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More "Behindhand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sparrows thought that the roses reigned here, and that the house had been built for their sake. That appeared to them to be really too much, but since all the people showed their love for the roses, they did not wish to be behindhand. "Peep!" they said sweeping the ground with their tails, and blinking with one eye at the roses, they had not looked at them long before they were convinced that they were their old neighbours. And so they really were. The painter ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... your saws are behindhand with their contributions, and, being deaf to remonstrance, I am obliged to apply to you, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Throughout the day I worked for myself, throughout the night for you, and nothing is behindhand. Each day adds to our internal strength, that gives us consideration abroad, and soon we shall hold our own as one of the four great European powers, mightier than in the days when the sun never set upon Austrian realms. The empire ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Ohne Hast ohne Rast, was as true of him as of Goethe. We find the explanation of his accomplishing so much in a rule of life which he gave, when President, to a young man employed as his secretary, and who was a little behindhand with his work: "When you have a number of duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable one first." No advice could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... girl at last," said the village gossips. "Mis' Miller's had a hard time with them four great boys, and Mr. Miller so behindhand allers." ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not want to distress you when it could have done no good to anyone.—I have been thinking of paying you a visit this fall, but I now think it extremely doubtful whether I shall be able to. Not being able to even attend to my hands, much less work myself, I am getting behindhand, so that I shall have to stay here and attend to my business. Cannot some of you come and pay us a visit? Jennie has not answered Julia's letter yet. Did she receive it? I was coming to the city the day it was written to hear a political speech, and ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... be very much time. Either the early tea is late or bath is early, or a shikar expedition, with a grass slipper in pursuit of flies, takes up the precious moments, and so the business of the day gets all behindhand. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... reserve &c. (store) 636; temporize; consult one's pillow, sleep on it. lose an opportunity &c. 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre[Fr][obs3]; wait impatiently; await &c. (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine[obs3], belated, postliminious[obs3], posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c. (slow) 275; delayed &c. v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward[obs3], backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh hour, at length, at last; ultimately; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... preparations are completed, one is prepared—not otherwise. There may have been made a great deal of very necessary preparation for war without being prepared. Every constituent of preparation may be behindhand, or some elements may be perfectly ready, while others are not. In neither case can a state ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... excursionists and to care for them during their stay. The circular prepared for the members gives every information as to routes, distances, fares, &c., so that they may make all their arrangements before leaving England. The telegraph companies, not to be behindhand, undertake to transmit messages during the meeting for members from Montreal to all parts of Canada and the United States free ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... without giving much thought to it myself; and that is what I should like. But this constant planning about one's toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, and then being behindhand! It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... is an expensive hotel, and the rent is high. We find it so difficult to make the place pay that we are behindhand with the rent. Sir Harry Brace, our landlord, has been very kind in waiting, but we can't expect him to stand out of his money much longer. I'm afraid in the end we'll have to give up The Derby Winner. But it is no good my worrying you about our troubles,' concluded Bell, in a more ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... out and do such work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South, that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A said he wasn't going to hand over his work to be mucked up by such and such a body at home; B said he wasn't ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... details of the battle. It is sufficient to know that the first line of the French chivalry charged with the utmost fury. Among these was an ally of note, John, King of Bohemia, who with his barons and knights was not behindhand in the deadly onset; and yet this king was old and blind! His was chivalry in another form! He would have his stroke in the battle, and he plunged into it with his horse tied by its reins to one of his knights on either side. A plume of three ostrich feathers waved from his helmet, and the chroniclers ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... contain himself for joy, and broke down utterly when he tried to thank Jupp for rescuing his little son; while Joe the gardener, not to be behindhand in this general expression of good-will and gratitude, squeezed his quondam rival's fist in his, ejaculating over and over again, with a broad grin on his bucolic face, "You be's a proper sort, you be, hey, Meaister?" thereby calling upon the vicar, as it were, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... ways, climbing up and robbing pigeon's nests for the eggs which they relished exceedingly, or by occasionally dispatching a hedgehog for them so they did not get the prickles in their mouths. But while on his part he thus altered his conduct, they on their side were not behindhand, but learnt a dozen human tricks from him that are ordinarily ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. If a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off—so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them, without the exertion of any considerable ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... that she makes a very paltry and small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to be nursery-maid ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... clock. He was always behindhand. He asked too many questions. He wasn't ready for the next step. He did not put his heart in his work. He learned nothing from his blunders. He was contented to be a second-rater. He didn't learn that the best part of his salary was not ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... story perfectly," Venner said, coldly. "You see, I had the pleasure of the friendship of the late Mr. George Le Fenu, and Mr. Evors and the younger Mr. Le Fenu are also known to me. Not to be behindhand in exchanging confidence for confidence, I may also say that your ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... Nor were the towns behindhand in activity. As yet, indeed, the little boroughs were for the most part busy in fighting for the most elementary of liberties—for freedom of trade within the town, for permission to hold a market, for leave to come and go ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... expressed the sad truth. Well! to return to those days, you know that after the siege we were obliged to work on Sundays, because Mr. Goulden while serving as a gunner on the ramparts had neglected his work and we were behindhand. So that on that morning as on the others I lighted the fire in our little stove and prepared the breakfast; the windows were open and we could hear the noise from ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the end of the year, and I am behindhand now, but I keep an exact account, and shall make it up ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... raced to the eastward. An intended call at Gough Island had to be abandoned; the sea was running too high for us to venture to approach the narrow little harbour. The month of October had put us a good deal behindhand, but now we were making up the distance we had lost. We had reckoned on being south of the Cape of Good Hope within two months after leaving Madeira, and this turned out correct. The day we passed the meridian of the Cape we had the first regular gale; the seas ran threateningly high, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... worse sailor for that," Charles Hethcote said with a laugh. "But I must be going on board. I have a message from the admiral to the captain and every moment is precious, for things are terribly behindhand. The dockyard people are wellnigh out of their wits with the pressure put upon them, and we are ordered to be ready to sail in a week. How it's all to be done, goodness only knows. You need not come on board, Jack. I will tell the captain that you have arrived, and he would not thank me ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... let others become historians of the war. But this is not all; a correspondent must keep ever in view the thousands that are looking at the journal he represents, who expect his account at the earliest possible moment. If he is behindhand, his occupation is gone. His account must be first, or among the first, or it is nothing. Day and night he must be on the alert, improving every opportunity and turning it to account. If he loses a steamboat trip, or a train of cars, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... scorning to be behindhand in loyalty as well as activity, he became a member of the Clerkenwell Volunteers, and was placed in the light company, in which capacity he obtained the character not only of being the cleanest man, but the best soldier ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... portion, the modest fellow,' added James. 'Ay, and that's not all. There's the MacAlpin threats me with all his clan if I dinna give you to him; and Mackay is not behindhand, but will come down with pibroch and braidsword and five hundred caterans to pay his court to you, and make short work of all others. My certie, sisters seem but a cause for threats from reivers, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I., 177. (Report by Gaudin, Sep. 15, 1799.) "A few (tax) rolls for the year V, and one-third of those for the year VII, are behindhand."—(Report by the same, Germinal I, year X.) "Everything remained to do, on the advent of the consulate, for the assessment and collection of direct taxes; 35,000 rolls for the year VII still remained to be drawn up. With the help of the new office, the rolls ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Europeans who have yet had an opportunity of acquainting themselves with Sun Tzu are not behindhand in their praise. In this connection, I may perhaps be excused for quoting from a letter from Lord Roberts, to whom the sheets of the present work were submitted previous to publication: "Many of Sun Wu's maxims are perfectly applicable to the present day, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... grace, or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.' This is the language he addresses to his niece; nor is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and fluttering as her heart. It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow.' Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is represented ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... business; upon which, all business left him; and, finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbadoes, taking the printing-house with him. There this apprentice employ'd his former master as a journeyman; they quarrel'd often; Harry went continually behindhand, and at length was forc'd to sell his types and return to his country work in Pensilvania. The person that bought them employ'd Keimer to use them, but in ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... occurrence with Annie. She was not the least studious; she had no one particular talent, unless it was an untrained and birdlike voice; she was always more or less in hot water about her lessons, always behindhand in her tasks, always leaving undone what she should do, and doing what she should not do. She was a contradictory, erratic creature—jealous of no one, envious of no one—dearly loving a joke, and many ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... whole family of that name in Carolina. I'm from Carolina myself, you must know. There was an old codger—a fine, hearty buck—old Ralph Colleton—Colonel Ralph, as they used to call him. He did have a power of money, and a smart chance of lands and field-niggers; but they did say he was going behindhand, for he didn't know how to keep what he had. He was always buying, and living large; but that can't last for ever. I saw him first at a muster. I was then just eighteen, and went out with the rest, for the first time. Maybe, 'squire, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the farmers, and Baby grew up into a Brownie, and made (as girls are apt to make) the best house-sprite of all. For, in the Brownie's habits of self-denial, thoughtfulness, consideration, and the art of little kindnesses, boys are, I am afraid, as a general rule, somewhat behindhand with their sisters. Whether this altogether proceeds from constitutional deficiency on these points in the masculine character, or is one result among many of the code of bye-laws which obtains in men's moral education ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was doing its part, the executive government was not behindhand in pursuing the system which had been so much commended. A refusal to abjure the declaration in the terms prescribed, was everywhere considered as sufficient cause for immediate execution. In one part of the country information having been received ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... conjurements." The efficient cause thus referred to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... I may reckon my year's earnin' at just double that money, and that leaves me twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An' there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally running over: scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in these essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes- basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired barouche, with all speed. And from our place ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... behindhand with his creditors in Hobart Town, and rusticates in the country in order to avoid the unseasonable calls of the Sheriff's little gentleman, that delights to stand at a corner where four streets meet, so as the better to watch ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... inconvenient to both of us only to know each other's meaning by signs; but I could not be otherwise than pleased to see that she endeavoured all in her power to learn to talk like me. Indeed I was not behindhand with her in that respect, striving all I could to imitate her. What I all the while wondered at was, she never showed the least disquiet at her confinement; for I kept my door shut at first, through fear of losing her, thinking she would have taken an opportunity to run ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... companions were some non-commissioned officers, a little better off than he was.... Without being lavish in their expenditure, these young fellows did not reckon up their every penny, and, not wishing to be behindhand, Vinson had sent to his mother for money again and again, and she had ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... don't mean to be behindhand if I satisfy myself as to the quality of the work to be done," added Sir James. "Cassall and I will arrange as to how many beds—Roche beds, you understand—I ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... every hundred of our gifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go this beaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is plentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadfully behindhand. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... laughed. "I am sorry to interfere with your romantic embellishments, Carey, or with the credit of your beloved pond, since you are determined not to leave it behindhand with its neighbours." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gibson?—nice little girl, how old? Pony wants grooming though,' patting it as he talked. 'What's your name, my dear? He's sadly behindhand with his rent, as I was saying, but if he's really ill, I must see after Sheepshanks, who is a hardish man of business. What's his complaint? You'll come to our school-scrimmage on Thursday, little girl—what's-your-name? Mind you send her, or bring her, Gibson; and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... after his return it befell that King Anguish of Ireland sent to King Mark of Cornwall for the tribute due to Ireland, but which was now seven years behindhand. To whom King Mark sent answer, if he would have it he must send and fight for it, and they would find a champion to ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... "I have. He's specially behindhand with his Greek. His report tells me that. If you'll do a little Greek grammar and construing with him in the mornings now and them, I shall be tremendously grateful. You see, owing to my miserable domestic circumstances, Jimmy ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... he said; "Higgins of Edge Farm. He has been very unfortunate. He was ill himself last autumn, and his children had scarlet fever. I can't say that he is a very good manager, but he has had ill-luck, and of course he is behindhand in many ways. He is in trouble about his rent now. Newick tells him if he doesn't pay it, he must leave the place; and of course that would be a very serious matter. His wife is ill, and he came to me yesterday to beg me to see about it, and ask you for time. ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exasperated that I should do the job in an easy way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below, which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first on the wrong, then ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... name I do not recall, came in. Then grouped around the table, Nye led off with a humorous description of life in the mines in the early days of California, and the others contributed anecdotes, humor and fun, in which Lincoln took the lead, "and I" (as Tod told the story), "not to be behindhand, told a story;" and so the hours flew on without any mention of the grave matters he expected to discuss with the President. When the clock announced the hour of eleven, Mr. Lincoln said he made it a habit to retire at eleven o'clock, and, turning to Tod, said: ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... often mentioned was reckoned the best scholar in all that or the next street to it; insomuch, as having run something behindhand with the world, he obtained the favour from a certain lord {80b} to receive him into his house and to teach his children. A while after the lord died, and he, by long practice upon his father's will, found the way of contriving a deed of conveyance of ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... the upper class. There is some quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority: it is certain that if one class of English society can be justly accused of an over-great veneration for rank, the class which is rank itself is not behindhand in doing homage to the political stars of the day. In favor of this peculiarity of English people it may fairly be said that they love to associate with persons of rank and power from a disinterested love of those things themselves, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the out-of-school studies. When she came quite unprepared to school, and could not answer the questions put to the class, she was overwhelmed with mortification, especially when the teacher would say, before all the other children, "I did not expect to see you so behindhand, Wiseli,—you of all others, who used to be so clever at your books." Then she used to feel fit to sink through the floor for shame, and would cry all the way as she walked home. But she did not dare to answer Cheppi back when he taunted her, because then he would begin to cry ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... Rome that his Eminence was not behindhand with La Riviere upon the score of treachery. For on the very day he got him nominated by the King, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Sachelli more fit to recommend him to a yellow cap than to a red one. This letter, nevertheless, was full of tenderness for La Riviere, which Mazarin knew was the only ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... principles effect! Where a joke is evidently intended, I never knew people more ready to join in it than these are. If ridiculed for any particularity of manner, figure, or countenance, they are sure not to be long behindhand in returning it, and that very often with interest. If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at times mixed with ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... towards him. But the thaw was only momentary; she froze again into stone when he remarked that it was a pity that Mr. Ede was ill, for they were going to play Madame Angot on Thursday night, and he would like them all to come. The invitation flattered Ralph's vanity, and, resolved not to be behindhand in civility, he declared between his gasps that no one should be disappointed on his account; he would feel highly complimented by Mr. Lennox's taking Mrs. Ede to the play; and on the spot it was arranged that Kate and Miss Hender ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... time that the good Colonel came forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... been heard from?" asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Skinners. We had a charming visit; no one there but Mrs. Sampson and her sister, and Dr. S. wide awake and full of enthusiasm. We did not get to bed till midnight. Mrs. —— came this morning and begged me to lend her some money, as she had got behindhand. I let her have five dollars, though I do not feel sure that I shall see it again, and she wept a little weep, and went away. A lady told cousin C. she had heard I was so shy that once having promised to go to a lunch party, my courage failed at the last moment, so that I could not go. I shall ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... answered that, having traveled almost incessantly during the last year, we could not help being a bit behindhand in the questions of modern science, and that we were not able ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would drag it out with his awful drawl—er, er, er—and he works just as he talks—slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given him to post for weeks ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Endicott [Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on August 10th], offering to try to raise some companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of trouble with Mexico. Won't you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand that I might not hear of things for a week. I have not the least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow continually smaller, I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up. The cowboys were all eager for ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... violent rain falls repeatedly. He lives in a miserable hut, with none of the appliances which we are accustomed to see in laundries. His artificial means for drying clothes are of the most primitive character, and his customers are clamouring for their garments, and abusing him because he is behindhand. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... wasn't going to be behindhand on a fashionable occasion like that, where a certain person was sure to be an object of special admiration and envious criticism, so I went to work at once, and turned my pink silk wrong side out with ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... wait here till I have got breakfast in?" said the man, letting her into the hall, and pointing to the bench there, he took her, from her dress, to be a lady's-maid or governess, or at most a tradesman's daughter; and, besides, he was behindhand with all his preparations. She came in and ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the yard or shop, and there sees how all things are gone to sixes and sevens, he begins to have second thoughts, and says to his folks, What have you all been doing? How are all things out of order! I am I cannot tell how much behindhand; one may see if a man be but a little laid aside, that you have neither wisdom nor prudence to order things. And now, instead of seeking to spend the rest of his time for God, he doubleth his diligence after ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... still are strong; and I do not forget the admirable spirit of the cottage women in particular; yet it is true that for the wider experiences of modern life other sentiments or ideals, in addition to those of the peasants, need development, and that progress in them is behindhand in the village. What the misbehaviour of the village boys illustrates in one direction may be seen in other directions amongst the men ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... were behindhand with their Gloria, because the bolide having transferred Monday's programme to Tuesday had syncopated the succeeding performances into counterpoint of the fourth order, and everything that happened after that was one beat late. Had ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Winter—we wonder—are we to have in the way of wind and weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire, combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day garb—we mean his garments of black and his ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... come, and as soon as tea was over, instead of going into the play-field with the others, I sat down alone, sore, aching, and disconsolate, to try and master some of the things Mr Hasnip had said I was behindhand in. ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... abounded, eventually right and truth prevailed, and our Christian Indians were left to keep the day without molestation. And, as has always been found to be the case in such instances, there was no loss, but rather gain. Our Christian Indians, who rested the Sabbath day, were never behindhand. On the long trips into the interior or down to York Factory or Hudson Bay, these Indian canoe brigades used to make better time, have better health, and bring up their boats and cargoes in better shape, than the Catholic Half-breeds or pagan Indians, who pushed on without any day of ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... reading fell behindhand. His parents, only too glad to see their boy taking more regular exercise, never suspected or inquired as to the direction of his frequent solitary rides. To them he seemed the same quiet, clever ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... I paused merely long enough to favor the company with parting admonition on their probable future. Then, glad enough to be thus easily rid of them, I lurched heavily forward into the narrow passageway. Some coarse joke launched at my expense attracted the attention of those behindhand ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... cordiality towards Mr. Fulmort, and at the same time mounted many stages in Clement's estimation on the discovery that, however behindhand his ecclesiastical advantages might be, the Vicar was exceedingly impressed by ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Whatever may be said or thought here in England of the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate be admitted that good roads were made under the Empire. Alsace, which twenty years ago seems to have been somewhat behindhand in this respect, received her full share of Napoleon's attention, and Granpere is now placed on an excellent road which runs from the town of Remiremont on one line of railway, to Colmar on another. The inhabitants of ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... season that woodcock-shooting is the most amusing. Then is the time for gentlemen to shoot; the braconnier despises it. From the middle of April to that of May is the important epoch at which the generality of animals marry, and the woodcocks are not behindhand in this respect; they leave their well-concealed retreats, become humanized, solicit the attentions of their feathered ladies, and fly with gay inspirations amongst the neighbouring bushes. But though as much in love as a ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "But you are terribly behindhand in some ways in Berlin," I said, for I knew the artist liked an argument. "In London you can shop all through the night by telephone. It ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss. Unluckily, my feet became entangled in my dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, and I fell flat on the ground. When I had picked myself up the maid was gone, and I heard her in the distance ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... suggested that they might ask the Turk to give lectures upon the "Arabian Nights." Everybody else was planning something of the sort, to "raise funds" for some purpose, and she was sure they ought not to be behindhand. Mrs. Peterkin approved of this. It would be excellent if they could raise funds enough to pay for their own tickets to the carnival; then they could go ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... be behindhand with Saunders, I seized one of the bivalves, already dead and with the shells gaping apart, and tore it open; but although the shell was lined with beautiful lustrous mother-o'-pearl, it was barren of gems. Flinging this away, I tried another, and a third and fourth, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... 'stick a bit o' holly i' yon pig's mouth, that's the way we do things i' Newcassel; but folks is so behindhand in Monkshaven. It's a fine thing to live in a large town, Sylvia; an' if yo're looking out for a husband, I'd advise yo' to tak' one as lives in a town. I feel as if I were buried alive comin' back here, such an out-o'-t'-way place after t' Side, wheere there's ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... then and keep out of the mud. I don't want you sick to-night. Be sure to come in the back way so that Uncle Josh won't see you. He'll think we're always behindhand." ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. When Scrooge's nephew laughed, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, laughed out lustily. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... And the officer, without more ado, ordered his men to board. Hardly had the order passed his lips, than Porter's clear voice rang out, "Repel boarders!" and the crew of the "Eliza," armed with pikes and muskets, rushed upon their assailants, and drove them into the sea. Young Porter was not behindhand in the fight, but lent his boyish aid to the vindication of American sailors' rights. One man was shot down by his side; and Porter received his first baptism of blood in this encounter, which thus early rooted in his mind a detestation for the arrogance of the British, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... General Monk first giving at his residence in the Cockpit, a great supper, after which "he entertained his majesty with several sorts of musick;" Next Earl Pembroke gave a rare banquet; also the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord Lumley, and many others. Nor was my lord mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, behindhand in extending hospitality to the king, whom he invited to sup with him. This feast, having no connection with the civic entertainments, was held at good Sir Thomas's house. The royal brothers of York and Gloucester were likewise bidden, together with several of the nobility and gentry of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... human knowledge. Science made rapid progress, and in its turn showed the broad and liberal influence of the great revolution. In 1842 societies were founded in Paris and London to promote the study of ethnology. Mr. Gallatin would not be behindhand in this important work for which America offered a virgin field. Drawing about him a number of gentlemen of similar tastes with his own, he founded in New York, in 1842, the American Ethnological Society. Among his associates were Dr. Robinson, the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... round to inquire the news. Bramble, according to pilot custom, had brought off one or two late Plymouth papers (one of which, I recollect, gave the account of the cutting out of the Hermione by Captain Hamilton); but the people on board were eight months behindhand at least as regarded what had passed. They had not even heard of Sir Sydney Smith's defence of Acre against Bonaparte, or anything else which had subsequently occurred; so that as soon as Bramble had taken charge, and put the ship's head the right course (for ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... job as that of trying, in the year of grace 1918, to get our share of the fitting out of the Hellenic forces fulfilled. The only thing to be said is that the French, who had easier problems to contend with and less to do than we had, were almost equally behindhand. But the result of it all was that, of the 200,000 troops whom, entirely apart from reserves, the Greek Government were prepared to mass on the fighting front if only they could be fitted out, barely half ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... them cost as much as possible to oneself, and as little to those one invades. If this was not complied with, they threatened to burn the town, and then march to Belfast, which is much richer. We were sensible of this civil proceeding, and not to be behindhand, agreed to it; but somehow or other this capitulation was broken; on which a detachment (the whole invasion consists of one thousand men) attack the place. We shut the gates, but after the battle of Quebec, it is impossible that so great a people should attend to such trifles ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... latter looked up with a smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of penitence to the hilt, and turned the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... scene with that horrible creature yesterday. It was the second week—she thought I was shamming, I know. She said she never allowed her "roomers" to get behindhand—it was her invariable rule. O God, I was so sick I could scarcely see—I did not care what she did. I told her that I had no money; that I was waiting to get some work; that I would pay her the first moment ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... exclaimed. "I shall now show you that I am not at all behindhand in ingenuity. This must be retted, carded, spun, and woven, and then with scissors, needle, and thread I will make you any ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the world and his wife were stopping at the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (puts money in the plate). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... hair and large white whiskers. The former, I suspect, is a wig. The cheering was tremendous, but behind the royal carriage the cheers were always redoubled where the old Duke, the especial favourite hero, rode. When they got off their horses in the schoolyard, the Duke being by some mistake behindhand, was regularly hustled in the crowd, with ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for the Judge's horses, Balaam went into his office this dry, bright morning and read nine accumulated newspapers; for he was behindhand. Then he rode out on the ditches, and met his man returning with the troublesome animals at last. He hastened home and sent for the Virginian. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... our Polynesian Converts behindhand. The Native Churches in Mangaia have also given generous gifts, of which the Rev. W.W. ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... knocked down by a little hand-truck which two big full-bearded fellows brought up at a gallop. It was from this truck that the night of heavy toil derived its name: and for the last week the students who had got behindhand with their work, through taking up petty paid jobs outside, had been repeating the cry, 'Oh! I'm in the truck and no mistake.' The moment the vehicle appeared, a clamour arose. It was a quarter to nine o'clock, there was barely time to reach the School of Arts. However, a helter-skelter rush ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... had, moreover, other causes for uneasiness at this time. His financial affairs were by no means in satisfactory condition. He had been filling a good many orders and getting excellent prices for his work, yet somehow he had been all the year running behindhand. He lived beyond his means, priding himself upon being the one Boston artist who had been born, bred, and educated a gentleman, as he chose to put it to himself, and who was able to live as a man of the world should. His summer had been passed at ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... a long time about it; and all the while Esther was growing more and more vexed, until, when Cousin Charlotte at last sprang up, exclaiming, "My dear children, do you know how long we have been talking? I must hurry away this minute, or I shall be behindhand all day!" the limit of poor Esther's patience ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... I can sell immediately five times over, and also be well paid. * * * Oh! how happy should I now be if I had my perfect hearing, for I should then hasten to you. As it is, I must in all things be behindhand; my best years will slip away without bringing forth what, with my talent and my strength, I ought to have accomplished. I must now have recourse to sad resignation. I have, it is true, resolved not to worry about all this, but how ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... arc of his orbit between the point opposite to that occupied by the Earth when I started and the point of opposition—the entire distance I had to gain as measured along his path—was about 116 millions of miles; so that, trusting to the terrestrial impulse alone, I should be some 30 millions behindhand at the critical moment. The apergic force must make up for this loss of ground, while driving me in a direction, so to speak, at right angles with that of the orbit, or along its radius, straight outward from the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... complete destruction of a fine rhythmical progression, by checking the onward bound of the rest of the orchestra, and destroying the unity. Almost always, the drum player, through not observing the original time given by the conductor, is somewhat behindhand in striking his first stroke. This retardment, multiplied by the number of strokes which follow the first one, soon produces—as may be imagined—a rhythmical discrepancy of the most fatal effect. The conductor,—all whose efforts to re-establish unanimity are then in ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... our life were luxuries or were unknown to them. First of all, the luxury of freedom,—political, social, and domestic,—with the habits it creates, is the source of great and ever-increasing expense. We are still much behindhand in this matter, and shall by-and-by spend more largely upon it. But, compared with our ancestors, individual culture, to which freedom is the means, absorbs a large share of our expenditure. The noble architecture of the thirteenth century was the work of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... out their systems either to other cantons or to individuals. In each canton the service, managed irrespective of federal needs, was costly, and Swiss postal systems, as compared with those of France and Germany, were notoriously behindhand. ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... you see, my time is everything to me; and I am already a little behindhand, in occasionally nursing the poor woman Morel; and you may imagine that an hour in one way and an hour in another makes in time a day; a day brings thirty sous, and if we earn nothing one must still live all the same. But, pshaw! never mind; I must spare from my nights; and then, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... and approve of his half-barbarous precursor. And what excuse can we find for such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. The Spaniards themselves were not behindhand in acknowledging the chivalry before which they quailed, and, after many years of ineffectual efforts, they gave up a conflict which they never afterwards resumed; leaving the Araucans alone, of all the American races with which they came in contact, a liberty which they were unable ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... first chapter,—so wonderfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments,—I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... come. The peasants obliged the collectors to wring out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ii. 203; ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas in the ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... of Oxfordshire did generally manifest great civility and respect to me in this business of my son; so did the citizens of Oxford; and the scholars were not behindhand in the expression of their favour and good opinion of me and my son, and they stood stoutly and generally for my son to be one of the knights for the county. Thus was my interest at this time sufficient ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... I suspected a trap somewhere. Nor were my friends behindhand in telling me of the horrors of gigantic and inexorable bills from which there was no appeal. They said I must have a coin-box. Excellent idea! I would have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... "I have frightened you, haven't I? was it wrong for me to come to-night? There are so many things I want to talk over with you. I want to get settled; and all the work on the farm is belated and I can't have the place run behindhand; that ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... always held that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... about to-morrow, Mary," he said, as the little family sat together the night before in the plain sitting-room. "I have never been so much behindhand before with ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... wonder, that in being so generous to some, he was forced to be unjust to others. He was still behindhand with his poor washerwoman—owed for boarding, clothes, hats, boots, and a dozen other matters—and was, in consequence, a good deal harassed with duns. Still, he was called by some of his old cronies, "a fine, generous fellow." A few were rather colder ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... been behindhand in her efforts to raise the condition of idiots. In 1818 an attempt was made to instruct them at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Hartford. It is said they were taught to communicate by the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... mother look ten years younger. My father also, and my two brothers, who were all fishermen, had now come to regard me as the flower of the flock. Yet they had not scrupled to knock me about, with little ceremony, in the days of my boyhood; nor do I think they would have been behindhand in finding fault with me for my folly, had I returned from my second voyage as poor and needy as from the first. But such is life, and a man must take what comes, and make the best of it and not the worst; so I accepted my new role as the patron ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... by, which she couldn't in reason expect to carry with her when her time came to go, wherever it was she might go to, and a houseful of furniture, old-fashioned, but strong and good still. So of course Sarah and I were not behindhand in going up to see the old lady, and taking her a pot or so of jam in fruiting season, or a turnover, maybe, on a baking-day, if the oven had been steady and the baking turned out well. And you couldn't have told ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... with you, do,' she said; 'I'm behindhand as it is. You won't get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off you goes, or I'll pin a dishcloth to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... sweet-scented flowering shrubs, and arbours nestling in retired corners, inviting retreats for study and meditation, comprised an ideal spot for one who loved the surroundings of Nature. Nor was the house itself behindhand in offering special attractions for the purposes of study and recreation, in addition to the more solid requirements of comfort and accommodation. The rooms were spacious and elegant, and comprised one large apartment perfectly adapted for musical or theatrical entertainments. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and bounded about, in all directions; and though they were neither so regular, nor so true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they seemed to do it from the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly confess that we preferred their style ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... triumph to the secret frolic of the night. Then, in the evening, Mr. Thorpe often thought it advisable to harangue him seriously, by way of not letting the reformed rake relapse for want of a little encouraging admonition of the moral sort. Nor was Mr. Yollop at all behindhand in taking similar precautions to secure the new convert permanently, after having once caught him. Every word these two gentlemen spoke only served to harden the lad afresh, and to deaden the reproving and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... but a repast for real gourmands. It is true, it was of no great use to us, for when we had finished, we had neither of us eaten anything—we were too happy. At eleven o'clock, Germain went away; we agreed to meet the next morning. At five o'clock I was up and at work, for I was two days behindhand. At eight o'clock some one knocked; I opened; who should come in but M. Rudolph. At once I began to thank him from the bottom of my heart for what he had done for Germain; he would not let me finish. 'My neighbor,' ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... met in most cases only by the States themselves, but it would be well for the Nation to endeavor to secure and publish comprehensive information as to the conditions of the labor of children in the different States, so as to spur up those that are behindhand and to secure approximately uniform legislation of a high character among the several States. In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we cannot afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens. The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... which the noble pug was perfectly satisfied! Of course, we all laughed at the Russian's story, but he assured us it was a well authenticated fact, and was generally regarded as a most delicate jeu d'esprit. Not to be behindhand in the line of cats and monkeys, I was obliged to tell an anecdote of a Frenchman, who, on his arrival in Algiers, ordered a ragout at one of the most fashionable restaurants. It was duly served up, and pronounced excellent, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... begin in a residence at Weslar. This was the seat of the Court of Appeal of the old German Empire. How far justice was really promoted, may be seen from the single statement that, while the docket of cases was twenty thousand behindhand in 1772, only sixty decisions were made in a year. In what was called praxis or practice, the young Goethe was placed in a "circumlocution office" like Weslar. There is something ludicrous in the position, so absurd is it. To take Schiller's capital figure, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... thinking of what they studied. They could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print and fine, and run through the interminable mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. This boy of large mind and brain, always behindhand, always incapable, utterly discouraged, no amount of study could place on an equality with his former inferiors. His health failed, and he dropped from school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to himself, and lost to an educated life, by just such a failure. The collegiate system is like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... would be no paddy to cut, none to keep in the store-room of the house. He feared that his wife would have no rice, nor Saidjah himself, who was still a child, nor his little brothers and sisters. And the district chief too would accuse him to the Assistant Resident if he was behindhand in the payment of his land taxes, for this is punished by the law. Saidjah's father then took a poniard which was an heirloom from his father. The poniard was not very handsome, but there were silver bands round the sheath, and at the end there ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... other papers hideous. At length the concierge gave in; he would arrange the matter, and, if necessary, would make out there was a piece more used than was really the case. So, on her way home, Gervaise purchased some tarts for Pauline. She did not like being behindhand—one always gained by behaving nicely ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... long, this terrible old schoolmaster sat at his desk, overlooking the pupils, or stalked about the room with a certain awful birch rod in his hand. Now came a rap over the shoulders of a boy whom Mr. Toil had caught at play; now he punished a whole class who were behindhand with their lessons; and, in short, unless a lad chose to attend constantly to his book, he had no chance of enjoying a quiet moment in ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... with their own affairs, and never hitherto troubling themselves about politics. But it had pleased the Home Government to set up the beginning of a constitution again in Jamaica; no one knew why, but so it was; and Trinidad did not choose to be behindhand. The official appointments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away by the Crown. The local popularities very naturally wished to have them for themselves. This was the [57] reality in the thing, so far as there was a reality. It was dressed up in the phrases borrowed from the great ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... said; they had to work hard, and they were always behindhand with their work. She learned from Cecilia that, apart from the canonical directions for Divine Service, there existed an unwritten code for pious observances—some saints were honoured by having ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Pilly and Fra Andrea Rondinelli. Immediately the partisans of Savonarala, seeing this arrival of reinforcements for their antagonist, came forward in a crowd to try the ordeal. The Franciscans were unwilling to be behindhand, and everybody took sides with equal ardour for one or other party. All Florence was like a den of madmen; everyone wanted the ordeal, everyone wanted to go into the fire; not only did men challenge one another, but women ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... consideration. The beat of the flail on barn floors was a regular winter sound at Uphill, as in all the country round, but to get all the corn threshed and winnowed by a curious revolving fan with four canvas sails, was a troublesome affair, making farmers behindhand in coming to the market. And as soon as he could afford the venture the Captain obtained a machine to be worked by horse-power, for steam had hardly been brought as yet into use even for sea traffic, and the first railway was only opened late in 1830, the time ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Desperate, we went, although it was now almost midnight, to another arriero, who, after some dickering, agreed to leave at eight the following morning, charging a price something more than fifty per cent above the usual rate. Of course he was behindhand, but we actually set ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... it have been," says Epimetheus Lloyd, "had Browne had a small battery on the other side of the Elbe;" whereby he might have taken them in flank, and shorn them into the wind! Epimetheus marks this battery on his Plan; and is wise behindhand, at a ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Nor were the Japanese behindhand in accepting the challenge. With what appeared to be almost lightning speed, the Japanese admiral, Nozu, changed his formation from column in line abreast to column of divisions steaming in echelon, the starboard division being led to starboard by the cruiser Yoshino, of nine thousand ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... people the first study of a statesman, i. 436. in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss in the government, i. 440. the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441. generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442. a connection with their interests a necessary qualification of a minister, i. 474. sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475. should show themselves able to protect every representative in the performance of his duty, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... the history of the reigning beauties of the times, descanting upon their various charms with poetical fervor, or illuminating, as he proceeds, with some choice anecdotes of the Paphian divinities, their protectors and propensities; and to do the fair Citherians justice, they are not much behindhand with us in that respect, for the whole conversation of the sisterhood turns upon the figure, fortune, genius, or generosity of the admiring beaux. To a young and ardent mind, just emerging from scholastic discipline, with feelings uncontaminated by 16fashionable ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... not behindhand in English. Fancy my calling you, upon a fitting occasion,—Fool, sot, silly, simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numpskull, ass, owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, addle-head, tony, zany, fop, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... public is very much more interested in matter than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree of culture. It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Dr. Meigs: Dewees.—I cited the same passage. Did not know half the facts. Robert Lee.—Believes the disease is sometimes communicable by contagion. Tonnelle, Baudelocque. Both cited by me. Jacquemier.—Published three years after my Essay. Kiwisch. "Behindhand in knowledge of Puerperal Fever." [B. & F. Med. Rev. Jan. 1842.] ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 1912, the Naval Airship section was once more reconstituted and was stationed at Farnborough. The first requirements were airships, and owing to the fact that airship construction was so behindhand in this country, in comparison with the Continent, it was determined that purchases should be made abroad until sufficient experience had been gained by British firms to enable them to compete with any chance of success ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... knew that Mr. Yates was in general thought to rant dreadfully; that Mr. Yates was disappointed in Henry Crawford; that Tom Bertram spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant spoiled everything by laughing; that Edmund was behindhand with his part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Rushworth, who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that poor Mr. Rushworth could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: his complaint came before her as well as the rest; and so decided to her eye ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Paradise Street was not behindhand in the matter of entertainment: there was a wedding festival in progress, and, at the modest cafe, a thick concourse of men talking and singing and enjoying life after their own fashion; only the house of Mhtoon Pah, the curio dealer, was dark, and it was before ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... running up one little bill here for stores, and another little bill there for sail-mending. The owner worked in with the sail-maker, and just as the skipper was putting out to earn his last instalment, he would find the bailiffs on board, his cruise would be delayed, he would be, consequently, behindhand with his instalment and back would go the smack to the owner with a present of four-fifths of its price. Weeks had to pay two hundred pounds, and had eight weeks to earn it in. But he got the straight tip that his sail-maker would stop him; and getting together any ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... kinds of things of which Tell had no suspicion had been happening in the town. The fact that there were no newspapers in Switzerland at that time often made him a little behindhand as regarded the latest events. He had to depend, as a rule, on visits from his friends, who would sit in his kitchen and tell him all about everything that had been going on for the last few days. And, ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this honor with several of the first and best and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them; and I am sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honor and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did. I should have attended him to the quarter-deck ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Caisse d'amortissement or sinking fund. But so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is France at present ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... I'm not behindhand either," exclaimed Cerizet. "I have come now to show you a way to put the thumbscrews on the old maid and make her spin like a teetotum. We mustn't deceive ourselves; Mademoiselle Thuillier is the head and front of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... experienced some difficulty in reconciling her accustomed habits with the straight tenets of her husband's household and connections, but in the end succeeded. It seems singular that one so extremely conscientious as Elizabeth Fry, should have been considered to fall behindhand in that self-denying plainness of act and speech which characterized others; but so it was. And so determined was she to serve God according to her light, that no mortification of the flesh was counted too severe provided it would further the great ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... Edisto people who are now being distributed onto the plantations have nothing. With the chance of giving up the control so soon, Government has not supplied all that is necessary and work bids fair to be as behindhand here as it was last year. Where the people have gone to work at all—at this end of the island—they have started with "good encourage," but at other places it has been impossible to get them to start any cotton, though they work corn. This is partly due to the fact that this ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... to push aside the urgent fear that was knocking at her heart. If even the policeman had confidence in Susie, should her mother be behindhand? She told the policeman, for his information and her own comfort, that she was only frightened because the little boy had been ill, and it was such a cold, wet night, but at the same time she thought ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... had been very careless about keeping the books; would come down late in the mornings, just before Mr. Surrey came in, and go away early in the afternoons, as soon as he had left. Of course, the books got behindhand every month, and Mr. Snipe didn't want to stay and work overhours to make them up. One day he found out, by something I said, that I understood bookkeeping, and tried me, and then got me to take them home at night and go over them. I didn't know then how ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Louis is doing famously. Philadelphia has several experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. In New York there are many noteworthy movements—half a dozen at least full of life and hope. Boston was never behindhand in knowledge, and in the new education is very alert, the efforts of a single lady deserving praise of high degree. These are but signs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Monk first giving at his residence in the Cockpit, a great supper, after which "he entertained his majesty with several sorts of musick;" Next Earl Pembroke gave a rare banquet; also the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord Lumley, and many others. Nor was my lord mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, behindhand in extending hospitality to the king, whom he invited to sup with him. This feast, having no connection with the civic entertainments, was held at good Sir Thomas's house. The royal brothers of York and Gloucester were likewise bidden, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... necessaries of our life were luxuries or were unknown to them. First of all, the luxury of freedom,—political, social, and domestic,—with the habits it creates, is the source of great and ever-increasing expense. We are still much behindhand in this matter, and shall by-and-by spend more largely upon it. But, compared with our ancestors, individual culture, to which freedom is the means, absorbs a large share of our expenditure. The noble architecture of the thirteenth century was the work of corporations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... over our material productive power will be as great as ever, except for the small number of our ships that have been sunk or the small amount of damage done to us by enemy aircraft. Our railways and factories may be somewhat behindhand in upkeep, but that will soon be made good, and against that item on the debit side, we may set the great new organization for munition works, part of which, we may hope, will be available for peaceful production when the ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... undertook a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand, flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible resemblance to the rolling consonants and gutturals of the savages. Marcoy imbibed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... strong spirit of opposition was aroused. Many a wary practitioner began to devise cunning means of concealment, and to invent traps to catch their adversary and turn him into ridicule. Davie Forbes was not behindhand in making remote preparations for the ganger's certain visit to him. But it was then mid-winter, and if Bonar was the canny man that he was said to be, there would be little fear of any attempted search for Davie's implements and ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... much thought to it myself; and that is what I should like. But this constant planning about one's toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, and then being behindhand! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the footman modestly, "I am called Bourguignon, and here is my comrade Comtois, whose turn for devotion will come to-morrow, and who, when the moment shall have arrived, will not be behindhand. Comtois, my friend, a slice of that pheasant, and a glass of champagne. Do you not see that, in order to reassure monsieur completely, I must taste everything; it is a severe test, I know, but where ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... have been making these astonishing revelations, the Egyptologists have not been behindhand. Such scholars as Lepsius, Brugsch, de Rouge, Lenormant, Birch, Mariette, Maspero and Erman have perfected the studies of Young and Champollion; while at the same time these and a considerable company of other explorers, most notable of whom are Gardner Wilkinson ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the whole House of Laity there assembled broke into cheers; and not to be behindhand in demonstrations of loyalty, the Judges and the Bishops cheered too—a thing that none of them had done individually for years; and in their official and corporate capacity, judicial and ecclesiastical, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... also, and my two brothers, who were all fishermen, had now come to regard me as the flower of the flock. Yet they had not scrupled to knock me about, with little ceremony, in the days of my boyhood; nor do I think they would have been behindhand in finding fault with me for my folly, had I returned from my second voyage as poor and needy as from the first. But such is life, and a man must take what comes, and make the best of it and not the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... grammar, though he hain't his beat for work; But I sez ter myself, "Look out, my gal, yer a-foolin' with a Turk!" Jake bore it wonderful patient, an' said in a mournful way, He p'sumed he was behindhand with the doin's at Injun Bay. I remember once he was askin' for some o' my Injun buns, An' she said he should allus say, "them air," stid o' "them is" the ones. Wal, Mary Ann kep' at him stiddy mornin' ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... day I worked for myself, throughout the night for you, and nothing is behindhand. Each day adds to our internal strength, that gives us consideration abroad, and soon we shall hold our own as one of the four great European powers, mightier than in the days when the sun never set upon Austrian realms. The empire of Charles ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears.' It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... plucked one of the roses and hid it in her bosom. Then the sparrows thought that the roses reigned here, and that the house had been built for their sake. That appeared to them to be really too much, but since all the people showed their love for the roses, they did not wish to be behindhand. "Peep!" they said sweeping the ground with their tails, and blinking with one eye at the roses, they had not looked at them long before they were convinced that they were their old neighbours. And so they really ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of your tenants, Mr. Browning. I am behindhand with my rent, owing to sickness in the family, and I have been ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... might ask the Turk to give lectures upon the "Arabian Nights." Everybody else was planning something of the sort, to "raise funds" for some purpose, and she was sure they ought not to be behindhand. Mrs. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... 14th, 15th, and 16th of May, the air became suddenly cold, with sharp winds from the north-west, and heavy storms of snow that nipped the young buds, and destroyed many of the early-sown vegetable seeds; fortunately for us we were behindhand with ours, which was ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Watson and the clerk, Dave had been rather surprised because William Jarvey had not shown himself, because on the train he had said he was behindhand; and they had naturally supposed he would come to the offices without delay. Just as they were preparing to leave they heard an angry discussion going on in Mr. Watson's private office, and they heard the voices of the ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... supply that gentleman with a big string of dogs by a certain time; but that shameless one, the German trader Meyers, had been buying up the brutes and skimped the market. It was very necessary he should see Mr. Vanderlip, because of the shameless one he would be all of a week behindhand in filling the contract. She did know where he had gone? Up-creek? Good! He would strike out after him at once and inform him of the unhappy delay. Did he understand her to say that Mr. Vanderlip needed the dogs on Friday night? that he must ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... at the bottom of Paul's pocket, lay a bill of fifty dollars for publishing expenses. What was to be done? The bill must be paid. It would never do to let the March Hare run behindhand. To begin to run into debt was an unsafe ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... milk was brought, breakfast was still a little behindhand, but she would not let me help. Anyhow, I felt in spite of my talk that I wanted to do some other sort of service for her: I wanted to show off, to prove myself a protector, to fight for her, to knock down or drive off her foes and mine; ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Tuscan web which connects Florence, Sienna, Pistoja, Lucca, Pisa, and Leghorn, in a roundabout way; and a few miles of Neapolitan railway, to connect Naples with Pompeii, Portici, Castel-a-mare, and Capua. Rome, behindhand in most things, is behindhand in railways. Switzerland has its little railway of twenty-five miles, from Zurich to Baden. Spain has its two small lines, from Madrid to Aranjuez, and from Barcelona to Mataro. Turkey ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... next had come. The peasants obliged the collectors to wring out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ii. 203; ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... I heard the world and his wife were stopping at the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (puts money in the plate). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... in aeronautics is not a fact by itself. It is merely an indication that we are behindhand in our mechanical knowledge and invention M. Bleriot's aeroplane points ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... took care to send for Tom Lord to amuse them, for Tom was a wit and a humourist, and kept the President in a laugh. Mr. Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand. When the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief; who was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that Ratcliffe was "a clever ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... be private, sent for his boon-companions, with whom he was most familiar, and charged the chamberlain that he suffer none of the creatures of Almighty Allah to enter, save a man of his cup-mates, by name Abd al-Malik bin Salih, who was behindhand with them. Then they donned brightly-dyed dresses.[FN259] for it was their wont, as often as they sat in the wine-seance, to endue raiment of red and yellow and green silk, and they sat down to drink, and the cups went ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... day. I have been over many prisons since, for I have always held that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common during the daytime in small easily ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... of wonder, that in being so generous to some, he was forced to be unjust to others. He was still behindhand with his poor old washer-woman—owed for boarding, clothes, hats, boots, and a dozen other matters—and was, in consequence, a good deal harassed with duns. Still, he was called by some of his old cronies, "a fine, generous fellow." A few were ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... seemed endless in the exposed picquets. Save for the Australian loot it looked like a fasting Christmas. Parcel mails could not be sent up, for every camel was required to convey food and fodder on to the cavalry. The cigarette ration was behindhand and most of the men were without a smoke. The officers could torture themselves with the thought of five turkeys ordered in Port Said and unlimited mess stores lying sixty miles away at Romani. But at the last moment all was changed. A parcel mail came in—and the spectre of bully ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... it was now almost midnight, to another arriero, who, after some dickering, agreed to leave at eight the following morning, charging a price something more than fifty per cent above the usual rate. Of course he was behindhand, but we actually ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... sorry to interfere with your romantic embellishments, Carey, or with the credit of your beloved pond, since you are determined not to leave it behindhand with its neighbours." ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... WITH MR. PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS,' in the imposing type here displayed. 'Well, that's quick work, however,' said he, casting his eyes up to the ceiling in astonishment, and thinking how unlike it was the Swillingford papers, which were always a week, but generally a fortnight behindhand with information. 'Splendid run with Mr. Puffington's hounds,' read he again, wondering who had done it: Bardolph, the innkeeper; Allsop, the cabinet-maker; Tuggins, the doctor, were all out; so was Weatherhog, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... a scene with that horrible creature yesterday. It was the second week—she thought I was shamming, I know. She said she never allowed her "roomers" to get behindhand—it was her invariable rule. O God, I was so sick I could scarcely see—I did not care what she did. I told her that I had no money; that I was waiting to get some work; that I would pay her the first moment ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... quite a long time about it; and all the while Esther was growing more and more vexed, until, when Cousin Charlotte at last sprang up, exclaiming, "My dear children, do you know how long we have been talking? I must hurry away this minute, or I shall be behindhand all day!" the limit of poor ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... knowledge. Science made rapid progress, and in its turn showed the broad and liberal influence of the great revolution. In 1842 societies were founded in Paris and London to promote the study of ethnology. Mr. Gallatin would not be behindhand in this important work for which America offered a virgin field. Drawing about him a number of gentlemen of similar tastes with his own, he founded in New York, in 1842, the American Ethnological Society. Among ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... monthly and quarterly reviews bestowed their longer and more careful criticism upon the new readings of that text, to elucidate which has been the devout industry of some of England's ripest scholars and profoundest thinkers; while the actors, not to be behindhand in a study especially concerning their vocation, adopted with more enthusiasm than discrimination some of the new readings, and showed a laudable acquaintance with the improved version, by exchanging undoubtedly the better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... others still, the employers advance the miners small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus binding the debtors to themselves. In the North, the custom is general of keeping the payment of wages one week behindhand, chaining the miners in this way to their work. And to complete the slavery of these enthralled workers, nearly all the Justices of the Peace in the coal districts are mine owners themselves, or relatives or friends of mine owners, and possess almost unlimited power ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Nye led off with a humorous description of life in the mines in the early days of California, and the others contributed anecdotes, humor and fun, in which Lincoln took the lead, "and I" (as Tod told the story), "not to be behindhand, told a story;" and so the hours flew on without any mention of the grave matters he expected to discuss with the President. When the clock announced the hour of eleven, Mr. Lincoln said he made it a habit to retire at eleven o'clock, and, turning to Tod, said: "Well, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... stock. That was always Richard's morning task, and he always on his way thither replenished the hearth fire, that his sister Madelon might have a lighter and speedier task at preparing breakfast. Madelon usually arose a half-hour after Richard, and she was not behindhand this morning. She entered the great living-room, lit the candles, and went about getting breakfast. Human daily needs arise and set on tragedy ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... their spring suits this very minute, and Martha was calculating to make them this week; and they'd have to have their first wear of them Sundays for a while before they start on them for school. I never was so behindhand; but what with fitting off Artemas and the spring cleaning being delayed, I didn't seem to know how to manage. Martha is good at making over, and there are two very good coats of Artemas's that she would do the right thing by; while there was a good many who could scrub and clean as well ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... reason," said Sheffield, "for he is sadly behindhand; but there is another cause of his steadiness which perhaps ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... her son to take back the money he had received, if almost any other person in the village but Mr. Acres had been concerned. But he was well off, and influential; and, moreover, was her landlord; and, though she was behindhand with her rent, he never took the trouble to ask for it. The dog, too, would have been sent back if any one but Mr. Acres had given it to her son. As it was, she contented herself with merely reprimanding Dick for robbing the bird's nest, and enjoining ...
— Who Are Happiest? and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... to the national honour has been ascertained, appraised and duly exhibited by those persons whose place in the national economy it is to look after all that sort of thing, the common man will be found nowise behindhand about resenting the evil usage of which he so, by force of interpretation, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Dominion guaranteed bonds of the Canadian Northern system to the extent of fifty-six millions; from 1912 to 1914, under Sir Robert Borden, it endorsed the Canadian Northern's notes for forty-nine millions more. Nor were the provinces behindhand. Mainly in the seven years from 1908, the five westernmost provinces pledged their credit on behalf of the same system to the astounding amount of over one hundred and thirty millions, British Columbia ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... who go out and do such work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South, that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A said he wasn't going ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... which, together with the good sale of my works, enables me to live without anxiety. Everything I write, I can sell immediately five times over, and also be well paid. * * * Oh! how happy should I now be if I had my perfect hearing, for I should then hasten to you. As it is, I must in all things be behindhand; my best years will slip away without bringing forth what, with my talent and my strength, I ought to have accomplished. I must now have recourse to sad resignation. I have, it is true, resolved not to worry about all this, but how is it possible? Yes, Amenda, if, six months hence, my malady ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... perfect order and with matchless speed and precision they formed in line of battle, while drums and fifes announced their high spirits. The Christian fleet was slower in falling into line; some of the galleys and most of the galleasses were behindhand. Don John let drop some pious oaths, and sent swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre corps de bataille kept touch ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... Dean Swift, he could knock down booksellers and silence bargees; he was melancholy almost to madness, 'radically wretched,' indolent, blinded, diseased. Poverty was long his portion; not that genteel poverty that is sometimes behindhand with its rent, but that hungry poverty that does not know where to look for its dinner. Against all these things had this 'old struggler' to contend; over all these things did this 'old struggler' prevail. Over even the fear of death, the giving up of this 'intellectual ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... that Simmons has given me a cheque for three hundred and fifty pounds for the two. Of course, the creatures are thoroughbred, and may turn out worth a great deal more; still, in these days no one gives a fair price for anything, and three-fifty is not to be sneezed at when your rents are always behindhand and your balance at the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... would,' she said eagerly; 'but I don't know what would come of it. We're dreadfully behindhand this month, and if he were to go away, people would be down on us; they'd think he wanted to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his return it befell that King Anguish of Ireland sent to King Mark of Cornwall for the tribute due to Ireland, but which was now seven years behindhand. To whom King Mark sent answer, if he would have it he must send and fight for it, and they would find a ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... along with him at all. He puts me out of temper, and if we both got angry, it would be very disagreeable. For, though he is the very best fellow in the world, when he is in a rage he is untamable. I cannot think what has put him out, now; for he has shot very well to-day. It is only when he gets behindhand, that he is usually jealous in his shooting; but he has got ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... it's a girl at last," said the village gossips. "Mis' Miller's had a hard time with them four great boys, and Mr. Miller so behindhand allers." ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and that the new Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March. The State of New York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree—with the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice of Washington as President of the United States. The other ten States performed their duty on time. They elected Washington ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... done no good to anyone.—I have been thinking of paying you a visit this fall, but I now think it extremely doubtful whether I shall be able to. Not being able to even attend to my hands, much less work myself, I am getting behindhand, so that I shall have to stay here and attend to my business. Cannot some of you come and pay us a visit? Jennie has not answered Julia's letter yet. Did she receive it? I was coming to the city ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant
... lose an opportunity &c. 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre[Fr][obs3]; wait impatiently; await &c. (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine[obs3], belated, postliminious[obs3], posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c. (slow) 275; delayed &c. v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward[obs3], backward; late in the day; at sunset, at ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... one's-self in doe-skins made for seven-pence a pair; but the cries of 'There's a figure! there's a shape!' must make the trowsers rather dear to any one who wishes to walk about peaceably, unmolested by this species of street-criticism.' Under the head of 'Bolsters for Behindhand Botanists,' we find these original questions and answers: 'What are the most difficult roots to extract from the ground?' The cube-root. 'What is the pistil of a flower?' It is that instrument with which the flower shoots. 'What is meant by the word stamina?' It means the pluck or courage which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... governed, himself, by law. Description of the Moral Exercise. Prejudice. The scholars' written remarks, and the teacher's comments. The spider. List of subjects. Anonymous writing. Specimens. Marks of a bad scholar. Consequences of being behindhand. New scholars. A ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... generally manifest great civility and respect to me in this business of my son; so did the citizens of Oxford; and the scholars were not behindhand in the expression of their favour and good opinion of me and my son, and they stood stoutly and generally for my son to be one of the knights for the county. Thus was my interest at this time sufficient to make another to be knight of the shire; yet when my condition fell, my interest fell with it, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... leads, far be it from me to seem behindhand," said the other, much ruffled, as she gathered her sheet about her. By the way she said it, one saw that she and Mrs. Parachute did not call. She bowed to Lady Arabel, and became satirical, even arch. "Good afternoon, Mrs.—er—, I am assured that the moment is not solemn, and therefore solemn ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... occasionally some high official of the Porte appears at formal receptions; but on the whole the society is diplomatic, and depends almost entirely upon the diplomatists for its existence and for its diversions. The lead once given, the old Greek aristocrats have not been behindhand in following it; but their numbers are small, and the movement and interest in Pera, or on the Bosphorus, centre in the great embassies, as they do nowhere else ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... work on the making of "steam coaches" to travel on the highways. Captain Ogle coming here on one of his own inventing September 8th, 1832, direct from Oxford, having travelled at from ten to fourteen miles per hour. Our local geniuses were not behindhand, and Messrs. Heaton Bros., and the well-known Dr. Church brought out machines for the purpose. Both parties started joint-stock companies to carry out their inventions, and in that respect both parties succeeded, for such was the run for shares, that in June, 1833, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... which offer'd, La Fleur had laid hold of it; and, in order to do honour to his master, had taken him into a back parlour in the auberge, and treated him with a cup or two of the best wine in Picardy; and the Count de L-'s servant, in return, and not to be behindhand in politeness with La Fleur, had taken him back with him to the Count's hotel. La Fleur's PREVENANCY (for there was a passport in his very looks) soon set every servant in the kitchen at ease with him; and as a Frenchman, whatever be his talents, has no sort of prudery in showing ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... to be constantly dependent on his brother for defence, for his position with other boys at school,—as he grew up, for his position in life, even. Harry was the favorite always. The schoolmaster—or teacher, as we call him nowadays—liked Harry best, although he was always in scrapes, and often behindhand in his studies, while Ernest was punctual, quiet, and always knew his lessons, though his eyes looked dreamily through his books rather ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... that it really was a most delightful spot. In a very few minutes there were three mice tumbling about on the gravel, and then presently there were two more, for other windows opened on the flat roof also, and Nibble and Brighteyes were not the mice to be behindhand when any fun was going on. Ah! that was the way to get an appetite for breakfast. Jump, dance, run, tumble, till the rattle sounded from below; then whirr! downstairs all like a flock of pigeons. They never lost any time in getting from one ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... was in general thought to rant dreadfully; that Mr. Yates was disappointed in Henry Crawford; that Tom Bertram spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant spoiled everything by laughing; that Edmund was behindhand with his part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Rushworth, who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that poor Mr. Rushworth could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: his ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hear of us no oftener than we of you, you will be as much behindhand in news as my Lady Lyttelton. We have seen a traveller that saw you in your island,(356) but it sounds like hearing of Ulysses. Well! we must be content. YOU are not only not dethroned, but owe the safety ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Thermometer. They are by writers engaged expressly for the respective subjects, because they will work cheaply and know but little of what they are writing about, and therefore make themselves the better understood by the equally ignorant. We do hope that they have not proved themselves behindhand in popular humbug and positive error, and that the blunders in "the Thermometer"[3] are equally as amusing as those of the then big-wig who wrote the treatise on "Animal Mechanics," published by our rival Society for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... last great proverbs; and combine them in your mind. Remember that while England is, and ever will be, behindhand in metaphysical and scholastic science, she is the nation which above all others has conquered nature by obeying her; that as it pleased God that the author of that proverb, the father of inductive science, Bacon Lord Verulam, should have been an Englishman, so it has pleased ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... white whiskers. The former, I suspect, is a wig. The cheering was tremendous, but behind the royal carriage the cheers were always redoubled where the old Duke, the especial favourite hero, rode. When they got off their horses in the schoolyard, the Duke being by some mistake behindhand, was regularly hustled in the crowd, with no attendant ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [Roosevelt wrote to Lodge on August 10th], offering to try to raise some companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of trouble with Mexico. Won't you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand that I might not hear of things for a week. I have not the least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow continually smaller, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... Higgins," he said; "Higgins of Edge Farm. He has been very unfortunate. He was ill himself last autumn, and his children had scarlet fever. I can't say that he is a very good manager, but he has had ill-luck, and of course he is behindhand in many ways. He is in trouble about his rent now. Newick tells him if he doesn't pay it, he must leave the place; and of course that would be a very serious matter. His wife is ill, and he came to me yesterday to beg me to see about it, and ask you ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have to make up at school for this long holiday," reminded Cousin Clare. "I'm afraid you'll find yourself terribly behindhand when ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... desk, overlooking the pupils, or stalked about the room with a certain awful birch rod in his hand. Now came a rap over the shoulders of a boy whom Mr. Toil had caught at play; now he punished a whole class who were behindhand with their lessons; and, in short, unless a lad chose to attend constantly to his book, he had no chance of enjoying a quiet moment in the schoolroom ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... can be actually met in most cases only by the States themselves, but it would be well for the Nation to endeavor to secure and publish comprehensive information as to the conditions of the labor of children in the different States, so as to spur up those that are behindhand and to secure approximately uniform legislation of a high character among the several States. In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we cannot afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens. The future ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the other, "he is not at all behindhand, and I lose nearly as many cattle as I get. But it gives me much more pleasure to kill one of his buffaloes or llamas, than it does pain me when he kills one of mine. I consider how much it will vex him, and that some ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... although they are behindhand in some of their methods of cultivation, (e.g. their failure to adopt the use of the plough in the greater portion of the district); they are thoroughly aware of the uses of manures. Their system of turning the sods, allowing them to dry, ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rammed it home, and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the spot, as I have set them down here. This is only a Journal in so far as it is a record of days, as faithful as I could make it in every detail, and as direct as circumstances allowed. But circumstances seldom did allow, and I was always behindhand with my Journal—a week behind with the first day of the seventeen, four months ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow right hard; for the old gentleman in the grey great-coat, who looks after the big copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with his work; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for more steam; and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to have come in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till you could not see where the sky ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... letter I received from my friend. On the morning of his death the following month he spoke of being behindhand with his December letter and of his intention to write ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the canoe which had set out from us had arrived in their country, and that their companions, wearied by their journey, were resting, and that they would soon arrive, in fulfilment of the promise they had made; that at most they would not be more than eight days behindhand, but that there would be only twenty-four canoes, as one of their captains and many of their comrades had died of a fever that had broken out among them. They also said that they had sent many to the war, which ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... it for you, or go a pilgrimage to our Lady at Loretto," said Bridget, determined not to be behindhand in her curiosity. So she set her woman's wits immediately to work; yet she saw her mistress daily losing strength, and no clue was obtained by which to know the interpretation of the vision. She consulted her confessor; but he was equally at a loss with herself, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... green turf, shaded by fine forest-trees, winding walks amidst sweet-scented flowering shrubs, and arbours nestling in retired corners, inviting retreats for study and meditation, comprised an ideal spot for one who loved the surroundings of Nature. Nor was the house itself behindhand in offering special attractions for the purposes of study and recreation, in addition to the more solid requirements of comfort and accommodation. The rooms were spacious and elegant, and comprised one large apartment perfectly ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... amidst this mass of confused, half-forgotten incidents, Pierre was conscious of the rise of a vivid vision. Ill-health, he remembered, had again compelled him to take a holiday. He had just completed his twenty-fourth year, he was greatly behindhand, having so far only secured the four minor orders; but on his return a sub-deaconship would be conferred on him, and an inviolable vow would bind him for evermore. And the Guersaints' little garden at Neuilly, whither he had formerly so often gone to play, again distinctly appeared ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... seed. He did not wonder that the seeding on Los Muertos seemed to be hastily conducted. Magnus and Harran Derrick had not yet been able to make up the time lost at the beginning of the season, when they had waited so long for the ploughs to arrive. They had been behindhand all the time. On Annixter's ranch, the land had not only been harrowed, as well as seeded, but in some cases, cross-harrowed as well. The labour of putting in the vast crop was over. Now there was nothing to do but wait, while the seed silently germinated; ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... one torrid day, remarked wonderingly that Mrs. Lancaster gave "nary a whimper." The latter looked up with a smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of penitence to the hilt, and turned the knife in ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Being five years behindhand for their wages (court musicians) But fit she should live where he hath a mind Gladder to have just now received it (than a promise) Most homely widow, but young, and pretty rich, and good natured No Parliament can, as he says, be ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... haven't. You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... emoluments attached to the Royal band, according to Samuel Pepys, appear to have been somewhat irregular. In the Diary, December 19, 1666, we read: "Talked of the King's family with Mr. Kingston, the organist. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp, having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the alms of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night without one linke, but that Mr. Kingston met it by chance, and did ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... there and four hours back, that makes eight hours; it is now two o'clock, he'll be here at ten. No doubt he thought I was angry and sent Kutyfalvi on before. It was very nice of him to show me such respect. Well, I'll not be behindhand in expressing my regret for my hastiness—asking his pardon; and from henceforth we will be good friends and kinsmen, and I shall be able to rest in the Lord with ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... for an hour's delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, "It was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying to get hold of just the right person—she says she's fearfully behindhand—" ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... for your portion, the modest fellow,' added James. 'Ay, and that's not all. There's the MacAlpin threats me with all his clan if I dinna give you to him; and Mackay is not behindhand, but will come down with pibroch and braidsword and five hundred caterans to pay his court to you, and make short work of all others. My certie, sisters seem but a cause for threats from reivers, though maybe they would not be so uncivil ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hagburn been heard from?" asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of the war,—shame to him ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stinginess, which I did not deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the end of the year, and I am behindhand now, but I keep an exact account, and shall make it ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... consult one's pillow, sleep on it. lose an opportunity &c 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre [Fr.]; wait impatiently; await &c (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine^, belated, postliminious^, posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c (slow) 275; delayed &c v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward^, backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a prattle and titter around, wherein mingle tunes, not quite so low and sweet as the voice of Cordelia. Those energetic civilians never seem at rest or at ease; they snatch their frequent drinks, upstanding and covered, as if they were just a minute behindhand for some appointment, and bolt their food, as if dinner ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... to be behindhand, having just come in for his lunch, ran out again without so much as wetting his stubbly white beard in the froth of the drawn quart of ale, and made away as fast as his stiff legs could carry him to where there was a steam ploughing engine ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... I have begun too late. I am doing now what I ought to have done when I was a girl, and I have always the feeling of being behindhand." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... old apartment, where there was still a corner with a little low chair in it, and boxes full of toys and other things, which were not only far outgrown by Clifford, but which were absolutely never seen nowadays at all, and would be considered far behindhand as amusements for a child ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... a month behindhand in exact knowledge of American foreign policy toward England, and he was in error in thinking that an American attack on England was either imminent or intended. Nevertheless, he surely was excusable, considering Seward's prestige and Lincoln's ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... stage had stopped there, and that she had managed to give the passengers some coffee, bread and butter and ham and eggs, though they had had to wait their turns for cups and plates. It appeared that the driver had quarreled with the Lowry people that morning because the breakfast was behindhand and he was kept waiting. So he told his passengers that there was another tavern, a few miles down the road, and that he would take them there ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... might not Christian education and Christian principles effect! Where a joke is evidently intended, I never knew people more ready to join in it than these are. If ridiculed for any particularity of manner, figure, or countenance, they are sure not to be long behindhand in returning it, and that very often with interest. If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... for his future calling is to begin in a residence at Weslar. This was the seat of the Court of Appeal of the old German Empire. How far justice was really promoted, may be seen from the single statement that, while the docket of cases was twenty thousand behindhand in 1772, only sixty decisions were made in a year. In what was called praxis or practice, the young Goethe was placed in a "circumlocution office" like Weslar. There is something ludicrous in the position, so absurd ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... them. She knew that Mr. Yates was in general thought to rant dreadfully; that Mr. Yates was disappointed in Henry Crawford; that Tom Bertram spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant spoiled everything by laughing; that Edmund was behindhand with his part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Rushworth, who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that poor Mr. Rushworth could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: his complaint came before her as well as the rest; and so decided to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre[Fr][obs3]; wait impatiently; await &c. (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine[obs3], belated, postliminious[obs3], posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c. (slow) 275; delayed &c. v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward[obs3], backward; late in the day; at sunset, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... watched the clock. He was always behindhand. He asked too many questions. He wasn't ready for the next step. He did not put his heart in his work. He learned nothing from his blunders. He was contented to be a second-rater. He didn't learn that the best part of his salary was not in his pay ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... for Tom was a wit and a humourist, and kept the President in a laugh. Mr. Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand. When the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief; who was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that Ratcliffe was "a clever fellow anyhow," and he was glad ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... see, my time is everything to me; and I am already a little behindhand, in occasionally nursing the poor woman Morel; and you may imagine that an hour in one way and an hour in another makes in time a day; a day brings thirty sous, and if we earn nothing one must still live all the same. But, pshaw! never mind; I must spare from my nights; and then, again, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... in. The Turks shortened sail and took to their oars: in perfect order and with matchless speed and precision they formed in line of battle, while drums and fifes announced their high spirits. The Christian fleet was slower in falling into line; some of the galleys and most of the galleasses were behindhand. Don John let drop some pious oaths, and sent swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre corps de bataille kept touch with him; but where ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behindhand in their politics. There are but very few who are capable of comparing and digesting what passes before their eyes at different times and occasions, so as to form the whole into a distinct system. But in books everything is settled for them, without the exertion ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... concluded that she was very much behindhand, for the dinner had only just been put into ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... literary ambition, these few minutes would have been enough to dispel them all. Henry Murger thought of nothing upon earth but money. How was he going to pay his quarter's rent, or rather his two or three quarters' rent? for he was two or three quarters behindhand. He still had credit with this restaurateur, but he owed so much to such another that he dared not show his face there. He was over head and ears in debt to his tailor. He was afraid to think of the amount of money ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Majesty that our state affairs are very much behindhand, and not feeling inclined to mix with coxcombs like Ripple, (here the Queen frowned, and Ripple, who was just behind him, made a grimace,) I went to one of the mushroom tables, and sat down to finish my memorial regarding the loan for the hospital for sick bumble-bees, when this ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... generous spirit of Havelock's reception was a proclamation which showed that he understood and appreciated the services which seemed so ill-rewarded by the government, and that he too would not be behindhand in generosity. Till Lucknow was taken Havelock should be still in command, and it was Outram himself who ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... having traveled almost incessantly during the last year, we could not help being a bit behindhand in the questions of modern science, and that we were not able to follow ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... came in. Then grouped around the table, Nye led off with a humorous description of life in the mines in the early days of California, and the others contributed anecdotes, humor and fun, in which Lincoln took the lead, "and I" (as Tod told the story), "not to be behindhand, told a story;" and so the hours flew on without any mention of the grave matters he expected to discuss with the President. When the clock announced the hour of eleven, Mr. Lincoln said he made it a habit to retire at eleven o'clock, and, turning to Tod, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... she said; 'I'm behindhand as it is. You won't get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off you goes, or I'll pin a dishcloth to some of ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... an Englishman: when treason's hatching, One might have thought you'd not have been behindhand. In what whore's lap have you been lolling? Give but an Englishman his whore and ease, Beef, and a sea-coal fire, he's yours ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... from his greenhouse and hotbeds. Zeb took care of the farm teams; but the winter's work of distributing forage and grain, getting up wood and ice, hauling manure, and so forth, had to be done in a desultory and irregular manner. The spring work would find us wofully behindhand if I did not look sharp. I had been looking sharp since January set in, and had experienced, for the first time, real difficulties in finding anything like good help. Hitherto I had been especially fortunate in this regard. I had met some reverses, but in the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... themselves to be behindhand in civilities towards the ship-owners, and accordingly the petition of Lyons demands the free introduction of raw material, "in order to prove," it remarks, "that the interests of manufacturing towns are not opposed to those of ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... passengers crowded round to inquire the news. Bramble, according to pilot custom, had brought off one or two late Plymouth papers (one of which, I recollect, gave the account of the cutting out of the "Hermione" by Captain Hamilton); but the people on board were eight months behindhand at least as regarded what had passed. They had not even heard of Sir Sydney Smith's defense of Acre against Bonaparte, or anything else which had subsequently occurred; so that as soon as Bramble had taken charge, and put the ship's head the right course (for the wind was fair), there was no ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments,—I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch gilt, or ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... expound and certify the nature of the transgression. But when once the lesion to the national honour has been ascertained, appraised and duly exhibited by those persons whose place in the national economy it is to look after all that sort of thing, the common man will be found nowise behindhand about resenting the evil usage of which he so, by force of interpretation, has ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... ball-rooms, and occasionally some high official of the Porte appears at formal receptions; but on the whole the society is diplomatic, and depends almost entirely upon the diplomatists for its existence and for its diversions. The lead once given, the old Greek aristocrats have not been behindhand in following it; but their numbers are small, and the movement and interest in Pera, or on the Bosphorus, centre in the great embassies, as they do nowhere else in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... years behindhand for their wages (court musicians) But fit she should live where he hath a mind Gladder to have just now received it (than a promise) Most homely widow, but young, and pretty rich, and good natured No Parliament can, as he ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... his Eminence was not behindhand with La Riviere upon the score of treachery. For on the very day he got him nominated by the King, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Sachelli more fit to recommend him to a yellow cap than to a red one. This letter, nevertheless, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... expressly for the respective subjects, because they will work cheaply and know but little of what they are writing about, and therefore make themselves the better understood by the equally ignorant. We do hope that they have not proved themselves behindhand in popular humbug and positive error, and that the blunders in "the Thermometer"[3] are equally as amusing as those of the then big-wig who wrote the treatise on "Animal Mechanics," published by our rival Society for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... spur on wildly, the rest of the yeomen did not like to seem behindhand, and they rapidly approached the town. Had they been calm enough to reflect, they might have observed that for the last half-hour no carts or carriages had met them on the way, as they had done further back. It was not till the troopers reached ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... chattering like blackbirds as they went down the slope to the river. Elaine recalled Peggy's fondness for the water, and Amy remarked that it was almost a relief to have Peggy behindhand for once, she had such a mania for looking out for everybody else. The other girls contributed observations equally important, and each tried to hide from the others, if not from herself, the fact that her persistent and voluble cheerfulness was designed to silence the uneasy ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... threatening. They must have realized the great danger of the situation, but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time; and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military preparations. They also, it appears, thought that England would not fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other troubles. And so it may have seemed that Now was ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... but it would be well for the Nation to endeavor to secure and publish comprehensive information as to the conditions of the labor of children in the different States, so as to spur up those that are behindhand and to secure approximately uniform legislation of a high character among the several States. In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we cannot afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens. The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... weariless hand. Ohne Hast ohne Rast, was as true of him as of Goethe. We find the explanation of his accomplishing so much in a rule of life which he gave, when President, to a young man employed as his secretary, and who was a little behindhand with his work: "When you have a number of duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable one first." No advice could have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Mary," he said, as the little family sat together the night before in the plain sitting-room. "I have never been so much behindhand before ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... vexations the artist had, moreover, other causes for uneasiness at this time. His financial affairs were by no means in satisfactory condition. He had been filling a good many orders and getting excellent prices for his work, yet somehow he had been all the year running behindhand. He lived beyond his means, priding himself upon being the one Boston artist who had been born, bred, and educated a gentleman, as he chose to put it to himself, and who was able to live as a man of the world ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a maiden, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... matter," said the other, "he is not at all behindhand, and I lose nearly as many cattle as I get. But it gives me much more pleasure to kill one of his buffaloes or llamas, than it does pain me when he kills one of mine. I consider how much it will vex him, and that some of his vassals are thereby deprived of their sustenance. ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... meantime, at the bottom of Paul's pocket, lay a bill of fifty dollars for publishing expenses. What was to be done? The bill must be paid. It would never do to let the March Hare run behindhand. To begin to run into debt was an unsafe and ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... and, finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbadoes, taking the printing-house with him. There this apprentice employ'd his former master as a journeyman; they quarrel'd often; Harry went continually behindhand, and at length was forc'd to sell his types and return to his country work in Pensilvania. The person that bought them employ'd Keimer to use them, but in a ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... had settled about the fire for an hour's delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, "It was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying to get hold of just the right person—she says she's fearfully behindhand—" ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... are industrious cultivators, although they are behindhand in some of their methods of cultivation, (e.g. their failure to adopt the use of the plough in the greater portion of the district); they are thoroughly aware of the uses of manures. Their system of turning the sods, allowing them to dry, then ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... did arrive, the whole House of Laity there assembled broke into cheers; and not to be behindhand in demonstrations of loyalty, the Judges and the Bishops cheered too—a thing that none of them had done individually for years; and in their official and corporate capacity, judicial and ecclesiastical, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... article it will be well to notice a few of the leading journals which have not been mentioned. The Daily Telegraph was originally started at twopence, in 1855, by Colonel Sleigh, but he, getting behindhand with his printers to the amount of L1,000, sold them the paper for another L1,000, and in their hands it has since remained. The price was reduced to a penny, and, under the new management, its circulation rapidly increased. The Standard dealt a heavy blow at it in 1858, by coming ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... own affairs, and never hitherto troubling themselves about politics. But it had pleased the Home Government to set up the beginning of a constitution again in Jamaica; no one knew why, but so it was; and Trinidad did not choose to be behindhand. The official appointments were valuable, and had been hitherto given away by the Crown. The local popularities very naturally wished to have them for themselves. This was the [57] reality in the thing, so far as there was a reality. It was ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... from me, should pay some court to you, my friends, in the hopes of an introduction. [46] Perhaps you will ask why I did not so arrange matters from the first, instead of always appearing in public. Because in war it is the first business of a commander not to be behindhand in knowing what ought to be done and seeing that it is done, and the general who is seldom seen is apt to let things slip. [47] But to-day, when war with its insatiable demands is over, I feel as if I had some claim myself to rest and refreshment. I am in some perplexity, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... she said; they had to work hard, and they were always behindhand with their work. She learned from Cecilia that, apart from the canonical directions for Divine Service, there existed an unwritten code for pious observances—some saints were honoured by having their banner exhibited during the octave of the feast, while others were allowed little temporary ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Pa's generosity. She would not be behindhand. Pa had to accept a red tie, a pair of gloves, a match-box, as a present; Ma, an embroidered handkerchief, a lucky charm. Lily had the satisfaction of paying with gold and ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... was just asked to help himself; which young Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on Satterlee the hospitality of a ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... sumptuous banquet to all the princes of his court. I am apt to believe that the menial officers of the house were so embusied in waiting each on his proper service at the feast, that nobody took care of poor Pantagruel, who was left a reculorum, behindhand, all alone, and as forsaken. What did he? Hark what he did, good people. He strove and essayed to break the chains of the cradle with his arms, but could not, for they were too strong for him. Then did he keep with his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... wonder—are we to have in the way of wind and weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire, combining the splendour of a court-dress with ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with none of the appliances which we are accustomed to see in laundries. His artificial means for drying clothes are of the most primitive character, and his customers are clamouring for their garments, and abusing him because he is behindhand. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... upon whomsoever he pleases: while we wait until we learn that something is happening, and only then, in a turmoil, make our preparations. {12} It follows, of course, that every position which he has attacked, he holds in undisturbed possession; while we are all behindhand; all our expenditure proves to have been so much useless waste; we have displayed our hostility and our desire to check him; but we are too late for action, and so we add disgrace ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Bull, the sea, 'The Times' in the morning, and, besides, some dozens of fellow-creatures. The learned class has greatly sunk in Germany, more than I supposed; all behindhand.... Nothing appears of any importance; the most wretched trifles ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... to let others become historians of the war. But this is not all; a correspondent must keep ever in view the thousands that are looking at the journal he represents, who expect his account at the earliest possible moment. If he is behindhand, his occupation is gone. His account must be first, or among the first, or it is nothing. Day and night he must be on the alert, improving every opportunity and turning it to account. If he loses a steamboat trip, or a train of cars, or a mail, it ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... would arrange the matter, and, if necessary, would make out there was a piece more used than was really the case. So, on her way home, Gervaise purchased some tarts for Pauline. She did not like being behindhand—one always gained by ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... gauger was repeated far and wide, and a strong spirit of opposition was aroused. Many a wary practitioner began to devise cunning means of concealment, and to invent traps to catch their adversary and turn him into ridicule. Davie Forbes was not behindhand in making remote preparations for the ganger's certain visit to him. But it was then mid-winter, and if Bonar was the canny man that he was said to be, there would be little fear of any attempted ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... were generally powerful young giants, rough and unlettered, but a good-natured, happy-go-lucky lot, full of tales of adventure in the woods or on the river, to which the boys listened with a never-failing delight. Nor were the raftmates at all behindhand in this interchange of good stories; for they could tell of life on the Plains or in California, of Indians, buffalo, mountains, deserts, and gold-mines, to which their auditors listened with wide-open eyes and gaping mouths. During the pauses Solon was always ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... 26s. every 14 days, is promised the miners, but not furnished, in others still, the employers advance the miners small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus binding the debtors to themselves. In the North, the custom is general of keeping the payment of wages one week behindhand, chaining the miners in this way to their work. And to complete the slavery of these enthralled workers, nearly all the Justices of the Peace in the coal districts are mine owners themselves, or relatives or friends of mine owners, and possess almost unlimited power in ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... worked so well that another has lately been opened for girls. St. Louis is doing famously. Philadelphia has several experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. In New York there are many noteworthy movements—half a dozen at least full of life and hope. Boston was never behindhand in knowledge, and in the new education is very alert, the efforts of a single lady deserving praise of high degree. These are but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the Paquita took their restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at sea. At night the one lit the other's road with a string of ruby lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent water. Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm. Breton and American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of the other—they were brothers all and cemented their friendship in ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... careful with the children, and taught them everything, educated them. Let tiny Leopoldine go on quickly with her crochet work, and the boys with writing and schooling; they would not be altogether behindhand when the time came for them to go to school in the village. Eleseus in particular was grown a clever one, but little Sivert was nothing much, if the truth must be told—a madcap, a jackanapes. He even ventured to screw a little at Mother's sewing-machine, and had already hacked off ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily. ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... his arm, not willing to be behindhand, quoted two verses of Schiller, most of it remaining in his flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for a time nothing ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... disagreeable. For, though he is the very best fellow in the world, when he is in a rage he is untamable. I cannot think what has put him out, now; for he has shot very well to-day. It is only when he gets behindhand, that he is usually jealous in his shooting; but he has got the deuce ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... heard the world and his wife were stopping at the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (puts money in the plate). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... I should do the job in an easy way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below, which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first on the ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... bailiff, not to be behindhand, having just come in for his lunch, ran out again without so much as wetting his stubbly white beard in the froth of the drawn quart of ale, and made away as fast as his stiff legs could carry him to where there was a steam ploughing engine ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... called "the clown," and was considered by boys who had been to the London theatres to surpass the best professional comic actors when he chose to put forth his powers. I did not know this then. I thought him a little formal, but particularly courteous in his manner, and not wishing to be behindhand in politeness, I replied, with as much of his style as I could assume, "Certainly, sir. But that is because my father was an Honourable. My father, sir, was the most ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... darkness seemed endless in the exposed picquets. Save for the Australian loot it looked like a fasting Christmas. Parcel mails could not be sent up, for every camel was required to convey food and fodder on to the cavalry. The cigarette ration was behindhand and most of the men were without a smoke. The officers could torture themselves with the thought of five turkeys ordered in Port Said and unlimited mess stores lying sixty miles away at Romani. But at the last moment all was changed. A parcel mail came ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... each other ironically, as they fail to find the numbers on them, paying all sorts of absurd compliments to each other and the drawer, offering to sell out their chances at enormous prices when they are behindhand, and letting off all sorts of squibs and jests, not so excellent in themselves as provocative of laughter. If the wit be little, the fun is great,—and, in the excitement of expectation, a great deal of real Italian humor is often ventilated. Sometimes, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... But the thaw was only momentary; she froze again into stone when he remarked that it was a pity that Mr. Ede was ill, for they were going to play Madame Angot on Thursday night, and he would like them all to come. The invitation flattered Ralph's vanity, and, resolved not to be behindhand in civility, he declared between his gasps that no one should be disappointed on his account; he would feel highly complimented by Mr. Lennox's taking Mrs. Ede to the play; and on the spot it was arranged that ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... are hopelessly behindhand in aeronautics is not a fact by itself. It is merely an indication that we are behindhand in our mechanical knowledge and invention M. Bleriot's aeroplane points also ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... wrote to Lodge on August 10th], offering to try to raise some companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of trouble with Mexico. Won't you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand that I might not hear of things for a week. I have not the least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow continually smaller, I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up. The cowboys ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... all kinds of things of which Tell had no suspicion had been happening in the town. The fact that there were no newspapers in Switzerland at that time often made him a little behindhand as regarded the latest events. He had to depend, as a rule, on visits from his friends, who would sit in his kitchen and tell him all about everything that had been going on for the last few days. And, ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse
... between two platforms, they opened the doors on both sides so as to rejoice German hearts by the sight of us. They treated us like wild beasts in a menagerie, and the officers and soldiers set the example while the women and children were not behindhand with abuse, and made threatening gestures. Our guards were applauded as if they were doing something heroic. At one station we saw a woman looking out of her window and shouting 'Hurrah!' The journey took 35 hours, and during the whole of ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... two to care for, unheard-of pickling and preserving to do,—and yet you commonly see her every afternoon sitting at her shady parlor-window behind the lilacs, cool and easy, hemming muslin cap-strings, or reading the last new book. She who hath faculty is never in a hurry, never behindhand. She can always step over to distressed Mrs. Smith, whose jelly won't come,—and stop to show Mrs. Jones how she makes her pickles so green,—and be ready to watch with poor old Mrs. Simpkins, who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... it befell that King Anguish of Ireland sent to King Mark of Cornwall for the tribute due to Ireland, but which was now seven years behindhand. To whom King Mark sent answer, if he would have it he must send and fight for it, and they would find a ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... information off, he is not contented with having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to- day! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... are behindhand already; and if we get started within an hour we can't reach the ground I selected before dark and we can't choose any nearer one, because if Pancho is anywhere in creation he is on the identical ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... identical with those which had for a series of years been repeatedly adduced in the commons, so that a repetition of them is unnecessary. The debate unfolded one great fact: namely, that the Protestant party were not behindhand with the Catholics in the vigour ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Robert Hagburn been heard from?" asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of the war,—shame ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that they might ask the Turk to give lectures upon the "Arabian Nights." Everybody else was planning something of the sort, to "raise funds" for some purpose, and she was sure they ought not to be behindhand. Mrs. Peterkin approved of this. It would be excellent if they could raise funds enough to pay for their own tickets to the carnival; then they could go ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... Vane entered. His apology for unpunctuality was cut short by the lively hostess. "Your pardon is granted without the humiliation of asking for it; we know that the characteristic of the English is always to be a little behindhand." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... frolic of the night. Then, in the evening, Mr. Thorpe often thought it advisable to harangue him seriously, by way of not letting the reformed rake relapse for want of a little encouraging admonition of the moral sort. Nor was Mr. Yollop at all behindhand in taking similar precautions to secure the new convert permanently, after having once caught him. Every word these two gentlemen spoke only served to harden the lad afresh, and to deaden the reproving and reclaiming ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... seem as if our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs. Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... collectors to wring out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... was not behindhand in the matter of entertainment: there was a wedding festival in progress, and, at the modest cafe, a thick concourse of men talking and singing and enjoying life after their own fashion; only the house of Mhtoon Pah, the curio dealer, was dark, and it ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... of money laid by, which she couldn't in reason expect to carry with her when her time came to go, wherever it was she might go to, and a houseful of furniture, old-fashioned, but strong and good still. So of course Sarah and I were not behindhand in going up to see the old lady, and taking her a pot or so of jam in fruiting season, or a turnover, maybe, on a baking-day, if the oven had been steady and the baking turned out well. And you couldn't have told from aunt's manner which of us she liked best; and there were ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.' This is the language he addresses to his niece; nor is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and fluttering as her heart. It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow.' Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is represented as a grave, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... bamboo clumps, straw-stacks and stores of cordage would provide raw material; and as for labour, all you have to do is to order some of your ryots (tenants) who are behindhand with their rent ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... woodcock-shooting is the most amusing. Then is the time for gentlemen to shoot; the braconnier despises it. From the middle of April to that of May is the important epoch at which the generality of animals marry, and the woodcocks are not behindhand in this respect; they leave their well-concealed retreats, become humanized, solicit the attentions of their feathered ladies, and fly with gay inspirations amongst the neighbouring bushes. But though as much in love as a widow, the woodcock does not on that account forget its habitual ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... emblems of good luck, the festival fishes, were already swimming in the air above the house eaves, as we scurried through the streets in jinrikisha toward the Uyeno railway station. We had been a little behindhand in starting, but by extra exertions on the part of the runners we succeeded in reaching the station just in time to be shut out by the gatekeeper. Time having been the one thing worthless in old Japan, it was truly sarcastic of fate ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... have eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... managed to extract enjoyment from its surroundings. The hospitality of the plantations was open to the officers, and wherever Stuart and his brigadiers pitched their tents, dances and music were the order of the day. Nor were the men behindhand. Even the heavy snow afforded them entertainment. Whenever a thaw took place they set themselves to making snow-balls; and great battles, in which one division was arrayed against another, and which were carried through with the pomp and circumstance of war, colours ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Phoenicia and the Bedawin of Melukhkha, and perhaps Egypt itself was implicated in the plot. The Prince of Kedar, Amuladdin, undertook to effect a diversion on the frontiers of Syria, and Uate, son of Layali, one of the Arab kings who had paid homage to Esarhaddon, was not behindhand in furnishing his contingent of horsemen and wild native infantry. The coalition already extended from the shores of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf before Assur-bani-pal became aware of its existence. An unforeseen occurrence suddenly ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... little bill there for sail-mending. The owner worked in with the sail-maker, and just as the skipper was putting out to earn his last instalment, he would find the bailiffs on board, his cruise would be delayed, he would be, consequently, behindhand with his instalment and back would go the smack to the owner with a present of four-fifths of its price. Weeks had to pay two hundred pounds, and had eight weeks to earn it in. But he got the straight tip that his sail-maker would stop him; and getting together any sort ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... nervousness and almost impatience were. You know how it upsets your good temper and all your civility when you are packing up for a long absence from home, and some one comes in, and will talk, and will not see how behindhand and how busy you are. "For what journey, I pray you?" asked Mrs. Timorous, for that was her visitor's name. "Even to go after my good husband," the busy woman said, and with that she fell a-weeping. But you must read the whole account of that eventful morning ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... there lies the village of Granpere. Whatever may be said or thought here in England of the late imperial rule in France, it must at any rate be admitted that good roads were made under the Empire. Alsace, which twenty years ago seems to have been somewhat behindhand in this respect, received her full share of Napoleon's attention, and Granpere is now placed on an excellent road which runs from the town of Remiremont on one line of railway, to Colmar on another. The inhabitants of ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... acting together in harmony they had a better chance of escape than by any mere individual effort. Mr McCarthy, too, and Adams showed themselves equally as capable as Captain Dinks in lending a hand and encouraging the crew—Frank Harness being not one whit behindhand either; so that, within a very few minutes after the consternation which the catastrophe had caused on its first happening had passed away, all, recovering that equanimity habitual to sailors in almost ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... is not much, and we are yet terribly behindhand, especially as regards secondary teaching, which is considered less important than primary teaching.[255] But we are scrambling out of an abyss of ignorance, and it is something to have the desire to get out of it. We must remember that Germany has not always been in its present plethoric state ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... enough to compensate for the girl's self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of her success—nay, her total ignoring of her literary honours—would be accepted. Arthurine, half her age, and a newcomer, was disliked for the pretensions which her mother innocently ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is very much more interested in matter than in form, and it is for this very reason that it is behindhand in any high degree of culture. It is most laughable the way the public reveals its liking for matter in poetic works; it carefully investigates the real events or personal circumstances of the poet's life which served to give the motif of his works; ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and Baby grew up into a Brownie, and made (as girls are apt to make) the best house-sprite of all. For, in the Brownie's habits of self-denial, thoughtfulness, consideration, and the art of little kindnesses, boys are, I am afraid, as a general rule, somewhat behindhand with their sisters. Whether this altogether proceeds from constitutional deficiency on these points in the masculine character, or is one result among many of the code of bye-laws which obtains in men's moral education from the cradle, is a question on which everybody has ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... but in later years the number rapidly increased. From 1850 the average number of cases decided was seventy-one, while from 1875 to 1880 the average was three hundred and ninety-one per annum, and now there are more than a thousand cases awaiting a hearing, and the court is so far behindhand in its work that it takes from three to four years for a case to come up for trial after having been entered upon the docket. At present there are about four hundred cases granted a ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... vii. 65, etc., from Simancas MSS. So Claude Haton, who is rarely behindhand in such matters, makes the Protestants lose fifteen thousand or sixteen thousand men. Memoires, ii. 582. Admiral Coligny was for a time believed by the court to be dead or mortally wounded, "mais ne fut ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the attractions of fine fielding, the average batting of the period is decidedly behindhand. What sight on a ball field is prettier to the good judge of the fine points of the game, than to see a hard hit "bounder" well stopped and accurately thrown from back of third base over to first base in time to cut off a rapid runner? or to see a splendidly ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... none the worse sailor for that," Charles Hethcote said with a laugh. "But I must be going on board. I have a message from the admiral to the captain and every moment is precious, for things are terribly behindhand. The dockyard people are wellnigh out of their wits with the pressure put upon them, and we are ordered to be ready to sail in a week. How it's all to be done, goodness only knows. You need not come on board, Jack. ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... of my work. It was very inconvenient to both of us only to know each other's meaning by signs; but I could not be otherwise than pleased to see that she endeavoured all in her power to learn to talk like me. Indeed I was not behindhand with her in that respect, striving all I could to imitate her. What I all the while wondered at was, she never showed the least disquiet at her confinement; for I kept my door shut at first, through fear of losing her, thinking ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting. They seemed, however, very well pleased, and all joined in the chorus of the seamen's songs: but the manner in which they were invariably a little behindhand was quite ludicrous. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Mrs. Lancaster gave "nary a whimper." The latter looked up with a smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of penitence to the hilt, and turned the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... York married Anne Hyde, and he avowed the marriage September 3rd, so that Pepys was rather behindhand ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ignorant alike of the inquiries and results, of the methods and the aims of our modern morphology, and this ignorance may be accounted for partly by the one-sided direction which their biological studies have taken, partly by the fact that there are few universities where the study of morphology is so behindhand as at the University of Berlin. Fully twenty years have now elapsed since the great Johannes Mueller died, the last naturalist who could command all the departments of biology. The three great provinces of science which had been reunited into a triune kingdom under ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him fit, was simply "ruination" to ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... all directions. Cousin Giles said it put him in mind of being behind the scenes of a theatre,—carpenters, painters, and gilders were everywhere to be seen; their saws and axes, their trowels and brushes seemed to have no rest; nor could they afford it, for they were evidently much behindhand with their preparations. Such furbishing, and painting, and washing, Moscow never before enjoyed. The whole circuit of the walls of the Kremlin, and its numerous towers, as well as the buildings in the interior, were covered, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... great geographical journey in spite of adverse weather conditions, which had severely handicapped him throughout, but he was nevertheless behindhand in his expectations, and although the attainment of the Pole was practically within his grasp, the long 900 mile march homeward from that spot had to be considered. It was principally on this account ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... long the most ancient people, though none the more for that did he like them; and so it was mainly the ancient folk, who could not do a day's work worth eighteenpence, that could enter into Bible promises. Not that he was at all behindhand about interpretation; but as long as he could fetch and earn, at planting box and doing borders, two shillings and ninepence a day and his beer, he was not going to be on ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... of Anselm. At a synod held in Rouen some six years after his great conquest, William insisted upon reform in the morals of the Church, upon strict rules of marriage, on an exact profession of the orthodox faith. He was not behindhand in performing his part of the profitable bargain that had been made ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... nineteenth century condescends to criticise and approve of his half-barbarous precursor. And what excuse can we find for such an offence as this which follows. The war of freedom of the Araucan Indians is the most gallant episode in the history of the New World. The Spaniards themselves were not behindhand in acknowledging the chivalry before which they quailed, and, after many years of ineffectual efforts, they gave up a conflict which they never afterwards resumed; leaving the Araucans alone, of all the American ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... that Occy has been ill, and that he is well? I hope you are not so behindhand in our news as not to know. For me, I am not yet undone by the winter. I still sit in my chair and walk about the room. But the prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself against them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less captivity. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... that an honest person, though poorly born, is company for the king. As soon as the breakfast was served up, they all set to, and maybe the various kinds of eatables did not pay for it; and among all this cutting and thrusting, no doubt but it was remarked, that the bride herself was behindhand wid none of them—that she took her dalin-trick without flinching, and made nothing less than a right fog meal of it; and small blame to her for that ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... your letter, dear Mr. Bache, by assuring you once more of my very sincere and affec-* *tionate interest. You will never find me wanting or behindhand when it is a question of proving this to you; be very sure ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... is behindhand, ma'am," said Trottle, moving to the door, the moment I gave Jarber leave to ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... for next day which weighed on the parson's mind. Not that he was behindhand with that part of his duties. He was far too methodical in his habits for that, and it had been written before the bustle of Christmas week began. But after preaching Christmas sermons from the same pulpit ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... without destroying each other; the narrative so wonderfully composed by Sackville, still makes us shudder at each blow received and given. Books were published to instruct them by a system of quarrelling, "to teach young gentlemen when they are beforehand and when behindhand;" thus they incensed and incited those youths of hope and promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the language of the poet, Aurorae filii, the sons of the morning,—who often ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... a smart youth in those days, by my family and friends, and certainly I had made myself as fine as I could, in the hope of pleasing Madeleine, who, to my mind, was the most charming girl in the world. Nor was she behindhand in the way of ornament, for she and her sister were dressed in their best, and looked as fresh as daisies. In fact, we were, one and all, in holiday attire; even the horse being tricked out with ribbons, tassels, fringes, and flowers, till he was ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... my chimney over me, some even think that I have got into a sad rearward way altogether; in short, from standing behind my old-fashioned chimney so much, I have got to be quite behind the age too, as well as running behindhand in everything else. But to tell the truth, I never was a very forward old fellow, nor what my farming neighbors call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors about my behindhandedness are so far correct, that I have an odd sauntering way with me sometimes of going about with ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... Fate, which always must give the final decision in everything we do. I have certainly not been behindhand in enormous sacrifices to mollify that inexorable power, and my representative, through whose hands pass far greater sums than through those of the paymasters of the troops, writes me word that they are not unfavorably disposed towards me ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... face, headed 'SPLENDID RUN WITH MR. PUFFINGTON'S HOUNDS,' in the imposing type here displayed. 'Well, that's quick work, however,' said he, casting his eyes up to the ceiling in astonishment, and thinking how unlike it was the Swillingford papers, which were always a week, but generally a fortnight behindhand with information. 'Splendid run with Mr. Puffington's hounds,' read he again, wondering who had done it: Bardolph, the innkeeper; Allsop, the cabinet-maker; Tuggins, the doctor, were all out; so was Weatherhog, the butcher. Which of them could ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... I have seen the timid youth lead another, and rehearse his captain's words. In like manner, he every day went into the school-room, and saw them do their nautical business, and at twelve o'clock he was the first upon deck with his quadrant. No one there could be behindhand in their business when their captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance I must mention which will close the subject, which was the day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Governor's. Our dear ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
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