"Backwoodsman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall have occasion to speak of hereafter, Pantaush's point, Designs Bay, and the embouchure of the Indian river; and just at dusk landed opposite my friend's house, pretty well tired, though much delighted with our day's journey. We were received with a welcome such as only a backwoodsman knows how to give. In half an hour I felt as much at home as if I ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... strong, and given to the weak. The pugilist may be a poltroon, and the bookworm a hero. We have seen the most purely ideal philosopher in this country face the black muzzles of a dozen loaded revolvers with his usual serene composure. And on the other hand, we have known a black-bearded backwoodsman, whose mere voice and presence would quell any riot among the lumberers,—yet this man, nicknamed by his employees "the black devil," confessed himself to be in secret ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... greater than he who took a city. Beranger's Roi d'Yvetot, who ate four meals a day,—the Esquimaux, with his daily twenty-pound quantum of train-oil, gravy, and tallow-candles,—the alderman puffing over callipash and callipee,—the backwoodsman hungering after fattest of pork,—such men as these were no common sinners: they were assassins who struck at the very fountain of life, and throttled a human stomach. Pancreatic meant pancreative. Gastric juice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the Atlantic merchants, and in the rude log cabins of the backwoodsman, the name of Arthur is equally known and cherished as the friend ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... with the same dauntless buoyancy that they had shown in ever attempting the undertaking, and then blithely defying public opinion with a servant and a cow. The sense of their unfitness which had made the young men uneasy now gave way to secret wonder as the doctor pitched the tent like a backwoodsman, and his daughter showed a skilled acquaintance with ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... fearful moment when he felt the bear lift up his body in his claws to carry him away to the neighbourhood of his lair. The bear having dug a hole, placed him in it, and covered him carefully with leaves, grass, and bushes. An Indian, or hardy backwoodsman, could alone have existed under such circumstances. The hunter waited anxiously till he heard loud snores proceeding from the cavern. Then, slipping up, like Jack the Giant-killer from the castle of the ogre, he scampered off as fast as his legs ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... in a reserved and at times morose habit, nearly akin to sadness, at least in those who frequented the wilderness; it was the expression of the influence of the vast, desolate, and lonely nature amid which they passed their lives. It is true that Lincoln was never a backwoodsman, and never roved alone for long periods among the shadowy forests and the limit-less prairies, so that their powerful and weird influences, though not altogether remote, never bore upon him in full force; yet their effect was everywhere ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... employs,—to Generals and Dictators, as well as to the most ragged Pampa- Cossack in their pay. Our language is incapable of expressing the idea conveyed by this term; and the Western qualification "backwoodsman" is perhaps the nearest approach to a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the quaint reminiscence of my old friend and the quainter way he had of telling it. The rude dialect of the backwoodsman might have seemed oddly out of place, there, but for the quiet, unassuming manner and the fine old face of Uncle Eb in which the dullest eye might see the soul of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Virginia. He was a dark, eager youth, with a mop of black shiny hair that he was always tossing back, bright glowing eyes, a great enthusiasm of manner, and an imagination alert to catch fire. The backwoodsman seemed attracted to the boy by this very quick and unsophisticated bubbling of candid youth; while the boy most evidently worshipped his older companion as a symbol of the mysterious frontier. The Northerner was named Rogers, but ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... you be at Marwar Junction on that time? 'T won't be inconveniencing you, because I know that there's precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the 'Backwoodsman.' " ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... phases. His accounts of these regions were touched with the most vivid colors; not Cooper nor Irving has more truly reproduced the grand and savage features of American scenery, or the reckless generous daring of the rude backwoodsman, than Gerstaecker, writing, from some chance hut, his nocturnal landing place on the shore of some mighty river in Nebraska or Arkansas. Next we hear of him in South America, and then in California, passing a winter among the miners of the remotest ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... but the word was equivocal and the boy beside himself. For Hugh had wrenched the staff from him and was holding the hand that gripped the stiletto, while the lad, with streaming tears, plunged, whined and gnashed at the backwoodsman. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Hawk-Eye was not much of a backwoodsman, after all," said Frank, who was in the habit of commenting upon and criticising every thing he read. "Why did he leave his extra powder-horn in his canoe, when he knew that the Hurons were all around him? You wouldn't catch Dick or old Bob Kelly in any such scrape, ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... there, was another evidence of the great advantage, which, he began to feel with hopeless rage, the man who had stolen that thing from him which he prized most highly, had over him. The negro was his servant. Servants meant prosperity, prosperity meant power. Backwoodsman as he was, Joe Lorey knew that perfectly. His ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... and independent mind, wedded to a character of so much strength, singleness, and purity, pursued its own path of self-improvement for more than half a century, part gymnosophist, part backwoodsman; and thus did it come twice, though in a subaltern attitude, into the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proceedings of two young clerks from Boston, who saw a wild animal in every thicket, and repeatedly leveled their guns at some bear or panther, which turned out to be neither more nor less than a bush or tree-stump. They pestered our guide with all sorts of simple questions, which he, with a true backwoodsman's indifference, left for the most part unanswered. After about an hour, we found ourselves on the borders of a long and tolerably wide swamp, formed by the overflowings of the river, and which stretched for some five miles from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... philosophers who think the thought in one generation that is to revolutionize society in the next. With the hereditary legislator in whom eloquence is a far-descended attainment—a rich echo repeated by powerful voices from Cicero downward—we will match some wondrous backwoodsman, who has caught a wild power of language from the breeze among his native forest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren and sisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary distinctions become ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mediocre fellows. House dogs and donkeys make the most harmless and chaste companions for young innocence in the world. Mark Twain's humor is of the kind that teamsters use in bantering with each other, and his laugh is the gruff "haw-haw" of the backwoodsman. He is still the rough, awkward, good-natured boy who swore at the deck hands on the river steamer and chewed uncured tobacco when he was three years old. Thoroughly likeable as a good fellow, but impossible as a man of letters. It is an unfortunate feature of American literature that a hostler ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... however, seemed ready to make his home in Kentucky; and accident at last seems to have thrown one man into that country, whose story, upon his return, made some anxious to go there. This was John Finley, a backwoodsman of North Carolina. He was in the habit of roving about and trading with the Indians. In the year 1767, he, with certain companions as fearless as himself, led on from place to place by the course of trade, wandered ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... backwoodsman had, as we have seen, followed up the trail of the robbers, and, with Tolly Trevor and his friend Leaping Buck, had lain for a considerable time safely ensconced in a moss-covered crevice of the cliff that overlooked the camping-place. There, quietly ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... a sort of backwoodsman's life, and if there are treasure-vaults in this place I think we shall be able to get at them, however thick and heavy the stones may be ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... colleagues. Gallatin later described him as "a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman." And Jefferson is represented as saying of Jackson to Webster at Monticello in 1824: "His passions are terrible. When I was president of the Senate he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... by his literary friends. The Bishop always gave the works which were offered to him a fair chance. He read till he could read no longer, cutting the pages as he went, and thus his progress could be traced like that of a backwoodsman who "blazes" his way through a primeval forest. The paper-knife generally ceased to do duty before the thirtieth page. The melancholy of the book- hunter is aroused by two questions, "Whence?" and "Whither?" The bibliophile asks about his books the question which the metaphysician ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... You have heard but few of them in Louisiana, I guess, or you would know the difference betwixt thunder and the crack of a backwoodsman's rifle. To be sure, yonder oak wood has an almighty echo. That's James's rifle—he has shot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... but determine to adhere steadily to your profession for the present, Captain Sinclair. It will not do for you to give up your prospects and chance of advancement for even such a woman as me," continued Mary, smiling; "nor must you think of becoming a backwoodsman for a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... duel has yet been fought, there is no specific law upon the subject beyond that in the Decalogue, which says, "Thou shalt do no murder." But duelling everywhere follows the steps of modern civilization, and by the time the backwoodsman is transformed into the citizen, he has imbibed the false notions of honour which are prevalent in Europe, and around him, and is ready, like his progenitors, to settle his differences with the pistol. In the majority of the States the punishment for challenging, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... me even to sketch the biography of Mr. Lincoln. He was born in Kentucky fifty-six years ago, when Kentucky was a pioneer State. He lived, as boy and man, the hard and needy life of a backwoodsman, a farmer, a river boatman, and, finally, by his own efforts at self-education, of an active, respected, influential citizen, in the half-organized and manifold interests of a new and energetic community. From his boyhood up he ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... determined on visiting America; within whose wide extent all the elements of society, civilized and uncivilized, were to be found—where the great city could be traced to the infant town—where villages dwindle into scattered farms—and these to the log-house of the solitary backwoodsman, and the temporary wig-wam of the ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... himself something of a poet; but early in 1842 he had not yet received the MS. Perhaps Emerson heard of Tennyson through Carlyle, who, says Sterling, "said more in your praise than in any one's except Cromwell, and an American backwoodsman who has killed thirty or forty people with a bowie-knife." Carlyle at this time was much attached to Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly Review, and it may have been Carlyle who converted Lockhart to admiration of his old victim. Carlyle had very little ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... over again and enjoyed and still sometimes dream. In this I was always hunting and fighting, often in the dark; there was usually a woman or a princess, whom I admired, somewhere in the background, but I have never really seen her. Sometimes I was a stowaway on board ship or an Indian hunter or a backwoodsman making a log-cabin for my wife or rather some companion. My daythoughts were not about the women round about me, or even about the one who was so kind to me; they were almost impersonal. I went on, at any rate, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... (b. 1793, d. 1863) graduated at Middlebury College, Vt., in 1818. He was at one time editor of the "Backwoodsman," published at Grafton, Ill., and later of the "Louisville Advocate." He was the author of many tales of western adventure and of numerous essays, sketches, etc. His language is clear, chaste, and classical; his style concise, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and Bob left the room. The conversation now turned upon Johnny, who appeared, from all accounts, to be a very bad and dangerous fellow; and after a short discussion, they agreed to lynch him, in backwoodsman's phrase, just as cooly as if they had been talking of catching a mustang. When the men had come to this satisfactory conclusion, they got up, drank the judge's health and mine, shook us by the hand, and left ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... on his back. Her buoyancy enables her to carry a heavy load, and, though frail, the elasticity of her material admits of many a blow and pinch which would seriously damage a heavier vessel. The rifle and axe of the backwoodsman, the canoe and the weapons of the Indian, are the result of long years of experiment, and perfectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... exception, all of Burr's allegations were strictly true; and even that one was true in a Burrian sense. He did not own any arms or military stores: by the terms of his engagement with his recruits, every man was to join him armed, just as every backwoodsman was armed whenever he went from home. He had not issued nor promised any commissions: the time had not come for that. Jefferson and his cabinet undoubtedly knew his views and intentions, up to the point where they ceased ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... by no means perfect. Many of the flights into which Charley ventured, especially in regard to the manners and customs of the savages of ancient Greece and Rome, were quite incomprehensible to the worthy backwoodsman; but he invariably proceeded when Charley halted, giving a flight of his own when at a loss, varying and modifying when he thought it advisable, and altering, adding, or cutting off ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Herr Carovius, "but after all you can't afford to be a backwoodsman. Music is supposed to ennoble a man even externally. By the way, there is a rumour afloat that it is a symphony with chorus. How did you happen upon the idea? The laurels of the Ninth will not let you sleep? I would have thought that you didn't give ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... cottonwood grove revealed nothing, and as the sound was very faint and was not repeated, we concluded it was only fancy; father muttering as he crawled under his blanket that I was getting too almighty scarey for a backwoodsman. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... fotched Tike Bryerson!" flew the whisper from lip to ear; but the man with the trembling madness in his eyes was backing toward the door. Suddenly he stooped and rose again with a backwoodsman's rifle in his hands, and his voice sheared the breathless silence like the snarl of a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... inflexible, was Craig. None of the suits he had bought at seven that morning was quite right for immediate use; so there he was in his old lounge suit, baggy at knees and elbows and liberally bestrewn with lint. Her glance fell from his mussy collar to his backwoodsman's hands, to his feet, so cheaply and shabbily shod; the shoes looked the worse for the elaborate gloss the ferry bootblack had put upon them. She advanced because she could not retreat; but never had she ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... got himself up in what he thought a proper costume for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his waist, and top-boots ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... largest number of electoral votes, and Adams was only chosen by the House of Representatives in the absence of a majority vote for any one candidate. At the close of his term "Old Hickory," the hero of the people, the most characteristically democratic of our Presidents, and the first backwoodsman who entered the White House, was borne into office on a wave of popular enthusiasm. We have now arrived at the time when American literature, in the higher and stricter sense of the term, really ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... little one it is, too," agreed Mr. Max. "For a backwoodsman, who is not supposed to have experience, it is very well put together. Oh, don't frown like that! I'll believe she's your granddaughter, if you say so," and he laughed in wicked enjoyment at Overton's flushed face. "It's all right, Dan. I congratulate ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... to be made the confidant of his vehement admiration for Emily Deerhurst. The gentle lady-like girl impressed the backwoodsman in a wondrous manner. It seemed to him, as if his wealth would have real value, if he could pour it all ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Parson Collins, shrewd backwoodsman, ready for fight or prayer. He suffers at the hands of desperadoes, but is dauntless, and always gets the better of his partner in a trade. His white mule Ma'y Jane, is the only creature that outwits him, and that only at fence-corners.—Octave ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... people we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials, they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to do service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render. Each had lofty ideals, but each in striving to attain ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... recognized her,—or rather he had divined who she was. He quickened his pace, bent upon overtaking her. Then, with the thrill of the hunter, he abruptly whirled and retraced his steps. With the backwoodsman's cunning he hastened over the ground he had already traversed, chuckling in anticipation of her surprise when she found him waiting for her at the other end ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... something of an aristocrat. His personal popularity was sufficient. The Whigs who nominated him shrewdly refused to adopt a platform or declare their belief in anything. When some Democrat asserted that Harrison was a backwoodsman whose sole wants were a jug of hard cider and a log cabin, the Whigs treated the remark not as an insult but as proof positive that Harrison deserved the votes of Jackson men. The jug and the cabin they proudly transformed ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... about a minute, the latter raised himself up, and allowed the blanket to slip from over his head, which now appeared bound round with a piece of calico, fringed with gouts of congealed blood. The backwoodsman cast a side glance at the Indian, but it was only a momentary one, and he allowed his gaze ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... fifteen, including four women and six children. The colony throve, received accessions from the East, and, surviving all casualties, grew at last into a populous town. Mrs. Jameson was married again to a stalwart backwoodsman and became the mother of a large family. She was always known as the "Mother of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... backwoodsman of twenty, whose life had been as obscure as that of a domestic animal. He was rough of manner and slow of speech, and just now, owing to a combination of physical confinement and mental torture altogether ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... perfectly familiar with Beverley's condition. He was himself a victim of the tender passion to the extent of being an exile from his Virginia home, which he had left on account of dangerously wounding a rival. But he was well touched with the backwoodsman's taste for joke and banter. He and Oncle Jazon, therefore, knowing the main feature of Beverley's predicament, enjoyed making the most of their opportunity in their rude but ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... some of the spirits and watched her revive. He warmed her hands and chafed her feet before the fire which the backwoodsman had made. As she came back to consciousness, Charlton happened to think that he had no dry clothes for her. He would have gone immediately back to the buggy, where there was a portmanteau carefully stowed under ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... required of the axeman who entered the hardwood forests, together with readiness to undergo the privations of the life, made the backwoodsman in a sense an expert engaged in a special calling. [Footnote: J. Hall, Statistics of the West, 101; cf. Chastellux, Travels in North America (London, 1787), I., 44.] Frequently he was the descendant of generations of pioneers, who, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... the trust of one or the other conveyance to the liveried outriders. Then came the compact, boxy, buggy, buttoned-up vehicle of our friend the pedler—a thing for which the unfertile character of our language, as yet, has failed to provide a fitting name—but which the backwoodsman of the west calls a go-cart; a title which the proprietor does not always esteem significant of its manifold virtues and accommodations. With a capacious stomach, it is wisely estimated for all possible purposes; and when opened ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the backwoodsman ceased. Both men rose and stood facing each other. Zane's bronzed face was hard and tense, expressive of an indomitable will; Wetzel's was coldly dark, with fateful resolve, as if his decree of vengeance, once given, was as immutable as destiny. The big, horny hands gripped in a viselike ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Long, the wag of the regiment, he had been drawn with genuine affection. He liked Abe's bunkie, the boy Sanders, who was from Maine, while Abe was a Westerner—the lineal descendant in frame, cast of mind, and character of the border backwoodsman of the Revolution. Reynolds was a bully, and Crittenden all but had trouble with him; for he bullied the boy Sanders when Abe was not around, and bullied the "rookies." Abe seemed to have little use for him, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... scarcely reconcile the most fumacious American to the cigarrito of the Spanish fair. How strange seems Parton's picture of General Jackson puffing his long clay pipe on one side of the fireplace and Mrs. Jackson puffing hers on the other! No doubt, to the heart of the chivalrous backwoodsman those smoke-dried lips were yet the altar of early passion,—as that rather ungrammatical tongue was still the music of the spheres; but the unattractiveness of that conjugal counterblast is Nature's own protest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... city, but it seemed a crowded metropolis to Alec's eyes, accustomed to the quiet life of the little inland village. But it was not as a gaping backwoodsman he viewed its sights. If he had never seen a trolley-car before, he had carefully studied the power that propels one. The whir and clang, the rush of automobiles, the pounding of machinery in the great factory all seemed familiar, because they were a part of the world ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... just pays-an, or, as we also say, a 'countryman.' 'Savage,' too, or, as we ought to write it, salvage,[9] is nothing more grim or terrible than one who dwells in sylvis, in the woods—a meaning we can appreciate from our still comparatively pure application of the adjective sylvan. A 'backwoodsman' is therefore the very best original type of a savage! 'Savage' seems to be hesitating between its civil and its ethical applications; 'villain,' 'pagan,' and 'heathen,' however, have become quite absorbed in their moral sense—and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... our boats, I entered the tall pine forest, and after walking a mile came upon the clearing of the backwoodsman. His two daughters, young women, were working in the field; but the sight of a stranger was so unusual to them, that, heedless of my remonstrances and gentle assurances of goodwill, they took to their heels and ran so fast that it was impossible to overtake ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... certain, however, that not only was I right to speak my mind, but that in the last resort the common sense of what the Anglo- Saxon chronicler called "miletes agresti," and the new journalism "the backwoodsman peers," would turn out to be not for but against revolutionary action. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... of such a sort in many other localities.[82] It was evidently to this period that the reminiscences afterward collected by Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live,'" a backwoodsman formerly of Alabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy—must ha' been about twenty years ago—folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... a backwoodsman—and again he looked like a Californian, too, for his clothes were an old blue flannel shirt (with a rolling collar having white stars in the corners), patched buckskin trousers and heavy boots of the regulation style. Charley chanced to ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... are you going? Single-handed like Jack the Giant Killer to deliver, not a beautiful damsel from the fangs of a winged monster, but a tough old backwoodsman from the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... plan does honour to his perseverance. He had but few tents, and, even if there had been an abundance, mere canvass would not have protected his men from the rigour of an American winter. Under these circumstances he imitated the backwoodsman's practice of hutting. Trees were felled, and log-huts wore erected, the interstices of which were filled up with earth, moss, and a rude kind of mortar, in order to render them warm and comfortable. Around them, for defence, two redoubts were erected and an intrenchment, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Junction on that time? ’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the Backwoodsman.” ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... distant lands. He had a field glass slung over his shoulder, and a very large sheath knife buckled by a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman's simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising relish the picturesque plan and sky line of the antiquated village, and especially the wooden square of the old inn sign that hung ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... a grave, where he placed the body, still wrapped in its deerskins. He noted on a finger of one hand a gold ring, a queer possession for a backwoodsman. This he took off and dropped into the pouch which hung round his neck. "I reckon it'd better go to Mis' Hanks. Jim's gal 'ud valley it mor'n a ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... settling there, and he will, he tells us, go first to Detroit, whence he will be able to send Harold forward to your farm. The boy himself is delighted at the thought, and promises to return an accomplished backwoodsman. John joins me in kind love to yourself and your husband, and believe ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... to myself, is another phase of life. Peter is at once a Highlander, a Canadian, a trapper, a backwoodsman, and a coaster. His daughters are half Scotch and half Indian, and have many of the peculiarities of both races. There is even between these sisters a wide difference in intellect, appearance, and innate refinement. The doctor has apparently abandoned his profession for ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... — N. inhabitant; resident, residentiary^; dweller, indweller^; addressee; occupier, occupant; householder, lodger, inmate, tenant, incumbent, sojourner, locum tenens, commorant^; settler, squatter, backwoodsman, colonist; islander; denizen, citizen; burgher, oppidan^, cockney, cit, townsman, burgess; villager; cottager, cottier^, cotter; compatriot; backsettler^, boarder; hotel keeper, innkeeper; habitant; paying guest; planter. native, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the answer; "but not of the Redskins. As brave a backwoodsman as ever crossed the Mississippi lies buried there. You are not altogether wrong, though. I believe it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... flint-locks were enormously long; many of them would have seemed extremely old-fashioned to an ordnance officer. But every gun was like an additional limb to those practised marksmen, who knew little of firing in platoons, but everything of the patient accuracy which gives the backwoodsman his unerring aim. The assailants carried the latest weapons approved of by the War Office, and manipulated them with the faultless unison and unswerving harmony that would have compelled the compliments of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... out by Mr. Bartlett. We confess, we looked for something racier and of a more puckery flavor. One hears such now and then, mostly from the West,—like "Mean enough to steal acorns from a blind hog"; "I take my tea bar-foot," the answer of a backwoodsman, when asked if he would have cream and sugar. Some are unmistakably Eastern; as, "All deacons are good,—but there's odds in deacons"; "He's a whole team and the dog under the wagon"; "That's first-rate and a half"; "Handy as a pocket in a shirt" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in which scalping may be held by the people of the northern and eastern states," observed Colonel D'Egville, "it is notorious that the example of the Indians is followed by those of the western. The backwoodsman of the new States, and the Kentuckians particularly, almost invariably scalp the Indians they have slain in battle. Am I not ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... birds, too, sometimes, my boy. Flesh-eating things are not particularly in favour for one's diet. Even the American backwoodsman who was forced to live on crows did not seem very favourably ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, notwithstanding, the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... and was crossing through Tennessee when death overtook him, at the cabin of a backwoodsman where he had stopped for the night. Some of the circumstances point to murder, others to suicide; the truth is conjectural. What does it matter, after all? He had lived largely; had done a man's work; he has a noble ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... grievously, but the old backwoodsman took the checkmate placidly and began to set the pieces for the second game in which the horses were the stake, hiding his useless rifle in a hollow tree,—his powder had been soaked and spoiled in the early morning plunge ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... Anonymous Annotators.—Can any of the correspondents of "NOTES AND QUERIES" point out to a literary Backwoodsman, like myself, any royal road towards assigning to the proper authors the handwriting of anonymous annotations in fly-leaves and margins? I have many of these, which I should be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... the Shield where its eastern rim is turned away from the reddening daybreak. Thence he had forced his way to its central portions where the skin of ever living verdure is drawn over the rocks: Anglo-Saxon, backwoodsman, borderer, great forest chief, hewing and fighting a path toward the sunset for Anglo-Saxon women and children. With his passion for the wilderness—its game, enemies, campfire and cabin, deep-lunged freedom. This ancestor had a lonely, stern, gaunt face, ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... Cromarty. "And where will you find the lady that's to succumb to my fascinations? I'm within a month of forty, Mr. Rattar, I've the mind, habits, and appearance of a backwoodsman, and I've one working eye left. A female collector of antique curiosities, or something in the nature of a retired wardress might take on the job, but I can't ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... French-Canadian explorer passing up or down the river or one of its branches in an Indian canoe; then the first faint changes, the building of one or two little French fur traders' hamlets, the passing of one or two British officers' boats, and the very rare appearance of the uncouth American backwoodsman. ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... and who manfully accommodated themselves to their primitive surroundings. As has been well remarked by Mr. MacMullen,[56] "While they learned to wield the axe and swing the cradle with the energy and skill of the roughest backwoodsman, they retained their polished manners, their literary tastes, their love for the beautiful and the elegant; and thus exercised the most beneficial influence upon their rustic neighbours. In the absence of schools, of churches, of most of the refining influences of civilized society, this class ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... "I'm not like the backwoodsman who never seemed to get his leaky roof mended," X-Ray announced, from his elevated position; "and when they came to ask him the reason he says, says he: 'When it rains I carnt mend it; and when the weather's dry, what's ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... interpreted as to fix the boundary of Kentucky on the north side of the Ohio River. It was, moreover, the native State of Abraham Lincoln and it was important to have that commonwealth support this untrained backwoodsman whom most statesmen considered incapable of administering the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various |
