"Back door" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said "it wuz a shame to dedicate a book that it had took most a hull bottle of ink to write, to a lot of creeters that he wouldn't have in the back door yard." ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... rounded the side of the kopje, an unusual scene presented itself. A large group was gathered at the back door of ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... breakfast the next morning in the old-fashioned kitchen. Nurse and her brother were having an animated talk over some reminiscences of the past, when there was a knock at the back door, and Mrs. Giles went out. Coming back, she appeared with a small hamper under her arm, which she placed ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... out der back door," was all that she could be made to say in answer to fierce inquiries. Every apartment was examined in vain, and then the roughs departed in search of other prey. Brave, simple-hearted girl! She would have been torn to pieces had her humane strategy ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... protected by a wide circle of intrenchments, while their forces had been augmented to something not far from three-quarters of a million men under arms and a huge supply of ordnance and munitions. From a mere expedition to keep a back door open for the defeated Serbians, Sarrail's army had developed into what was obviously going to be a gigantic campaign against the rear of the Central Powers, an attempt to enter Austria through a back window. Such, at least, was the supposition of military critics the world over. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the oaken staircase, and Warren entered from the back door. For a few moments there was quite a confusion of tongues, and Recompense wondered how mothers ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... track until it took an abrupt turn around a shoulder of the mountain. Immediately below me, unless I erred in my bearings, a desolate sheep farm stood but a short distance above the high road. Towards this I descended, and finding it with no great difficulty, knocked gently at the back door. To my surprise the shepherd opened it almost at once. He was fully dressed in spite of the lateness of the hour, and seemed greatly perturbed; nor, I can promise you, was he reassured when, after giving him the signal arranged between Trant and the peasantry, I followed ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... kept out of sight, was walking to and fro in an adjoining street, to receive intelligence, from time to time, of the progress of the affair, and to issue orders. The gunpowder was conveyed across the gardens to the rear of the house, taken in at a back door, and deposited in the room marked M in the plan, which was the room belonging to Mary. Mary was all this time directly ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... be a close blood relation to Ananias. Hot words flew back and forth between judge, lawyers and witnesses, and it began to look as if the man in whose barn the calf was placidly munching was guilty. Just then Russell, with a chuckle, slipped from the counter and disappeared through the back door. In a minute he returned, and solemnly pushed a white-faced calf with a broken horn squarely among the almost fighting disputants. There was a lull in the storm of angry words. Here was the lost calf. With a bawl of dismay and many ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... commissions, and the glaziers never put up a pane of glass at a cost of a franc and a half but he had a franc put down to himself. Charles devoured the horses' oats and doubled the amount of their provender, reselling at the back door what came in at the carriage gate, while amid the general pillage, the sack of the town after the storm, Zoe, by dint of cleverness, succeeded in saving appearances and covering the thefts of all in order the better to slur over and make good her own. But the household waste was worse than the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Linda ran the Bear Cat to the back door, where she and Katy packed it. Before they had finished, Donald Whiting came down the sidewalk, his cheeks flushed with the exercise of walking, his eyes bright with anticipation, his cause forever won—in case he had ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... reached the village, and Lord Martindale, saying he must speak to a workman, took them through a pretty garden to a house, the front rooms of which were shut up; they entered by the back door, and found themselves in a kitchen, where a couple of labouring people were sitting, in church-going trim. While Violet shook off the rain, and warmed herself at the fire, Lord Martindale spoke to the man; and then opening a door, called her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with them quite quietly. The back door was open; he could have walked out. I did not advise him to. I'm glad no one saw his face except myself. You see," she added, "he's devoted to Derek, and Derek knows it; that's why he feels it so, and will feel it more and more. The boy has a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the detectives, and without further ado, he sprinted for the burning house. Paying no heed to the warning cries of his comrades he dashed up to the back door and entered, and was ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... strange place might have done, for if Ricardo had not Wang's miraculous gift of materializing and vanishing, rather than coming and going, he could be nearly as noiseless in his less elusive movements. He noted the back door standing just ajar; and an the time his slightly pointed ears, at the utmost stretch of watchfulness, kept in touch with the profound silence outside enveloping the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... fact that he saw a black pig approach his door, and when he went to kick it the pig vanished. He was also tempted by a black thing with the body of a monkey, the feet of a cock, and the face of a man. On going out of his back door he saw the said Bridget Bishop going towards her house. The evidence was deemed quite conclusive. Another witness said that being in bed on the Lord's Day, he saw a woman, Susanna Martin, come in at the window and jump down on the floor. She took hold of the witness's foot, and drawing ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... and downhearted. After a while Azuba came and announced that she guessed she'd get a mouthful of fresh air, if she wasn't needed. Receiving no answer, she apparently considered the request granted and the captain heard the back door shut. Still the captain sat in the library, a huddled, pathetic heap in the armchair, gazing at ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was to you. 'Twas this afternoon, Mrs. Piper, in the last mail. The postman give it to me and then the back door-bell rang. I had it in my hand, so I must have stuck it somewhere. I thought I'd just slip in ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... "No," I said, "I want all the sleep I can get." Foster said he felt tired, and would go to bed. I knew that the sneak had some scheme on hand, so I went to my room, but I did not go to bed; I went out the back door and up on the roof, where I could see what was going on down in the cabin. I had not been on watch very long until I saw Foster come out of his room, and in a short time go into another with two gentlemen. I slipped down off the roof, went out on the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... It was a throaty little chuckle, pleasant to hear. "I looked out for that," said he. "There isn't a grain of that sand around my doorway. I took it all out through another hole some distance away, a sort of back door, and then closed it up solidly. If you please, Mother Nature, if I am not a Ground Squirrel, ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... Santarem on the 8th of June. The waters were then at their highest point, and my canoe had been anchored close to the back door of our house. The morning was cool and a brisk wind blew, with which we sped rapidly past the white-washed houses and thatched Indian huts of the suburbs. The charming little bay of Mapiri was soon left behind; we then doubled Point Maria Josepha, a headland ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... get out," said the man, in a low, hollow tone, which seemed the concentration of fear; "I would have got out of it if I could; but just step to the back door, ma'am, and see." ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... reach it something queer happened. With a bark and a wag of his tail, their dog Splash came rushing along. Straight down the street he trotted, and up into the pony cart he jumped, for the back door had been left open, when Bunny ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... back here for you. Leave the rear work to me. Go around, you two, and get the ladder. In fifteen minutes I'll have a fire at the back door. You'll probably see the light. As soon as you hear cries from the house, listen well and you'll know whether or not the guard has rushed back. The big door-window on the balcony is always left open so that the guard can command the window of Miss Atheson's ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... influence of Mirabeau. His defence of the prerogative deserved a reward, and he was received in a secret audience by Marie Antoinette. The interview took place at St. Cloud, July 3. The statesman did not trust his new friends, and he instructed the nephew who drove him, in disguise, to the back door, to fetch the police if he did not reappear in three-quarters of an hour. The conversation was satisfactory, and Mirabeau, as he kissed the queen's hand, declared with chivalrous fervour that the monarchy was saved. He spoke sincerely. The comedian and deceiver ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... that of Nancy's effort, it required twice the amount of self-sacrifice. He was to be, from June twenty-seventh till August twenty-seventh, Bill Harmon's post-office clerk and delivery boy, and the first that the family would know about it would be his arrival at the back door, in a linen jacket, with an order-book in his hand. Bravo, Gilly! One can see your heels disappearing over ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pitcher under her cape she started bravely forth on a foraging expedition. After walking a few blocks she came to a white house whose woodhouse joined the alley. Hiding behind a barrel she watched and waited until a woman opened the back door and set a soup plate of milk on the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... closet and bureau, she found no time on this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open back door while her uncle ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... again. 'That's just what Mrs. Rudden has come up to me to ask,' said the Admiral. 'This fellow presented it in her shop about a quarter of an hour ago. The good woman smelt a rat. What do you think she did? She looked at it and him, asked him to wait a bit, whipped out at her back door, luckily met the policeman starting on his rounds, bade him have an eye to the customer in her shop, and came off to show it to me. That young woman is demented enough for anything, and is quite capable ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of everything hitherto by anonymous letters; so when I sent her up a note from myself, with the letter, you know, in order to fix a meeting for eight o'clock this morning, I signed it 'your secret correspondent.' They let me in at once—very quickly—by the back door, and the noble lady ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fell to the ground, and with despair written upon every feature she arose to go. The two went to the back door through which Tiara had entered, Mrs. Johnson in an excited manner saying over and over again: "O no, no! Such a thing is not to be thought of for a moment!" words that pierced Tiara like a dagger each time ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... to the back door of the palace, and put his head into the kitchen, and said, "I am very tired. May I sit down here and rest a ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mews indeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark from that of any of the other stables. But many a little close carriage has stopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves, who knows everything, and who showed me the place) told me. "The Prince and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shabbiness, it would not be possible for his benefactors, in any grade of society, to ask him to their tables. He is sometimes fed in the kitchen; where the people of the house feed in the kitchen themselves, he is fed at the back door. ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... why the soldiers made such a desperate attempt to secure Culp's Hill, for what use would it have been to get Cemetery Hill and leave a back door open, as it were, for ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... a story so incredible and so against myself as this. One evening father said, "I am going to my room early tonight, Katie; do not forget to lock the back door." I sat reading until quite late, then retired. About 2.30 A.M., I was startled to hear someone gently open that back door, then take off boots and begin to softly ascend the stairs, which stopped only the width of a narrow hall from my room. I have been told that ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... little point, Bartley walked away to escape further comment, and Hope turned on his heel and walked into his office, and out at the back door directly, and proceeded to his duties in the mine; but he was much displeased with Bartley, and his ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... his race are protected by the government. It had been decided that no one should be allowed to sell liquor to an "Injun"—at least at the regular bar. If an "Injun," however, could so far lose sight of his personal dignity as to come sneaking in at the back door, and pay an extra price for his liquor, whose business ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... she hoped. No one had thought of that possible way of escape. No doubt the back door of the yard was watched; but she would never have sent ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... happy indeed. It was watching Drummer that started Johnny Chuck to thinking about his own home. He had always thought it a very nice home. He had built it just as he wanted it. From the doorstep he could look in all directions over the Green Meadows. It had a front door and a hidden back door. Yes, it was a very nice ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... Douglas shut himself up in the study, and she was sure that he was writing; so when the village children stopped in on the way from school for Mandy's new-made cookies, she used her customary trick to get them away. "Tag—you're it!" she cried, and then dashed out the back door, pursued by the laughing, screaming youngsters. Mandy followed the children to the porch and stood looking after them, as the mad, little band scurried about the back yard, darted in and out amongst the trees, then up the side of the wooded hill, ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... smaller ones, in addition to the comfort of studying with our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. This door would open sometimes to let one of us out, a privilege which ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... bustled about the porch and pantry some time, appeared after a short interval, at the back door. Uncle Nathan understood the signal, and taking Mary by the hand, led her into a kitchen, neatly covered with a rag carpet, and furnished with old-fashioned wooden chairs. A little round tea-table stood in the middle of the room, covered ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... o'clock the next day, Victor-Ange-Hermenegilde Doublon, bailiff, made protest for non-payment at two o'clock, a time when the Place du Murier is full of people; so that though Doublon was careful to stand and chat at the back door with Marion and Kolb, the news of the protest was known all over the business world of Angouleme that evening. Tall Cointet had enjoined it upon Master Doublon to show the Sechards the greatest consideration; but when all was said ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the sort," said Dr. Muir, sharply. "Why, man, your face would be enough to tell the news, in all conscience. You may walk to the door with me—the back door, if you please—but further you shall not come until I have seen Mistress Luttrell. Here, give me your arm; you're not fit to go alone with that white face. And how did ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... by the back door. He was, he said, the village solicitor. I do not assert that he licked Woodhouse's boots, but we should have respected him more if he had and been done with it. His notion was that the matter could be accommodated, arranged and compromised for gold, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... D., Esq., Edinburgh) tells me of a cat his family had in the country, that used regularly to "tirl at the pin" of the back door when it wished to ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... each other. Some from the trees about the yard; some from the thickets, fences, and fields farther away. As he threw open the barn doors, a few more, shyer still, darted swiftly into hiding. He heard the quick heavy flap of wings on the joists of the oats loft overhead, and a hawk swooped out the back door and sailed low away. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Dunseveric's groom, was decidedly the most drunken of the party, but Maurice wanted the man, and was prepared to take some trouble to reduce him to a condition of serviceableness again. He grasped him by the collar of the coat, and pushed him through the back door into the yard. A delighted stable boy worked the pump handle while Maurice held the groom under the stream of cold water. The cure was ineffective. Maurice walked him up and down the yard for half an hour, and then put him under the ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Lunn was not a great talker in company, although so delightful in confidence and consultation. She wished now, from the bottom of her heart, that one of her admirers would go away; but at this instant there was a loud tapping at a back door in the farther ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the barber college who had not been caught by the alarm were roaming the rooms of the small house, drifting singly out the back door at ten-minute intervals. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... by the jangling supper-bell. When he reached the back door Bill was already at the table and Rose, in a simple gown that brought out the appealing lines of her slim young body, was deftly helping his wife in the final dishing up. As Martin stood a moment, looking in at the bright ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... lower classes suspected it was M. Guizot concealed at Trouville, and as some sinister occurrence might reasonably be expected there, I sent a faithful person into Calvados. It was high time. The mob had assembled at the place where the King was, who had to slip out at the back door and walk two leagues on foot. At length he reached a small cottage belonging to a gardener at Honfleur, where the Queen was. This was half-past six o'clock A.M. yesterday. My agent saw the King and Queen, who, after some conversation, sent ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... and walked out the back door of the Temple-on-the-Green. The door was open and two Temple Myrmidons, wearing the golden grape-clusters of Dionysus on their shoulder patches, stood outside the door. Neither of them ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Plain of Chalons and the level country west of the Argonne. When the Germans came south through Belgium and got into the Plain of Chalons from the north they had turned the whole Verdun position and had got into the region it barred by another route; they had come in by the back door; Verdun was the front. Not only that, but they are there now and have been there ever since the first ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... accompanying him. We went out at the back door, which Mr Talboys ordered to be closed after us. We had not gone far when we discovered a ribbon, which I knew Miss Lucy had worn ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... out by the back door, and, after due explanations, they went out by it. The niece was now mortified by unnumerable chickens, who rushed up to her feet for food, and by a shameless and maternal sow. She did not know what animals were coming to. But ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... they are pressed. Tell them that they must hold out without my help for a short time. I am going to send six officers out by the back of the house, to collect some of our men together. Another will be in readiness to open the back door, as ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... pathetic in its genuineness of woe. I was standing near him, and during a momentary lull in the amiable siege of which he was the distressed object, he whispered tragically to me: "Can't we get out of this?—Do you know the way to the back door?" I said I did, and led him through an inconspicuous doorway into a comparatively deserted corridor behind the staircase. I procured for him, through the strategic employment of a passing servant, something to eat, and we staid in concealment there until the function had come to an end, and his ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... never neglected, no matter how late he went to bed, nor how tired he was. Half way to the barn he halted. A light was waving wildly by the Dickerson back door. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... or I'll be serving thee the same way; thee see I've found the trick of it." The doctor could not but hear so much as he made his way into his own house by the back door, after finishing his surgical operation. Bridget was recounting to her champion the fracas that had occurred; and he, as was so natural, was expressing his admiration ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... it could be none other than the accursed witch Lizzie Kolken, a coach with four horses drove quickly up to the door, wherein sat six fellows, who straightway all jumped out. Two went and stood at the front, two at the back door, and two more, one of whom was the constable Jacob Knake, came into the room, and handed me a warrant from the sheriff for the arrest of my daughter, as in common repute of being a wicked witch, and for her examination before the criminal court. Any one may guess how my heart sunk within me ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... the place seemed deserted, but she picked her way, among barrels and boxes, saddles and hams, to the dry-goods department in the rear. Through the open back door she could see two men in the yard, one repairing a chicken-coop, and the other standing with his hands in his pockets, watching the job. The man with the hammer and saw, she knew. He was the manager of the store. The other was ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the little man, who was Professor Scotch. "Let's hurry out by the back door, the way we came in. We were detained, so we did not arrive in time for the train, but we came as quickly ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... she's alone in the house," the cook had said, with a grandiosity of style borrowed from the Family Herald. It is easy for the cook to be grandiose when the butler and the lady's- maid are in trouble. Thus philosophy walketh in at the back door. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Esquire, Fairoaks, engraved upon the brass plate, were there in waiting. The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who had seen the chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after the Major's arrival, and entered by the back door. The former gave a detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pendennis, enlarged on his virtues and the estimation in which the neighbourhood held him; on what a loss he would be to the magistrates' bench, the County Hospital, etc. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... America is not at all simple. It is more than a problem of immigration. The problem of the European immigrant is one part of it. There is also the problem of the relation of the American people to the yellow races at our back door, and the problem of the negro, who is here through no fault of his own, but who, because he is here, must be brought into friendly and helpful relation with the rest ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Georgina dress up in some little knickerbockers and a roundabout which had been stored away with other clothes worn by Justin as a small boy. But her disapproval was beyond words when Barbara herself appeared at the back door one morning, so cleverly disguised as a gypsy, that Mrs. Triplett grudgingly handed out some cold biscuits before she discovered the imposition. The poor she was glad to feed, but she had no use ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... meal, and had a good pull at the jug of ale, which was a liquor he had not tasted for a long while, rose from the table and went out of the back door and found there Oswald Partridge. He accosted him, stating the reason for his coming over to him. "I did not know that Jacob had a grandson; indeed, I never knew that he had a son. Have you been living with ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... cottages are almost never built singly, but always by the dozen or score; a single contractor building up one or two streets at a time. These are then arranged as follows: One front is formed of cottages of the best class, so fortunate as to possess a back door and small court, and these command the highest rent. In the rear of these cottages runs a narrow alley, the back street, built up at both ends, into which either a narrow roadway or a covered passage leads from one side. The cottages which face this back street command least rent, and ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... room at all, Arnold had been compelled to step down from the grass on to a narrow, tiled path about half a yard wide, which led to the back door. Standing on this and peering through the chink in the boards, he gained at last a view of the interior of the house. From the first, he had entered upon this search with a certain presentiment. He looked into the room and shivered. It was apparently ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gentlemen's servants, 'busmen, and other skilled judges of good beer, the subtle and delicate perfume of which liquor pervades the place from cellar to basement, and has more than once taken the policeman on duty to the back door, under the impression that ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... came to a hole in the ground, an old house that had once belonged to her grandfather. Now this old house had a back door hidden close beside the hollow trunk of a fallen tree. Old Granny Fox just ran through the house, out the back door, through the hollow tree, and then jumped into a little brook where there was hardly more than enough water ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... we have taken, as usual, the fertile land and the running water, and have allotted land to the Indian where neither wood nor water exist, no crops will grow, no human life can be supported. I have seen the land. I have seen the Indian begging at the back door. Oh, yes, they were an "inferior race." Oh, yes, they didn't and couldn't use the land to the best advantage, couldn't build Broadway and the Union Pacific Railroad, couldn't improve real estate. If you choose to call the whole thing "manifest destiny," I am with you. I'll ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... you wasn't feeling none too well yourself, what with a hold-over, a black eye, and a lot o' bumps, what would you—Hold on! I say, I ask no questions! I know the answer. If Tommy O'Rourke came howling and whooping into your back door and asked you to go out and shin up a tree and fetch down his tomcat, ye'd tell Tommy to bounce along and mind his own matters till ye'd settled your own—and if he didn't go ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Sam clasped the miner around the waist. "Try the back door; it will be possible to give them the slip ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... a garrison of armed men had been stationed. All hoped that these wretches would be intimidated by the superior numbers of their assailants, and surrender themselves at discretion rather than attempt a desperate defence. The house being surrounded, the back door was burst open, when four or five shots were fired from the interior, one of which instantly killed Dr Hugh S Bodley, a citizen universally beloved and respected. The interior was so dark that the villains could not be seen; but several of the citizens, guided by the flash of their guns, returned ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... this country that they repealed them on account of the injury it was doing themselves, and took America into consideration about as much as they did the inhabitants of Kamschatka. The conditional repeal of the Berlin and Milan decrees was a back door for them, and they availed themselves of it to sneak out of it. This necessity, this act of dire necessity, the Federal papers cry up as evincing a most forbearing spirit towards us, and really astonish the English themselves who never dreamt that it could ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... think allow'd to be the most difficult) and exceeding all I ever saw. The last time I had the Honour to see him, was on his Return from that Exercise. He had been abroad with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and alighted out of his Coach at a back Door of the Palace, with three or four Birds in his Hand, which according to his usual Custom, he carried up to the Queen ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... into your house one evening concealed in the middle of a floor-cloth, which the maid had rolled up and set at the outside of the back door, whilst she swept the passage, and neglected to take it in again till the evening, In that I hid myself, and upon her laying it down, ran with all speed down the cellar-stairs, where I continued till the family were all gone to bed. Then I returned back, and came ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... must go by myself," I said, getting down my rod from the wall on which it hung with my fishing-tackle and basket. Swinging the latter over my shoulder I crept noiselessly out of the room and down stairs. No one was stirring, so I let myself out by a back door which led into the garden. Even our old dog "Growler" did not bark, for he was, I suppose, taking his morning snooze after having been ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... in a voice I could hear, and then he picked me up again and carried me to the back door, and opened it and threw me all the way down the eight steps. I chucked off the blanket, and I was going up the steps again, to show him he couldn't treat me that way, when—bing!—somebody next door took a shot at me with a revolver. Thought ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... "I don't think so," she said quietly. "It's hours since I slipped out by the back door. They have very strict rules about runaway girls—even when their friends bring them back. If you send me back—" she stopped, and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... that question when I heard their voices at the other side of the house. The back door was smaller than the front, but it had this advantage in the way of strength—it was made of two solid oak boards joined lengthwise, and strengthened inside by heavy cross pieces. It had no bolts like the front door, but was fastened by a bar of iron running across it in a slanting ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the shivers; wasn't her hand cold? It was, but thrilling even in its coldness to the bashfully admiring man. And she was that weak and dizzy, he must let her lean on his arm going down; and they must go SLOW. She was sure he was cold, too, and if he would wait at the back door she would give him a drink of whiskey. Thus Lanty, with her brain afire, her eyes and ears straining into the darkness, and the vague outline of the barn beyond. Another moment was protracted over the drink of whiskey, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... At five o'clock the back door of the Edwards house opened. Elmira came out with a shawl over her head and hurried up the hill. "Oh, Jerome," she panted, when she got up to him. "You must stop working, mother says, and go right straight off to the ten-acre lot. Father 'ain't come home yet, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rusty mowing-machines, buggies with torn and flapping canvas, sleighs ready to yawn at every crack, all are here: poor relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at the back door for the privilege of playing in it. They take long, entrancing journeys in the mouldy old chaise; they endure Siberian nights of sleighing, and throw out their helpless dolls to the pursuing wolves; or the more mercantile-minded among ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... and leading her through an enter passage to the back door, she added, "I do it to save your good name. St. Leon is undoubtedly waiting for you, and I would not trust my own sister with him, were she a poor ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... carriages of the leading singers had driven up by that way, entering at one end and going out at the other, but the side that had formerly led to the square before the theatre was now built up, and contained a small shop having a back door in the dark alley, and only the other exit remained, and it opened upon an unfrequented street ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their houses. These are large, but enclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... room, where he and Knight and the Sheriff had been closeted, the Sheriff said that Knight was bailed—he would not say by whom. Knight being looked after, was not to be found. He had slipped out through a back door, and thus cheated the crowd of the pleasure of greeting him—possibly with that rough and ready affection which Barclay's brewers bestowed upon Haynau. The escape was very fortunate every way. Hughes and Knight have since been twice arrested and put under bonds of $10,000 (making ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... to reward her for sittin' on Cousin Ralph so long," says I. "Give her one of the fives. You can slip the other to him as we shoo him through the back door. Now, let's go ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... as he wished to enter Danville to visit his parents. Disguised as a country boy with produce to sell, he had no trouble in passing the pickets into town. With a basket of eggs on his arm, he knocked at the back door of his father's residence. It was opened by ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... proven customs of his generation. The corrals were new, but their style was old. Wade reflected that it would be hard for rustlers or horse-thieves to steal out of those corrals. A long lane led from the pasture-land, following the brook that ran through the corrals and by the back door of the rambling, comfortable-looking cabin. A cowboy was leading horses across a wide square between the main ranch-house and a cluster of cabins and sheds. He saw ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... wrung her hands. As he touched the liquor in the cauldron he felt that he was not quite himself. He was, in fact, a green dragon. He felt himself vanish—a most uncomfortable sensation—and reappeared, with a suddenness that took his breath away, in his own form and at the back door ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... boys were prompt, but the little boys were prompter. The back door swung on its hinges and Max and Archie, puffing, ejaculating and wrathful, gave over attempts at capture for efforts at repair, Max going off to hunt up Algernon, while Archie gathered up scattered cards and mopped up the ink ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... at Charing Cross, had a back door into Spring Garden. It seems to have been specially frequented ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... brought to a close by Moses making an exit via the back door, and when the privacy of the sheep-house had been gained he sat down on a big log and began counting how much money he had still on hand after his trip to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... with heat. "All yu an yore Sharp's could do was to cut yore initials in th' back door of their ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... front hall," said Mike laughingly; "it's the back door. Front hall's down by the sea, where the ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... been holding an interminable conversation with her in the schoolroom, interrupted at last by a summons to speak to a Cocksmoor woman at the back door, and she was returning from the kitchen, when the doctor ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... existed at the cabins on the tenant row near the stream. Negroes poured from the cabins in all manners of dress or undress even the cold weather did not tempt them to take time to don shoes and hose but came to the back door of my house some crying and moaning and praying, and if there is such a thing as a pale negro these darkies were certainly pale, eyes rolling and the majority of them wanting to leave the farm before daybreak or by that time anyway or else staying ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... we have said, about four weeks after the commencement of the regency of the Duke of Courland, when a sedan-chair was set down before a small back door of the Duchess Anna Leopoldowna's palace; it had been borne and accompanied by four serfs, over whose gold-embroidered liveries, as if to protect them from the weather, had been laid a tolerably thick coat of dust and sweat. Equally splendid, elegant, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... servants on different errands, opened the chest, and received his friend with open arms. Grotius declared, that while he was in the chest, he had felt much anxiety, but had suffered no other inconvenience. Having dressed himself as a mason, with a rule and trowel, he went, through the back door of Bazelaer's house, accompanied by his maid, along the market-place, to a boat engaged for the purpose. It conveyed them to Vervie in Brabant: there, he was safe. His maid then left him, and, returning to his wife, communicated to her the agreeable ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... Parks. "Sam, do you rec'lect one time I come over to spend Christmas Day with you when we was little shavers about ten year old, and we left the pig-pen gate open, and the pigs got all over the place? Gorry! do you rec'lect the back door stood open, and nothin' to it but old Marm Sow must projick right into the kitchen where your Ma was gettin' dinner? Haw! haw! do you ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... a back window into the courtyard behind, which was now getting low-toned and dim with the earliest films of night. A crooked file of men was approaching the back door. The whole string of trailing individuals advanced in the completest balance of intention, like the remarkable creatures known as Chain Salpae, which, distinctly organized in other respects, have one will common ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... tea-kettle back if it were necessary. Amanda stood in the door, trembling. All at once there was a swift roll of wheels in the yard past the window. "Somebody's come!" gasped Amanda. Mrs. Field rushed to the back door, and Amanda after her. There was a buggy drawn up close to the step, and a man was trying to lift ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cause or to produce. People say to condition something instead of to cause it, because being abstract and indefinite it says less; it affirms that A cannot happen without B, instead of that A is caused by B. A back door is always left open; and this suits people whose secret knowledge of their own incapacity inspires them with a perpetual terror of all positive assertion; while with other people it is merely the effect of that tendency by which everything that is stupid in literature ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... it by a back door whose porch was covered with ivy, and going through several low passages, came to the other side of the house. There Mr. Graeme showed Donal into a large, low-ceiled, old-fashioned drawing-room, smelling of ancient rose-leaves, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... luck of hunting," said Mr. Hume, as the boys walked round the great beast. "Some days you never get a shot, and other times you find game at your back door, so to speak. One of you boys will stay with Muata to skin and cut up. It will ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... one end of the house, and thence to the stable in the rear. On the other side of the house, near the street, was the office,—for Forester's father was a lawyer. The office was a small square building, with the lawyer's name over the door. There was a back door to the office, and a footpath, winding among trees and shrubbery, which led from the office to ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... till he drew up before the house. Then he condescended, "Better jump out here and I'll take the boat around back. Say, see if the back door is unlocked, will you?" She unlatched the door for him. She realized that she still carried the damp glove she had stripped off for Erik. She drew it on. She stood in the center of the living-room, unmoving, in damp ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Aunt Rachel's I found a voluble, fat, dirty, old, yellow-haired tramp established in the ground floor of the same house. He had, in the first place, come to our back door to beg a hand-out. And, sitting on the doorstep and eating, and drinking coffee, he had persuaded my grandmother that if she would give him a place to locate on credit he knew a way to clear a whole lot of money. His project for making money ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... up-stairs and down, indicated that the proposition was a welcome one, and Peggy stepped out of the back door to interview the dealer. A boy in nondescript costume, with a brimless straw hat on the back of his head, held up a string ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... him at the railroad station at Potsdam, at half-past eleven in the evening, in order to accompany him to manoeuvres that were to be held at a place several hours' distance on the following day. Leaving the palace on foot shortly after eleven, he entered the railroad station by a back door, and managed to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... who had entered his cabinet by a back door, was interrupted in his examination of the documents, previous to interrogating the witnesses, by the officer Hendon, who demanded leave to make an important communication. "Amongst the witnesses," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... at Marygreen, and the rain of the afternoon showed no sign of abatement. About the time at which Jude and Arabella were walking the streets of Christminster homeward, the Widow Edlin crossed the green, and opened the back door of the schoolmaster's dwelling, which she often did now before bedtime, to assist Sue ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Longstreet's corps, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. First Manassas was the brigade's, baptism of fire. Seven Pines, the Seven Days, Second Manassas, Harper's Ferry, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg followed. And when the enemy began knocking at the back door of the Confederacy in late 1863, it was Longstreet's corps that Lee rushed to the aid of Bragg's faltering Army of Tennessee. After the victory at Chickamauga and a winter in Tennessee, the corps was recalled to Virginia—and to the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... bright tin bucket, that shone like burnished silver in the sunbeams, swinging on her arm, she stole out of the back door, and ran down a narrow lane, till she came to an open field, where the young corn was waving its silken tassels, and potato vines frolicking at its feet. The long, shining leaves of the young corn threw off the sunlight like polished steel, and Helen thought she had never ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... rapping loudly on the back door. The sound seemed to rouse the inmates at once, for, with considerable thumping and fumbling, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... draught through your front door. That's most hurtful. Better lock it at once. Would it matter if this kept your visitors off for two or three days? If someone happens to call unexpectedly—there's the back door. You had better shut this window as well, it's letting in the sunset rays only to keep the ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... then, here comes a few guys in the back door, they want a special job, see, for real special pay. And there's your ice cream and cake. And maybe a little stack ...
— Alarm Clock • Everett B. Cole
... boy who stared down at her with his small perplexed eyes, the two made a picture that afforded endless amusement to her husband, a short fat bald-headed man who went about clad in blue overalls and a blue cotton shirt. Coming to the back door of his house, that was within a stone's throw of the station, Henry Shepard stood with his hand on the door-jamb and watched the woman and the boy. Above the scolding voice of the woman his own voice arose. "Look out, ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson |
