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More "Behindhand" Quotes from Famous Books



... obliged the collectors to wring out the hard-earned copper pieces one or two at a time. The tardy were vexed with fines and distraints. Furniture, doors, the very rafters and floors were sold for unpaid taxes. In the time of Louis XV., if a whole village fell too much behindhand, its four principal inhabitants might be seized and carried off to jail. This corporal joint-liability was ended by a law passed under the ministry of Turgot, and apparently not repealed on his fall.[Footnote: Horn, 238; Vauban; Bailly, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... she found it impossible to get together more than 110 reals. She gave as an excuse that she had her railways to finish. The truth is that science is not looked upon very favourably in that country; it is still a little behindhand. And then certain Spaniards, and not the most ignorant either, had no clear conception of the size of the projectile compared with that of the moon; they feared it might disturb the satellite from her orbit, and make her fall on to the surface of the terrestrial globe. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... your saws are behindhand with their contributions, and, being deaf to remonstrance, I am obliged to apply to you, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... anxious about to-morrow, Mary," he said, as the little family sat together the night before in the plain sitting-room. "I have never been so much behindhand before with ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... spent the forenoon in initiating him into the mysteries of his duty. In the afternoon I commenced posting, for Mr. Whippleton had been so busy with his boat, and with his other out-door occupations, that the books were somewhat behindhand. While I was thus engaged, I obeyed the instructions of the junior partner, and examined carefully into the system by which the accounts were kept. I began early in the morning and worked till late ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... excursionists and to care for them during their stay. The circular prepared for the members gives every information as to routes, distances, fares, &c., so that they may make all their arrangements before leaving England. The telegraph companies, not to be behindhand, undertake to transmit messages during the meeting for members from Montreal to all parts of Canada and the United ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... the bottom of Paul's pocket, lay a bill of fifty dollars for publishing expenses. What was to be done? The bill must be paid. It would never do to let the March Hare run behindhand. To begin to run into debt was ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... day I worked for myself, throughout the night for you, and nothing is behindhand. Each day adds to our internal strength, that gives us consideration abroad, and soon we shall hold our own as one of the four great European powers, mightier than in the days when the sun never set upon Austrian realms. The empire ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... we haven't. You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... We are still behindhand in one type of contemplation: to understand how the greatest productions of the intellect have a dreadful and evil background . the sceptical type of contemplation. Greek antiquity is now investigated as the most beautiful example ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... unless she may have that leisure given her, he will not have her take any place; for which we are both troubled, but there is no help for it, and believing it to be a good providence of God to prevent my running behindhand in the world, I am somewhat contented therewith, and shall make my wife so, who, poor wretch, I know will consider of things, though in good earnest the privacy of her life must needs be irksome to her. So I made Gosnell and we sit up looking over the book of Dances till 12 at night, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... between the class of men who go out and do such work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South, that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A said he wasn't going to hand over his work to be mucked up by such and such a body at home; B ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... a Winter—we wonder—are we to have in the way of wind and weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire, combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day garb—we mean his ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... we write, that during the week preceding July 4th, seventy thousand of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in population. By whom, then? By Northern men ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... that she makes a very paltry and small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to be nursery-maid ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... tunes, not quite so low and sweet as the voice of Cordelia. Those energetic civilians never seem at rest or at ease; they snatch their frequent drinks, upstanding and covered, as if they were just a minute behindhand for some appointment, and bolt their food, as if dinner ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... years ahead of England in agricultural science, and that he could cultivate English soil to far better advantage than English farmers do, and at vastly less expense. Their tendency to cling to old ideas, which retards them in everything else, keeps them behindhand in this matter too. Really, I do not know any other place in England where a man can be made so sensible that he lives in a progressive world as here in ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fact, even the most seditionary organs confessed that the tenants gained little and lost much by the change from the old type of landlord to the new, for the latter, being practical men, had no sympathy for the man who was permanently behindhand with his rent. And no one can say that this habitual arrear was a healthy stimulus to the moral wellbeing of the tenant himself, though he felt aggrieved ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey

... reason of the three friends being thus at fault in their investigations was simply this: they were exactly twenty-four hours behindhand in their attempt to unravel the mystery. The conclusion they had come to with regard to the meaning of the note was correct: a tacit understanding had existed for some time among the inner circle of the Thurstonian party that this should be the signal for a gathering ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... moment's pause, when the Typees, with wild shrieks, flung themselves into the covert, spear in hand; nor was Toby behindhand. Coming so near getting his skull broken by the stones, and animated by an old grudge he bore the Happars, he was among the first to dash at them. As he broke his way through the underbush, trying, as he did so, to wrest a spear from a young chief, the shouts of battle ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... have never been behindhand in tributes to the Queen. Every sculptor and painter to whom she has sat, has had the same story as Gibson and Leslie to tell of her kindness, taste and intelligence. Miss Fox, writing of Landseer, says, "He deeply admires the Queen's ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... his desk overlooking the scholars, or stalked about the school-room with a certain awful birch rod in his hand. Now came a rap over the shoulders of a boy whom Mr. Toil had caught at play; now he punished a whole class who were behindhand with their lessons; and, in short, unless a lad chose to attend quietly and constantly to his book, he had no chance of enjoying a quiet moment in ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... other papers hideous. At length the concierge gave in; he would arrange the matter, and, if necessary, would make out there was a piece more used than was really the case. So, on her way home, Gervaise purchased some tarts for Pauline. She did not like being behindhand—one always gained by ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears.' It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... precedence of my chimney over me, some even think that I have got into a sad rearward way altogether; in short, from standing behind my old-fashioned chimney so much, I have got to be quite behind the age too, as well as running behindhand in everything else. But to tell the truth, I never was a very forward old fellow, nor what my farming neighbors call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors about my behindhandedness are so far correct, that I have an odd sauntering way with me sometimes of going about with my hands behind my ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... be two boys in a school, both good boys; one, may be going on well in his classes, while the other, from the concurrence of some accidental train of circumstances, may be behindhand in his work, or wrongly classed, or so situated in other respects that his school duties perplex and harass him day by day. Now how different will be the feelings of these two boys in respect to coming to ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... it could have done no good to anyone.—I have been thinking of paying you a visit this fall, but I now think it extremely doubtful whether I shall be able to. Not being able to even attend to my hands, much less work myself, I am getting behindhand, so that I shall have to stay here and attend to my business. Cannot some of you come and pay us a visit? Jennie has not answered Julia's letter yet. Did she receive it? I was coming to the city ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant

... not thinking of what they studied. They could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print and fine, and run through the interminable mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. This boy of large mind and brain, always behindhand, always incapable, utterly discouraged, no amount of study could place on an equality with his former inferiors. His health failed, and he dropped from school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to himself, and lost to an educated life, by just such a failure. The collegiate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... interest—that makes one pound one. I may reckon my year's earnin' at just double that money, and that leaves me twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An' there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... one or two o'clock in the morning. And I was at the theatre all day yesterday. Unless I had come to London, I do not think there would have been much hope of the version being more than just tolerated, even that doubtful. All the actors bad, all the business frightfully behindhand. The very words of the book confused in the copying into the densest and most insufferable nonsense. I must exempt, however, from the general slackness both the Keeleys. I hope they will be very good. I have never seen anything of its kind better than the manner in which they played the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... cider, accompanied us with one of his company to Mr. Hosier's, who was a good generous-hearted man, better than any Englishman we had met with in this country. He had formerly had much business with Mr. Moll, but their affairs in England running behindhand a little, they both came and settled down here; and, therefore, Mr. Moll and he had a great regard for each other. He showed us very particular attention, although we were strangers. Something was immediately set before Mr. Commegys and ourselves ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... and helped Ruth shell the pease for dinner; when the washing and churning were out of the way long before noon, and Elizabeth was folding down the clothes for ironing while Sarah and her mother prepared the dinner and sent it out to the men—the child couldn't see that things were at all behindhand. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul, "I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Was there then, something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... traveled almost incessantly during the last year, we could not help being a bit behindhand in the questions of modern science, and that we were not able to ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... Pa's generosity. She would not be behindhand. Pa had to accept a red tie, a pair of gloves, a match-box, as a present; Ma, an embroidered handkerchief, a lucky charm. Lily had the satisfaction of paying with ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... 14th, 15th, and 16th of May, the air became suddenly cold, with sharp winds from the north-west, and heavy storms of snow that nipped the young buds, and destroyed many of the early-sown vegetable seeds; fortunately for us we were behindhand with ours, which was very well, as ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... his inflammable successor, who, during his father's lifetime, took open part with some of the vassals of France in a temporary struggle against the throne. Louis, who had been worsted in a combat where both he and Charles bore a part, was not behindhand in his hatred. But inasmuch as one was haughty, audacious, and intemperate, the other was cunning, cool, and treacherous. Charles was the proudest, most daring, and most unmanageable prince that ever made ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... testified to the remarkable ability and zeal he had found in his pupil, and likewise to the spirit of industry which had prevented the desultory life of travelling and ill-health from having made him nearly so much behindhand as might have been expected. If he only had health to work steadily for the next two years, he would be quite as well prepared to matriculate at the university as all but the very foremost scholars from the public schools. Mr. Morgan ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... who is a good deal behindhand in all matters connected with the turf, and who has set her face into a determined refusal when she hears the word "racing," rather relaxes at the mention of "gentlemen riders," and replies gravely, "John, I want ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... passage. Did not know half the facts. Robert Lee.—Believes the disease is sometimes communicable by contagion. Tonnelle, Baudelocque. Both cited by me. Jacquemier.—Published three years after my Essay. Kiwisch. "Behindhand in knowledge of Puerperal Fever." [B. & F. Med. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... hour. Then an involved struggle with a patient who had to be lifted from a bath-chair into bed. (I had never lifted a human being before.) Then a second bout of washing-up with Mrs. Mappin. Then a nominal half-an-hour's respite for my own tea—actually ten minutes, for I was behindhand. Then, all too soon, more waitering at the ceremony of Dinner: this time with the complication that some of my patients were allowed wine, beer, or spirits, and some were not. "Burgundy, Sir?" "Whiskey-and-soda, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... abroad, ran in debt, and neglected his business; upon which, all business left him; and, finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbadoes, taking the printing-house with him. There this apprentice employ'd his former master as a journeyman; they quarrel'd often; Harry went continually behindhand, and at length was forc'd to sell his types and return to his country work in Pensilvania. The person that bought them employ'd Keimer to use them, but in a ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... we raced to the eastward. An intended call at Gough Island had to be abandoned; the sea was running too high for us to venture to approach the narrow little harbour. The month of October had put us a good deal behindhand, but now we were making up the distance we had lost. We had reckoned on being south of the Cape of Good Hope within two months after leaving Madeira, and this turned out correct. The day we passed the meridian of the Cape we had the first regular gale; the seas ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... and you will find that I have not been behindhand. I have already seen the commandant, and our casting-shops are almost ready to begin casting shells. I am not letting the grass grow under my feet, I can assure you, and in a week or two we shall ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill

... apply to his zeal in sports. There was not in the whole school a more diligent student than George: there was for him "a time to work and a time to play," and he never allowed one to trespass upon the other. He would rather go without a game at cricket for a fortnight than be behindhand in one of his lessons. The boys would laugh at him for this, but George could bear to be laughed at on such points, because he knew he was in the right. "I came to school to learn," he would say, "and I don't see any fun in making my parents pay heavy fees for me every year ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder

... being minded to be private, sent for his boon-companions, with whom he was most familiar, and charged the chamberlain that he suffer none of the creatures of Almighty Allah to enter, save a man of his cup-mates, by name Abd al-Malik bin Salih, who was behindhand with them. Then they donned brightly-dyed dresses.[FN259] for it was their wont, as often as they sat in the wine-seance, to endue raiment of red and yellow and green silk, and they sat down to drink, and the cups went round the lutes thrilled ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... some non-commissioned officers, a little better off than he was.... Without being lavish in their expenditure, these young fellows did not reckon up their every penny, and, not wishing to be behindhand, Vinson had sent to his mother for money again and again, and she ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... all the respect imaginable, and never suffered her to do the least part of my work. It was very inconvenient to both of us only to know each other's meaning by signs; but I could not be otherwise than pleased to see that she endeavoured all in her power to learn to talk like me. Indeed I was not behindhand with her in that respect, striving all I could to imitate her. What I all the while wondered at was, she never showed the least disquiet at her confinement; for I kept my door shut at first, through fear of losing her, thinking she would have taken an opportunity to run away from ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... the evening, Mr. Thorpe often thought it advisable to harangue him seriously, by way of not letting the reformed rake relapse for want of a little encouraging admonition of the moral sort. Nor was Mr. Yollop at all behindhand in taking similar precautions to secure the new convert permanently, after having once caught him. Every word these two gentlemen spoke only served to harden the lad afresh, and to deaden the reproving ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... many persons to work on the making of "steam coaches" to travel on the highways. Captain Ogle coming here on one of his own inventing September 8th, 1832, direct from Oxford, having travelled at from ten to fourteen miles per hour. Our local geniuses were not behindhand, and Messrs. Heaton Bros., and the well-known Dr. Church brought out machines for the purpose. Both parties started joint-stock companies to carry out their inventions, and in that respect both ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the end of the year, and I am behindhand now, but I keep an exact account, and shall ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... simply. 'She is all I have in the world except Kitty, and I am thinking what I can do for her from morning to night; that is the best and the worst of my work, one need never stop thinking for it. Sometimes, when I am tired, or things have gone wrong with my customers, or I am a bit behindhand with the rent, I wish I could talk it over with her; it would ease me somehow; but I never do give way to the feeling, for it would only ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... behindhand in some ways in Berlin," I said, for I knew the artist liked an argument. "In London you can shop all through the night by telephone. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... specially behindhand with his Greek. His report tells me that. If you'll do a little Greek grammar and construing with him in the mornings now and them, I shall be tremendously grateful. You see, owing to my miserable domestic circumstances, Jimmy is ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... the company with parting admonition on their probable future. Then, glad enough to be thus easily rid of them, I lurched heavily forward into the narrow passageway. Some coarse joke launched at my expense attracted the attention of those behindhand speeded me onward. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... fit in with the views of certain foreign biographers. Accordingly, they have given the child's birthplace as in, among other cities, Madrid, Lucerne, Constantinople, and Calcutta; and one of them has even been sufficiently daring to make her a daughter of Lord Byron. Larousse, too, not to be behindhand, says that she was "born in Seville, of a Spanish father"; and, alternatively, "in Scotland, of an English father." Both accounts, however, are emphatic that her mother was "a young Creole of astonishing loveliness, who had married two officers, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... long behindhand in adding to his ever-growing list of honours. He had the "Grand Officier" of the coveted "Legion" in 1885 after bringing safely to a conclusion the French Treaty of that year. Undoubtedly this was one of the most picturesque and interesting incidents with which he was ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... officers, and passengers crowded round to inquire the news. Bramble, according to pilot custom, had brought off one or two late Plymouth papers (one of which, I recollect, gave the account of the cutting out of the Hermione by Captain Hamilton); but the people on board were eight months behindhand at least as regarded what had passed. They had not even heard of Sir Sydney Smith's defence of Acre against Bonaparte, or anything else which had subsequently occurred; so that as soon as Bramble had taken charge, and put the ship's head the right course ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... he had got his rise at Michaelmas. But even so they were behindhand with their bills. That, of course, would not have happened if he hadn't had to buy a new suit that winter. Ranny had found out that his bicycle, though it diminished his traveling expenses and kept him fit, was simply "ruination" to ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... his morning expeditions were no longer made alone. Harry Maylie, after the very first morning when he met Oliver coming laden home, was seized with such a passion for flowers, and displayed such a taste in their arrangement, as left his young companion far behind. If Oliver were behindhand in these respects, he knew where the best were to be found; and morning after morning they scoured the country together, and brought home the fairest that blossomed. The window of the young lady's chamber was opened ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... band, according to Samuel Pepys, appear to have been somewhat irregular. In the Diary, December 19, 1666, we read: "Talked of the King's family with Mr. Kingston, the organist. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp, having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the alms of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... his arm, not willing to be behindhand, quoted two verses of Schiller, most of it remaining in his flowing beard. Then the ladies exclaimed, and for a ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet

... off to the stable, and saddled the pony and the donkey, and led them out to the play-ground, where Napoleon treated them in turn to a very fine dance on his hind legs, and Old Pudding-head, not to be behindhand in politeness, gave all the little boys a somerset over his nose. They had a first-rate frolic, and did not think once of ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... along now and pack your trunk. And take my advice and study hard. You'll be behindhand in your work, so Mr. Sylvester tells me, but you're smart, and you can catch up. Make us proud of you; that's what ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... fashion to an excess; but never if he stops short of it. The first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an affectation of singularity or superiority. At your age, one is allowed to 'outrer' fashion, dress, vivacity, gallantry, etc., but by no means to be behindhand in any one of them. And one may apply to youth in this case, 'Si non errasset, fecerat ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... forward. 'Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.' This is the language he addresses to his niece; nor is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and fluttering as her heart. It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow.' Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is represented as a grave, sober, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... his opponent with exercising undue pressure on the electors by means of cajolery, threats, lavish hospitality (which was dispensed with the aid of brother-Augustinians), bribery, and attempted personal violence.[204] Luis de Leon was not behindhand: he sought to have Zumel disqualified on technical grounds, and further accused his opponent of breaking the law governing elections. In the heat of conflict, the very best of men seem able to persuade themselves that the most extravagant assertions are true. ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... was not much behindhand with the count in the article of politeness, for he also returned a flag with his compliments, and requested to be permitted four and twenty hours to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... Cousin Giles said it put him in mind of being behind the scenes of a theatre,—carpenters, painters, and gilders were everywhere to be seen; their saws and axes, their trowels and brushes seemed to have no rest; nor could they afford it, for they were evidently much behindhand with their preparations. Such furbishing, and painting, and washing, Moscow never before enjoyed. The whole circuit of the walls of the Kremlin, and its numerous towers, as well as the buildings in the interior, ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... From 1903 to 1911, under Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Dominion guaranteed bonds of the Canadian Northern system to the extent of fifty-six millions; from 1912 to 1914, under Sir Robert Borden, it endorsed the Canadian Northern's notes for forty-nine millions more. Nor were the provinces behindhand. Mainly in the seven years from 1908, the five westernmost provinces pledged their credit on behalf of the same system to the astounding amount of over one hundred and thirty millions, British Columbia leading; Nova Scotia made a loan of another five millions. Thus endorsed, ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... before leaving the Scotch capital. Indeed the aimless prolongation of his stay at Oxford, which brought him neither friends, money, nor professional experience of any kind, threw him considerably behindhand all his life; and this delay, much more than Tory persecution or Whig indifference, was the cause of the comparative slowness with which he made his way. His time at Edinburgh was, however, usefully spent even before that invention of the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... Higgins," he said; "Higgins of Edge Farm. He has been very unfortunate. He was ill himself last autumn, and his children had scarlet fever. I can't say that he is a very good manager, but he has had ill-luck, and of course he is behindhand in many ways. He is in trouble about his rent now. Newick tells him if he doesn't pay it, he must leave the place; and of course that would be a very serious matter. His wife is ill, and he came to me yesterday to beg me to see about it, and ask you for time. He thinks ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... amusing. Then is the time for gentlemen to shoot; the braconnier despises it. From the middle of April to that of May is the important epoch at which the generality of animals marry, and the woodcocks are not behindhand in this respect; they leave their well-concealed retreats, become humanized, solicit the attentions of their feathered ladies, and fly with gay inspirations amongst the neighbouring bushes. But though ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority: it is certain that if one class of English society can be justly accused of an over-great veneration for rank, the class which is rank itself is not behindhand in doing homage to the political stars of the day. In favor of this peculiarity of English people it may fairly be said that they love to associate with persons of rank and power from a disinterested love ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... not behindhand with some moral reflections on this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such weight as to render it doubtful—not whether the deceased was of the age suggested, but whether she had not almost reached the patriarchal term of a hundred. When they had settled this ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... mother look ten years younger. My father also, and my two brothers, who were all fishermen, had now come to regard me as the flower of the flock. Yet they had not scrupled to knock me about, with little ceremony, in the days of my boyhood; nor do I think they would have been behindhand in finding fault with me for my folly, had I returned from my second voyage as poor and needy as from the first. But such is life, and a man must take what comes, and make the best of it and not the worst; so I accepted my new role as the patron saint of my family with ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... me, they must, in the first instance at any rate, have been of a sufficiently generous character. Ananias had seen what was going on around him, and he had determined that he must not be behindhand in this ministry of love. But—and now we get a little deeper into his character—ambition to stand well with his fellow-members evidently mingled with the pure spirit of charity: though we do not need to suppose that there was as yet any conscious ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... point opposite to that occupied by the Earth when I started and the point of opposition—the entire distance I had to gain as measured along his path—was about 116 millions of miles; so that, trusting to the terrestrial impulse alone, I should be some 30 millions behindhand at the critical moment. The apergic force must make up for this loss of ground, while driving me in a direction, so to speak, at right angles with that of the orbit, or along its radius, straight outward from the Sun, forty odd millions of miles in the same time. If I succeeded ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments,—I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... define. They have lived, they have eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others call it ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... note and whatever silver I have in my pocket," pulling out a great handful as he spoke, and counting up thirty-two and sixpence. "Very good," replied the Yorkshireman when he had finished, "I'm your man;—and not to be behindhand in point of liberality, I've got threepence that I received in change at the cigar divan just now, which I will add to the common stock, so that we shall have six pounds twelve and ninepence between us." "Between us!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, "now that's so like ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... Martha. The boys ought to be having their spring suits this very minute, and Martha was calculating to make them this week; and they'd have to have their first wear of them Sundays for a while before they start on them for school. I never was so behindhand; but what with fitting off Artemas and the spring cleaning being delayed, I didn't seem to know how to manage. Martha is good at making over, and there are two very good coats of Artemas's that she would do the right thing by; ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... Nor were the Japanese behindhand in accepting the challenge. With what appeared to be almost lightning speed, the Japanese admiral, Nozu, changed his formation from column in line abreast to column of divisions steaming in echelon, the starboard division being led to starboard by ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood

... without the necessary number of cattle or mules, and with only their worn-out hoes; the Edisto people who are now being distributed onto the plantations have nothing. With the chance of giving up the control so soon, Government has not supplied all that is necessary and work bids fair to be as behindhand here as it was last year. Where the people have gone to work at all—at this end of the island—they have started with "good encourage," but at other places it has been impossible to get them to start any cotton, though ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... no cause of wonder, that in being so generous to some, he was forced to be unjust to others. He was still behindhand with his poor washerwoman—owed for boarding, clothes, hats, boots, and a dozen other matters—and was, in consequence, a good deal harassed with duns. Still, he was called by some of his old cronies, "a fine, generous fellow." A few were rather colder in their expressions. He had borrowed money ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... have to make up at school for this long holiday," reminded Cousin Clare. "I'm afraid you'll find yourself terribly behindhand when you get back ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... hear more she told us the whole story. They had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them notice to quit. But her husband was a high-spirited ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... Denmark satins a bit behindhand, for they jumped and bounded about, in all directions; and though they were neither so regular, nor so true to the time as the cloth boots, still, as they seemed to do it from the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly confess that we preferred their style of dancing to the other. But the old gentleman ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... far from Salisbury I took notice of a Justice of Peace's Lady [who [4]] was at least ten Years behindhand in her Dress, but at the same time as fine as Hands could make her. She was flounced and furbelowed from Head to Foot; every Ribbon was wrinkled, and every Part of her Garments in Curl, so that she looked like one of those Animals which in the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... to your letter, dear Mr. Bache, by assuring you once more of my very sincere and affec-* *tionate interest. You will never find me wanting or behindhand when it is a question of proving this to you; be very sure ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... at four o'clock. In the morning there was no congregation; partly because of the rough weather, and partly because we had sailed so well that nobody realised how much faster the time was to-day than it had been yesterday, and we were therefore all behindhand. In the afternoon I went on deck for a short time, but found it so cold that I could not remain; for, although the wind was right aft, the gale blew fierce and strong. Tom had a very anxious time of it, literally flying along a strange coast, with on one hand the danger of being driven ashore if ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... next morning for the long hours of delightful study. It was churning day, and there was baking to be done, and the mending was behindhand, and the children needed clothes; besides the numerous 'odd jobs' which Mrs Harding had deferred, but which she was prompt to require done as soon as she had some one besides Martha to call on. Then her meals must be given ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... interested, she talked on and on for quite a long time about it; and all the while Esther was growing more and more vexed, until, when Cousin Charlotte at last sprang up, exclaiming, "My dear children, do you know how long we have been talking? I must hurry away this minute, or I shall be behindhand all day!" the limit of ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... an ugly dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss. Unluckily, my feet became entangled in my dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, and I fell flat on the ground. When I had picked myself up the maid was gone, and I heard her in the distance laughing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... calculation: Four hours there and four hours back, that makes eight hours; it is now two o'clock, he'll be here at ten. No doubt he thought I was angry and sent Kutyfalvi on before. It was very nice of him to show me such respect. Well, I'll not be behindhand in expressing my regret for my hastiness—asking his pardon; and from henceforth we will be good friends and kinsmen, and I shall be able to rest in the Lord with ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... return it befell that King Anguish of Ireland sent to King Mark of Cornwall for the tribute due to Ireland, but which was now seven years behindhand. To whom King Mark sent answer, if he would have it he must send and fight for it, and they would find a ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... Indians were left to keep the day without molestation. And, as has always been found to be the case in such instances, there was no loss, but rather gain. Our Christian Indians, who rested the Sabbath day, were never behindhand. On the long trips into the interior or down to York Factory or Hudson Bay, these Indian canoe brigades used to make better time, have better health, and bring up their boats and cargoes in better shape, than the Catholic Half-breeds or pagan Indians, who ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... very disagreeable. For, though he is the very best fellow in the world, when he is in a rage he is untamable. I cannot think what has put him out, now; for he has shot very well to-day. It is only when he gets behindhand, that he is usually jealous in his shooting; but he has got the ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... find it a most absorbing occupation. That is literally why I have not written to you before. I have been making love ever since the last of May. It takes an immense amount of time, and everything else has got terribly behindhand. I don't mean to say that the experiment itself has gone on very fast; but I am trying to push it forward. I have n't yet had time to test its success; but in this I want your help. You know we great physicists ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... 1912, the Naval Airship section was once more reconstituted and was stationed at Farnborough. The first requirements were airships, and owing to the fact that airship construction was so behindhand in this country, in comparison with the Continent, it was determined that purchases should be made abroad until sufficient experience had been gained by British firms to enable them to compete with any chance of success against ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale

... gold; very likely the workmanship is worth something. So let us settle it that I am to give you fifteen hundred francs—in livres; Cruchot will lend them to me. I haven't got a copper farthing here,—unless Perrotet, who is behindhand with his rent, should pay up. By the bye, ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... heard the world and his wife were stopping at the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (puts money in the plate). I would sooner see that fiddler than any other fiddler in ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... hands. It is time that the good Colonel came forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him a ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... meantime all kinds of things of which Tell had no suspicion had been happening in the town. The fact that there were no newspapers in Switzerland at that time often made him a little behindhand as regarded the latest events. He had to depend, as a rule, on visits from his friends, who would sit in his kitchen and tell him all about everything that had been going on for the last few days. And, of ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse

... course, the creatures are thoroughbred, and may turn out worth a great deal more; still, in these days no one gives a fair price for anything, and three-fifty is not to be sneezed at when your rents are always behindhand and your balance at the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... Yet the Meccan Apostle made, as has been seen, his own household produce two perfections. The blatant popular voice follows with such "dictes" as, "Women are made of nectar and poison"; "Women have long hair and short wits" and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behindhand. Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning (Katha s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear (170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... had settled about the fire for an hour's delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, "It was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying to get hold of just the right person—she says she's fearfully behindhand—" ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... of long duration; and if it was I that killed their grandmother, they were not themselves behindhand in what remained to be performed. The skin being taken off, we found the fat in several places six inches deep. This, being divided into two parts, loaded two persons; and the flesh parts were as much as four persons could carry. In all, the carcass ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... afraid we should be too late," was Mrs. Benson's response to the smiling greeting of the hostess, with a most friendly look towards the rest of the company. "Mr. Benson is always behindhand in getting dressed for a party, and he said he guessed the party ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... "Well—I was behindhand! Not up to my duties, considered as a corpse! The doctor stood me over another twenty-four hours, and I came to. I was very much run down, certainly, but I did come to, or I shouldn't be here now to tell you about it, my dear. I should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... delighted, and charged the chamberlain[FN145] that he should suffer none of the creatures of God the Most High to enter, save a man of his boon-companions, by name Abdulmelik ben Salih,[FN146] who was behindhand with them. Then they donned coloured clothes,[FN147] for that it was their wont, whenas they sat in the wine-chamber, to don raiment of red and yellow and green silk, and sat down to drink, and the cups went round and the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... little low chair in it, and boxes full of toys and other things, which were not only far outgrown by Clifford, but which were absolutely never seen nowadays at all, and would be considered far behindhand as amusements for ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... not ready to sit down to breakfast at the time which shall have been appointed by Mrs. Gray the evening before, or who shall not be ready to enter the carriage at the time appointed, shall pay a fine, except in the case hereinafter provided for. If the person so behindhand is one of the children, the fine shall be two cents, or the value thereof in the currency of the country where we may chance to be; and if it is one of the grown persons, the fine shall be three times that amount, ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... August 10th], offering to try to raise some companies of horse-riflemen out here, in the event of trouble with Mexico. Won't you telegraph me at once if war becomes inevitable? Out here things are so much behindhand that I might not hear of things for a week. I have not the least idea there will be any trouble, but as my chances of doing anything in the future worth doing seem to grow continually smaller, I intend to grasp at every opportunity that turns up. The cowboys were all eager ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... upon which, all business left him; and, finding nothing to do, he followed Keimer to Barbadoes, taking the printing-house with him. There this apprentice employ'd his former master as a journeyman; they quarrel'd often; Harry went continually behindhand, and at length was forc'd to sell his types and return to his country work in Pensilvania. The person that bought them employ'd Keimer to use them, but in a ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a last ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... efficient cause thus referred to existed in the person of Samuel Hartlib, philanthropist and polypragmatist, precursor of the Franklins and Rumfords of the succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... kinds of things of which Tell had no suspicion had been happening in the town. The fact that there were no newspapers in Switzerland at that time often made him a little behindhand as regarded the latest events. He had to depend, as a rule, on visits from his friends, who would sit in his kitchen and tell him all about everything that had been going on for the last few days. And, of course, when there was anything very exciting happening in the town, ...
— William Tell Told Again • P. G. Wodehouse

... "I am called Bourguignon, and here is my comrade Comtois, whose turn for devotion will come to-morrow, and who, when the moment shall have arrived, will not be behindhand. Comtois, my friend, a slice of that pheasant, and a glass of champagne. Do you not see that, in order to reassure monsieur completely, I must taste everything; it is a severe test, I know, but where would be the merit of being an honest ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... accompaniments, and the damp and dismal hours of darkness seemed endless in the exposed picquets. Save for the Australian loot it looked like a fasting Christmas. Parcel mails could not be sent up, for every camel was required to convey food and fodder on to the cavalry. The cigarette ration was behindhand and most of the men were without a smoke. The officers could torture themselves with the thought of five turkeys ordered in Port Said and unlimited mess stores lying sixty miles away at Romani. But at the last moment all was changed. A parcel mail came in—and the ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... that the canoe which had set out from us had arrived in their country, and that their companions, wearied by their journey, were resting, and that they would soon arrive, in fulfilment of the promise they had made; that at most they would not be more than eight days behindhand, but that there would be only twenty-four canoes, as one of their captains and many of their comrades had died of a fever that had broken out among them. They also said that they had sent many ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... Whichello. This is an expensive hotel, and the rent is high. We find it so difficult to make the place pay that we are behindhand with the rent. Sir Harry Brace, our landlord, has been very kind in waiting, but we can't expect him to stand out of his money much longer. I'm afraid in the end we'll have to give up The Derby Winner. But it is no good my worrying you about our troubles,' ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the last station at which we stopped, before I became alive to the recollection that our work was terribly behindhand. Miss Clifton also became grave, and sat at the end of the counter very quiet and subdued, as if her frolic were over, and it was possible she might find something to repent of in it. I had told her we should stop no more until we reached Euston-square station, but to my ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens

... of it. The first is ascribed to youth and fire; but the latter is imputed to an affectation of singularity or superiority. At your age, one is allowed to 'outrer' fashion, dress, vivacity, gallantry, etc., but by no means to be behindhand in any one of them. And one may apply to youth in this case, 'Si non ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as "undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them. They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that they would have none of that disgrace to our ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... to anyone.—I have been thinking of paying you a visit this fall, but I now think it extremely doubtful whether I shall be able to. Not being able to even attend to my hands, much less work myself, I am getting behindhand, so that I shall have to stay here and attend to my business. Cannot some of you come and pay us a visit? Jennie has not answered Julia's letter yet. Did she receive it? I was coming to the city the day it was written to hear a political speech, and it was too late to get it in the post office, ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant

... seen the timid youth lead another, and rehearse his captain's words. In like manner, he every day went into the school-room, and saw them do their nautical business, and at twelve o'clock he was the first upon deck with his quadrant. No one there could be behindhand in their business when their captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance I must mention which will close the subject, which was the day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Governor's. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... year's earnin' at just double that money, and that leaves me twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An' there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with my interest payments? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... not to be behindhand, would take his turn: "Well, little one, and when are you going ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... John Bull, the sea, 'The Times' in the morning, and, besides, some dozens of fellow-creatures. The learned class has greatly sunk in Germany, more than I supposed; all behindhand.... Nothing appears of any importance; the most ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... opportunity &c. 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre[Fr][obs3]; wait impatiently; await &c. (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine[obs3], belated, postliminious[obs3], posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c. (slow) 275; delayed &c. v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward[obs3], backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh hour, at length, at last; ultimately; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... I can sell immediately five times over, and also be well paid. * * * Oh! how happy should I now be if I had my perfect hearing, for I should then hasten to you. As it is, I must in all things be behindhand; my best years will slip away without bringing forth what, with my talent and my strength, I ought to have accomplished. I must now have recourse to sad resignation. I have, it is true, resolved not to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... while Esther was growing more and more vexed, until, when Cousin Charlotte at last sprang up, exclaiming, "My dear children, do you know how long we have been talking? I must hurry away this minute, or I shall be behindhand all day!" the limit of ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... for your further orders to put in the bulb, you know that I must be behindhand with you, as I have in my favour all the chances of good air, of the sun, and ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... pay. Dr. Farrar made thousands out of his trashy volumes, and his publishers netted a fortune. Mr. Haweis has done the same trick with four volumes. Ward Beecher spent his last days on a Life of Christ. Talmage is occupied on the same labor of love—and profit. Even the Catholic Church is not behindhand. Pere Didon has put forth his Life of Christ in two fat volumes as an antidote to the poison of Kenan. And the end is not yet. Nevertheless we see the beginning of the end. It was bound to come. After the prose writers prance the versifiers, and Sir Edward Arnold ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... (as Miss Wooler observed the other day), and since there are so many holidays this half-year, it would have appeared almost unreasonable to ask for an extra holiday; besides, we should perhaps have got behindhand with our lessons, so that, everything considered, it is perhaps as well that circumstances have deprived us of this pleasure.—Believe me to remain, your ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... the whole House of Laity there assembled broke into cheers; and not to be behindhand in demonstrations of loyalty, the Judges and the Bishops cheered too—a thing that none of them had done individually for years; and in their official and corporate capacity, judicial and ecclesiastical, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... 'stick a bit o' holly i' yon pig's mouth, that's the way we do things i' Newcassel; but folks is so behindhand in Monkshaven. It's a fine thing to live in a large town, Sylvia; an' if yo're looking out for a husband, I'd advise yo' to tak' one as lives in a town. I feel as if I were buried alive comin' back here, such an out-o'-t'-way place after t' Side, wheere there's ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... in Carolina. I'm from Carolina myself, you must know. There was an old codger—a fine, hearty buck—old Ralph Colleton—Colonel Ralph, as they used to call him. He did have a power of money, and a smart chance of lands and field-niggers; but they did say he was going behindhand, for he didn't know how to keep what he had. He was always buying, and living large; but that can't last for ever. I saw him first at a muster. I was then just eighteen, and went out with the rest, for the first time. Maybe, 'squire, I didn't take the rag off the bush that day. I belonged ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... number of days he had lived; and of Lope de Vega it is said this calculation came rather short. We hear of another who was unhappy that his lady had produced twins, from the circumstance that hitherto he had contrived to pair his labours with her own, but that now he was a book behindhand. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... "And we behindhand in more quarters than one," continued the miller, prudently ignoring his wife's tears and remonstrances, "and a dear season coming on, and an uncertain trade that keeps a man idle by days together, and here's ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... to me, they must, in the first instance at any rate, have been of a sufficiently generous character. Ananias had seen what was going on around him, and he had determined that he must not be behindhand in this ministry of love. But—and now we get a little deeper into his character—ambition to stand well with his fellow-members evidently mingled with the pure spirit of charity: though we do not need to suppose that there was as yet any ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... old people, I believe, but curiously—of course I'm quoting Fay—comatose and uninterested in things, 'behindhand with the world,' she said. They thought Hugo very wonderful, and seemed rather afraid of him. What he has told them lately I don't know. He wrote very seldom, they said; but I've written to them, saying I've got the children and where we shall be. If they express ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... proposed to pay for the service of our guides, it was curious to see how every rascal at the table craned forward to watch the upshot. Don Lopez makes a pretence of leaving the payment to Don Sanchez's generosity; and he, not behindhand in courtesy, lugs out his purse and begs the other to pay himself. Whereupon, with more apologies, Don Lopez empties the money on the table and carefully counts it, and there being but about a score of gold pieces and some silver, he shakes his head and says a ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... to benefit Mellish by beating somebody, he will not be behindhand. Remember you are not to mention me for a ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... majesty. Throughout the day I worked for myself, throughout the night for you, and nothing is behindhand. Each day adds to our internal strength, that gives us consideration abroad, and soon we shall hold our own as one of the four great European powers, mightier than in the days when the sun never set upon Austrian realms. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... doing famously. Philadelphia has several experiments in progress. Baltimore has made a start. In New York there are many noteworthy movements—half a dozen at least full of life and hope. Boston was never behindhand in knowledge, and in the new education is very alert, the efforts of a single lady deserving praise of high degree. These are but signs of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... creatures are thoroughbred, and may turn out worth a great deal more; still, in these days no one gives a fair price for anything, and three-fifty is not to be sneezed at when your rents are always behindhand and your balance at the bank ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... haven't. You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... principles effect! Where a joke is evidently intended, I never knew people more ready to join in it than these are. If ridiculed for any particularity of manner, figure, or countenance, they are sure not to be long behindhand in returning it, and that very often with interest. If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at times ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... leads, far be it from me to seem behindhand," said the other, much ruffled, as she gathered her sheet about her. By the way she said it, one saw that she and Mrs. Parachute did not call. She bowed to Lady Arabel, and became satirical, even arch. "Good afternoon, ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... Westminster." The emoluments attached to the Royal band, according to Samuel Pepys, appear to have been somewhat irregular. In the Diary, December 19, 1666, we read: "Talked of the King's family with Mr. Kingston, the organist. He says many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behindhand for their wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp, having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the alms of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night without ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... for your portion, the modest fellow,' added James. 'Ay, and that's not all. There's the MacAlpin threats me with all his clan if I dinna give you to him; and Mackay is not behindhand, but will come down with pibroch and braidsword and five hundred caterans to pay his court to you, and make short work of all others. My certie, sisters seem but a cause for threats from reivers, though maybe they would not be so uncivil ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of dinner, but Aunt Henshaw stowed away some cake for me in a corner of her capacious bag; a proceeding which then rather amused me, but for which I was afterwards exceedingly thankful. The time seemed almost interminable; I threw out various hints on the value of expedition, the misery of being behindhand, and the doubtful punctuality of stage-coaches—but Aunt Henshaw ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... made, as has been seen, his own household produce two perfections. The blatant popular voice follows with such "dictes" as, "Women are made of nectar and poison"; "Women have long hair and short wits" and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behindhand. Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning (Katha s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... was on Wednesday. Yesterday morning I called on Lord Wharncliffe, and told him what Richmond had said. He was sitting before a heap of papers, and when I told him this he laughed and said that Richmond was behindhand, that matters had gone a great deal further than this, and then proceeded to give me the following account of what had passed. A short time ago Palmerston spoke to his son, John Wortley, and expressed a desire that some compromise could be effected between ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... spare from his greenhouse and hotbeds. Zeb took care of the farm teams; but the winter's work of distributing forage and grain, getting up wood and ice, hauling manure, and so forth, had to be done in a desultory and irregular manner. The spring work would find us wofully behindhand if I did not look sharp. I had been looking sharp since January set in, and had experienced, for the first time, real difficulties in finding anything like good help. Hitherto I had been especially fortunate in this regard. I had met some reverses, but ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... spur on wildly, the rest of the yeomen did not like to seem behindhand, and they rapidly approached the town. Had they been calm enough to reflect, they might have observed that for the last half-hour no carts or carriages had met them on the way, as they had done further back. It was not till the troopers reached ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... Daffydowndilly. The whole day long, this terrible old schoolmaster sat at his desk overlooking the scholars, or stalked about the school-room with a certain awful birch rod in his hand. Now came a rap over the shoulders of a boy whom Mr. Toil had caught at play; now he punished a whole class who were behindhand with their lessons; and, in short, unless a lad chose to attend quietly and constantly to his book, he had no chance of enjoying a quiet moment in ...
— Little Daffydowndilly - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... indeed! And the officer, without more ado, ordered his men to board. Hardly had the order passed his lips, than Porter's clear voice rang out, "Repel boarders!" and the crew of the "Eliza," armed with pikes and muskets, rushed upon their assailants, and drove them into the sea. Young Porter was not behindhand in the fight, but lent his boyish aid to the vindication of American sailors' rights. One man was shot down by his side; and Porter received his first baptism of blood in this encounter, which thus early rooted in his mind a detestation for the arrogance of the British, and a determination to devote ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... temporize; consult one's pillow, sleep on it. lose an opportunity &c 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre [Fr.]; wait impatiently; await &c (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine^, belated, postliminious^, posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c (slow) 275; delayed &c v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward^, backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh hour, at length, at last; ultimately; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... true that these problems can be actually met in most cases only by the States themselves, but it would be well for the Nation to endeavor to secure and publish comprehensive information as to the conditions of the labor of children in the different States, so as to spur up those that are behindhand and to secure approximately uniform legislation of a high character among the several States. In such a Republic as ours the one thing that we cannot afford to neglect is the problem of turning out decent citizens. The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship of the generations ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... at the bottom of Paul's pocket, lay a bill of fifty dollars for publishing expenses. What was to be done? The bill must be paid. It would never do to let the March Hare run behindhand. To begin to run into debt was ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... was an era in human knowledge. Science made rapid progress, and in its turn showed the broad and liberal influence of the great revolution. In 1842 societies were founded in Paris and London to promote the study of ethnology. Mr. Gallatin would not be behindhand in this important work for which America offered a virgin field. Drawing about him a number of gentlemen of similar tastes with his own, he founded in New York, in 1842, the American Ethnological Society. Among his associates were Dr. Robinson, the famous explorer ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... been consummated under James's own direction. The Revolution of 1688 brought up other influences more hostile still to the Proprietary; and the Province, which was always sedulous to follow the fashions of London, was not behindhand on this occasion, but made, also, its revolution, in imitation of the great one. The end of all was the utter subversion of the Charter, and a new government of Maryland under a royal commission. How this was accomplished ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... Watson and the clerk, Dave had been rather surprised because William Jarvey had not shown himself, because on the train he had said he was behindhand; and they had naturally supposed he would come to the offices without delay. Just as they were preparing to leave they heard an angry discussion going on in Mr. Watson's private office, and they heard the voices of the superintendent and the man they had ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom, and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening, he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a maiden, and inducing her to approach ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... mountains, and trembles at the mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears.' It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... tried to push aside the urgent fear that was knocking at her heart. If even the policeman had confidence in Susie, should her mother be behindhand? She told the policeman, for his information and her own comfort, that she was only frightened because the little boy had been ill, and it was such a cold, wet night, but at the same time she thought she would walk round to the town by the beach. ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... gave "nary a whimper." The latter looked up with a smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of penitence to the hilt, and turned the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... ugly dressing-gown!" she exclaimed, when she saw me with my fluttering robe in the open air. This vexed me, but, not to be behindhand in gallantry, I capered gaily after her to give her a kiss. Unluckily, my feet became entangled in my dressing-gown, which was much too long for me, and I fell flat on the ground. When I had picked myself up the maid was gone, and I heard her in the distance laughing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... that she had managed to give the passengers some coffee, bread and butter and ham and eggs, though they had had to wait their turns for cups and plates. It appeared that the driver had quarreled with the Lowry people that morning because the breakfast was behindhand and he was kept waiting. So he told his passengers that there was another tavern, a few miles down the road, and that he would take them there ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... with this mention: "Pilot of great value, model of devotion and courage. Has fulfilled in the past six months two special missions requiring the finest spirit of sacrifice, and has waged thirteen aerial combats, two of which ended in the enemy airplanes falling in flames." This mention was already behindhand, having been based upon the report dated December 8. To the two victories therein mentioned should be added those of the 5th and the 14th of December. Decorated at the age of twenty-one, the enlisted ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... myself just now. I have an appointment four miles away in half an hour's time. I am late as it is. Williams will get you some lunch. Tell Fairman I shall see him before night. Make yourself perfectly at home, and don't hurry. But excuse me; this affair has made me quite behindhand." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... here till I have got breakfast in?" said the man, letting her into the hall, and pointing to the bench there, he took her, from her dress, to be a lady's-maid or governess, or at most a tradesman's daughter; and, besides, he was behindhand with all his preparations. She came in ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... all the better from the habit of not thinking of what they studied. They could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print and fine, and run through the interminable mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. This boy of large mind and brain, always behindhand, always incapable, utterly discouraged, no amount of study could place on an equality with his former inferiors. His health failed, and he dropped from school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to himself, and lost to an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... Caisse d'amortissement or sinking fund. But so unfaithfully and unsteadily has this and all the other articles which compose that fund been applied to their purposes, that they have given the state but very little even of present relief, since it is known to the whole world that she is behindhand on every one of her establishments. Since the year 1763, there has been no operation of any consequence on the French finances; and in this enviable condition is France at present with regard ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... if not by any great elegance, at least by a plentiful store of anecdotes, concerning the highest personages of the city; with whom, according to himself, the Captain lived on terms of the utmost intimacy. Not to be behindhand with him, I spoke of my own estates and property as if I was as rich as a duke. I told all the stories of the nobility I had ever heard from my mother, and some that, perhaps, I had invented; and ought to have been aware that my host was an impostor himself, as he did not find out my own blunders ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs. Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she keeps ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Rome that his Eminence was not behindhand with La Riviere upon the score of treachery. For on the very day he got him nominated by the King, he wrote a letter to Cardinal Sachelli more fit to recommend him to a yellow cap than to a red one. This letter, nevertheless, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... time—it's after five already, and I want to make a deep-dish peach pie. I hear Rev. MacGill's especially fond of it. You can take Gypsy home after supper. Now hurry up!—I'm behindhand already." ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... furnished, in others still, the employers advance the miners small sums to be worked out afterwards, thus binding the debtors to themselves. In the North, the custom is general of keeping the payment of wages one week behindhand, chaining the miners in this way to their work. And to complete the slavery of these enthralled workers, nearly all the Justices of the Peace in the coal districts are mine owners themselves, or relatives or friends of mine owners, and possess almost unlimited power in these ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... reputation of closeness and even stinginess, which I did not deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the end of the year, and I am behindhand now, but I keep an exact account, and shall make it ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... cattle or mules, and with only their worn-out hoes; the Edisto people who are now being distributed onto the plantations have nothing. With the chance of giving up the control so soon, Government has not supplied all that is necessary and work bids fair to be as behindhand here as it was last year. Where the people have gone to work at all—at this end of the island—they have started with "good encourage," but at other places it has been impossible to get them to start any cotton, though ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... receptions; but on the whole the society is diplomatic, and depends almost entirely upon the diplomatists for its existence and for its diversions. The lead once given, the old Greek aristocrats have not been behindhand in following it; but their numbers are small, and the movement and interest in Pera, or on the Bosphorus, centre in the great embassies, as they do nowhere else in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... objected vehemently, that there is but one offering once offered—an objection in itself entirely true; yet the Romish doctrine contains a truth which it is of importance to disengage from the gross and material form with which it has been overlaid. Let us hear St. Paul, "I fill up that which is behindhand of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body's sake, which is the Church." Was there then, something behindhand of Christ's sufferings remaining uncompleted, of which the sufferings of Paul could be in any sense the complement? He says there was. Could the sufferings of Paul for the Church ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... and do such work and the authorities at home who deal with their collections. I remember a conversation in the hut during the last bad winter. Men were arguing fiercely that professionally they lost a lot by being down South, that they fell behindhand in current work, got out of the running and so forth. There is a lot in that. And then the talk went on to the publication of results, and the way in which they would wish them done. A said he wasn't going to hand ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... to the stable, and saddled the pony and the donkey, and led them out to the play-ground, where Napoleon treated them in turn to a very fine dance on his hind-legs, and Old Pudding-head, not to be behindhand in politeness, gave all the little boys a somersault over his nose. They had a first-rate frolic, and did not think ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown

... be beautifully dressed all the time without giving much thought to it myself; and that is what I should like. But this constant planning about one's toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, and then being behindhand! It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... length the concierge gave in; he would arrange the matter, and, if necessary, would make out there was a piece more used than was really the case. So, on her way home, Gervaise purchased some tarts for Pauline. She did not like being behindhand—one always gained by behaving nicely ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... the strike had done him. A good deal of his capital was locked up in new and expensive machinery; and he had also bought cotton largely, with a view to some great orders which he had in hand. The strike had thrown him terribly behindhand, as to the completion of these orders. Even with his own accustomed and skilled workpeople, he would have had some difficulty in fulfilling his engagements; as it was, the incompetence of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work, at a time requiring ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... were all fishermen, had now come to regard me as the flower of the flock. Yet they had not scrupled to knock me about, with little ceremony, in the days of my boyhood; nor do I think they would have been behindhand in finding fault with me for my folly, had I returned from my second voyage as poor and needy as from the first. But such is life, and a man must take what comes, and make the best of it and not the worst; so I accepted my new role as the patron saint of my family ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Tom's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Bob in contempt for a dog who made so poor ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... emerging with effort from a nest of ill construction and worse cement. She is rich, she is sharp, she uses her quill; she is emphatically not marriageable. Bath might still accept her as a rival queen, only she is always behindhand in seizing an occasion. Now you will catch sight of her fan working in a minute. She is envious and imitative. It would be undoubtedly better policy on her part to continue to cut me: she cannot, she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... who have yet had an opportunity of acquainting themselves with Sun Tzu are not behindhand in their praise. In this connection, I may perhaps be excused for quoting from a letter from Lord Roberts, to whom the sheets of the present work were submitted previous to publication: "Many of Sun Wu's maxims are perfectly applicable to the present day, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... rammed it home, and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to- day! And yet Mr. Barlow ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... the other, "he is not at all behindhand, and I lose nearly as many cattle as I get. But it gives me much more pleasure to kill one of his buffaloes or llamas, than it does pain me when he kills one of mine. I consider how much it will vex him, and that some of his vassals are thereby ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand, flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible resemblance to the rolling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... at his residence in the Cockpit, a great supper, after which "he entertained his majesty with several sorts of musick;" Next Earl Pembroke gave a rare banquet; also the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord Lumley, and many others. Nor was my lord mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, behindhand in extending hospitality to the king, whom he invited to sup with him. This feast, having no connection with the civic entertainments, was held at good Sir Thomas's house. The royal brothers of York and Gloucester were likewise bidden, together with several of the nobility and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... July 4th, seventy thousand of the Secession army perished! They are exhausting, annihilating themselves; and by whom will the vacancy be filled? Not by the children of States which, under the old system, fell behindhand in population. By whom, then? By Northern men and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... commonly called "the clown," and was considered by boys who had been to the London theatres to surpass the best professional comic actors when he chose to put forth his powers. I did not know this then. I thought him a little formal, but particularly courteous in his manner, and not wishing to be behindhand in politeness, I replied, with as much of his style as I could assume, "Certainly, sir. But that is because my father was an Honourable. My father, sir, was the ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... places is a pretty reliable thermometer of the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common during the daytime in small easily ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.' This is the language he addresses to his niece; nor is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and fluttering as her heart. It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta'en sparrow.' Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... is demanded nowadays," she said in her dear soprano. "And if you want to get on, it doesn't do to be behindhand. Of course, it means hard work, but that is nothing to me—I am used to work and love it. Since I was seventeen—I am twenty-six now—I can fairly say I have never got up in the morning, without having my whole day mapped and planned before ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... young Skiddy did, though sparingly. Captain Satterlee took an immense fancy to this youthful representative of their common country, and treated him with an engaging mixture of respect and paternalism; and Skiddy, not to be behindhand, and dazzled, besides, by his elder's marked regard and friendship, threw wide the consular door, and constantly pressed on Satterlee the hospitality of a cot on ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... yells by his schoolmates, went home in tears, and the curls were cut off forthwith. He was an ambitious rather than an assiduous scholar, and kept his place on the bench of honor by his facility in learning more than by his industry; but it was a source of keen mortification to him if he fell behindhand. His talents soon attracted the attention of the masters and the envy of the pupils, the latter of whom were irritated and humiliated by seeing the little curly-pate, the youngest of them all, always at the head of the class. The laziest and dullest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... and, in order to do honour to his master, had taken him into a back parlour in the auberge, and treated him with a cup or two of the best wine in Picardy; and the Count de L-'s servant, in return, and not to be behindhand in politeness with La Fleur, had taken him back with him to the Count's hotel. La Fleur's PREVENANCY (for there was a passport in his very looks) soon set every servant in the kitchen at ease with him; and as a Frenchman, ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... restless way together, side by side in port, inseparable at sea. At night the one lit the other's road with a string of ruby lanterns and kept the pair in company across the dark and silent water. Their respective crews, not behindhand in this splendid camaraderie of ships, fraternised in wine-shops and strolled through the crooked foreign streets arm in arm. Breton and American, red cap and blue, sixty of the one and eighty of ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... flowering shrubs, and arbours nestling in retired corners, inviting retreats for study and meditation, comprised an ideal spot for one who loved the surroundings of Nature. Nor was the house itself behindhand in offering special attractions for the purposes of study and recreation, in addition to the more solid requirements of comfort and accommodation. The rooms were spacious and elegant, and comprised one large apartment perfectly adapted for musical ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... We are behindhand already; and if we get started within an hour we can't reach the ground I selected before dark and we can't choose any nearer one, because if Pancho is anywhere in creation he is on the identical spot I sent ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... wished to hear more she told us the whole story. They had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them notice to quit. But her husband was a high-spirited man and determined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent that ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... place, Goriot and Eugene de Rastignac both slept till close upon eleven o'clock. Mme. Vauquer, who came home about midnight from the Gaite, lay a-bed till half-past ten. Christophe, after a prolonged slumber (he had finished Vautrin's first bottle of wine), was behindhand with his work, but Poiret and Mlle. Michonneau uttered no complaint, though breakfast was delayed. As for Victorine and Mme. Couture, they also lay late. Vautrin went out before eight o'clock, and only came ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... never seems to be very much time. Either the early tea is late or bath is early, or a shikar expedition, with a grass slipper in pursuit of flies, takes up the precious moments, and so the business of the day gets all behindhand. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... beautifully dressed all the time without giving much thought to it myself; and that is what I should like. But this constant planning about one's toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and your bonnet-trimmings and your hats every other day, and then being behindhand! It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... whom Fashion has taken for leader, you walk in such terror of appearing behindhand to the eyes of your own tail that your throat is blue with it! But, urged forward, on and on, by every staring eye upon it, you will fall at last, breathless for good and all, and end in the false immortality bestowed, false artist, by the—[Imitating the manner of the ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... ignorant of both. I am sorry that I did not mention it before, because I can understand that it must seem as if we did not want to be sociable. I can assure you that we do; and that after this fortnight is over we shall be ready to be as jolly as any one. You see we are altogether behindhand with our work now, and have got to work hard to put ourselves ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... to-morrow, Mary," he said, as the little family sat together the night before in the plain sitting-room. "I have never been so much behindhand before ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... of us no oftener than we of you, you will be as much behindhand in news as my Lady Lyttelton. We have seen a traveller that saw you in your island,(356) but it sounds like hearing of Ulysses. Well! we must be content. YOU are not only not dethroned, but owe the safety of your dominions to your own skill in fortification. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... hour's delicious discussion, but she interrupted it to say soothingly, "It was her cousin, Dad, who's going to be married, and she's been trying to get hold of just the right person—she says she's fearfully behindhand—" ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... Genoa to Alessandria and Turin; a Tuscan web which connects Florence, Sienna, Pistoja, Lucca, Pisa, and Leghorn, in a roundabout way; and a few miles of Neapolitan railway, to connect Naples with Pompeii, Portici, Castel-a-mare, and Capua. Rome, behindhand in most things, is behindhand in railways. Switzerland has its little railway of twenty-five miles, from Zurich to Baden. Spain has its two small lines, from Madrid to Aranjuez, and from Barcelona to Mataro. Turkey and Greece, in the south-east; Portugal, in the south-west; Sweden and Norway,[1] ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various

... holiday that his father Gargantua made a sumptuous banquet to all the princes of his court. I am apt to believe that the menial officers of the house were so embusied in waiting each on his proper service at the feast, that nobody took care of poor Pantagruel, who was left a reculorum, behindhand, all alone, and as forsaken. What did he? Hark what he did, good people. He strove and essayed to break the chains of the cradle with his arms, but could not, for they were too strong for him. Then did he keep with his feet such a stamping stir, and so long, that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... anxious and her heart heavy; many cares never communicated to cloud the bright sunshine of her boy's soul oppressed hers. The rent had fallen fearfully behindhand, and the landlord threatened, unless the money could be raised to pay him, to seize their furniture and eject them from the premises. And how this money was to be raised she could not see at all. True, this meek Christian had often in her sad experience proved God's special providence at her ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... spring suits this very minute, and Martha was calculating to make them this week; and they'd have to have their first wear of them Sundays for a while before they start on them for school. I never was so behindhand; but what with fitting off Artemas and the spring cleaning being delayed, I didn't seem to know how to manage. Martha is good at making over, and there are two very good coats of Artemas's that she would do the right thing by; while there was a good many who could scrub ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... little to those one invades. If this was not complied with, they threatened to burn the town, and then march to Belfast, which is much richer. We were sensible of this civil proceeding, and not to be behindhand, agreed to it; but somehow or other this capitulation was broken; on which a detachment (the whole invasion consists of one thousand men) attack the place. We shut the gates, but after the battle of Quebec, it is impossible that so great a people should attend to such trifles ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... by no means behindhand: Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, Raphael, Bramante, and Michael Angelo were now living. Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... other by the whole company; that Goldsmith and Garrick pitted themselves against each other; that thereafter Goldsmith began as occasion served to write similar squibs about his friends, which were shown about as they were written; that thereupon those gentlemen, not to be behindhand, composed more elaborate pieces in proof of their wit; and that, finally, Goldsmith resolved to bind these fugitive lines of his together in a poem, which he left unfinished, and which, under the name ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... said that he should like to go to Lord Wharncliffe, and talk the matter over with him. This was on Wednesday. Yesterday morning I called on Lord Wharncliffe, and told him what Richmond had said. He was sitting before a heap of papers, and when I told him this he laughed and said that Richmond was behindhand, that matters had gone a great deal further than this, and then proceeded to give me the following account of what had passed. A short time ago Palmerston spoke to his son, John Wortley, and expressed a desire that some compromise could be effected ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... York married Anne Hyde, and he avowed the marriage September 3rd, so that Pepys was rather behindhand in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... bad weather came on, and the settlers who had only just come to the country began to cry out that the winter would be upon them before they were ready. They were, it is true, much behindhand, for though many of them had far greater means than Michael Hale and John Kemp, they had not their experience, and often threw away much labour and time uselessly. They were wrong as to the weather, too, for ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... run along now and pack your trunk. And take my advice and study hard. You'll be behindhand in your work, so Mr. Sylvester tells me, but you're smart, and you can catch up. Make us proud of you; that's what ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... want to distress you when it could have done no good to anyone.—I have been thinking of paying you a visit this fall, but I now think it extremely doubtful whether I shall be able to. Not being able to even attend to my hands, much less work myself, I am getting behindhand, so that I shall have to stay here and attend to my business. Cannot some of you come and pay us a visit? Jennie has not answered Julia's letter yet. Did she receive it? I was coming to the city the day it was written to hear ...
— Letters of Ulysses S. Grant to His Father and His Youngest Sister, - 1857-78 • Ulysses S. Grant

... Cabuliwallah, not to be behindhand, would take his turn: "Well, little one, and when are you ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... like Fate, which always must give the final decision in everything we do. I have certainly not been behindhand in enormous sacrifices to mollify that inexorable power, and my representative, through whose hands pass far greater sums than through those of the paymasters of the troops, writes me word that they are not unfavorably disposed towards me ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... I heard the world and his wife were stopping at the door to give a welcome to Raftery, and I thought I would not be behindhand. And here is something for the fiddler (puts money in the plate). I would sooner see that fiddler than any ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... scorning to be behindhand in loyalty as well as activity, he became a member of the Clerkenwell Volunteers, and was placed in the light company, in which capacity he obtained the character not only of being the cleanest man, but the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... suggested that they might ask the Turk to give lectures upon the "Arabian Nights." Everybody else was planning something of the sort, to "raise funds" for some purpose, and she was sure they ought not to be behindhand. Mrs. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... was not behindhand in the matter of entertainment: there was a wedding festival in progress, and, at the modest cafe, a thick concourse of men talking and singing and enjoying life after their own fashion; only the house of Mhtoon Pah, the curio dealer, was dark, and it was before this ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... hither, after the old- fashioned way, to serve in the household of Monseigneur by way of an "institution" in learning and good manners, as to which a grave national assembly, more than three centuries before the States- General of 1789, had judged French youth of quality somewhat behindhand, recommending king and nobles to take better care for the future of their education, "to the end that, enlightened and moralised, they might know their duties, and be less likely ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... best, Mr. Malcolm; but what with committees and deputations and Heaven knows what, my mistress has been driven almost out of her senses. The maids are in the dining-room now, for there's to be tea and light refreshment; and they've been behindhand too with the plants from Covent Garden, drat them," muttered the old man irritably. He was a faithful servant, and true to his mistress's interests; but he was growing old, and there were times when he longed to sit quietly under his own fig tree, in the Surrey village where he was born, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... imprecations, and prayers from dying men,—they would be content to let others become historians of the war. But this is not all; a correspondent must keep ever in view the thousands that are looking at the journal he represents, who expect his account at the earliest possible moment. If he is behindhand, his occupation is gone. His account must be first, or among the first, or it is nothing. Day and night he must be on the alert, improving every opportunity and turning it to account. If he loses a steamboat trip, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... better from the habit of not thinking of what they studied. They could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print and fine, and run through the interminable mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. This boy of large mind and brain, always behindhand, always incapable, utterly discouraged, no amount of study could place on an equality with his former inferiors. His health failed, and he dropped from school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to himself, and lost to an educated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... large white whiskers. The former, I suspect, is a wig. The cheering was tremendous, but behind the royal carriage the cheers were always redoubled where the old Duke, the especial favourite hero, rode. When they got off their horses in the schoolyard, the Duke being by some mistake behindhand, was regularly hustled in the crowd, with no attendant ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... carriage. They dined together and Ratcliffe took care to send for Tom Lord to amuse them, for Tom was a wit and a humourist, and kept the President in a laugh. Mr. Lord ordered the dinner and chose the wines. He could be coarse enough to suit even the President's palate, and Ratcliffe was not behindhand. When the new Secretary went away at ten o'clock that night, his chief; who was in high good humour with his dinner, his champagne, and his conversation, swore with some unnecessary granite oaths, that Ratcliffe was "a clever fellow anyhow," and he was ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... the only end of music was form, or musical beauty. The followers of Herbart showed themselves very tender towards this unexpected and vigorous ally, and Hanslick, not to be behindhand in politeness, returned their compliments, by referring to Herbart and to R. Zimmermann, in the later editions of his work, as having "completely developed the great aesthetic principle of form." Unfortunately Hanslick meant something altogether different from the Herbartians ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... I have an appointment four miles away in half an hour's time. I am late as it is. Williams will get you some lunch. Tell Fairman I shall see him before night. Make yourself perfectly at home, and don't hurry. But excuse me; this affair has made me quite behindhand." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... The more behindhand of my friends, among whom I count the weary men of the towns, are ceaselessly bewailing the effect of railways and the spoiling of the country; nor do I fail, when I hear such complaints, to point ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one of our horses with the neck-yoke. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... like what I said it was going to, exactly to a T," said Mrs. Symes, wrapping her wet arms in her apron and leaning them on the fence; "if it wasn't that it's Tuesday and me behindhand as it is, I'd ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... a residence at Weslar. This was the seat of the Court of Appeal of the old German Empire. How far justice was really promoted, may be seen from the single statement that, while the docket of cases was twenty thousand behindhand in 1772, only sixty decisions were made in a year. In what was called praxis or practice, the young Goethe was placed in a "circumlocution office" like Weslar. There is something ludicrous in the position, so absurd is it. To ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... was considered by boys who had been to the London theatres to surpass the best professional comic actors when he chose to put forth his powers. I did not know this then. I thought him a little formal, but particularly courteous in his manner, and not wishing to be behindhand in politeness, I replied, with as much of his style as I could assume, "Certainly, sir. But that is because my father was an Honourable. My father, sir, was the most ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... under contract, as you know. I was behindhand in my work, but I hoped that the inspiration I would receive from the society of my fellow authors would give me an impetus I lacked in the country. There I often have to spur myself to my work. Here I hoped to work more steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... accompanied us with one of his company to Mr. Hosier's, who was a good generous-hearted man, better than any Englishman we had met with in this country. He had formerly had much business with Mr. Moll, but their affairs in England running behindhand a little, they both came and settled down here; and, therefore, Mr. Moll and he had a great regard for each other. He showed us very particular attention, although we were strangers. Something was immediately ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... sent for his boon-companions, with whom he was most familiar, and charged the chamberlain that he suffer none of the creatures of Almighty Allah to enter, save a man of his cup-mates, by name Abd al-Malik bin Salih, who was behindhand with them. Then they donned brightly-dyed dresses.[FN259] for it was their wont, as often as they sat in the wine-seance, to endue raiment of red and yellow and green silk, and they sat down to drink, and the cups went round the lutes thrilled and shrilled. Now there was a man of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... laughed out. I do assure you, this account of his misfortunes was not given particularly to me: nay, to some he goes so far as to say, "Let them go to the office, and look over my letters and see if I am behindhand!" To be sure, when he has done his book, it is very hard he may not play! My dear Sir, I don't know what apologies a P'ere d'Orl'eans must make for our present history! ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... I took notice of a justice of peace's lady, who was at least ten years behindhand in her dress, but at the same time as fine as hands could make her. She was flounced and furbelowed from head to foot; every ribbon was wrinkled, and every part of her garments in curl, so that she looked like one of those animals ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... my time is everything to me; and I am already a little behindhand, in occasionally nursing the poor woman Morel; and you may imagine that an hour in one way and an hour in another makes in time a day; a day brings thirty sous, and if we earn nothing one must still live ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... America proportionately equal to any area on this continent in population, and in all the arts which can lead to that population's prosperity and happiness, Canada will not be found to be one whit behindhand. ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... with—after which the noble pug was perfectly satisfied! Of course, we all laughed at the Russian's story, but he assured us it was a well authenticated fact, and was generally regarded as a most delicate jeu d'esprit. Not to be behindhand in the line of cats and monkeys, I was obliged to tell an anecdote of a Frenchman, who, on his arrival in Algiers, ordered a ragout at one of the most fashionable restaurants. It was duly served up, and pronounced excellent, though rather ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... as if our ministers were the poorest lot!" complained Mrs. Robinson. "If their salary is two months behindhand they begin to be nervous! Seems as though they might lay up a little before they come here, and not live from hand to mouth so! The Baxters seem quite different, and I only hope they won't get wasteful and run into debt. They say she ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the order yesterday at noon; and there's three girls beside the mother; and what with trying on and matching the stuff (for there was not enough in the piece they chose first), I'm above a bit behindhand. I've the skirts all to make. I kept that work till candlelight; and the sleeves, to say nothing of little bits to the bodies; for the missis is very particular, and I could scarce keep from smiling while they were crying ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... opportunity &c 135; be kept waiting, dance attendance; kick one's heels, cool one's heels; faire antichambre [Fr.]; wait impatiently; await &c (expect) 507; sit up, sit up at night. Adj. late, tardy, slow, behindhand, serotine^, belated, postliminious^, posthumous, backward, unpunctual, untimely; delayed, postponed; dilatory &c (slow) 275; delayed &c v.; in abeyance. Adv. late; lateward^, backward; late in the day; at sunset, at the eleventh ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... that we received, but the effect was excellent — we raced to the eastward. An intended call at Gough Island had to be abandoned; the sea was running too high for us to venture to approach the narrow little harbour. The month of October had put us a good deal behindhand, but now we were making up the distance we had lost. We had reckoned on being south of the Cape of Good Hope within two months after leaving Madeira, and this turned out correct. The day we passed the meridian of the Cape we had the first regular ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... man was not behindhand with some moral reflections on this fruitful theme, and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such weight as to render it doubtful—not whether the deceased was of the age suggested, but whether she had ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... having rammed it home, and discharged it upon me, Tommy, his target, but he pretends that he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it,—that he imbibed it with mother's milk,—and that I, the wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behindhand in not having done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil of Mr. Barlow to this extent? What Mr. Barlow had not the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my fingers' ends to- day! And yet ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... terrible old schoolmaster sat at his desk overlooking the scholars, or stalked about the school-room with a certain awful birch rod in his hand. Now came a rap over the shoulders of a boy whom Mr. Toil had caught at play; now he punished a whole class who were behindhand with their lessons; and, in short, unless a lad chose to attend quietly and constantly to his book, he had no chance of enjoying a quiet moment in ...
— Little Daffydowndilly - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Hetty, earnestly. "I have frightened you, haven't I? was it wrong for me to come to-night? There are so many things I want to talk over with you. I want to get settled; and all the work on the farm is belated and I can't have the place run behindhand; ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... and the aims of our modern morphology, and this ignorance may be accounted for partly by the one-sided direction which their biological studies have taken, partly by the fact that there are few universities where the study of morphology is so behindhand as at the University of Berlin. Fully twenty years have now elapsed since the great Johannes Mueller died, the last naturalist who could command all the departments of biology. The three great provinces of science ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... the piece, and thought all the other papers hideous. At length the concierge gave in; he would arrange the matter, and, if necessary, would make out there was a piece more used than was really the case. So, on her way home, Gervaise purchased some tarts for Pauline. She did not like being behindhand—one always gained by ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... of this harmonious recognition. One cannot accept the event of the moment because he is absorbed in the event of yesterday, or last week, and his life is not, thereby, "up-to-date." To be always behindhand is to be under a perpetual and ever-increasing burden. Empedocles under Mt. Etna was no more imprisoned than is the life of to-day which is filled with the things of yesterday. Yet where does the remedy lie? It is the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... The marionettes were behindhand with their Gloria, because the bolide having transferred Monday's programme to Tuesday had syncopated the succeeding performances into counterpoint of the fourth order, and everything that happened after that was one beat late. Had they moved concurrently with the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... none the worse sailor for that," Charles Hethcote said with a laugh. "But I must be going on board. I have a message from the admiral to the captain and every moment is precious, for things are terribly behindhand. The dockyard people are wellnigh out of their wits with the pressure put upon them, and we are ordered to be ready to sail in a week. How it's all to be done, goodness only knows. You need not come on board, Jack. I will tell the captain that you have arrived, and he would not thank me for bringing ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... are by writers engaged expressly for the respective subjects, because they will work cheaply and know but little of what they are writing about, and therefore make themselves the better understood by the equally ignorant. We do hope that they have not proved themselves behindhand in popular humbug and positive error, and that the blunders in "the Thermometer"[3] are equally as amusing as those of the then big-wig who wrote the treatise on "Animal Mechanics," published by our rival Society ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... been behindhand in her efforts to raise the condition of idiots. In 1818 an attempt was made to instruct them at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Hartford. It is said they were taught to communicate by ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... is to benefit Mellish by beating somebody, he will not be behindhand. Remember you are not to mention me for a fortnight. Is ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... of every hundred of our gifted souls, who have to seek a career for themselves, go this beaver road. Whereby the first half-result, national wealth namely, is plentifully realized; and only the second half, or wisdom to guide it, is dreadfully behindhand. ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... ours falls off it cannot harm us, I think. I observe that Nos. 1 and 2 extend to merely twenty-nine sheets, so that, in fact, ours is still the cheaper of the two. Murray's waiting on you with it is one of the wisest things I ever knew him do: you will not be behindhand with him ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... This is an expensive hotel, and the rent is high. We find it so difficult to make the place pay that we are behindhand with the rent. Sir Harry Brace, our landlord, has been very kind in waiting, but we can't expect him to stand out of his money much longer. I'm afraid in the end we'll have to give up The Derby Winner. But it is no good my worrying you ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... had come to the end of a stage in his progress: he was reaping the fruits of all his former efforts, cumulatively: too easily he was tapping the vein of music that he had opened and while the public was naturally behindhand, and was just discovering and admiring his old work, he was beginning to break away from them without knowing as yet whether he would be able to make any advance on them. He had now a uniform and even delight in creation. At this ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting. They seemed, however, very well pleased, and all joined in the chorus of the seamen's songs: but the manner in which they were invariably a little behindhand was quite ludicrous. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... 411. the temper of the people the first study of a statesman, i. 436. in seasons of popular discontent, something generally amiss in the government, i. 440. the people have no interest in disorder, i. 441. generally fifty years behindhand in their politics, i. 442. a connection with their interests a necessary qualification of a minister, i. 474. sense of the people, how to be ascertained by the king, i. 475. should show themselves able to protect every representative in the performance of his duty, i. 503. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... M. Thureau's 'Histoire de la Monarchic de Juillet,' of which I never even heard. It is dreadful to reflect how utterly behindhand one gets in all things, literary, artistic, and political, through long sojourns out of Europe. But I do hope there is some prospect of M. de Sainte-Aulaire's Memoirs themselves being published at full length. I know it was M. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... more she told us the whole story. They had got behindhand with the rent, but that had often been the case, only this time it happened that the agent wanted a cottage for a person he wished to befriend, and so gave them notice to quit. But her husband was a high-spirited man and determined to stick to his rights, so he informed the agent ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... the nature of the transgression. But when once the lesion to the national honour has been ascertained, appraised and duly exhibited by those persons whose place in the national economy it is to look after all that sort of thing, the common man will be found nowise behindhand about resenting the evil usage of which he so, by force of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... did not deserve. I had to be economical with myself to meet my payments, which increased as the years went on, until they are so large that sometimes I have not been able to put the whole in the box at the end of the year, and I am behindhand now, but I keep an exact account, and shall ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... have yet had an opportunity of acquainting themselves with Sun Tzu are not behindhand in their praise. In this connection, I may perhaps be excused for quoting from a letter from Lord Roberts, to whom the sheets of the present work were submitted previous to publication: "Many of Sun Wu's maxims are perfectly applicable to the present day, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... undertook a colloquy, and Aragon, not to be behindhand, flashed a few words across the conversation, right and left as it were, his expressions appearing to be in a different tongue from those used by the chief interpreter, and both utterly without perceptible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... Richard Steele was preparing his great room in York Buildings for public orations, he was behindhand in his payments to the workmen; and coming one day among them, to see what progress they made, he ordered the carpenter to get into the rostrum, and speak anything that came uppermost, that he might observe how it could ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... in cordiality towards Mr. Fulmort, and at the same time mounted many stages in Clement's estimation on the discovery that, however behindhand his ecclesiastical advantages might be, the Vicar was exceedingly impressed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... man buys things he does not need; spends his money as fast as he can get it; lives beyond his means; throws things away which are capable of further service; runs in debt; and is forever behindhand. He lives from hand to mouth; is dependent upon his neighbors for things which with a little economy he might own himself; makes no provision for the future, and when sickness or old age comes upon him, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... knife which sent the bread and butter flying out of their fingers. She read no books, and, what was odd in those days, did not go to chapel or church; but she had her "opinions," as she called them, upon everything which was stirring in the world, and never was behindhand in the news. She was really happier when she found that she had to look after Mrs. Coleman. She bustled about, taking directions from the doctor—not without some scepticism, for she had notions of her own on the subject of disease—and going up and down stairs ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... grammar, though he hain't his beat for work; But I sez ter myself, "Look out, my gal, yer a-foolin' with a Turk!" Jake bore it wonderful patient, an' said in a mournful way, He p'sumed he was behindhand with the doin's at Injun Bay. I remember once he was askin' for some o' my Injun buns, An' she said he should allus say, "them air," stid o' "them is" the ones. Wal, Mary Ann kep' at him stiddy mornin' an' evenin' long, Tell he dassent open ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... neighbourhood; but it was a scanty one, and they had not wealth and position enough to compensate for the girl's self-assertion and literary pretensions. It was not a superior or intellectual society, and, as the Rockstone Merrifields laughingly declared, it was fifty years behindhand, and where Bessie Merrifield, for the sake of the old stock and her meek bearing of her success—nay, her total ignoring of her literary honours—would be accepted. Arthurine, half her age, and a newcomer, was disliked for the pretensions which her mother innocently pressed on the world. ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... attack is the Risus Sardonicus.—But the Young Girl. She gets her living by writing stories for a newspaper. Every week she furnishes a new story. If her head aches or her heart is heavy, so that she does not come to time with her story, she falls behindhand and has to live on credit. It sounds well enough to say that "she supports herself by her pen," but her lot is a trying one; it repeats the doom of the Danaides. The "Weekly Bucket" has no bottom, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Askelon, Antipater came to him, conducting three thousand of the Jews, armed men. He had also taken care the principal men of the Arabians should come to his assistance; and on his account it was that all the Syrians assisted him also, as not willing to appear behindhand in their alacrity for Cesar, viz. Jamblicus the ruler, and Ptolemy his son, and Tholomy the son of Sohemus, who dwelt at Mount Libanus, and almost all the cities. So Mithridates marched out of Syria, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... "I have. He's specially behindhand with his Greek. His report tells me that. If you'll do a little Greek grammar and construing with him in the mornings now and them, I shall be tremendously grateful. You see, owing to my miserable domestic ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... reminded Lily of Pa's generosity. She would not be behindhand. Pa had to accept a red tie, a pair of gloves, a match-box, as a present; Ma, an embroidered handkerchief, a lucky charm. Lily had the satisfaction of paying ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... stand in the half of a five-pound note and whatever silver I have in my pocket," pulling out a great handful as he spoke, and counting up thirty-two and sixpence. "Very good," replied the Yorkshireman when he had finished, "I'm your man;—and not to be behindhand in point of liberality, I've got threepence that I received in change at the cigar divan just now, which I will add to the common stock, so that we shall have six pounds twelve and ninepence between us." "Between us!" exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks, "now that's so like a Yorkshireman. I declare ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... Robert Hagburn been heard from?" asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of the ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... their oars: in perfect order and with matchless speed and precision they formed in line of battle, while drums and fifes announced their high spirits. The Christian fleet was slower in falling into line; some of the galleys and most of the galleasses were behindhand. Don John let drop some pious oaths, and sent swift vessels to hurry them up. At last they began to get into order. Barbarigo, the "left guide," hugged the coast with the left wing; Don John with the centre corps de bataille kept touch with him; but where was the "right ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. When Scrooge's nephew laughed, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, laughed ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... they were before their age, and were obliged, as it were, to drag it after them; but now the age has far outrun them, and they who were once so necessary and important have now ceased to be means to an end. A young man who would take Klopstock and Herder for his teachers nowadays would be far behindhand." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... going to be a fighting man, sir; and, behindhand as you are with your studies, I think you might try a little more to do your instructor credit, and not waste time with one of the servants in such a barbaric pursuit as this. Lady Royland is waiting breakfast. You had ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... petrels went north-eastward, it began to blow right hard; for the old gentleman in the grey great-coat, who looks after the big copper boiler, in the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with his work; so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for more steam; and now the steam was coming, as much in an hour as ought to have come in a week, puffing and roaring and swishing and swirling, till you could not see where the sky ended and the ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... by law. Description of the Moral Exercise. Prejudice. The scholars' written remarks, and the teacher's comments. The spider. List of subjects. Anonymous writing. Specimens. Marks of a bad scholar. Consequences of being behindhand. New scholars. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... For a little time she experienced some difficulty in reconciling her accustomed habits with the straight tenets of her husband's household and connections, but in the end succeeded. It seems singular that one so extremely conscientious as Elizabeth Fry, should have been considered to fall behindhand in that self-denying plainness of act and speech which characterized others; but so it was. And so determined was she to serve God according to her light, that no mortification of the flesh was counted too severe provided it would ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... pieces—and with these I was enabled to carry on, until my half-year's salary, as young Mr. Foker's Governor, was due: then Harry's hundred, on which I laid main basse, helped us over three months (we were behindhand with our rent, or the money would have lasted six good weeks longer): and when this was pretty near expended, what should arrive but a bill of exchange for a couple of hundred pounds from Jamaica, with ten thousand blessings, from the dear friends there, and fond scolding from the General that ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... tickets in their hands, congratulating each other ironically, as they fail to find the numbers on them, paying all sorts of absurd compliments to each other and the drawer, offering to sell out their chances at enormous prices when they are behindhand, and letting off all sorts of squibs and jests, not so excellent in themselves as provocative of laughter. If the wit be little, the fun is great,—and, in the excitement of expectation, a great deal of real Italian humor is often ventilated. Sometimes, at the country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... feel too warm, follow my plan; make up your minds you won't feel so, and the thing's done!" and Dr. Van Noostile marched proudly along in the hottest part of the road, with his nose in the air, though the sun blistered the end most abominably! while the others, not to be behindhand in wisdom, followed his example; all but Mumbudget, who kept in the shade of the trees growing beside the road, and was secretly voted a greater ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... of my chimney over me, some even think that I have got into a sad rearward way altogether; in short, from standing behind my old-fashioned chimney so much, I have got to be quite behind the age too, as well as running behindhand in everything else. But to tell the truth, I never was a very forward old fellow, nor what my farming neighbors call a forehanded one. Indeed, those rumors about my behindhandedness are so far correct, that ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... unpractised in such figments,—I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Roman Catholics, who usually outdo us in their work among the poor, seemed a little behindhand in this special department of settling the Arabs. They have schools largely attended in Tudor Place, Tottenham Court Road, White Lion Street, Seven Dials, &c., but, as far as I could ascertain, nothing local in the shape of a Refuge. To propagate the faith may be all very well, and will ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... darkness seemed endless in the exposed picquets. Save for the Australian loot it looked like a fasting Christmas. Parcel mails could not be sent up, for every camel was required to convey food and fodder on to the cavalry. The cigarette ration was behindhand and most of the men were without a smoke. The officers could torture themselves with the thought of five turkeys ordered in Port Said and unlimited mess stores lying sixty miles away at Romani. But at the last moment all was changed. A parcel mail came in—and the spectre of bully ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... was brought, breakfast was still a little behindhand, but she would not let me help. Anyhow, I felt in spite of my talk that I wanted to do some other sort of service for her: I wanted to show off, to prove myself a protector, to fight for her, to knock down or drive off her foes and mine; and as I ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... found among them; virtue and vice are distributed among them. Let Americans not stigmatize them as "undesirable immigrants," and close their hospitable gate upon them. They bring with them qualities which are an ample compensation for their defects, and their well-to-do brethren are not behindhand in seeing to it that they become no public burden. The American people have repeatedly shown the door to those who came hither for the purpose of preaching anti-Semitism, thereby publicly testifying that they would have none of ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau

... almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion. I partook, indeed, of this honor with several of the first and best and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behindhand with none of them; and I am sure, that, if, to the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honor and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... myself and eat abundantly, for, being a great man, I must feel tired; and he took good care to give the means of doing so. All the people in these parts are exceedingly kind and liberal with their food, and Katema was not behindhand. When he visited our encampment, I presented him with a cloak of red baize, ornamented with gold tinsel, which cost thirty shillings, according to the promise I had made in going to Londa; also a cotton robe, both large and small beads, an iron spoon, and a tin pannikin containing a quarter ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... congregation; partly because of the rough weather, and partly because we had sailed so well that nobody realised how much faster the time was to-day than it had been yesterday, and we were therefore all behindhand. In the afternoon I went on deck for a short time, but found it so cold that I could not remain; for, although the wind was right aft, the gale blew fierce and strong. Tom had a very anxious time of it, literally flying along a strange coast, with on one hand the danger ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... section-house one torrid day, remarked wonderingly that Mrs. Lancaster gave "nary a whimper." The latter looked up with a smile. "I don't think I'm sick enough," she said. "Other people, worse off, have a right to groan." Dallas, certain that Marylyn's heartache was the keener, would not be behindhand in restraint. And her sister's happiness, forethought, and desire to please, all drove the thrust of penitence to the hilt, and turned the knife in that ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... together with the good sale of my works, enables me to live without anxiety. Everything I write, I can sell immediately five times over, and also be well paid. * * * Oh! how happy should I now be if I had my perfect hearing, for I should then hasten to you. As it is, I must in all things be behindhand; my best years will slip away without bringing forth what, with my talent and my strength, I ought to have accomplished. I must now have recourse to sad resignation. I have, it is true, resolved not to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... they had to work hard, and they were always behindhand with their work. She learned from Cecilia that, apart from the canonical directions for Divine Service, there existed an unwritten code for pious observances—some saints were honoured by having ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... not give the details of the battle. It is sufficient to know that the first line of the French chivalry charged with the utmost fury. Among these was an ally of note, John, King of Bohemia, who with his barons and knights was not behindhand in the deadly onset; and yet this king was old and blind! His was chivalry in another form! He would have his stroke in the battle, and he plunged into it with his horse tied by its reins to one of his knights on either side. A plume ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... be it from me to seem behindhand," said the other, much ruffled, as she gathered her sheet about her. By the way she said it, one saw that she and Mrs. Parachute did not call. She bowed to Lady Arabel, and became satirical, even arch. "Good afternoon, Mrs.—er—, I am assured that the moment ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... and declared he had a nap,—just enough to make him a poet. To prove which he wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand, wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen, which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with so many w's that they looked like saws; and they circulated even unto Llandudno, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... the upper class. There is some quality in the English race which breeds an inordinate admiration for all kinds of superiority: it is certain that if one class of English society can be justly accused of an over-great veneration for rank, the class which is rank itself is not behindhand in doing homage to the political stars of the day. In favor of this peculiarity of English people it may fairly be said that they love to associate with persons of rank and power from a disinterested love of those things themselves, whereas in most other countries the society of noble and ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... naturally charitable, what might not Christian education and Christian principles effect! Where a joke is evidently intended, I never knew people more ready to join in it than these are. If ridiculed for any particularity of manner, figure, or countenance, they are sure not to be long behindhand in returning it, and that very often with interest. If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... friends, in the hopes of an introduction. [46] Perhaps you will ask why I did not so arrange matters from the first, instead of always appearing in public. Because in war it is the first business of a commander not to be behindhand in knowing what ought to be done and seeing that it is done, and the general who is seldom seen is apt to let things slip. [47] But to-day, when war with its insatiable demands is over, I feel as if I had some claim myself to rest and refreshment. I am in some perplexity, however, as ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... got a fall. In the forenoon of the following Sabbath the minister preached from the text, "Be sure your sin will find you out;" and in the afternoon from "Pride goeth before a fall." He was grand. In the evening Sandy tendered his resignation of office, which was at once accepted. Wobs were behindhand for a week owing to the length of the prayers offered up for Bell; and Lang ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... are behindhand with their contributions, and, being deaf to remonstrance, I am obliged to apply to you, to ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... friends), sent for his boon-companions, in whom he delighted, and charged the chamberlain[FN145] that he should suffer none of the creatures of God the Most High to enter, save a man of his boon-companions, by name Abdulmelik ben Salih,[FN146] who was behindhand with them. Then they donned coloured clothes,[FN147] for that it was their wont, whenas they sat in the wine-chamber, to don raiment of red and yellow and green silk, and sat down to drink, and the cups went round and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... Wednesday of January, 1789; that they should vote for President on the first Wednesday in February, and that the new Congress should meet on the first Wednesday in March. The State of New York, where Anti-Federalists swarmed, did not follow the decree—with the result that that State, which had been behindhand in signing the Declaration of Independence, failed through the intrigues of the Anti-Federalists to choose electors, and so had no part in the choice of Washington as President of the United States. The other ten States performed their duty on time. They elected Washington President ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... noted in you, my Liberalis, and as it were touched with my hand a feeling of fussy anxiety not to be behindhand in doing what is your duty. This anxiety is not suitable to a grateful mind, which, on the contrary, produces the utmost confidence in oneself, and which drives away all trouble by the consciousness ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... extraordinarily active parson who had done the like by his schools, and partly from real kindness, and partly in the spirit of emulation which intrudes even upon schemes of benevolence, he was most anxious that we at Dacrefield should not "be behindhand" in good works. Competition is a feeling with which children have great sympathy, and I warmly echoed Mr. Clerke's resolve that we ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... little nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally running over: scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in these essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes- basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired barouche, with all speed. And from our place ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... complicated and threatening. They must have realized the great danger of the situation, but they very likely may have thought that by another piece of bluff similar to that of 1908-9 they might intimidate Russia a second time; and they believed that Russia was behindhand in her military preparations. They also, it appears, thought that England would not fight, being too much preoccupied with Ireland, India, and other troubles. And so it may have seemed that ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... aside the urgent fear that was knocking at her heart. If even the policeman had confidence in Susie, should her mother be behindhand? She told the policeman, for his information and her own comfort, that she was only frightened because the little boy had been ill, and it was such a cold, wet night, but at the same time she thought she would walk round to the town by the beach. "And you will go to the police station? Some ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... that it was a pity that Mr. Ede was ill, for they were going to play Madame Angot on Thursday night, and he would like them all to come. The invitation flattered Ralph's vanity, and, resolved not to be behindhand in civility, he declared between his gasps that no one should be disappointed on his account; he would feel highly complimented by Mr. Lennox's taking Mrs. Ede to the play; and on the spot it was arranged that Kate and Miss Hender should go together on ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... railways set many persons to work on the making of "steam coaches" to travel on the highways. Captain Ogle coming here on one of his own inventing September 8th, 1832, direct from Oxford, having travelled at from ten to fourteen miles per hour. Our local geniuses were not behindhand, and Messrs. Heaton Bros., and the well-known Dr. Church brought out machines for the purpose. Both parties started joint-stock companies to carry out their inventions, and in that respect both parties succeeded, for such was the run for shares, that in June, 1833, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... making these astonishing revelations, the Egyptologists have not been behindhand. Such scholars as Lepsius, Brugsch, de Rouge, Lenormant, Birch, Mariette, Maspero and Erman have perfected the studies of Young and Champollion; while at the same time these and a considerable company of other explorers, most notable of whom ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... its surroundings. The hospitality of the plantations was open to the officers, and wherever Stuart and his brigadiers pitched their tents, dances and music were the order of the day. Nor were the men behindhand. Even the heavy snow afforded them entertainment. Whenever a thaw took place they set themselves to making snow-balls; and great battles, in which one division was arrayed against another, and which were carried through with the pomp and circumstance of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... just double that money, and that leaves me twenty-one shillin' for a whole year's food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep up some sort of a place to live in. An' there's odds an' ends. Is it a wonder if I'm behindhand with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... household produce two perfections. The blatant popular voice follows with such "dictes" as, "Women are made of nectar and poison"; "Women have long hair and short wits" and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behindhand. Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings of lightning (Katha s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in fear (170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... Darting at one of the natives before he was apparently aware of his intention, he stabbed him through the heart, and then catching him up without a second's deliberation by his legs, and using his body as a club, he floored three others in rapid succession. We, too, were not behindhand with our sticks; and the savages—struck more with consternation at Magellan's tremendous strength, for he was built like a giant, and stood over six feet high, than by our prowess—ran away back into the jungle as fast as they had come upon ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson









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