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Backward and forward   /bˈækwərd ənd fˈɔrwərd/   Listen
Backward and forward

adverb
1.
Moving from one place to another and back again.  Synonyms: back and forth, to and fro.  "The treetops whipped to and fro in a frightening manner" , "The old man just sat on the porch and rocked back and forth all day"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Backward and forward" Quotes from Famous Books



... decided long ago that where there was no mind, it was useless to appeal for reason—one had merely to ignore the ignorant. And Rupert—he had now reacted towards the strongly female, healthy, selfish woman—it was his reaction for the time being—there was no helping it all. It was all a foolish backward and forward, a violent oscillation that would at length be too violent for his coherency, and he would smash and be dead. There was no saving him. This violent and directionless reaction between animalism and spiritual truth would go on in him till he tore himself in two between the opposite directions, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... some decisive event. Lingard struck a match to light his cheroot, and his powerful face with narrowed eyes stood out for a moment in the night and vanished suddenly. Then two shadowy forms and two red sparks moved backward and forward on the poop. A larger, but a paler and oval patch of light from the compass lamps lay on the brasses of the wheel and on the breast of the Malay standing by the helm. Lingard's voice, as if unable altogether to master the enormous silence of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... inseparable from his majesty's person." It was expected, therefore, that the National Assembly would immediately transfer its sittings to Paris. This took place on the 19th. It was now more easy for me to bring persons together, than when I had to travel backward and forward to Versailles. Accordingly, by watching my opportunities, I obtained the promise of another meeting. This was held afterwards at the Duke de la Rochefoucauld's. The persons before mentioned were present; except the Comte de Mirabeau, whose occupations at that moment made it utterly impossible ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... apparently move at all, but ball number 8 at the other end will roll away. The air-particles act upon each other in much this same fashion, the difference being that when they are set in motion by a vibrating body a complete vibration backward and forward causes a similar backward and forward movement of the particles (oscillation) instead of simply a forward jerk as in the case of the ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... missing my comrades, and I was well-nigh starving, when I chanced to come back to the spot where we parted; and I verily believe I had not been two miles distant the whole eight days that I was moving round and round, and backward and forward, just in a circle, because, d'ye see, I followed the sun, and that led me astray ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... too delighted to do; but he was so excited that he could not sit still, and he kept walking backward and forward before me while he was speaking. "Well, it was this way," he said; "just now, while I was playing in the yard, Hannah said papa wanted to see me. Of course I thought right away that something must be wrong, and I didn't feel very happy over it, I can tell you; but when I got to the study, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... battery, the air was racking in furious waves. With every shot, Lacour and his companion received a blow on the breast, the violent contact with an invisible hand, pushing them backward and forward. They had to adjust their breathing to the rhythm of the concussions. During the hundredth part of a second, between the passing of one aerial wave and the advance of the next, their chests felt the agony of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Soper had begun with the extraordinary sound mentioned above. His features had immediately assumed an expression of intense pain, his eyes staring wildly, and, clapping his hands to his face, he had rocked his head backward and forward in speechless agony. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to face, holding each other's hands. Two others also face each other holding hands across the other two. They seesaw backward and forward, singing ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... upon deck, and, taking his arm as had been my wont, I sauntered with him backward and forward. His gloom, however (which I considered quite natural under the circumstances), seemed entirely unabated. He said little, and that moodily, and with evident effort. I ventured a jest or two, and he made a sickening attempt at a smile. Poor fellow!—as I thought of HIS WIFE, I wondered ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... of carrying out the precepts she enforced, and 'bothering the old wictim' in practice as well as in theory, Mrs Gamp took him by the collar of his coat, and gave him some dozen or two of hearty shakes backward and forward in his chair; that exercise being considered by the disciples of the Prig school of nursing (who are very numerous among professional ladies) as exceedingly conducive to repose, and highly beneficial to the performance ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... had been excessively warm, and so, as she sat, she gracefully waved, backward and forward, one ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... wretch that falls behind; he will be sure to meet an unhappy end, even at the hands of the Goobarites!" There was danger of being even thrown down and trampled to death by the bullocks, which were furiously rushing backward and forward; however, through the unremitting care of the escort, Clapperton made his way safely, though not without much fatigue and annoyance, along ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... cried he, and he was angry with himself as he noted that his voice was hoarse and tremulous, and that he could not manage to bring out his natural tones, "what have you been doing with yourself? I—I've been backward and forward here all day long, and now I've been waiting for ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... be quite a small one, and it was necessary that he should pass his hands over every inch, as he had said. The difficulty was to be sure, in the darkness, that he did not miss an inch. Sometimes he was not sure enough, and then he went over the ground again. He crawled backward and forward, and he crawled forward and backward. He crawled crosswise and lengthwise, he crawled diagonally, and he crawled round and round. But he did not find the key. If he had had only a little light, but he had none. He was so absorbed in his search that he did not know he had ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... horizontally. The spaces in between are filled with mud and stones, which we mix together to form a kind of cement. We bring the mud in tiny handfuls, holding it under our throats by means of our forepaws, and often making as many as a thousand journeys backward and forward from the bank before we have enough. We always build by night, you know, and for a long time no man could say just how we worked. Perhaps the Night Wind told in ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... know. The big curved spar, now that it was hanging low, bucked and swung and the dhow steered like an omnibus on slippery pavement. Luckily, I had living ballast and could trim the ship how I chose. They all began to grow seasick, but I gave them something to think about by making them shift backward and forward and from side to side until I found which way the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... turned the pitchfork round, and worked with the handle, and in the twinkling of an eye the stable was as clean as if it had been scoured. When he had done that, he went back again into the room in which the giant had given him leave to stay, and there he walked backward and forward on the floor, and ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... interest of the community in any function is direct, and indirect for individuals singly or associated together, it is proper for the State and not for individuals to take hold of it.—According to this rule the limits of the public and private domain can be defined, which limits, as they change backward and forward, may be verified according to the changes which take place in interests ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of the house and then closed again.[739] When a Greenlander dies, "they do not carry out the corpse through the entry of the house, but lift it through the window, or if he dies in a tent, they unfasten one of the skins behind, and convey it out that way. A woman behind waves a lighted chip backward and forward, and says: 'There is nothing more to be had here.'"[740] Similarly the Hottentots, Bechuanas, Basutos, Marotse, Barongo, and many other tribes of South and West Africa never carry a corpse out by the door of the hut but always by a special opening ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... was moving rapidly backward and forward. Once Rockley and his men had Tom's team dangerously close to the line. But Tom ordered a drop and there the team clung, refusing to budge ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... here? (No response.) In that case I am told that Dr. Rohrbacher will read a paper by Mr. Tatum of Lebanon, Kentucky on "A Look, Backward and Forward, Into Nut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... Devil drest! He was in his Sunday's best; His coat was red, and his breeches were blue, With a hole behind where his tail came thro'. Over the hill, and over the dale, And he went over the plain: And backward and forward he switch'd his tail, As a ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... than the roofs of the dwellings. The stork clattering to her young on the house peak may feel that her nest is lifted far out of danger, but the croaking frog in neighboring bulrushes is nearer the stars than she. Water bugs dart backward and forward above the heads of the chimney swallows, and willow trees seem drooping with shame, because they cannot reach as high ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... and curious thoughts stole into her heart as she watched the mother slowly rocking backward and forward, uttering a low, crooning lullaby,—the gentlest sound that ever falls on mortal ears. For some reason there came into her soul a sudden loathing of her own ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... considered a first-rate teacher. Parents upheld him in anything he chose to do with the boys, and if they complained at home, they were told that it must have been their fault to be punished at all. This man every morning took the Bible in one hand and his rattan in the other and walked backward and forward on the floor in front of the desks while the boys read aloud, each boy reading two or three verses; and woe be to any boy who made a mistake, such as mispronouncing a word! Although he might never have been instructed ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... citadel; it was yet occupied by groups of Southron officers, gayly walking to and fro under the light of the moon. In hopes of gaining some useful information from their discourse, he concealed himself behind a chest of arrows; and as they passed backward and forward, distinctly heard them jesting each other about divers fair dames of the country around. The conversation terminated in a debate, whether or no the indifference which their governor De Valence manifested to the majestic beauties ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... shut up in the pew, but she could scarcely sit still. She rocked backward and forward and wrung her hands. "Now this will follow me all day," she thought. "Who knows," she went on, growing more and more anxious, "who knows whether it will not ...
— The Treasure • Selma Lagerlof

... confounding to the faculties than that roaring column of consuming fire. It was a thing incredibly huge, incredibly furious, incredibly wild. Human figures, black against its glare, were flying to safety, near-by silhouettes were flinging their arms aloft and dashing backward and forward; faces upturned to it were white and terrified. The scattered mesquite stood against the night like a wall, spotted with inky shadows, and, above, the heavens resembled ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... people, scarcely a figure of speech," so marvellous is the difference between the surroundings of their cradle and their grave. Standing by the Janus at the portals of the two centuries, what a contrast was presented in the backward and forward views! Backward we have seen, in these glimpses of the past, men struggling with difficulties and passing away with the seed-sowing; forward, we see other men enter the promised land and reaping the harvest, for which others had toiled; backward we have seen in our villages, men passing ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... ours may live for months without a red-skin happening to light on us, but if there were many more they would be certain to find us. There would be too much noise going on, too much shooting and driving backward and forward with food and necessaries. We want it kept dark till we thoroughly prove the place. So I made them all take an oath this morning that they would keep their heads cool, and I told them that if one of them got drunk, or said a word about our going after ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... horses to get past. Carriages had to go round, an easy matter in a city built as this is in squares like a chess-board. The barricades mount two guns each, and as the streets are quite straight they can sweep them in both directions, to the whole length of their range. As in Turin, you can look backward and forward along the straight streets from every part of the city, and see mountains at each end. The suburbs of the city are quite as repulsive as our first glimpse of them led us to expect; and, as far as one could judge by the appearance ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... flared up in the library and then was turned lower. He crept to the window and looked in as before. The strange man was at the safe, working the combination knob backward and forward. ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... seen a well-dressed woman made to look very awkward by elevating her shoulders slightly and pushing her elbows too far behind her. Some hold their hands up to the waist, and press their arms against themselves as tightly as if they were glued there; others swing them backward and forward, as a business man walks along the street. Too short steps detract from dignity very much, forming a mincing pace; too long ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... in his Berserker rage; bleeding, frothing, cursing; five frozen years thawing into sudden hell. They swayed backward and forward, panted, sweated, like some cyclopean, many-legged monster rising from the lower deeps. The slush-lamp went over, drowned in its own fat, while the midday twilight scarce percolated through the dirty canvas ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... hinge, and thus not only gained a better purchase, increasing his leverage, but was able to operate without the slightest sound. It was a long time before the bolt moved, but to his intense gratification it did move at last, and Henley took a fresh grip upon his hinge. Backward and forward he worked his lever, and with each turn the old bolt slipped back a little. At last he could see the end of it, and then it was clear of the frame entirely. He had expected no difficulty in opening the door when ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... made no reply; for while these young viragoes were catechising us at this rate, I discovered with much pleasure, that the lady of the house did not utter a word, but walked the room backward and forward with a smiling countenance. Presently she went out; and showing herself at an opposite window, beckoned me to come to her; when she said, in a low voice, "Go back into the house, I'll be there directly. On my stepping in you must demand provisions; I will deny that I have any. You must then ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... found Beethoven awaiting him, with the coveted reply from his lady-love. In this manner Beethoven carried the letters backward and forward for some five or six weeks—in short, as long as ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... Amsterdam in 1650. Some one had made a literal translation, writing generally the English word under the Dutch, so that the grammatical differences between the two tongues made even the reading of the translation a difficult matter. One had to dodge backward and forward among the words. This was in addition to the difficulty of deciphering a strange handwriting of two hundred years ago. I found, however, that after a short time I got into the habit of following in conventional English the Dutch construction; ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... potatoes and pork, and then pork and potatoes. And don't imagine for a moment that they are clean! No, indeed! And if only you saw them drilling for hours, indeed for days, together; they all collect in a field, then they do nothing but march backward and forward, and wheel this way and that. If only they would cultivate the land, or remain at home and work on their high roads! Really, madame, these soldiers are of no earthly use! Poor people have to feed and keep them, only in order that they may learn ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... dislike of poetic productions," what sort of dislike of them must it not be inducing to-day? For the appreciation of poetry cannot live under the same roof with the journalistic spirit. The art needs long, quiet vistas backward and forward, such as are to be had daily on one of those "lone heaths" where Hazlitt used to love to stalk ideas, but such as are not to be met with in Times Square ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... I said, saluting. "I beg your pardon, sir; I've been going backward and forward to Mr ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... edge of the crowbar, and by gently working it backward and forward, he removed the stones and enlarged the aperture sufficiently to admit the passage of a man; he then replaced the stones, together with the bar, and so arranged the window that no one would have ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... that it was to entertain Hicks and another person; but it should seem that other persons were not named; and Barter tells you that Hicks and another person (who afterwards proved to be Nelthorp) are promised to be entertained, and ordered to come in the evening. But not to go backward and forward, as he has done in his evidence, denying what he afterwards acknowledged that he saw anybody besides a little girl; that he pulled down the hay out of the rack for his horse; that he eat anything but cake ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... companions, thrown high into the air, to be followed by a second and a third. Now the animal was through the throng and carrying a poor boy on its horn, whence presently he fell dead; through and through the ranks of the regiments it charged furiously backward and forward. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard

... asked who lived there, and they informed me, adding an expression of surprise at my putting such a question. Was their master at home? He was. And could I see him? They would let me know directly. On this I was conducted to a small room, and left there, The roughs paced backward and forward before the door, casting glances at me which I fancied to be sinister. In a few minutes their chief, a stalwart, brawny biped, swaggered in, twirling his moustaches, clanking his sword, and studying to seem truculent. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... independently of his own movements, thus broadening the surface they were covering with a view to succoring the canoe. As though with malevolent delight in the fear he was causing, Carey rapidly changed the course of the launch, urging it backward and forward with a resulting wild agitation of the waters. In one of these evolutions it passed within oar's length of the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... with that familiar trick of his, balancing on one foot and suddenly throwing his slight weight forward on the other. "A bundle of nerves," people called the Doctor: to stand still would have been a penance to him; even as he swayed backward and forward in talking, his hand must be busy at the seals on his watch chain and his shrewd glance travelling over a dozen things you would never dream so clever a man would take notice of. It was a prospect of moderate commercial activity they looked out upon, a street of mellow shopfronts on both sides, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... to the branch of a tree, in order that the dogs might not get at them. A number of large fires were also kindled on the beach, for the purpose of giving light to the canoes, which were employed all night in going backward and forward between the shore and the ship, although it rained the greater ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... half a mile from where Jill watched, resting again while she gazed after him. He moved backward and forward. He marked a place with a stone. He came well back from it and seemed to remove his wrist watch. He laid it on a boulder and stamped on it. He stamped again and again, shifting it between stampings. Then he pounded it with a small rock. He stood up and came back, trailing ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... over and over, and backward and forward, too; But I couldn't remember six times nine, and I didn't know what to do, Till sister told me to play with my doll, and not to bother my head. "If you call her 'Fifty-four' for a while, you'll learn it by ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... heard a loud stamping noise above me. It was a continued series of thumps, that resembled the heavy footsteps of men passing backward and forward over the decks. They were on both sides of the hatchway, and all around it, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... we to deny to a MAJORITY of the people the right of altering even the whole frame of their society, if such should be their pleasure? They may change it, say they, from a monarchy to a republic to?day, and to-morrow back again from a republic to a monarchy, and so backward and forward as often as they like. They are masters of the commonwealth; because in substance they are themselves the commonwealth. The French revolution, say they, was the act of the majority of the people; and if the majority of any other people, the people of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... "it was in that corner she had her rocking-chair. Girls, do you remember Annabel's rocking-chair, and how she used to sway herself backward and forward in it and half-shut ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... of girls in Latin; but my only opportunity of going before him was at morning prayers and Wednesday afternoons, when we assembled in the hall to hear orations in Latin, or translations, and "pieces" spoken by the boys; and at the quarterly reviews, when he marched us backward and forward through the books we had conned, like the sharp old gentleman he was, notwithstanding ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... reach Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's place, is best told in his own words. "The train soon stopped at a small station, and, seeing some people get out, I also descended; when, in a moment, the train moved on —faster and faster—and left me standing on the platform. I walked a few paces backward and forward in disagreeable meditation. 'I wish to Heaven,' thought I to myself, 'that I was on my way back to Rome with a postboy.' Then I observed a policeman darting his eyes upon me, as if he would look me through. Said I to the ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... the parapet, she perceived the little white boat just starting around the cliff towards the Grotto of Virgil. Vere was rowing. Hermione saw her thin figure, so impregnated with the narrow charm of youth, bending backward and forward to the oars, Emile's big form leaning against the cushions as if at ease. From the dripping oars came twinkling lines of light, that rayed out and spread like the opened sticks of a fan upon the sea. Hugging the shore, the boat slipped out ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... daily increase, and the fixedness of our position in the Far East hourly becomes more definite. The public man wears a scarf about his eyes who does not see that our historic statesmanship during this century will deal with our growing mastery of the Pacific, and the weaving backward and forward across that ocean of our ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... capture presented great difficulties. All through the 8th General Fry bombarded it from Mazera, while his infantry were slowly ferried over higher up. This was prepared by some daring sappers, who swam the broad river and fixed a wire rope by which the boats were worked backward and forward, and an advance was made against ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... have in common with the anthropoid apes, abandoned the use of these muscles, and they gradually became rudimentary and useless. However, we possess them still (Figure 2.324). In fact, some men can still move their ears a little backward and forward by means of the drawing and withdrawing muscles (b and c); with practice this faculty can be much improved. But no man can now lift up his ears by the raising muscle (a), or change the shape of them by the small inner muscles (d, e, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... there continues this terrible cannonading backward and forward, this dreadful argument of batteries. Horrible as is the devastation which such an instrument of murder can wreak, you gradually grow accustomed to the roaring storm. And you almost smile because you still lower your head each time. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... take my book and establish myself in the garden. Paris might have been miles away, though only a few yards off there was a busy, crowded boulevard, but no noise seemed to penetrate the thick walls. Occasionally at the end of a quiet path I would see a black figure pacing backward and forward, with eyes fixed on a breviary. Once or twice a soeur jardiniere with a big, flat straw hat over her coiffe and veil tending the flowers (there were not many) or weeding the lawn, sometimes convalescents or old ladies seated in armchairs ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... incessantly, near and distant, broken, cheery little flurries of bugle music, and far and farther still, where mists hung over a vast hollow in the hills, the dropping shots of the outposts thickened to a steady patter, running backward and forward, from east to west, as far as ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... note from him, and pass one to him in return. He had only to run it under the leaf of a table, or stick it inside of some book: no doubt they have it all arranged, and pass their infernal love-letters backward and forward. But I'll soon have a chance. My time is coming. It's near, too. I'll have my vengeance; and then for all the wrongs of all my life that demon of a woman shall ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... absence of general conversation. Lady Loring sat down at the piano, and played as admirably as usual. At the other end of the room Romayne and Stella were together, listening to the music. Lord Loring, walking backward and forward, with a restlessness which was far from being characteristic of him in his after-dinner hours, was stopped when he reached the neighborhood of the piano by a ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... First, every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... he prepares a second hook from a second reel which he throws out at the starboard side. At the end of each copper line a few yards of fish-cord are attached in which a loop is adjusted for the fingers. This holds the line secure while the backward and forward pulls are being made, and affords a good hold for the hook-impaling "jerk" when a strike is felt. While the "angler" pulls on his line the boatman slowly rows along, and holding his line on the fingers of his "starboard" hand, he secures the proper motion ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... entirely unconscious of everything except this one importunate want, and giving no sign of knowing his wife or any one else; and poor Mrs. Tulliver, her feeble faculties almost paralyzed by this sudden accumulation of troubles, went backward and forward to the gate to see if the Laceham coach were coming, though ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... last came Bletchley, and the children were lifted out into the middle of such a bustle, as it seemed to Milly. There were crowds of people at the station, and they were all pushing backward and forward, and ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... supported the long-boats should give way, and the boats themselves should go overboard, perhaps carrying away with them a lot of the rigging. Then twenty-five empty paraffin casks which were lashed on deck broke loose, washed backward and forward, and gradually filled with water; so that the outlook was not altogether agreeable. But it was worst of all when the piles of reserve timber, spars, and planks began the same dance, and threatened to break the props ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... a lady of quality, had two daughters who were perfect beauties. He asked for one of them in marriage, leaving to her the choice of which she would bestow on him. They would neither of them have him, and they sent him backward and forward from one to the other, neither being able to make up her mind to marry a man who had a blue beard. Another thing which made them averse to him was that he had already married several wives, and nobody knew what had become ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... and sat on his haunches, his ears moving quickly backward and forward. He kept his eyes fixed on me with a look so strange that he concentered all my attention on himself. Slowly he rose up, all his hair bristling, and stood perfectly rigid, and with the same wild stare. I had no time, however, to examine the dog. Presently ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... other finish to their cylinders; but Messrs. Penn grind their cylinders after they are bored, by laying them on their side, and rubbing a piece of lead, with a cross iron handle like that of a rolling stone, and smeared with emery and oil, backward and forward— the cylinder being gradually turned round so as to subject every part successively to the operation. The lead by which this grinding is accomplished is cast in the Cylinder, whereby it is formed of the right curve; but the part of the cylinder in which it is cast should be previously heated by ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... had antecedents," I cried out. "There are two ways of doing this Sherlock Holmes business—backward and forward, you know. Let's take Doctor Jones backward. As they say in post-office forms?—what ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... Backward and forward they run and crawl, Houses and treasures they heap up high, Hither and thither their booty haul, ... Then suddenly drop in their tracks and die! For few are wise enough to repair In time to a ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... great, pleasant barn, and while Peggy saddled the good horse, Rita and Margaret mounted the old swing, and went flying backward and forward between the great banks of ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... very difficult to catch one, for their movements are like a flash. I did succeed once in holding one long enough to examine his beautiful steel-blue bands. The babies are as delicate as if they were made of glass, and as light and airy as if they belonged to fairy-land. They run, all the time, backward and forward, just for the pleasure of moving, over the ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... music. The instruments were a gong made of a large keg, over one of the ends of which was stretched a skin which was struck by a small stick, and an instrument consisting of a stick of firm wood, notched like a saw, over the teeth of which a smaller stick was rubbed forcibly backward and forward. They had besides rattles made of strings of deer's hoofs, and also parts of the intestines of an animal inflated, inclosing small stones, which produced a sound like pebbles in a small gourd. With these, rude as they were, very good time was preserved with the vocal performers, seated ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... came to her that he had asked for no caress. He was going unassoiled to his God, with the divine indifference of the dying. Only his imagination looked backward and forward. And she thought, "It is a little light flame that I have lit with my own taper that has gone out, and presently the grave will extinguish that." She sat quiet and sombre in the growing darkness ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... from the nearest town, and not a human being visible from the point of observation occupied by Miss Gladden, as she slowly swung backward and forward in her hammock under the pines, half way up the mountain side; and the only sign of human life was a faint, blue smoke curling upward among the evergreens on one side, at the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... from the air; and, reversing this order, the air arises from fire, the water from the air, and from the water the earth, the lowest of the four elements, of which all beings are formed. Thus by their continual motions backward and forward, upward and downward, the conjunction of the several parts of the universe is preserved; a union which, in the beauty we now behold it, must be eternal, or at least of a very long duration, and almost for an infinite space of time; and, whichever it is, the universe must of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... of the bird is very different from that of other pigeons; in good birds the head touches the tail-feathers, which consequently often become crumpled. They habitually tremble much; and their necks have an extraordinary, apparently convulsive, backward and forward movement. Good birds walk in a singular manner, as if their small feet were stiff. Owing to their large tails, they fly badly on a windy day. The dark-coloured varieties are ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... and look at the engine in here!" cried Miselle, dragging her reluctant friend into a long, narrow den, almost filled by a black monster with shining brass ornaments, who slid his iron arms backward and forward, backward and forward, in a steady, remorseless manner, highly suggestive of what he would do, had he fists at the end of them, and all the world within reach of their swing. A sickish smell of heated oil pervaded the apartment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... the easy-going masons of Amboise prepare to patch up its walls. No particular method is observed, the work progresses after the fashion of a child's block house, and the principal labour lies in dividing the lumps of stone. This is done with a rusty old saw pulled slowly backward and forward by two men, the sound produced resembling a succession of agonized shrieks. It goes on for hours and hours, with no apparent result except the noise; while a handsome boy, in a striped blouse and broad blue sash, completes the discord by currying the stone ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... behind the wooded hill. We conversed on many subjects, and, without perceiving it, approached the gloomy recess. Charlotte entered, and sat down. Albert seated himself beside her. I did the same, but my agitation did not suffer me to remain long seated. I got up, and stood before her, then walked backward and forward, and sat down again. I was restless and miserable. Charlotte drew our attention to the beautiful effect of the moonlight, which threw a silver hue over the terrace in front of us, beyond the beech trees. It was a glorious ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... know of no use for it." J. O.—"I know of no use for it." M. O.—"Brother Senior, what shall we do with it?" S. O.—"Heave it over among the rubbish." The Master and Senior Overseers then take the stone between them, and after waving it backward and forward four times, they heave it over in such a manner that the one letting go while the stone is arriving at the highest point, it brings the stone in a quarterly direction over the other's left shoulder; the Junior ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... Jim, and now I saw it plain enough. He was one of those rattling, jolly kind of fellows that can't help being friendly with every girl he meets, and very seldom cares much for any one in particular. He had been backward and forward a good deal with father before we got clear of Berrima, and that's how poor Maddie had come to take the fancy so strong and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... of the grim knight and pictured saint Look living in the moon; and as you turn Backward and forward, to the echoes faint Of your own footsteps—voices from the urn Appear to wake, and shadows wild and quaint Start from the frames which fence their aspects stern, As if to ask how you can dare to keep A vigil ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... and sun and moonshine rain'd their light On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight Round Troy—but while this stood, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... on the road to Gerbeviller, we were again in the track of the September invasion. Over all the slopes now cool with spring foliage the battle rocked backward and forward during those burning autumn days; and every mile of the struggle has left its ghastly traces. The fields are full of wooden crosses which the ploughshare makes a circuit to avoid; many of the villages have been partly wrecked, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... ready to his hand, he took the piece of split reed, and drew it backward and forward across the row of upright canes. This produced a sound which was an exact imitation of the "skerr" of the rattlesnake; go like, that a person hearing it, without knowing what caused it, would undoubtedly have mistaken it for the latter; so like, that the black knew the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... have as it were nailed them down and held them fast.' [Footnote: Mill, System of Logic, vol. ii. p. 291.] And this holds good alike of the false and of the true. I think we may observe very often the way in which controversies, after long eddying backward and forward, hither and thither, concentrate themselves at last in some single word which is felt to contain all that the one party would affirm and the other would deny. After a desultory swaying of the battle hither and thither 'the ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... am not better, Hannah—I have only floated back. I am always floating backward and forward, towards life and towards death; only every time I float towards death I go farther away, and I shall float out with ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... one silent turn backward and forward in the shade of the wall, getting, at the height on which the quarantine barracks are placed, what cool refreshment of sea breeze there was at seven in the morning. Mr Meagles's companion ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... and on the poop were three or four officers in uniform and straw hats. One of these last stood for some time gazing at the brig—one hand resting on the ratlines of the mizzen shrouds, and the other slowly swinging a trumpet backward and forward. Presently an officer with a pair of gleaming epaulets on his shoulders mounted the poop ladder, touched his hat, and waved his hand toward the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... of sustaining any serious injury from fire, on the ground, one and two pair stories, the communication is cut off by means of iron doors, which run on wheels in chase in the centre of the walls, and are moved backward and forward by a windlass; which doors are closed every evening, and would effectually prevent a communication beyond their boundaries. Fire-proof rooms also, as repositories for valuable books 302 and papers, are provided ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Liscom being such a character has always more or less authority in her bearing, but that day she displayed a real majesty which I had never seen in her before. She stood there a second, then she turned and made a backward and forward motion of her arm as if she were sweeping, and directly red-shirted firemen and boys began to fly out of the house as ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... way, though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... cat-like body, moving to and fro under the hanging meat. The rounded head, the long hollow back, the smooth tawny skin, were not to be mistaken. As if to add to their terrible situation, the boys now saw that not one, but a pair, of these fearful creatures were upon the ground, moving backward and forward, passing each other, and looking eagerly up at the meat where ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... hours. When properly boiled, strain it off, taking care to skim off all the fat; then put into it two ounces of rice, well boiled, half a pint of cream beaten up, and five or six yolks of eggs. When ready to serve, pour the soup to the eggs backward and forward to prevent it from curdling, and send it to table. You must boil the soup once after you add the cream, and before you put it to the eggs. Three laurel leaves put into it in summer and six in winter make a pleasant addition, instead of ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... dinner, the boys donned snowshoes and oilskin coats and sallied forth again. They traveled down the lake as far as the point where they had seen the men make a crossing. Then they entered the forest, and tramped backward and forward for several hours. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... remain a mystery to us: an organised illusion. Think, too, of the innumerable worlds amongst the stars, and the eternity of the past and future. Whether we look into the depths of space beyond the reach of telescope and microscope, or backward and forward along the vistas of time, we shall find ourselves surrounded with an impenetrable mystery in which the imagination is free ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... backward and forward and studied the sleeping, innocent face. I had almost written "sweet" again; I can scarcely think of her face, as it was then, without writing sweet. It would be long, Miss Prudence mused, before lines and creases intruded here and there in that ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... Once in the open he made no pause. The lumbering beast looked so clumsy that the inexperienced might have been forgiven a smile of ridicule. Its ears twitched backward and forward, its head lolled to its gait, and though its eyes shone with a baleful ferocity they seemed to gaze anywhere but at its ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... inches distance of upper flue from the copper, five inches closing into four and a half inches at top. A short distance above the top of your copper should be placed an iron register to regulate the fire, so contrived as to be handily worked backward and forward by the brewer, or the man tending the fire, as circumstances may direct. The furnace door should be in two parts, one to hang on each side of the frame, and so lap over a small round hole, with a sliding shut to it, should be fixed in one of these doors, to admit the iron slicer to stir the fire. ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... simple element in you, in spite of your endeavors to analyze or decompose it. Are not, after all, our convictions our only steadfastly grounded faith? I do not mean conviction wrought out in the loom of logical argument, where one's understanding must have shuttled backward and forward through every thread a thousand times before the woof is completed, but the spiritual convictions, the intuitions of our souls, that lie upon their surface like direct reflections from heaven, distinct ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... readers, like myself, who are interested in scientific fantasies, prefer stories of interplanetary travels and fourth dimensional stories, and variations of these themes. Such as various space-ships and vibration machines for visiting other planets and traveling backward and forward in time. Stories of lost continents and of strange races of people living in unknown places on our ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... I said, half crying, as I began to rock myself backward and forward in the great rocking-chair. "I am out of all heart." For an hour I continued to rock and fret myself, and then came to the desperate resolution to go to work and try what I could do with my own hands. But where was I to begin? What was I to take hold of first? ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... confusion by the news that Dick Talbot, as he was commonly called, had laid a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The bravo was sent to the Tower: but in a few days he was again swaggering about the galleries, and carrying billets backward and forward between his patron and the ugliest maids of honour. It was in vain that old and discreet counsellors implored the royal brothers not to countenance this bad man, who had nothing to recommend him except his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Number 2, to slide his feet forward along the floor, carrying Number 1 backward upon them. Number 2 then leans forward so that his weight is well on his own feet, which allows Number 1 to draw his feet towards him and Number 2 slides forward with them. By swaying backward and forward in this way, the two members of the team, by alternating the sliding of their feet, progress across the floor to the distance line. Upon reaching the same, they reverse their direction without turning around. The race ends when they have crossed ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... 2 had an engine of a nominal power of 40 horses, and took on an average 30 minutes to make the trip, backward and forward, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various

... hands clasped before her on the edge of the table, vainly trying to steady their palsied shaking. Her eyes, bright, piercing, age-defying, she fixed upon the bewildered Abraham with a look of deep and sorrowful reproach. Her unsteady head bobbed backward and forward with many an accusing nod, and the cap with its rakish pink bow bobbed backward and forward too. Abe watched her, fascinated, unconsciously wondering, even in the midst of his disquietude, why the cap did not slide off her bald scalp entirely. To his amazement, she ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... backward and forward movement, alternately relieving and pressing the patient's stomach against the ground in order to drive the air out of his chest and mouth, and allowing it to suck itself in again, until gradually the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... for the picnic! John Morgan wanted to hire a wagon, and take Polly Jane; but she was tired going backward and forward to Rocky Hollow, and didn't care to go. Joe and Biel drove our steady horses, and Cousin Nancy and Rhody Mills went with them. I couldn't find out if Race Miller was going or not; but I didn't hear of his inviting anybody else. Calanthy ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of the frame there is fixed a support which carries a train of gear wheels which is set in motion by a pulley and belt. These wheels serve to communicate a backward and forward motion, longitudinally, to the mullers through the intermedium of a winch, and a backward and forward motion transversely to two granite tables on which is placed the ink or color to be ground. This last-named motion is effected by means of a bevel pinion which is keyed to the same axle ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... thing for him, which he is like to get the most money by. My new friend kept himself to the nature of the thing, and would have been content to have gone, like a carrier's horse, always to the same inn, backward and forward, provided he could, as he called it, find his account in it: on the other hand, mine, as old as I was, was the notion of a mad rambling boy, that never cares to see a thing ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe



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