ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly began to flutter, cocks to crow, hens to cluck; and five or six chickens, managing to escape out of their coop, flew backwards and forwards blindly, with frightened screams, dashing against each other and against the walls of the Projectile, and altogether getting up as demoniacal a hullabaloo as could be made by ten thousand bats that you suddenly disturbed in a cavern ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... and moved to the head of the column. I followed. There, "Left into line wheel—march!" chanted our second in command. "Backwards—march!" and then "Right dress!" and the line, that had been a column, dressed along the western edge of the road with the morning sun in their faces. Then Ferry called "Fours from the right, to march to the left—march!" and he and Quinn ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... and drawing a long breath as he recognised each word, pronounced without a shudder at the critical points. "Thou art safe so far," said Stephen. "But sure he is a wizard. I even beheld his familiar spirit—in a fair shape doubtless—like a pixie! Be not deceived, brother. Sorcery reads backwards—and I saw him so read from that scroll of his. Laughest thou! Nay! what shall I do ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... concerning this matter about which we are uncertain; so that if so be that this man is guiltless, that book which we hold in our hands shall [in revolving] follow the ordinary course of the sun; but that if he be guilty that book shall move backwards." ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... was cultivated with great care and bloomed next year. It surprised all who saw it by the unexpected peculiarity of its large rich crimson flowers, the rays of which were reversed tubular. The margins of the narrow rays were curved backwards, showing the bright color of the upper surface. It was a very showy novelty, rapidly multiplied by cuttings, and was soon introduced into commerce. It has since been crossed with nearly all other available ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... following the outskirts of Ballinskelligs Bay, insinuates itself up a dizzy height. Looking backwards, Waterville, "standing with reluctant feet" between the sea and the lake, seems to wonder which is more bewitching. Forging ahead through the mountain gaps, we pass under Coomakiska, 1,500 feet, and Beenarourke, 1,000 feet above the sea level. Clearing the gates of the mountains, we come into ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... well they won't need to do any acting,—boys that can stand a panoram on their work in the saddle. I've been getting by with a bunch of freaks that think they're real riders if they can lope a horse up-grade without falling off backwards. Most of my direction of those actorines has been knowing to a hair how much footage to give 'em without showing how raw their ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... had to go backwards through the circles between Thermidor and Brumaire, and can hardly be said to have "seen the stars" even then. Vigny has, as we shall see, touched on the less enormous and flagrant—but as individual things scarcely less atrocious—crimes of the Directory in the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... cars of the horse but that did not work, so Pan roped his front feet. Blinky held the beast while Pan put the saddle on, but when he gave the cinch a pull Dunny stood up with a wild shriek and fell over backwards. He would have struck square on the saddle if Blinky had not pulled him sideways. Fortunately for Pan the horse rolled ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is, as a rule, the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the denoument one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hairbreadth escapes of the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Beyond it lies the interior of the scabbard, which is smoothly lined and wadded with satin, however rough the exterior may be. Armed at the stern with two hooks which bite into the silky lining, the animal is able to move backwards and forwards at will inside the cylinder, to fix its grapnels at whatever point it pleases and thus to keep a hold on the cylinder while the six legs and ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... confirmed by subsequent evidence.] It remains that we agree on some method and plan by which henceforth our letters may go between us by a sure route. This does not seem very difficult, when so many of our merchants have frequent and large transactions with you, and their messengers run backwards and forwards every week, and their vessels sail from port to port not much seldomer. The charge of this I shall commit, rightly I hope, to Bookseller James (Jacobo Bibliopolae), or to his master, my very familiar acquaintance (vel ejus hero mihi familiarissimo). ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... have both an axis and a circumference, and that the axis stands still, for there is no deviation from the perpendicular; and that the circumference goes round. But if, while revolving, the axis inclines either to the right or left, forwards or backwards, then in no point of view can they be ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and rising in her wrath soared down on the small boy like a hawk. She put him over the line, reversed him, ran him backwards, till he didn't know which end of him was front, and finally dropped him into the lap of the scared mother, with a benediction whereof the purport was that she'd be back in a moment to skin ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... nursery, or as if he were exhorting her in some recognized shibboleth of a section. Miss Sally rose and shut down the piano. Then leaning over it on her elbows, her rounded little chin slightly elevated with languid impertinence, and one saucy foot kicked backwards beyond the hem of her white cotton frock, she said: "And let me tell you, Mister Chester Brooks, that it's just such God-forsaken, infant phenomenons as you who want to run the whole country that make all this fuss, when you ain't no more fit to be trusted with matches than Judy's children. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... now; I can see nothing of it in a day; why, I do but get a breath of it, and the sun sinks before I have well begun to think. Life is so little and so mean. I dream sometimes backwards of the ancient times. If I could have the bow of Ninus, and the earth full of wild bulls and lions, to hunt them down, there would be rest in that. To shoot with a gun is nothing; a mere touch discharges it. Give me a bow, that I may enjoy the delight ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... hand, and she pulled. There was another suck at the bottom of the stream, and Paul came up by a foot. She went backwards for a new vantage-ground, and pulled again, and Paul came to bank, clothed from the waist downward in water-lily leaf and weed, and lay face downwards helpless on the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... next day about Noon, we accidentally met with a Southward Indian, amongst those that us'd to trade backwards and forwards, and spoke a little English, whom we hir'd to go with us to the Esaw Indians, a very large Nation containing many thousand People. In the Afternoon we set forward, taking our Leaves of the Wisack Indians, and leaving them some Trifles. On our Way, we met with several Towns of Indians, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Lord Talbot, as lord steward, appeared on horseback in Westminster-hall. His horse had been, at numerous rehearsals, so assiduously trained to perform what was thought the most difficult part of his duty, namely, the retiring backwards from the royal table, that, at the ceremony itself, no art of his rider could prevent the too docile animal from making his approaches to the royal presence tail foremost. This ridiculous incident, was the occasion of some sarcastic remarks in the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and proud of his team—three iron-greys, with white manes and tails, called "Pleasant", "Old Pleasant", and "Young Pleasant." Yet though he did his ploughing well, it by no means occupied all his mind. As he trudged backwards and forwards with bent head, and hands grasping the handles, with now and then a shout to his horses, and now and then a pause for rest, his thoughts were free as the wind, flying about to an sorts of subjects. For this silent Peter had always something to wonder about. ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... perhaps, because 'twas reasonable; more so because she would have me and my family out of the danger; and danger or not, for her part felt that she was determined to remain in the land where her father was buried, and she was born. She was living backwards, so to speak. She had seen the new generation, and blessed them, and bade them farewell. She belonged to the past, and old days ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... outer wall so shaped that, on the worn crown, it exhibits the form of two crescents, one in front and one behind, with their concave sides turned outwards. From the inner side of the front crescent, a crescentic front ridge passes inwards and backwards, and its inner face enlarges into a strong longitudinal fold or pillar. From the front part of the hinder crescent, a back ridge takes a like direction, and also has ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... which rang to the jarring clang of their long swords that clashed as they moved, and to the heavy tramp of their high-heeled jack-boots. Iron jacks, or coats of buff, formed the principal part of their dress, and steel-bonnets, or large slouched hats with Spanish plumes drooping backwards, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... part of the ruin which is not already supported by some modern brickwork, and they are building a wall which will nearly surround it. If they had been more selfish they would have left it to moulder away, and posterity to grumble over their stinginess or indifference. I am always tossed backwards and forwards between admiration of the Coliseum and St. Peter's, and admire most that which I see last. They are certainly 'magis pares quam similes,' but worth everything else in ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... The woman jumped backwards as if she were shot, staring in horror at Freddy's furious little face, then touched her mouth and ears and began to jabber inarticulately and talk on ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... parrot, and witnessing the curse denounced upon him, the gods, feeling a compassion for the poor creature, blessed him, saying, 'In consequence of thy being a parrot, thou shalt not be wholly deprived of the power of speech. Though thy tongue has been turned backwards, yet speech thou shalt have, confined to the letter K. Like that of a child or an old man, thy speech shall be sweet and indistinct and wonderful.' Having said these words unto the parrot, and beholding the deity of fire within the heart of the Sami, the gods made Sami wood a sacred fuel fit for ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... shelves, and tables; and round the wainscot there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and fireproof, with people's names painted outside, which anxious visitors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one word of ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... horse's neck and thrust out her sword-arm,—out with the force of frenzy and down into the shoulder of the Englishman. In a kind of dazed wonder, she saw his blade fall from his grasp and his eyes roll up at her, as he staggered backwards. ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... struggle for the perpetuation of our name extends backwards into the past, just as it aspires to conquer the future; we contend with the dead because we, the living, are obscured beneath their shadow. We are jealous of the geniuses of former times, whose names, standing out like the landmarks of history, rescue ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... dreams to be chanting for their lullaby, "Rock-a- by baby on the tree-top." Indeed, the baby on the tree-top was in an enviable position compared with my kaleidoscopic movements among the swashy seas. Many visions were before me that night, of the numerous little sufferers who are daily slung backwards and forwards in those pernicious instruments of ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... animal gave a furious leap across the gulf and reached the opposite bank; but one of his feet slipped, and after a short struggle he fell backwards, both horse and rider disappearing in the flood. A cry of anguish burst from the Canadian and one of triumph from the opposite bank; but both were quickly drowned by the roar of the torrent as it ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... snakes, sign ob de'th.—Ef a hen crows a sign ob de'th.—Sneeze wid food in mouth means de'th.—Ef a black cat crosses de road, walk backwards 'til you git pas' whar hit crossed. Mah parents useter tell lots ob tales but I can't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... But I was above the hail-storm, and that was something gained. The cloud was as dark and thick as a London fog. In my anxiety to get clear, I cocked her nose up until the automatic alarm-bell rang, and I actually began to slide backwards. My sopped and dripping wings had made me heavier than I thought, but presently I was in lighter cloud, and soon had cleared the first layer. There was a second—opal-coloured and fleecy—at a great height ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before the blue line saw them through the haze. The hill blazed and hissed in their faces. The massed infantry behind the guns found their marks. Men dropped right and left, sank in grey heaps or fell forward on their faces—some were knocked backwards down the slope. Yet without ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... as has often been said, contemporary history is the most difficult of all histories to write. A certain step backwards seems necessary in order to enable us to appreciate correctly the relative importance of events, and details conceal the full view from eyes which are too close to them, as the trees prevent us from seeing ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... are allowed to leave school for the day, the shops are closed, and a general holiday is observed in the town. The work bell is rung every morning from 5.55 to 6.0, and from 6.0 to 6.5 every evening from March to November, and the bells are rung backwards to call out the fire brigade. The curious little fire-engine upon which the town used to rely is still preserved in a shed in Willowgate. It is one of those primitive little contrivances standing on very small solid wheels, suggesting those of ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... made the coast. We got the booms down on the decks, and having made the ship as snug as possible, sailed again on the 16th. After this we met with several gales of wind off the mouth of the Strait; and continued beating backwards and forwards till the 30th, when we were so fortunate as to get a favourable wind, which we took every advantage of, and at last got safe into our desired port. We saw nothing of the Resolution, and began to doubt her safety; but on going ashore, we discerned the place where she had ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... lines briskly and merrily, making the hare-bells chime in time with the music; but the last two he sang quite slowly and gently, and merely waved the flowers backwards and forwards. Then he left off to explain. "The Fairy-King is Oberon, and he lives across the lake—and sometimes he comes in a little boat—and we go and meet him and then we sing ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... in a stranger, is really excessively diverting. Your most prudent course now will assuredly be to cast yourself from the carriage without delay and rely upon the benevolent intervention of a fire-chariot proceeding backwards." ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... as a peal of laughter. There is an echo in Woodstock Park which repeats the word twenty times. Again sometimes, as in the Alps, the sound-waves coming back rebound from mountain to mountain and are driven backwards and forwards, becoming fainter and fainter till they die away; ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... already(976) had occasion to mention the general design of his philosophy. At a time when the world was wishing to break with the past, in politics, in literature, and in religion, his spirit was conservative of older truth, while sympathetic with that which was new. In looking backwards, he sought to discover what mankind had meant by their beliefs; in looking around, he asked what were the elements which the present generation disapproved: and, wishing to eliminate the error of the past and appropriate the truth of the present, he looked inwards into the human heart, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... soul, and when it realises that a choice must be made. Sometimes this is made early in life; but sometimes a soul drifts on, guileless in a sense, though its life may be evil and purposeless, not looking backwards or forwards, but simply acting as its nature bids it act. What it is that decides the awakening of the will I hardly know; it is all a secret growth, I think; but the older that the spirit is, in the sense of spiritual experience, the earlier in mortal life that ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and effort as unique in all time, as necessary in itself, and as the messenger of reformation for all ages, working forwards and backwards, offering and giving to mankind all that it needs, and all that it perpetually seeks on every side. I have no complaint to make if others think otherwise about it; I can bear with them;[122] I can even, if need be, live with them, and this I ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... will blaze out; and what is the humor of those once overwhelmed Remnants, now getting air again! Daun's line is actually broken in this point, his artillery surmounted and become useless; Daun's potence and north front are reeling backwards, Prussians in possession of their ground. "The field to be ours!" thinks Friedrich, for some time. If indeed Ziethen had been seriously busy on the southern side of things, instead of vaguely cannonading ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... guests, who may come in a month after receiving the croton leaves, or may be later; and the community giving the feast do not know on what date their guests will arrive until news comes that they are actually on their way, though in the meantime messengers will be passing backwards and forwards and native wireless telegraphy (shouting from ridge to ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... hardness of her heart. She tried to be tender with me. She is awful. I said to her, 'Rita, have you sold your soul to the Devil?' and she shouted like a fiend: 'For happiness! Ha, ha, ha!' She threw herself backwards on that couch in your room and laughed and laughed and laughed as if I had been tickling her, and she drummed on the floor with the heels of her shoes. She is possessed. Oh, my dear innocent young Monsieur, you have never seen anything like that. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Corydon, will perform ( ) on Tuesday evening in the circus. He will leap ( ) over four bars, separately, in imitation of the english hunter. He will lie ( ) down, and rise ( ) up instantly at the word of command. He will move ( ) backwards and sideways, rear ( ) and stand ( ) on his hind feet; he will sit ( ) down, like a Turk, on a cushion. To conclude ( ), he will leap ( ), in a surprising manner, over ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... variety of fantastic changes which it is in the power of each to assume." The Menai Straits are about twelve miles long, through which, imprisoned between the precipitous shores, the waters of the Irish Sea and St. George's Channel are not only everlastingly vibrating, backwards and forwards, but at the same time and from the same causes, are progressively rising and falling 20 to 25 feet, with each successive tide, which, varying its period of high water, every day forms altogether an ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... catechism still have their prestige with them; they cannot comprehend how the Constitution which they like produces the anarchy which they detest; they are "foolish enough to bemoan the effects while swearing to maintain their causes; totally deficient in spirit, in union and in boldness," they float backwards and forwards between contradictory desires, while their predisposition to order merely awaits the steady impulsion of a vigorous will to turn it in the opposite direction.—On such docile material the "Left" can work effectively. It comprises, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Timothy had to undergo his career of gymnastics, and was to be seen all day tumbling and retumbling, until he could tumble on his feet again. Light and active, he soon became a very dexterous performer, and could throw a somerset either backwards or forwards, walk on his hands, eat fire, pull out ribbons, and do fifty other tricks to amuse a gaping audience. Jumbo also was worked hard, to bring down his fat, and never was allowed his dinner until he ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... he could see a big yellow hand moving backwards and forwards. He went close up to it, and then he saw that it was a yellow leaf, which seemed to gesticulate with its fingers, although nobody could possibly understand what it ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... soil, which should be well pulverized, to the depth of at least a foot, and if not light enough, it should be made so by adding some leaf mould. Now draw a line along the whole length of the bed; then take a spade and put it down perpendicular along the line or nearly so, moving it a little backwards and forwards, so as to open the cut. Now take the cutting and press it down into the cut thus made, until the upper bud is even with the surface of the soil. The cuttings may be put close in the rows, say an inch apart, and the rows made two ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... which her father had trusted her, and which she had hidden inside her frock. True, she was shaking with the terrible excitement of the moment, she was nearly dragged off her feet by the horse's plunging backwards, and a correct aim seemed almost impossible—but her father had told her to defend Angelot's wife, and Riette was very sure that this wicked man should not carry away Helene, as long as she had life and a weapon to prevent it. And if she could have understood ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... Displacement Backwards.—The uterus may be tipped backward, in which case it will rest against the lower bowel. The principal symptom here is pain in the lower part of the back, as if a movement of the bowels were necessary. There is great discomfort in walking, because of this ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... purpose of excusing myself for not passing over the entire ground that the Judge has traversed. I however desire to take up some of the points that he has attended to, and ask your attention to them, and I shall follow him backwards upon some notes which I have taken, reversing the order, by ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... distance when a gruff voice ordered him to stop. He had a way, however, of misunderstanding English when he chose, and interpreted the command to mean, run faster. Receiving it in that sense, he obeyed. Somebody behind him began to run too. In short, it was a chase; and Carl, glancing backwards, saw long-legged Silas Ropes, one of the ringleaders of the mob, taking appalling strides after him, across ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... not caring a fig for Mammy's dignity or importance, planted his head in her breast, and over the old lady went backwards. At this the children, who loved Mammy dearly, set up a yell, and Mammy, still waving the cotton-stalk, attempted to rise, but Billy was ready for her, and, with a well-aimed blow, sent her back to ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... used to come and see us often. He would come in, make such a pretty courtesy and kiss your hand, and when going away would kiss the tips of his own fingers so prettily, and bow to the right, to the left, backwards and forwards! He was such ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... show off like that," said McTurk, "when you've got to do it for your living. Upside down and backwards, isn't it? Let's see if I ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... imagined the like. It seemed as if the man, whoever he was, was being forcibly lifted, with his arms somehow pinioned or held back, towards the little gibbet on the stage. I could just see the nightcapped head behind him. Then there was a cry and a crash. The whole show-box fell over backwards; kicking legs were seen among the ruins, and then two figures—as some said; I can only answer for one—were visible running at top speed across the square and disappearing in a lane which leads ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... that ugly old woman,' he at length asked, 'that is so busy there, going backwards and forwards, in her gray cloak?' 'She is one of my attendants,' said his bride; 'she is to overlook and manage my waiting-maids and the other girls.' 'How can you bear to have anything so hideous always at your elbow?' replied Emilius. 'Let her alone,' answered the young lady; ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... no; go to your pigs first, you'll spoil my lovely present for Jack if you come near me," said Fairy, hiding her hands behind her, and running backwards to avoid any chance of a collision with Charlie and his pail as he prepared to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... underlies this distinction. The place that I fill in the universe will never be changed by my thought; I shall be as I was to the day of my death; but my actions will almost invariably move me forwards or backwards in the hierarchy of man. Thought is a solitary, wandering, fugitive force, which advances towards us today and perhaps on the morrow will vanish, whereas every deed presupposes a permanent army of ideas and desires which have, after lengthy effort, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... malice in which her brother and sister took their chief pleasure. Unfortunately, Wilfred arrived at the end of Africa at the wrong moment for her. He pushed the atlas away from him with a jerk that overturned the ink bottle, sending a stream of ink towards Avice—who, shoving her chair backwards to escape the deluge, cannoned into Queenie, and brought her headlong to the floor. Howls broke out anew, mingled with a crisp interchange of abuse between the elder pair, while Cecilia vainly sought to lessen the ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the use of your asking questions about a Bible-class here? We are not here on Sunday, and it would be too far for you to walk backwards and forwards three or four ...
— Kate's Ordeal • Emma Leslie
... I know your writing from having read Burnett all those "Burn this at once" epistles. And I know it still better from having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must digress backwards.) ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... this way is formed at each side, directly under the horny plate of the back part of the head, a small vesicle filled with fluid, the primitive auscultory vesicle, or the primary labyrinth. As it separates from its source, the horny plate, and presses inwards and backwards into the skull, it changes from round to pear-shaped (Figures 2.322 B lv and 2.323 o). The outer part of it is lengthened into a thin stem, which at first still opens outwards by a narrow canal. This is the labyrinthic appendage (Figure 2.322 lr). In ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... Amack on the night of the New Year. All indifferent poets and poetesses, musicians, newspaper writers and artistic notabilities, I mean those who are no good, ride in the New Year's-night through the air to Amack. They sit backwards on their painting brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them, they're too stiff. As I told you, I see that every New Year's night, and could mention the majority of the riders by name, but I should not like to draw their enmity upon myself, for they don't like ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... we go up, up, up, And here we go down, down, down; And here we go backwards and forwards, And here we ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... smilingly. The ink having dried, she folded the paper, and put it into an envelope, which she closed. Then her face indicated a new effort. She could think of only one way of disguising her hand in cursive—the common device of sloping it backwards. This she attempted. The result failing to please her, she tried again on a second envelope, and this time with success; the writing looked masculine, and in no respect suggested its true authorship. She had addressed the letter to ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
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