Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
It may sound funny to you, for you don't know the back-country as I do, but just that short article in the daily, coupled with a few helpful hints from me that I was looking for all the nice, touching incidents of his boyhood days, with the opinions of the oldest inhabitants, and maybe a few of their pictures to be used in a big Sunday feature, brought them all out: the old circle of regulars which always sits around the tavern stove nights, straightening out the country's politics and attending strictly to everybody's affairs but their own.
The back-country man, though saturnine, is very rarely quarrelsome, and almost never a pugilist; nevertheless, his foot on his native salt-bush, it is not advisable to assault him with any feebler weapon than rifle-and-bayonet. There is a radical difference, without a verbal distinction, between his and the Englishman's notions of fair-play.
I want to state here that I have never lost a single opportunity, whilst travelling through the enemy's country, of looking at the "home" life of the people and I may say that I have been in a few back-country homes in America, in Australia, and in other parts of the world and I want to place it on record that in my opinion the Boer farmer is as clean in his home life, as loving in his domestic arrangements, as pure in his morals, as any class of people I have ever met.
It happened from time to time, this mysterious retreat into the moors, more frequently as the Infield Conference drew on and the hollows deepened in the minister's cheeks and his eyes shone brighter with foreboding. Nor was this the first time the back-country had been mentioned in the same breath with the Wilderness of Judea.
It was the first time that Daniel Webster had been so far from home. He was bashful and awkward. His clothes were of home-made stuff, and they were cut in the quaint style of the back-country districts. He must have been a funny-looking fellow. No wonder that the boys laughed when they saw him going up to the principal to be examined for admission.
Now the broken engine was underpinned firmly, and they took away the wooden shores from under the cylinders, and gave them to the robbed bridge, thanking God for even half a day's work on gentle, kindly wood instead of the iron that had entered into their souls. Eight months in the back-country among the leeches, at a temperature of 84 degrees moist, is very bad for the nerves.
Just as pickers comb the back-country for antiques, a related group search for untenanted old houses. These men are a cross between practical builders and antique dealers. They know Early American domestic architecture and experience has taught them the point beyond which salvage is impossible. Also they are experts in dismembering such houses so they can be re-erected.
English politicians and citizens alike had a very incomplete understanding of the great strides made by Virginia. They still thought of Virginians as provincials, struggling in the wilderness, or as impoverished Scots, Irish, and Germans living in the back-country.
The prisoners always respected their parole on wood-chopping expeditions, and went out and came in at the main entrance. The guards were a particularly verdant body of back-country militia, and the confusion of the parole system enabled us to practise ruses. In our present difficulty we resorted to a new expedient and forged a parole.
It would be impossible to describe the rejoicing of our new acquaintances the gratitude lavishly expressed the smiles of love that thanked us. We should have repeated our visits almost nightly; but from that time the guerilleros swarmed in the back-country, and small parties of our men, straggling from camp, were cut off daily.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking