"Backbone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was one more complicated, more delicate, and hence incomparably more difficult of solution. To draw largely upon these seafaring classes, numerous and fit though they were, meant detriment to trade, and if the Navy was the fist, trade was the backbone of the nation. The sufferings of trade, moreover, reacted unpleasantly upon those in power at Whitehall. Methods of procuration must therefore be devised of a nature such as to insure that neither trade nor Admiralty should suffer—that they ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... your eyes, filling them with a vision of forked lightning. Recovering from this agreeable sensation, you find a gap like the edge of a razor, in going through which, you feel the buttons of your waistcoat rubbing against your backbone. It certainly would be no bad half-hour's recreation to watch a rotund Lord Mayor, followed by a court of aldermen to match, forcing their way through this pass after a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Peaches. "Granny carried me to the big doctors once, an' my backbone is weak, an' I won't ever walk, they all ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... West, was particularly sustained thereby. Wheat and grain would have fallen to prices ruinous for the farmers. When the gold fell, the farmer felt it by the reduction of the price of his produce. The agriculturist, the backbone and marrow of the country, spends less money for manufactured products than he netted clear profits by the rise in gold. If the farmer sold now his wheat for six shillings, without inflation the price might have ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... light in the east, and is not over till the "pits" are worked out. It was my task to cart clay in the afternoon to fill them up again. It was an idle enough kind of job. All I had to do was to walk alongside my horse, a big white beast with no joints at all except where its legs were hinged to the backbone, back it up to the pit, and dump the load. But, walking so in the autumn sun; I fell a-dreaming. I forgot claybank and pit. I was back in the old town—saw her play among the timber. I met her again on the Long Bridge. I held her hands ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... not secured against this eventuality, what are the preparations to meet with a contingency? The Government must not stake the fate of the nation as if it be a child's toy, and the people must not be cast into the whirlpool of slaughter. The people are the backbone of a country, and if the people are all opposed to war on Germany, the Government—in spite of the support of Parliament—must call a great citizens' convention to decide the question. We must persist in our neutrality. You gentlemen are patriotic ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... hydrocarbons sector is the backbone of the economy, accounting for roughly 60% of budget revenues, 30% of GDP, and over 95% of export earnings. Algeria has the fifth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second largest gas exporter; it ranks ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... correct curve for a mile and a half, it indicates a clear-cut difference between the flat and the plateau. The toe of the bank rests upon sand, while the plateau is of chocolate-coloured soil intermixed on the surface with flakes of slate; and from this sure foundation springs the backbone of the island. On the flat, the plateau, and the hillsides, the forest consists of similar trees—alike in age and character for all the difference in soil—the one tree that does not leave the flat being the tea or melaleuca. In some places the jungle comes down to the water's edge, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible." Truman came to the conclusion that "the rank and file of the disbanded Southern army... are the backbone and sinew of the South.... To the disbanded regiments of the rebel army, both officers and men, I look with great confidence as the best and altogether the most hopeful element of the South, the real basis of reconstruction and the material of worthy citizenship." ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... preeminently a nation of farmers. We can not, and we ought not, to continue exclusively, or even chiefly, an agricultural country, because one man can raise food enough for many. But the farmer who owns his land is still the backbone of this Nation; and one of the things we want most is more of him. The man on the farm is valuable to the Nation, like any other citizen, just in proportion to his intelligence, character, ability, and patriotism; but, unlike other citizens, also in proportion ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... grain of character. It may generally be described as heroism materialized,—spirit and will thrust into heart, brain, and backbone, so as to form part of the physical substance of the man. The feeling with which it rushes into consciousness is akin to physical sensation; and the whole body—every nerve, muscle, and drop of blood—is thrilled with purpose and passion. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... infuses fresh blood into his veins: she frees his scars from the clotted gore, and penetrates them with froth from the moon. She mixes whatever nature has engendered in its most fearful caprices, foam from the jaws of a mad dog, the entrails of the lynx, the backbone of the hyena, and the marrow of a stag that had dieted on serpents, the sinews of the remora, and the eyes of a dragon, the eggs of the eagle, the flying serpent of Arabia, the viper that guards the pearl in the Red Sea, the slough of the hooded snake, and the ashes that remain when the phoenix ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... a false play, but—durn the critter anyway, Shane! He ain't got no more backbone than a wet string! He's been in a hell of a stew ever since we got here about this storm a-brewing and it's beginnin' to roil me just havin' him pesticate around. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... laughed at her pride, called her Madame Lucifer, in speaking to her, and she admitted that the name did not displease her. She always received his advances with coldness, and a sort of superiority of greatness. She was a princess to the backbone, at all hours, and in all places. Yet, at the same time, her timidity was extreme. The King could have made her feel ill with a single severe look; and Madame de Maintenon could have done likewise, perhaps. At all events, Madame ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had so shrunk away that he could not close eyes or mouth—the latter, therefore, stood on a perpetual ghastly grin, and the former on an incessant stare. He had but one serviceable joint in his body, which was at the bottom of the backbone, and that creaked and grated whenever he bent. He could not raise his feet from the ground, but skated along the drawing-room carpet whenever he wished to ring the bell. The only sign of moisture in his whole body was a pellucid ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... This placed both General von Kluck and General von Buelow into subordinate positions. Field Marshal von Heeringen held a deserved reputation as one of the most brilliant as well as one of the most iron-willed of the German military leaders. He had been the backbone of the crown prince's movement against Troyon, a movement which, given a day or two longer, might have meant the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... they reached the South Pass. For many hundred miles they had been climbing the backbone of the continent. Now they had reached the summit, the dividing ridge between streams that flowed to the Atlantic and streams that flowed to the Pacific. From the level prairies they had toiled up into the fearsome Rockies where bleak, grim crags lowered upon ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... and I spent two days at the Brook Farm Community when in the height of its prosperity. There I met the Ripleys,—who were, I believe, the backbone of the experiment,—William Henry Channing, Bronson Alcott, Charles A. Dana, Frederick Cabot, William Chase, Mrs. Horace Greeley, who was spending a few days there, and many others, whose names I cannot recall. Here was a charming family of intelligent men and women, doing their ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... and hearths was slowly evolved through the centuries. In the late 18th century, an American codified this masonic lore and established the scientific basis for a proper fireplace so cogently that even today his principles form the backbone of fireplace building. He was born Benjamin Thompson, March 26, 1753, at Woburn, Massachusetts, but is better known as Count von Rumford of the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... degenerates into the dull memorizing of dates and names or, rising into the O Altitudo, evaporates in romantic gush over beautiful passages. This does not mean, of course, that no benefit may be obtained from such a study, but it does preclude English literature generally from being made the backbone, so to speak, of a sound curriculum. The same may be said of French and German. The difficulties of these tongues in themselves, and the effort required of us to enter into their spirit, imply some degree of intellectual gymnastics, but scarcely enough for our purpose. ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... backbone of Trestle Summit, where, either way, the track descends at a sharp grade for over three miles. It was nearly six miles to Woodsville; but I knew while the mail was climbing the up grade we could get well on toward the station. So I said ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... was Ballard. His eyes glanced round with an indomitable expression of scorn and indignation, which, as Diccon whispered, he could have felt to his very backbone. It was like that of a trapped and maimed lion, as the man sat in his chair with crushed and racked limbs, but with a spirit untamed ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Hence the traditional alliance between Protestantism and the Old Testament, in which the path of duty is far more clearly and consistently defined than in the New. And hence the singular fact that Calvinism, which is the backbone of Protestantism, and which in theory, and even (at times) in practice, regards "works" as "filthy rags," finds its other self in Puritanism, which is in the main a recrudescence of Jewish legalism in the more strictly moral ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... and her backbone stiffened involuntarily the moment she had her first glimpse of Prouty. Invariably it had this effect upon her and to-day was no different from any other. Her eyes narrowed and her nerves tightened as though to meet the attack of an advancing enemy ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... great working population, in the fields and the mines, and without them the national industries would be non-existent. They are a picturesque, poor and generally ignorant class, although possessed of excellent natural elements and traits which must develop as time goes on. They form a strong, virile backbone to the country, but the conditions of their life are at present but little removed from serfdom, due to their general poverty as a class and to the monopolisation of the ownership of land by the upper classes. In this connection it is to be ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... all Protestant German lands the Shorter Catechism prepared by Luther, or the later Heidelberg Catechism; in Calvinistic lands the Catechism of Calvin; and in England and the American Colonies the Westminster Catechism, [10] formed the backbone of the religious instruction. Teachers drilled their pupils in these as thoroughly as on any other subject, writing masters set as copies sentences from the book, children were required to memorize the answers, and the doctrines contained were emphasized ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. He's started a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... it is possible that two sketches reproduced by Sir Lambert Playfair are from his pencil: the drawings were the only fruit of the cruise. James Bruce, the African traveller, as agent or consul-general in 1763, put a little backbone into the communications, but he soon went on his travels, and then the old fruitless course of humble remonstrances and idle demonstrations went on again. Whenever more serious attempts were made, the preparations were totally inadequate. Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Malta ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... witness those scenes. The greater part of our gentry stood firm for America's rights, and they had behind them the best lawyers in America. After the lawyers came the small planters and most of the mechanics. The shopkeepers formed the backbone of King George's adherents; the Tory gentry, the clergy, and those holding office under the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... pulled down, if not absolutely required by the farmer for his hands. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of some starved the trade of others, who were thus obliged to follow. These families, who had formed the backbone of the village life in the past, who were the depositaries of the village traditions, had to seek refuge in the large centres; the process, humorously designated by statisticians as "the tendency of the rural population towards the large towns", being really the tendency of water ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... will give you five minutes; not another moment. I know you, Nora; you always exaggerate things. You are an Irishwoman to your backbone." ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... "He's the backbone o' that congregation now," asserted Mrs. Sargent, "and they say he's goin' to marry Mrs. Sam Peters, who sings in their choir, as soon as his year is up. They make a perfect fool of him ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... shouting: 'Mourir pour la Patrie!' It is either popery or patriotism, whichever you please; and then this life of the present day is a perfect nuisance; it looks as if it was made expressly to take the backbone out of a man. There is no more initiative. We are all nothing but machines, but with no real system; we only do pieces of work, never knowing where our work will fit in; most often it doesn't fit at all. It is all a mess, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... pulse into the blood of the man and the boy, but she crept just a little nearer to the camp fire of evenings and found herself more and more languid in responding to the call of the day that returned all too soon for her. At last, rolling out on the Wahsatch side of the continental backbone, they encountered very warm but shortening days, while the nights grew chillier. Having passed to the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well and faithfully marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in recent years, they began to realize that they were with the ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... most concerning it was the fact that every bit of material used in constructing this backbone of the Spanish defence, this strategic point of all their operations, and their chief hope of success against the revolutionists, was furnished by their despised and hated enemies in the United States. Every ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... interfere at need. Madame Theophile was creeping nearer and nearer almost imperceptibly; her pink nose quivered, her eyes were half closed, her contractile claws moved in and out of their velvet sheaths, slight thrills of pleasure ran along her backbone at the idea of the meal she was about to make. Such novel and exotic food excited ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... from the faction of Catholics to the backbone. After his abjuration just as much as at his accession, the League continued to exist and to act against him. The legate, Gaetani, maintained that the bishops of France had no right, without the pope's approval, to give an excommunicated prince absolution; he opposed the three ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hand, is ecclesiastical to the backbone. Miss Deedy ruins her already feeble health with early mattins (she insists on the double t) and frequent fasts. Beyond an innocuous flirtation with the curate at decorations, or a choral meeting, Miss Deedy has as few sins as most of us to answer ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... will never mend or alter me,' she rejoined with a light laugh. 'I am Irish to the backbone. Now, my boy, you really must not keep me any longer with all this nonsense about Mollie. I have to go up to Rosendale, you know; Mrs. Cardell begged me to sit with her a little, and I am late now. Mollie will give you your tea. Come—have you ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... comes resolve to make the audience share that conviction-tension. Purpose is the backbone of force; without it speech is flabby—it may glitter, but it is the iridescence of the spineless jellyfish. You must hold fast to your resolve if you would hold ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... is necessary to recall that it lies in the anterior portion of the chest slightly to the left of the median line and that it extends from the third to the sixth rib. It extends almost to the breastbone, and a little more than half of the distance between the breastbone and the backbone. In contracting, it rotates slightly on its axis, so that the point of the heart, which lies below, is pressed against the left chest wall at a place immediately above the point of the elbow. The heart has in it four chambers—two in the left ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... passed on into the house. He had the straight backbone and well poised head of the West Pointer, but without the unnatural stiffness of the soldier's carriage; the shoulders of the "halfback," and the lean hips of a runner were his, and he had earned them in four years on his varsity football and track ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... northern littoral of the main island. Similarly, the provinces now called Ugo and Uzen, which form the northwestern littoral, were comprised in the single term "Dewa." Nature has separated these two regions, Mutsu and Dewa, by a formidable chain of mountains, constituting the backbone of northern Japan. Within Dewa, Mutsu, and the island of Yezo, the aboriginal Yemishi had been held since Yamato-dake's signal campaign in the second century A.D., and though not so effectually quelled as to preclude all danger ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... extensive one, as it is obstructed on either side by low hills. However, what is seen is very pretty. A large level plain traversed by a broad smooth river which has now lost its tortuous zig-zag course and bounded by the everlasting snows covering the main backbone of the Himalayas. At the head of the valley stands the quaint looking town of Baramula surrounded by hills on all sides but one, embowered in trees and intersected by the Jhelum, across which there is a good wooden ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... interested; but England took the initiative and the struggle to save the exemption was turned, in the United States, into a demonstration by the Irish, Germans and other anti-British elements. Innate hostility to England, the coastwise shipping interests, formed the backbone of the opposition to any repeal of this exemption, but the Taft Administration had held that the exemption did not conflict with the treaty (on the ground that the words "all nations" meant all nations except the United ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... of you." All we could get out of him was, "You had better bed down in the station and await events." Poor devil! so worn with work and worry that he looked as if a simple little De Aar dust-devil would snap his backbone if it touched him. So we were turned adrift again in the old iron heap to swell the army of vagrants who live by their ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... manliness, mental productivity into you. Make it a practise, when going to your business or your work each morning, to reflect how blessed a thing it is to be an American, and why it is a blessed thing. Then observe how your backbone stiffens as you think, how your step becomes light and firm, how the very soul of you floods with a kind of ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... and Europe is disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed by the Ural mountains and the glistening ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... to you, sirrah?' he exclaimed, and the forked lightning ran out of his eye right down my backbone. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... it was "simply absurd" to suppose it could "possibly be fraught with any benefit to science" or "reveal any truth of profound significance;" in 1884 he said of the same theory, that "it formed the backbone of all the previous literature upon instinct" by Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Fiske, and Spalding, "not to mention their numerous followers, and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... his troops with the tempting price of thirty thousand pounds for the Pretender dead or alive, but every adherent of the luckless Jefferson Davis of that day was in peril of life and wholesale confiscation. The House of Hanover not only broke the backbone of the Rebellion, but mangled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... had been in the White House six months the country was divided substantially into Jackson men and anti-Jackson or administration men. The elements from which Jackson drew support were many and discordant. The backbone of his strength was the self-assertive, ambitious western Democracy, which recognized in him its truest and most eminent representative. The alliance with the Calhoun forces was kept up, although it was already jeopardized by the feeling of the South Carolinian's friends that they, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... shall be very glad to do so. I suppose you are a Yankee still, engaged in the business of subjugating the free South, as I am still a rebel to the backbone," replied Percy, laughing ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... to the rescue. 'I was reading a frightfully interesting book about it the other day, Imperial Purple. It was the relaxing of all ideals, the giving way entirely to carnal appetites, the utter lack of moral backbone consequent on excess of luxury and prosperity that smashed up the Romans. But if a strenuous, cold-blooded nation like ourselves chose to relax the stringent conditions of marriage, and kept strictly to the innovation, well, it's absurd to say all our ideals would deteriorate ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... fastened. This, of course, was lowered. Notwithstanding the dense multitudes of people, I made my way to the same spot, determined to be satisfied whether or not there was any deception in the application of the hooks. There was no deception. They passed through the skin, on the sides of the backbone. To these hooks were attached yellow ropes, by which he was fastened to the beam, as you will perceive in the picture. This being done, the men, five or six in number, who had hold of the ropes fastened to the end of the beam which you see resting ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... lines. Then it was "the country," and fairly saturated with romance. Cousin Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought with him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was no suburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... I was passing through one of our main thoroughfares, and saw seven or eight Territorials taking refreshment in the backbone. I ask in fairness, Is this the backbone. I ask in fairness, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... legs and arms, and many short ones in your fingers and toes. The backbone is called ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... some of them muttered: "We were better at home, with mere bread and water, than here where we have had such a sorry feast!" Then Gamelyn turned his attention to his false brother, who had been unable to escape, seized him by the neck, broke his backbone with one blow from his staff, and thrust him, sitting, into the fetters that yet hung from the post where Gamelyn had stood. "Sit there, brother, and cool thy blood," said Gamelyn, as he and Adam sat down to a feast, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... or an allegory—that chain and backbone of continuous interest, implying a progress and leading up to a climax, which holds together the great poems of the world, the Iliad and Odyssey, the AEneid, the Commedia, the Paradise Lost, the Jerusalem ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... protozoan, about 1-125 inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill arteries ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... Portuguese armies, and as he had brought many British officers with him, some 20,000 men had been armed and drilled, and could be reckoned upon to do some service, if employed with British troops to give them backbone. The Portuguese peasantry were strong and robust, and by nature courageous, and needed only the discipline—that they could not receive from their own officers—to turn them into valuable troops. According to the law ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... Great South Bay, and eat fish and clams, and have the sea-breeze," advised Cousin Jane. "The Seamens will board you very reasonably. And Charles looks as if something of the kind wouldn't hurt him. He will have a pretty hard pull in college the first year, and he ought to have some good backbone to ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a half for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthwise, take out the backbone, and put them to soak in vinegar. Then before serving them let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and putting them on a dish pour over them a ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... all by degrees be levelled down. This latter line of conduct would be practicable, and had this beautiful attraction,—that it would save for his own present use that charming balance of ready money which he still possessed. Had Altringham possessed any true backbone of friendship, he might now, he thought, have been triumphant over all ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... only put up a little backbone yourself you'd make it easier for me," I replied, quite hotly. "What are you, anyhow, a jelly-fish or an India-rubber man?" He hadn't time to answer, for just as I spoke an irresistible shove from the crowd pushed me slap up against the man in the front row, and I was appalled to find the ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... him and his aeropile along with it, and for a moment that seemed an age he could not tell what was happening. He heard a thousand throats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edge of the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulder and saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. He had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, and hands clutching at the tilting guide bars. The fenestrations in the further ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... you can instruct a person older than yourself, do you—you-with the brains of a butterfly, the acumen of a bat; the backbone of a jelly-fish. You can tell me something, can you? I was managing governments when you were sitting in your high chair, drumming on a tin plate with a spoon." Her voice boomed like a gun. "You dare to tell me how a ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... only the most persistent bent toward letters had chance of surviving. Joyful as the landing had been, the Colony had no sturdy backbone of practical workers. Their first summer was unutterably forlorn, the beauty and fertility that had seemed to promise to the sea-sad eyes a life of instant ease, bringing with it only a "horrible trail of homesickness, discord, starvation, pestilence and Indian hostility." No common purpose ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... not packed. It is true that the conversation lacked some of the sparkle generally found in the better class of salon. To be absolutely accurate, there was hardly any conversation. The youths of Melbourne were sturdy and honest. They were the backbone of England. England, in her hour of need, could have called upon them with the comfortable certainty that, unless they happened to be otherwise engaged, they would leap ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... usual, groping with our fingers among the rotting fish for the sudden sensation of hardness which proclaimed the presence of the gems, when one of the party, straightening himself up for a moment to take the kinks out of his backbone, let out a sudden yell of: ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... about Antha," replied Katherine. "Now we've got Anthony where we understand him; but Antha is still the spiritless cry baby she was when she came. She hasn't a particle of backbone. I'm getting discouraged about her." She pulled a patch of moss from the rock beside her and tore ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... matter. Oh-Pshaw was certainly humble and unassuming enough, always kind and sweet and obliging, always willing to take any part in anything that was assigned her, but did she have the grit and backbone, the force of character which Nyoda considered necessary qualifications for a Torch Bearer? As ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... was he to the backbone, and clear grit through and through; Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn't do;— The boy was dying, sir, dying as plain as plain could be, Worn out by his ride with Morgan ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... meant a battle each time he was mounted. He was a splendid brute, black and clean, with abundant bone in the head and a brilliant eye—blood all over, that was easy to see. Yet he was a murderer at heart. I have known him to bite the backbone out of a yearling pig that came under his manger, and no other horse on our farm would stand before him a moment when he came on, mouth open and ears laid back. He would fight man, dog, or devil, and fear was not in him, nor any real submission. He ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... intestines, gizzard, heart, and liver should all be removed together. Care must be taken that the gall bladder, which lies under the liver, is not broken; it must be cut away carefully from the liver. The lungs and kidneys, lying in the hollow of the backbone, must be carefully removed. Press the heart to extract the blood. Cut off the outer coat of the gizzard. The gizzard, heart, and liver constitute the giblets to be used in making gravy. Wash the giblets. Place them all, ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... bee in her bonnet. He ought to have kept her at home. I would have. I wouldn't have had any such nonsense in my family! Well, for an obstinate man (and he IS obstinate, you know), the squire, when it comes to his wife, has no more backbone than ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... maybe we'd better fill him up again," said Mother. "Them legs still look 'most too much like knitting-needles to suit me, and I kinder want to feel him to be sure his stomick haven't growed to his backbone. Anyway, you can't never measure a boy's food by his size. Please run and get him a glass of buttermilk and a biscuit, child, while I finish setting in this sleeve. Let me see them britches legs 'fore you put 'em down. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Semennud (i.e., Sebennytus) and lying a little to the south of the thirty-first parallel of latitude. It was here that the reconstitution of the dismembered body of Osiris took place, and it was here that the solemn ceremony of setting up the backbone of Osiris was performed each year. The original Sekhet-Aaru was evidently placed here, and we are therefore right in assuming that the fertile fields of this part of the Delta formed the prototype of the Elysian Fields of the Egyptian. ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... above all. Those people have no backbone. What happens to them is inevitable. So ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... trying to fool myself into imagining I was the servant of the people by introducing or speaking for petty little popular measures. I saw clearly that graft was the backbone, the whole skeleton of legislative business, and that its fleshly cover of pretended public service could be seen only by the blind. I saw, also, that no one in the machine of either party had any real power. The state boss of our party, United States Senator Dunkirk, was a creature ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... to persuade the overworked Leech to take a holiday, he added, just to drive the matter home: "If anything happened to you, who are the 'backbone of Punch,' what would become of the paper?" At which Leech smiled, says his biographer, and retorted, "Don't talk such rubbish! Backbone of Punch, indeed! Why, bless your heart, there isn't a fellow at work upon the paper that doesn't think that of himself, and with about as much ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... he saw her outside of it, playing coquettishly, and to her own mind, seriously; playing bewitchingly her shallow role patterned after life, yet without once realizing the counterfeit. The Western country boy, whatever his Cavalier stock, had a Puritanical backbone in common with the whole American race. And without being aware of it, his personal, private bearing toward the light and airy French girl was a sneer, a tolerant, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... satisfied with any of them saucy country lasses. He don't ever mix with them. He'll look high will Master Jeff if the time ever comes that he looks at all. He's a gentleman himself right through to the backbone, and ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... it was only in regard of her crassin' in an' whippin' the word out o' my mouth, that I wanted to take a rise out of her. Oh, bedad, sir, no; the crathur's thruth to the backbone, an' ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... you're the same careless fellow still," cried Mrs Gilmour, as soon as she was able to get out a word. "As me poor dear Ted used to say, you're an Irishman to the backbone. Sure you never open your mouth but you put your ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lived at the stomach's expense; and when the quartermaster—that's the stomach—telegraphs up that he's fairly cleaned out, not a half-ration left, says our little commander, cool and calm, 'Serve out grit and backbone to the troops, and send out the senses on a scout.' And, men, if you've got the grit, and keep on the sharp look-out, you are likely to get on; but shut down on grumbling,—that's a luxury for fellows that get three meals a day; for while you are busy about that, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Genoese. In the reign of Henry IV. the House of Vipont reaped the benefit of its past forbearance and modesty. Now, for the first time, the Viponts appear as belted knights; they have armorial bearings; they are Lancasterian to the backbone; they are exceedingly indignant against heretics; they burn the Lollards; they have places in the household of Queen Joan, who was called a witch,—but a witch is a very good friend when she wields a sceptre instead of a broomstick. And in proof ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... modiste's gray-and-raspberry salon, being draped and pinned and fitted. She, whose dynamic force once charged the entire office and factory with energy and efficiency, now distributed a tithe of that priceless vigor here, a tithe there, a tithe everywhere, and thus broke the very backbone of its power. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... Twelve years ago there was a good bit of talk about her ladyship's father being one of them with the fullest pockets. She came here with plenty, but Sir Nigel got hold of it for his games, and they're the games that cost money. Her ladyship wasn't born with a backbone, poor thing, but this new one was, and her ladyship's father is her father, and you mark my words, there's money coming into Stornham, though it's not going to be played the fool with. Lord, yes! this new one has a backbone and good strong wrists and a good strong head, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... nook behind the metal refuse-can, when the strange cat ventured to ascend the steps of the porch, his appearance was so unwarlike that the cat felt encouraged to extend its field of reconnaissance for the cook had been careless, and the backbone of a three-pound whitefish lay at the foot ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... me: 'Don't worry. That gal has got a backbone. She ain't no rye straw. She's a-goin' to ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... is something so innocent, so guileless, so complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless "hog-wash," that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow. There is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for its proofs are written all over its face. An ingenious scribbler might imitate it after a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not counterfeit it. It is noticeable that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but his violin. Aunt Caroline says the engagement was a mystery to everyone. She says that probably Miss Martin just offered to take him in hand and look after him (she used to be very capable) and he hadn't backbone enough to say she couldn't. They say that the only time anyone ever saw a gleam in his face was the day he went away to the war. Then he was killed. And now she won't get well because she can't ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... of May, 1769, Finley, Boone, and three others struck boldly into the broad backbone of mountain-land which lay between their old home and the new land of promise. They set out on their dangerous journey amid the tears of their families, who deemed that destruction awaited them, and vainly besought them to abandon the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... business experience, resorting to all sorts of strategy; then, when I qualify, I can afford to snap my fingers in the face of this profligate. You've no idea how much the honor of business young ladies is menaced, Mrs. Roberts. I'm not by any means the only one. The trouble is, very few have the backbone to resist these propositions, which invariably come in one form or another to the working girls attractive of face or form, or of both. They are, with scarcely an exception, poor; from infancy they have been well dressed, too well ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... than at that moment. He advanced slowly. A bush caught him by the coat and held him an instant. He felt as if he had been seized in a man's grasp. He reached the first wagon, and it seemed to him, broken and rifled, an emblem of desolation. As he passed it a strange, low, whining cry made his backbone turn to ice. But he recovered and forced an uneasy little laugh at himself. It was only a wolf, the mean coyote of ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... insult; modesty is a mean between impudence and shamefacedness. People are often mistaken and regard one of the extremes as a virtue. Thus the reckless and the foolhardy is often praised as the brave; the man of no backbone is called gentle; the indolent is mistaken for the contented; the insensible for the temperate, the extravagant for the generous. This is an error. The mean ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... is not so much in their nutritive value as in their texture and flavor. All muscle consists of tiny fibers which are tender in young animals and in those parts of older animals in which there has been little muscular strain. Under the backbone in the hind quarter is the place from which the tenderest meat comes. This is usually called the tenderloin. Sometimes in beef and also in pork it is taken out whole and sometimes it is left to be cut up with the rest of the loin. In old animals, and in those ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... to me! Pah! it makes me sick to think of it. I have one merit, Amelius, I don't cant. It's my duty to take care of my sister's child; and I do my duty willingly. Regina's a good sort of creature—I don't dispute it. But she's like all those tall darkish women: there's no backbone in her, no dash; a kind, feeble, goody-goody, sugarish disposition; and a deal of quiet obstinacy at the bottom of it, I can tell you. Oh yes, I do her justice; I don't deny that she's devoted to me, as you say. But I am making a clean breast of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... and getting warm again in the sun. It was precious cold down there in the night, and I got wet right through to my backbone. I'm only just beginning to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... of the animal world are the vertebrata, mollusca, articulata, and radiata. The vertebrata are those animals which (as man and other sucklers, birds and fishes) have a backbone and a skull with lateral appendages, within which the viscera are excluded, and to which the muscles are attached. The mollusca or soft animals have no bony skeleton; the muscles are attached to the skin, which often include stony plates called ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... of the left flank is very characteristic, as in well marked cases the flank at its upper part rises above the level of the backbone and when struck with the tips of the fingers emits a drum-like sound. The animal has an anxious expression, moves uneasily and is evidently distressed. If relief is not obtained in time the sheep breathes with difficulty, reels ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... and I'll pitch you out into the indigenous delights," threatened Peter. "Come on, Gilbert, let's block out the backbone of the ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... enemies, and like the Unjust Steward to have a claim to a place in their houses, if they were successful, than to work for its security. It was with great difficulty that Sir A. Milner as late as September 18 obtained his consent to the dispatch of a few regulars to Kimberley to form the backbone of a defensive force. He seems to have retained almost to the end, in spite of all indications to the contrary, the belief that the war would be averted or at least that the Orange Free State would not join in it. Yet in this he erred in good company. Mr. Balfour said that if on September 28 ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... veritas,' thought Soames, but he only nodded, and passed on up Hamilton Place. There was but a trickle of roysterers in Park Lane, not very noisy. And looking up at the houses he thought: 'After all, we're the backbone of the country. They won't upset us easily. Possession's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... example, we learn through the researches of a multitude of workers that in the early day it was a mere archipelago. Its chief island—the backbone of the future continent—was a great V-shaped area surrounding what is now Hudson Bay, an area built tip, perhaps, through denudation of a yet more ancient polar continent, whose existence is only conjectured. To the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... younger sons of rich people above the necessity of military service. Thus the army loses an element of refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when the time comes, if ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... backbone of Poland, and, from its source in the Carpathians to its mouth at Dantzic, runs the whole length of that which for three hundred years was the leading power of eastern Europe. At Cracow—the tomb of many kings—it passes half round the citadel, a shallow, sluggish river; and ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... covered by Long Island. The British command decided on the reduction of Long Island as a preliminary to an assault upon the city. The island is long and narrow, and a ridge of high ground runs down it like a backbone. This ridge Washington's army sought to hold against the attack of the British forces. It was the first real battle of the war, and it resulted in a defeat so overwhelming that it might well have decided the fate of America had not Washington, as soon as he saw how the day ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... is true that a solitary chain, the Urals, runs north and south, but it stands by itself, and is nothing more than what the word Ural signifies, a belt or girdle separating the European from his Asiatic brother. These mountains do not form the backbone of a country, nor do they serve as a watershed, like our Rocky Mountains or the Andes of South America. Some of their peaks rise to a height of 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, but the chain, 1531 miles long, seems destined only to keep the ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... we halted on a platform which stretched to the base of the Moench, whose ridge or backbone rose before our eyes. Here a small grotto had been excavated in the ice in which I was bidden to rest myself, thoroughly well wrapped up. We were literally on the brink of a complete collapse, respiration failed us, and for some minutes I expectorated blood. However, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... The higher mountain regions were known only to a sprinkling of guide-led climbers and the frequenters of a few gaunt hotels, and the vast rainless belts of land that lay across the continental masses, from Gobi to Sahara and along the backbone of America, with their perfect air, their daily baths of blazing sunshine, their nights of cool serenity and glowing stars, and their reservoirs of deep-lying water, were as yet only desolations of fear and death to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... yourself up, that's all," says Reginald, "especially now cricket's beginning. We ought to turn out a good eleven with four old Wilderhams to give it a backbone, eh?" ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... place, because, unfortunately for all concerned, he had been enabled to get credit; but there is an end to that sort of thing, and now, with his credit gone after his money, he felt his particular world slipping from him. He felt a change in himself, a certain on-creeping paralysis of his social backbone. When practicable he avoided certain of his old friends, for he could see too plainly written on their faces the fear that he was about to request a trifling loan, though already his sense of honor, when he considered his prospects, had forced him to cease asking ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... when I heard him. I went to him, but he was practically gone. Will say this for him though, he was a Hun all right, and he died cussing us all, Johnny Bull, Uncle Sam, as 'Schwein, schwein!' Oh yes, be was true German to the backbone. Between you and me I'm right glad that it fell to us to do him up, and that we will all know he got the reward due his abominable treachery." And ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... to the man in question would be of the vaguest interest to the man in the stalls or the girls eating buns in the gallery, unless they were connected by that thread of—what shall we call it—that is the backbone of ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... man had loved her through it all,—this priceless, peerless man,—this man who was as true to the backbone as that other man had shown himself to be false; who was as sound as the other man had proved himself to be rotten. A smile came across her face as she sat looking at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose love was ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... has gone on board again," he said in his slow, solemn way, "gone on board to get me some English papers. A most estimable and kind gentleman, Mr. Blount, an aristocrat to the backbone, but a gentleman, Mr. Blount, a gentleman above all. His visit has given me the ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... whaler answered. "The Eskimo would have been wiped off the face of the earth but for that one man's work. He started the reindeer idea, he brought in a few himself, he got the Government interested an' now reindeer are the backbone of northern Alaska. Our steam whalers had driven the whales an' the walrus an' the seal so far north that the Eskimo couldn't reach them. They were slowly starvin' to death by hundreds when Uncle Sam stepped in. And your captain commandant, that's ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... brethren did, to one ecclesiastical group, and that the dominant one, the English Unitarians included Dissenters of different tendencies and traditions, with a few recruits from the State Church. The 'Presbyterian' congregations, as they were not very strictly called, were the backbone of the 'body'; many of these, however, were very weak, and in the course of a few decades some were destined to follow those which had died out in the eighteenth century. Converts not infrequently lent new force in the pulpit, but at the risk of substituting an eager missionary ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... triumphal procession, such as few of Caesar's generals had ever known. Arrived at the predestined table, he stood one side while menials drew out the chairs. Then he marched tremendously back to the main door, his chin high, his expression haughty, his backbone rigid. This head waiter was the feature of the Bella Union Hotel, just as the glass columns were the feature of the Empire, or the clockwork mechanism of the ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... country. View it in that light. If you are not going to be called upon to undergo the cruel hardships and physical strain of some campaigns, your son will be, and you can be of great help to him by being fit yourself. You and your sons will form the backbone of America's strength in her ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... gate, because he looked better on a horse than off, and he was not wanting in that vain streak which any man with a backbone and marrow in him possesses. He wanted to appear at his best when the boss of that high-class outfit laid her eyes on him for the first time; and if he had hopes that she might succumb to his charms, they were no more extravagant than most ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... high thinking and noble living! The more intelligent you become, the better read, the greater the interest you take in community and public affairs, the more effectively you become what in reality and jointly you are—the backbone of this and of every nation. Teacher, poet, dramatist, carpenter, ironworker, clerk, college head, Mayor, Governor, President, Ruler—the effectiveness of your work and the satisfaction in your work will be determined by ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... losses—devises clothes, wigs, artificial teeth, paddings, shoes—what civilised being could use his bare feet for his ordinary locomotion? Imagine him on a furze-sprinkled golf links. Then stays, an efficient substitute for the effete feminine backbone. So the thing goes on. Long ago his superficies became artificial, and now the human being shrinks like a burning cigar, and the figure he has abandoned remains distended with artificial ashes, dead dry protections against the exposures he so unaccountably ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... he ate over half of the liver; after which he started to dress the antelope. He did this with uncommon quickness and skill, so that soon the hide was flayed and the haunches were separated from the backbone. Then Stas, somewhat surprised that Saba was not present at this work, whistled for him to come to a bounteous feast of the ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white, dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almost brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf invariably shuts its eyes in ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... another; and to enable it to do this, it has those strong contractile bundles of muscles attached to the bones of its limbs, which are put in motion by means of a sort of telegraphic apparatus formed by the brain and the great spinal cord running through the spine or backbone; and to this spinal cord are attached a number of fibres termed nerves, which proceed to all parts of the structure. By means of these the eyes, nose, tongue, and skin—all the organs of perception—transmit impressions or sensations to the brain, which acts as a sort of great central telegraph-office, ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... simple sentence stands the complex sentence. The basis of it is two or more simple sentences, which are so united that one member is the main one,—the backbone,—the other members subordinate to it, or dependent on it; as ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... little man was transformed. In the quiet, confident horseman that rode down the gorge a few minutes later it would have been difficult to recognise the shy, timid bushman. The saddle had given him backbone, and it soon appeared he was right-hand man, and, at times, even organiser in the difficult task of crossing horses ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... easier to carve this joint by cutting across the ribs, parallel with the backbone, but that is cutting with the grain; and meat, especially beef, seems more tender if cut ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... suppose, to speak as the men of his family spoke—less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think Adams said bought and caught? He said ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... car runs mostly along the backbone of the queer island on which this city stands. So the innumerable parallel streets that cross it curve down and away; and at this time street after street to the west reveals, and seems to drop into, a mysterious ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... their master to luxurious Sardis, the remnant of the fleet fled back across the AEgean. But the brain and right arm of the Persians, Mardonius the Valiant, remained in Hellas. With him were still the Median infantry, the Tartar horse-archers, the matchless Persian lancers,—the backbone of the undefeated army. Hellas was ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of ten to one, Britain will have to employ against us in 1940 no less than three million men! And when that time comes, the children of to-day will have the recollection of the concentration camps and of a few other little trifles to strengthen their backbone. ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... Colonel Ian Hamilton, the brigadier in command on the ridge, also wrote of them, "It will be made quite clear in my despatch that the Imperial Light Horse were second to none. No one realizes more clearly than I do that they were the backbone of the defence during that long day's fighting."[30] In other parts of the field also the British loss of officers at this moment ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... which was too sluggish from overeating to have noticed that there was any particular excitement in the village. Gripping the reptile in inexorable talons just behind its head, the great bird bit its backbone through, carried it to the nearest hillock, and proceeded to tear it to pieces. Calmly he made his meal, glancing around with eyes glassy hard and fiercely arrogant, while from every burrow in the neighborhood round, innocent heads peered forth, barking ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and see if any of the words you know are nominatives or accusatives. This will often give you what may be called the backbone of the sentence; that ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... pickerel or haddock, sprinkle with salt, stuff and sew with No. 8 cotton thread. Cut four or five diagonal gashes on each side of backbone and lay in strips of fat salt pork. Have the gashes on one side come between gashes on the other. The fish may be skewered in the shape of the letter S, or placed in an upright position on a well-greased fish sheet, laid in the bottom of a dripping-pan. ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... arms. Having heard this statement, Gen. Butler, viewing the matter from a purely military stand-point, exclaimed: "These men are contraband of war; set them at work." Here was a solution of the entire problem; here was a blow delivered at the backbone of the Rebellion. He claimed no right to act as a politician, but acting as a loyal-hearted, clear-headed soldier, he coined a word and hurled a shaft at the enemy that struck him in a part as vulnerable as the heel of Achilles. In his letter to the Lieut.-Gen. of the Army, Winfield Scott, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of roughly blocked and crevassed stone, the gorge fell away a dizzy thousand feet. Out of the pines struggled the half-overgrown path where once a road had led from the castle. This way the earlier Lords of Galavia had come to look across the backbone of the peninsula, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... famous Passage of Arms at Haflinghem was held in my honour, the challengers were four, the assailants so many as twelve. It lasted three days, and cost the lives of two adventurous knights, the fracture of one backbone, one collarbone, three legs, and two arms, besides flesh wounds and bruises beyond the heralds' counting, and thus have the ladies of our House ever been honoured. Ah! had you but half the heart of your noble ancestry, you would find means at ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... pieces that way, Bascomb!" entreated Rupert. "You've got to keep a stiff backbone. Come, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish |
