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Hindmost   Listen
adjective
Hindmost, Hindermost  adj.  Furthest in or toward the rear; last. "Rachel and Joseph hindermost."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hindmost" Quotes from Famous Books



... cloud lifted from around the brig, he saw how terrible had been its effect; the foremost boat was cut in pieces, and of its gallant crew only here and there was one able to struggle with the waves; most had sunk under the deadly volley. A few were picked up by the hindmost boat, the second having pressed on with the valor characteristic of English seamen; they were met, however, by a heavy fire from the starboard guns, which had been depressed so as to cover a particular range, and the second boat like the first was shattered to pieces. The third ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... it caused us a five miles' gallop, and our horses a white sweat, to come up with the hindmost, a young cow, which fell, bored by a bullet from every ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... way announcing that a raid had been made into their lands by their adversaries, that all things were being consumed with the edge of the sword,[733] and that their goods were being laid waste, and their wives and children taken and led away. When they heard this they returned in haste. The hindmost followed the first, not knowing whither they went[734] or what had happened; for they had not all heard the men who spoke. And when they came and found none of those things which had been told them they were confounded, taken in their own wickedness;[735] and they knew that ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... did no harm. It is not like unto the plan of Esau, who wanted to slay his brother Jacob and keep his children as slaves. It is not like unto the tactics of Amalek, who pursued Israel and smote the hindmost and feeble, but left the strong unscathed. It is not like unto the policy of Nebuchadnezzar, who carried them away into exile, and settled them near his own throne. And it is not like unto the way of Sennacherib, who assigned ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... fashion of the after-part of a ship, in the plane of projection. They are the hindmost timbers in the run of a ship, which terminate the breadth, and form the shape of the stern; they are united to the stern-post, and to the end of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... whose name meant "corpse," now was a corpse in truth, his merciless brain oozing from a skull shattered by a Mayoruna clubman; and Schwandorf was very busy looking out for Schwandorf. So it was every man for himself, with the devil rapidly taking not only the hindmost, but the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... lay in a deer's-horn rest, a large horse pistol. With this in hand she ran to meet her children. Some hunter had broken the bear's fore leg with a bullet a few days before, which accounted for its strange, waddling gait; but it was almost within reach of the hindmost child when the mother arrived. The bear at once turned its attention to the newcomer, and with a terrific snarl rushed 5 at her. On sped the children, screaming and crazy with fright. It was a moment of imminent peril to the mother, but she was equal to the occasion. She leveled ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... spouse A suppliant under holy boughs, The gentle darling of his heart, He thus to Lakshman spake apart: "Brother, by thee our way be led; Let Sita close behind thee tread: I, best of men, will grasp my bow, And hindmost of the three will go. What fruits soe'er her fancy take, Or flowers half hidden in the brake, For Janak's child forget not thou To gather from the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... route lay before those who took the River Road leading to the Indian Encampment. Bachelor Lot was the hindmost in this receding column. Bachelor Lot, though too withered and brown of visage to afford immediate enlightenment as to his species, was held to be of unquestionable white descent. Yet he kept house, alone, at the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... my wighty men, As fast as ye can drie; For he that is hindmost of the thrang Shall ne'er get ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... located the nest of Mexicans before she did, and got a good deal out of their drunken jargon. And then I cat-footed it back after a snaky-looking, black Spaniard that seemed to be following her. There were three of us in a row, but the devil hasn't got the hindmost one, not yet—that's me." ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... nearer and nearer to the smoker's nose. Its mode of progression was in the highest degree unsightly. It glided, never, so far as I could see, removing its tentacles from the stem of the pipe. It slipped its hindmost feelers onward until they came up to those which were in advance. Then, in their turn, it advanced those which were in front. It seemed, too, to move with the utmost labor, shuddering as though it were ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... saw all this as well as I did, looked full of horror. He caught one of the hindmost of the rabble by the sleeve and asked him harshly, 'What has this man done, and whither are you taking him?' At which the man, turning towards us his red, jovial ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling

... the cannons came culverins sixteen feet long, and then falconets, the smallest of which shot balls the size of a grenade. This formidable artillery brought up the rear of the procession, and formed the hindmost guard ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... public square. Now, it also happened, that all the saleable ground lying north of the city was owned by a man named Smith—a shrewd, wide-awake individual, whose motto was "Every man for himself," with an occasional addition about a certain gentleman in black taking "the hindmost." ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... it and himself. They now had races of all sorts and daily. Hurdles had given place to great hedges and ditches, which most of the animals distinguished themselves in leaping. Monty was still the hindmost in everything, yet showed his pluck in sticking to his saddle at all risks, and sometimes ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... feverish industry that not one of them stopped to look up. From the receiving corral three Mexicans in slouched hats and jumpers drove the sheep into a broad chute, yelling and hurling battered oil cans at the hindmost; by the chute an American punched them vigorously forward with a prod, and yet another thrust them into the pens behind the shearers, who bent to their work with a sullen, back-breaking stoop. Each man held between his knees a sheep, gripped ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... these pines, Stepped, as they said, to the next thicket-side To bring me berries, or such cooling fruit As the kind hospitable woods provide. They left me then when the grey-hooded Even, Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain. But where they are, and why they came not back, Is now the labour of my thoughts. 'Tis likeliest They had engaged their wandering steps too far; And envious darkness, ere they could return, Had stole them from me. Else, O thievish Night, Why ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... reached the hindmost and smallest of the boys when Jack Sheldon suddenly came out ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh

... another is magnificent enough to make me forgive the scamp his autobiography from now to the day of judgment (when we shall all begin forgiving each other in great haste, I suppose, for fear of the devil taking the hindmost!), and I registered a vow on the spot to that effect:—so no more of him here, henceforth, ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... the stage; And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd, Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield. As with the greater dead he dares not strive, He would not match his verse with those who live: 20 Let him retire, betwixt two ages cast, The first of this, and hindmost of the last. A losing gamester, let him sneak away; He bears no ready money from the play. The fate which governs poets, thought it fit He should not raise his fortunes by his wit. The clergy thrive, and the litigious bar; Dull heroes fatten with the spoils of war: All southern vices, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... for the third time in a wrecked ship, stranded on a wild, sandy shore. The overloaded boats were making away from him for the land, and he alone was left to sink with the ship. I cried to him to hail the hindmost boat, and to make a last effort for his life. The quiet face looked at me in return, and the unmoved voice gave me back the changeless reply. "Another step on the journey. Wait and look. The Sea which drowns ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... at the old pump like true Britons, and began to sponge it out as if they had been bred to gunnery from childhood, while the limber was detached and galloped to the rear. In this operation the cart was smashed to pieces, and the two hindmost horses were thrown; but this mattered little, as they had got round a corner, and the French did not ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... herd see them, they stop, and the head is made to play its part by copying their movements. By these means the hunters get into the very centre of the herd without exciting suspicion; the hindmost man then pushes forward his comrade's gun, and both fire nearly at the same instant. The deer scamper off, the hunters trot after them; the poor animals soon halt to see what alarmed them; their enemies have ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... much powder at the Invalides at Paris, and brag and bluster over our misfortune? Is there any magnanimity in hallooing and huzzaying because five or six hundred brave fellows have been caught by ten thousand on a seashore, and that fate has overtaken them which is said to befall the hindmost? I had a mind to design an authentic picture of the rejoicings at London upon our glorious success at St. Malo. I fancied the polished guns dragged in procession by our gallant tars; the stout horse-grenadiers prancing by; the mob ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the phrase then in use. Nothing could be more excellent, for instance, than the proverb "Money talks" as representing two commercial countries like America and England. In that short sentence is packed the essence of many other wise and drastic sayings, as, for instance, "The devil take the hindmost;" for, of course, if money talks, then the man without it must remain silent, and his place is at the tail of the procession, where the devil prowls about like a Cossack at the ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... by the hope of ultimately over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business, and the devil take the hindmost! By all means; but they who are not rooted to the spot by commercial exigencies nor ready to adopt debased standards of conduct will find that a prolonged residence in a centre like Naples—the daily attrition of its ape-and-tiger elements—sullies ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... you won't talk of penitentiary so—easily." The quietness with which he spoke did not rob his words of their significance. Then he went on, just a shade more sharply. "Now, see here. When that freight gets in I hold you responsible that the hindmost car—next the caboose—is dropped here, and the seals are intact. It's billed loaded with barrels of cube sugar, for Calford. Get me? That's your duty just now. See you ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... rest. No more alone upon the far-off hills With song serene the wilderness he fills, But in the forum now his art employs And what he lacks in knowledge gives in noise. At first, ere he began to feel his feet, He begged a corner in the hindmost sheet, Concealed with Answers and Acrostics lay, And held aloof from Questions of the Day. But now, grown bold, he dashes to the front, Among the leaders bears the battle's brunt, Takes steel in hand, and cheaply unafraid Spurs a lame Pegasus on Jameson's Raid, Or pipes the ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path, For Emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue; if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost;— Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, Tho' less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours: For Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand, And with his ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... the positions we hold will be insecure. Suddenly happening upon a powerful foe, we shall be brought to battle in a flurried condition, and no mutual support will be possible between wings, vanguard or rear, especially if there is any great distance between the foremost and hindmost divisions of ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... unsuccessful he committed suicide; his body was afterwards found on the Landes of Bordeaux half devoured by wolves; was surnamed the "Virtuous," as Robespierre the "Incorruptible"; was of the Girondist party; had "unalterable beliefs, not hindmost of them," says Carlyle, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes "Every one for himself, and God for us all"? or, the more vulgar one, "Go ahead, and the d——l take the hindmost?" What are they but concentrations of the fact that selfishness is man's ruling passion? What are most laws made for, but to restrain men by human penalties from a broach of the law of love? and, if ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... Burik-ab a heavy fire was encountered by the hindmost from some caves near the road-side, occasioning fresh disorder, which continued all the way to Kutter-Sung, where the advance arrived at dawn of day, and awaited the junction of the rear, which did not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... hastily across the azotea in the direction of the sounds. I looked over the parapet. Down the slope of the hill two men were running at the top of their speed, one after the other. The hindmost held in his hand a drawn sabre. It was Holingsworth still in pursuit ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... children, but none were hurt. A ledge of rock prevented an attack. The captain commanded them to dismiss. "We will," they replied, "when the service is over, if you promise us no harm." The promise was given, yet the treacherous troops dashed upon the hindmost ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... With beating bosom, and with eager pace, Hangs on his haunch, or fastens on his heels, Guards as he turns, and circles as he wheels; Thus oft the Grecians turn'd, but still they flew; Thus following, Hector still the hindmost slew. When flying they had pass'd the trench profound, And many a chief lay gasping on the ground; Before the ships a desperate stand they made, And fired the troops, and called the gods to aid. Fierce on his rattling chariot Hector came: His eyes ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... day was by far the most calamitous to our men; it had this result, however, that on that day the largest number of the enemy was wounded and slain, since they had crowded beneath the very rampart, and the hindmost did not afford the foremost a retreat. The flame having abated a little, and a tower having been brought up in a particular place and touching the rampart, the centurions of the third cohort retired from the place in which they were standing, and drew off all their men: ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... a scene such as he had been studying daily for months past,—pigs at the water-side. He had made dozens of such sketches. But the delight of the farmer knew no bounds. He slapped his knees, he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and, as Jan put a very wicked eye into the face of the hindmost pig, he laughed merrily also. He was not insensible of his own talents, and the stimulus of the farmer's approbation ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... would have been very pleasant. I have had ill luck, however, in only one little earthquake having happened. I was lying in bed when there was a party at dinner in the house; on a sudden I heard such a hubbub in the dining-room; without a word being spoken, it was devil take the hindmost who should get out first; at the same moment I felt my bed SLIGHTLY vibrate in a lateral direction. The party were old stagers, and heard the noise which always precedes a shock; and no old stager looks at an ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Eeduck!" roared the boy, aiming a shot at the leader's left ear, and bringing the thick end of the whip down on the flanks of the six hindmost dogs. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... muse my Lord of Gloster is not come: 'Tis not his wont to be the hindmost man, What e're occasion keepes him ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... swore in vain. The panic grew. Men rushed pell mell over one another, white with terror. They threw down their muskets, their knapsacks, their haversacks and ran for their lives, every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. In vain the regular army, with splendid discipline, formed a rear guard to effect an orderly retreat. The crack of their guns only made ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... my wighty men, Sae fast as ye can dree; For he that is hindmost of the thrang Sall neir get ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... due distance. At the farther end of the workshop stood the pupils and the artists from Pesaro and other places in the duchy whose works were there in competition. In all there were some ten competitors: poor Luca, who had set his own work on the table with the rest as he was obliged to do, stood hindmost of all, shrinking back, to hide his misery, into the deepest shadow of the deep- ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... encouragement to the combatants, as they wheeled by him in the mazes of their half angry sport. It was not long, however, before their strife was brought to a conclusion; for, almost as the friends entered, the hindmost horseman of the two made a thrust at the other, which taking effect merely on the lower rim of his antagonist's parma, glanced off under his outstretched arm, and made the striker, in a great measure, lose his balance. As quick as light, the other wheeled upon ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... on closer inspection, I found these creatures clinging by thousands, literally blackening the wall, and hanging in festoons a foot or two in length. The manner of forming these festoons was curious enough: three or four bats having first taken hold of some sharp projecting ledge with their hindmost claws, and hanging thereby with their heads downward, others had seized their leathery wings at the second joint, and they too, hanging with downward heads, had offered their wings as holding-places for still others; and so the unsightly pendent mass had grown, until in some instances it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... drove the Greeks, while Hector in the van Advanced, death menacing in every look. As some fleet hound close-threatening flank or haunch 390 Of boar or lion, oft as he his head Turns flying, marks him with a steadfast eye, So Hector chased the Grecians, slaying still The hindmost of the scatter'd multitude. But when, at length, both piles and hollow foss 395 They had surmounted, and no few had fallen By Trojan hands, within their fleet they stood Imprison'd, calling each to ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... One of these drawings represented Satan himself—an erect figure, with hairy paws clasped in a supplicating posture, thick black horns, and eyes which (for additional horror) the artist had painted red and edged with a circle of white. At his feet crawled the hindmost limb of a peculiarly loathsome monster with claws stuck in the soil. Close by a nun was figured, sitting in a pensive attitude, her cheek resting on the back of her hand, her elbow supported by a hideous dwarf, and at some distance a small ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... will—when a sudden outcry roused me. It came from my companion, a hired muleteer, and sounded angry. The fellow had been riding on ahead. I now saw that he had overtaken other travellers—two men astride of one donkey—and had entered into conversation with them. One of the two, the hindmost, was a Turkish soldier. Except the little group they made together, and a vulture, a mere speck above them in the blue, no other living creature was in sight. Something had happened, for the soldier seemed amused, while my poor man was ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... bound to happen, the stubborn retreat broke into a rout. It was every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The pirates fled for the after cabin-house, there to take cover behind the timbered walls and use the small port-holes for musketry fire. Thus they could find respite and it would be ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... was in no state to perceive that he had only shot-to the bolt of the door of the cage; and his behaviour had so irritated the beast that, after so dealing with him that he lay in a most dangerous state, he had dashed out at the door in rage and terror, and, after seizing the hindmost of the flying crowd, had lain down between the shafts of the waggon, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... squadron in front, having ascertained that it had taken a wrong direction, was nevertheless compelled to advance until it reached some open spot, where the men were enabled to assemble, and wait for the hindmost of their comrades, and then retrace their steps. After having pursued this plan, the troops have met another squadron following the same track; and, under such circumstances, it has required hours for either to effect a countermarch. In this complicated operation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... red furnace of the fight. Thus Daunia's ancient river fares, Proud Aufidus, with bull-like horn, When swoln with choler he prepares A deluge for the fields of corn. So Claudius charged and overthrew The grim barbarian's mail-clad host, The foremost and the hindmost slew, And conquer'd all, and nothing lost. The force, the forethought, were thine own, Thine own the gods. The selfsame day When, port and palace open thrown, Low at thy footstool Egypt lay, That selfsame day, three lustres gone, Another victory to ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... troubles, and I believe in helping a fellow every time. Life piles up too high against one sometimes, but a little shove from the other side will move it away. I never believed in the devil take the hindmost, at all. ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley

... gave command that the front of his army, and such as were in sight of the enemy, should form as if ready to engage, and those in the rear should cast up the trenches and fortify the camp; so that the hindmost in succession wheeling off by degrees and withdrawing, their whole order was insensibly broken up, and the army encamped ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... held the tow-rope. The water curled away on either side of her sharp prow, that cut its way onward at the full rate of five miles an hour, and the team came swinging down the tow-path at a gallant trot, the driver sitting the hindmost horse of three, and cracking his long-lashed whip with loud explosions, as he whirled its snaky spirals in the air. All the boys in town were there, meekly proud to be ordered out of his way, to break and fly before his volleyed ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... introducing one of them into family worship. But he loved every line inside the tattered orange covers, and their bright melodies had helped him over many a hard place after Grandma had left him. His favourite hymn was the last in the book, "The Hindmost Hymn," Grandpa called it, and every night of his life, unless he were too ill, he sang at least one verse ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... over the sea without wetting hair or hoof. But fast as he galloped the nine little pipers were always ahead of him, although they seemed to be going only at a walking pace. When at last he came up rather close to the hindmost of them the nine little pipers disappeared, but the children heard the music playing beneath the waters. The white steed pulled up suddenly, and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... younger women shrunk back and left the cook to answer. "Mr. Roger Peacey, sir, and the lady." From the hindmost girl there ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... only come quietly together in convention, and declare by unanimous resolution, or even by a two-thirds vote, that edge-tools should hereafter cut everybody's fingers but his that played with them; that, when two men ride on one horse, the hindmost shall always sit in front; and that, when a man tries to thrust his partner out of bed and gets kicked out himself, he shall be deemed to have established his title to an equitable division, and the bed shall be thenceforth his as of right, without detriment ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... he declared as he rode away, "and the devil take the hindmost. Good-bye, I'm going home. I still have one a ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... driver to creep up gradually, but not to approach too near the hindmost coach of the train in front until Moscow was ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... his men, in the meantime, had stopped and loaded their box cars with old cross-ties and discarded rails These they began to throw out of the rear end of their hindmost car as a measure of safety. They did not suspect pursuit at this time, but they took the precaution to obstruct the track in this manner. Six miles north of Kingston the raiders stopped and tore up several rails. Captain Fuller rode on the pilot of his engine, and removed ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... sweet-fleshed. Half a handful of these served for the moment to cajole his hunger, and he pressed briskly but warily along the ridge, availing himself of the shelter of every rampike in his path. At last, catching sight of the hindmost stragglers of the herd, still far out of range, he crouched like a cat, and crossed over the crest of the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... a new respect. The Indians, having scurried back out of range of Lite's uncomfortably close shooting, yelled a bedlam of yips and howls and came on again in a closer group than before, shooting as they rode—at the four men first, and then at the hindmost pack-horse that gave a hop over the wire left across the gap, and came galloping heavily after the others. They succeeded in burying a bullet in the packed bedding, but ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... did not dare to stray away to inquire what it might be; the high road was our only safety. Even that was doubtful. Curious isolated encounters were taking place all over the vast city of Peking; it was now everyone for himself, and not even the devil taking care of the hindmost. It ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... they were) than have my thoughts set off helter-skelter with those cursed trumpets and drums, blown and dub-a-dubbed by fellows whom I vow to heaven I would not trust with a five-pound note,—still, if I must march, I must; and so deuce take the hindmost! But when it comes to individual marchers upon their own account,—privateers and condottieri of Enlightenment,—who have filled their pockets with Lucifer matches, and have a sublime contempt for their neighbour's barns and hay-ricks, I don't see why I should ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... which had been issued, refrained from looting on their own account; but when they saw that officers, even of the higher ranks, took possession of plunder, these scruples were cast to the winds—it was "every man for himself, and the d—- l take the hindmost," and a general desire was evinced for each to enrich himself with the prize lying at ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... upon them had been so sudden that they had taken no heed of where they were going. It was every man for himself, with the broncho boys' bullets for the hindmost. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... what to do! I guess I shall have to leave the thing to Providence—and the devil take the hindmost!" he thought gloomily. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost: there you lie, For pavement to the abject rear, o'errun ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... to run pell-mell out into the grass, until only their heads appeared bobbing along, and finally disappeared. Dale caught a glimpse of skulking coyotes that evidently had been stalking the turkeys, and as they saw him and darted into the timber he took a quick shot at the hindmost. His bullet struck low, as he had meant it to, but too low, and the coyote got only a dusting of earth and pine-needles thrown up into his face. This frightened him so that he leaped aside blindly to butt into a ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... ran for home, on the night of May 31, it seems to have scattered—"starred," I believe, is the word for the evolution—in a general sauve qui peut, while the Devil, livelily represented by our destroyers, took the hindmost. Our flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job. One man compared it to hounds hunting ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... And either pelt us with rude calumnies, Or stab at us, ye laggards! with base guile. Howbeit, these ways will never help to build The wholesome order of established law, If men shall hustle victors from their right, And mix the hindmost rabble with the van. That craves repression. Not by bulky size, Or shoulders' breadth, the perfect man is known; But wisdom gives chief power in all the world. The ox hath a huge broadside, yet is held Right in the furrow by a slender goad; Which remedy, I ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... were wending with such speed as their drivers could coerce the ox-teams to make along the woodland road homeward, while happier wights on horseback galloped past, leaving clouds of dust in the rear and a grewsome premonition of being hindmost in a flight that to the simple minds of the mountaineers had ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... meetings for every night till the 4th of May. By that time we shall be well tired out. But we shall see the country, and I hope have done some good. There is no such love of principle here as I expected to find. Each man goes for himself, and "the devil take the hindmost." The women here are grand, and it will be a shame past all expression if they don't get the right to vote. One woman in Wyandotte said she carried petitions all through the town for female suffrage, and not one woman in ten refused to sign. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... communities profited greatly by this official recognition of the Kahal. It enabled them to free the members of their families from enrollment in the army. In their hands, it became an instrument for the oppression and exploitation of the poor. "The devil take the hindmost!" expresses the state of mind of the Russian Jews in the middle of the nineteenth century, during the whole of the period ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... the summum bonum,—no matter how obtained, or at what sacrifice. Money is our god: "Devil take the hindmost" our motto. The spirits of darkness ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... of our own to count the limbs from before backwards. To inspect a lobster's limbs, we lay it on its back (as Aristotle did), and see the legs overlapping, each hinder one above the one before; the hindmost is the first we see, and the one we must first lift up ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... phenomenon called a streamer, viz. twenty men galloping absurdly as hard as they can, in a line half a mile long, and in humours which are celestial in the few foremost, contented in the central, and gradually becoming darker in the hindmost; till in the last man they assume a hue altogether Tartarean. Farewell, brave gentlemen! I watch, half sadly, half self-contented, the red coats scattered like sparks of fire over hill and dale, and turn slowly homeward, to ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... these two, of the hindmost seat in the canoe, for the back of each was unspeakable from the spear-prods. Without a word McElroy took his punishment as the lagging became more pronounced from arms overtaxed at the paddles, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... Freedom must not be simply negative. It must be positive. If on account of the immaturity or over-maturity of a people, there be no sturdy middle class among them, unlimited competition may become what Bazard calls a general sauve-qui-peut (let the devil take the hindmost); what Fourier designates as a morcellement industriel, and a fraude commerciale; what M. Chevalier denominated "a battle-field on which the little are devoured by the big;" and in such case, as Bodz-Reymond says, the word competition, meaning simply that each one is permitted ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... pursued the unruly fowls, and pressed upon them and buffeted them, until the turkeys were right glad to defy the vision of the old brown sensationalist, and take refuge in their house. Pocahontas closed the door with a sharp bang almost upon the tail of the hindmost one, locked it, and then turned cordially to her companion and invited him to remain and take ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... his hands. Gonzalo hanged such of his prisoners as were most obnoxious to him, and continued the pursuit of the flying royalists with the utmost diligence, through difficult and almost impracticable roads, where no provisions could be procured, always coming up with some of the hindmost of the enemy. Gonzalo likewise sent on several Indians with letters to the principal officers who served under the viceroy, urging them to put him to death, and offering them their pardons for the past and to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... religion, a cause and a controversy, well smitten and well defended; men governed by reasons and suasion of speech; wheels going, steam buzzing—a mortal race, and a slashing pace, and the devil taking the hindmost—taking me, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long upon the difficult pass that leads ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... Even at the theatres in Paris, I am glad to say, the popular instinct still regulates the queue on principles quite inconsistent with the Darwinian maxims of 'every man for himself,' and 'the devil take the hindmost.' It will be an evil day for invalids and cripples bitten with the drama when the 'struggle for life' comes to be logically developed into the right of the strongest men to get first to the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... heard it said: Each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. But I say to you: Each for all, and the hindmost is your charge. I say to you: If a man will not work, let him be the one that hungers; if he will not serve, let him be your criminal. For if one man be idle, another man has been robbed; ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... one of the small poles above-mentioned on their shoulders. We were told, that the small pieces of sticks fastened to the poles were yams; so that probably they were meant to represent this root emblematically. The hindmost man of each couple, for the most part, placed one of his hands to the middle of the pole, as if, without this additional support, it were not strong enough to carry the weight that hung to it, and under which they all seemed to bend ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... They set out when it was getting dark; the sheep were put on the road, the drover going before the flock and Shergold following at the tail. It was a cold, cloudy night, threatening snow, and so dark that he could hardly distinguish the dim forms of even the hindmost sheep, and by and by the temptation to steal one assailed him. For how easy it would be for him to do it! With his tremendous strength he could kill and hide a sheep very quickly without making any sound whatever to alarm the drover. He ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... stampede, I yet did not lose my senses. Neither did I cry out or whimper. Children have gone into convulsions and become idiotic for less cause. I was phenomenally healthy, and, as I have said, no coward. Before the hindmost deserter gained the draw-bars my reason was on the return path. I had the signal advantage above my comrades of not believing in ghosts. My father had asserted to me positively, once and again, that no such things ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... the hindmost of them were slain with the sword: for they pursued them unto Gazera, and unto the plains of Idumea, and Azotus, and Jamnia, so that there were slain of them upon a ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... already moving as Wemple dashed up to its hindmost car, his horse staggering and their pursuers ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... that had recommended Dash as the object of Robbie's half-drunken pastime; and after a fruitless half-hour's exercise the tractable little creature, with a woeful expression of face, was at length poised on its hindmost parts just as Liza pushed open the door and called to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... defeat; but when the little Stadtholder drilled his soldiers in small bodies of various shapes, teaching them to turn, advance; retreat; wheel in a variety of ways, sometimes in considerable masses, sometimes man by man, sending the foremost suddenly to the rear, or bringing the hindmost ranks to the front, and began to attempt all this in narrow fields as well as in wide ones, and when the enemy was in sight, men stood aghast at his want of reverence, or laughed at him as a pedant. But there ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault. now then, thought i, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the hindmost. .. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... meeting now and then a string of asses, their panniers filled with stones or with wood for Carmona; the drivers sat on the rump of the hindmost animal, for that is the only comfortable way to ride a donkey. A peasant trotted briskly by on his mule, his wife behind him with her arms about his waist. I saw a row of ploughs in a field; to each were attached two oxen, and they went along heavily, one behind the other in regular ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... distinguish himself, galloped out with the keenest of the troopers and charged the Vitellians, inflicting only slight loss; for, on the arrival of reinforcements, the tables were turned and those who had been hottest in pursuit were now hindmost in the rout. Their haste had no sanction from Antonius, who had foreseen what would happen. Encouraging his men to engage with brave hearts, he drew off the cavalry on to each flank and left a free passage ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... Ruhleben camp was terrible. It was every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. If one, in desperation, approached the authorities for a word of suggestion to improve this or that, officialdom merely shrugged its shoulders and candidly admitted impotence to recommend a remedy. So we had to depend essentially upon our ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... consid'able bigger craft than the leadin' one. Get a move on, fellers—the dinner gong's struck and the grub's on the table waitin' to be swallered—first come, first served's the rule things go by, so stir your stumps, an' put in the best licks you know how—an' may the devil take the hindmost. Hey there! that drummin' noise, it's stopped—wonder if they got out to the sloop or else smell a rat an' are lyin' low till they make it a dead certainty? Gosh, but ain't this all mighty thrillin' though, ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... declined his queen's command. There lay the reason why Dolores so placidly turned her back to men whose dearest ambition would have been realized by the plunge of steel between her shoulders at that moment. Milo walked around to the rear of the hesitant mob, and without a word gripped the hindmost in his two great hands and hurled him bodily over the heads of his mates in ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... forces. This was the theory which was called orthodox political economy—the laisser-faire system—the philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,' as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... of each man solely on his OWN welfare, the salvation of his OWN soul or body. These two forces have therefore been disruptive to the last degree; they mark the culmination of the Self-conscious Age—a culmination in War, Greed, Materialism, and the general principle of Devil-take-the-hindmost—and the clearing of the ground for the new order which is to come. So there is hope for the human race. Its evolution is not all a mere formless craze and jumble. There is an inner necessity by which Humanity unfolds from one degree or plane of consciousness to another. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... in the Gorilla being so great that it projects, like a tusk, far beyond the general level of the other teeth. The roots of the false molar teeth of the Gorilla, again, are more complex than in Man, and the proportional size of the molars is different. The Gorilla has the crown of the hindmost grinder of the lower jaw more complex, and the order of eruption of the permanent teeth is different; the permanent canines making their appearance before the second and third molars in Man, and after ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary. Angel's eye at last fell upon Tess, the hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed laughter at their dilemma, could not help ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... dog his steps and do him damage. For a while he led his troops in a hollow square, posting one half of his cavalry in the van and the other half on his rear, but finding his march hindered by frequent attacks of the Thessalians on his hindmost divisions, he sent round the mass of his cavalry from the vanguard to support his rear, reserving only his personal escort. (2) And now in battle order the rival squadrons faced each other; when the Thessalians, not liking a cavalry engagement in ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon

... was going to say your cat. There would be cats in my home too if I could but get it. I may seem to you 'the impersonation of life,' but my life is the impersonation of waiting, and that's a poor creature. God help us all, and the deil be kind to the hindmost! Upon my word, we are a brave, cheery crew, we human beings, and my admiration increases daily - primarily for myself, but by a roundabout process for the whole crowd; for I dare say they have all their poor little secrets and anxieties. And here am I, for instance, writing to you as if you ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... when several came and asked her for her garland and her golden chain, she turned towards me and smiled, saying, "Father, I must begin to speak some Latin again, otherwise the folks will leave me no peace." But it was not wanted this time; for our guards, with the pitchforks, had now reached the hindmost, and, doubtless, told them what had happened, as we presently heard a great shouting behind us, for the love of God to turn back before the witch did them a mischief; and as Jacob Schwarten his wife heeded it not, but still plagued my child to give her her apron to make a christening ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... for yesterday was once to-morrow: That yesterday is gone, and nothing gain'd; And all thy fruitless days will thus be drain'd, For thou hast more to-morrows yet to ask, And wilt be ever to begin thy task; Who, like the hindmost chariot-wheels, are curst, Still to be near, but ne'er to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... secrecy are obvious. Women, in the last analysis, can prevail against men in the great struggle for power and security only by keeping them disarmed, and, in the main, unwarned. In a pitched battle, with the devil taking the hindmost, their physical and economic inferiority would inevitably bring them to disaster. Thus they have to apply their peculiar talents warily, and with due regard to the danger of arousing the foe. He must be attached without any ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... methods on the grounds that it has a right to transact business on a scale corresponding to its pecuniary ability—there is no question of morality involved. Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost. Yet there are people who believe that there is no future punishment for ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... Heeding not advice paternal, Heeding not his mother's counsel, Leads his courser from his stable, Fire outstreaming from his nostrils, From his hoofs, the sparks outshooting, Hitches to his sledge, the fleet-foot, To his golden sledge, the courser, Mounts impetuous his snow-sledge, Leaps upon the hindmost cross-bench, Strikes his courser with his birch-whip, With his birch-whip, pearl-enamelled. Instantly the prancing racer Springs away upon his journey; On he, restless, plunges northward, All day long be onward gallops, All the next day, onward, onward, So the third from morn till ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... it hold on with the rest, while another of the foremost legs is advanced. Thus they continue, until all the foremost are out, and the body of the animal is suspended by its legs at its full stretch. Now one of the hindmost legs closes in to the body, while all the others hold on—now another, and another, each in their turn; and by this skilful manoeuvre they have contrived to advance the body nearly an inch along the ceiling. One of the foremost legs ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... true of the jaws, the feelers, and the eye- stalks, every pair of which is borne upon its own special segment. Thus the conclusion is gradually forced upon us, that the body of the lobster is composed of as many rings as there are pairs of appendages, namely, twenty in all, but that the six hindmost rings remain free and movable, while the fourteen front rings become firmly soldered together, their backs forming ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and gleaming eyes wandered around the room as if in search of a victim. He pointed to one of the hindmost benches, and ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... galloping, galloping; Legs and arms a' walloping, walloping; De'il take the hindmost, quo' Duncan M'Calapin, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... in a struggle for individual ends, often on the corpses of their fellows, often by a blood-and-iron competition, often by a strange mixture of blood and cunning, in which each looks out for himself and extinction besets the hindmost." ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... infantry and cavalry, should find it necessary to make a stand, I was to go into battery. The right and center sections had gone far ahead of me, as the road was not cut up so bad for them, and it literally seemed, in the language of the poet Horace, that the "Devil would take the hindmost." After the first mile we came to a long, deep bed of sticky mud. I rode in advance, and found that about a half mile ahead there was a little knoll of cleared land, comparatively dry, and skirted by a high, worm fence of good oak rails. So I went back and ordered an advance. By pushing ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker

... leads four times, and lyeth behind as many, and twice in every other place; the two Bells in the 3d. and 4th. places continue dodging, when the Treble moves out of the 4th. place, until it comes down there again, and then the two hindmost dodge, till the Treble displaceth them; who maketh every double Change, except when it lieth behind, and then the double is on the four first, and on the four last when it leads. Every single (except when the Treble lies there) is in the 5th. ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... the main facts of such a life-story as that of a moth or butterfly. The form of the adult insect (fig. 1 a) is dominated by the wings—two pairs of scaly wings, carried respectively on the middle and hindmost of the three segments that make up the thorax or central region of the insect's body. Each of these three segments carries a pair of legs. In front of the thorax is the head on which the pair of long jointed feelers ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... high that it was impossible to see those who propelled it. These were moments of painful suspense on both sides; even the enemy's fire ceased; every eye was fixed on the fearful vehicle which was to bring the bitter conflict to a fatal close. At length the backs of the hindmost men at the pole came into sight. Two flashes from Fink's rifle, two yells, the wagon stood still; those who were pushing it crowded closer. Two dark bodies lay on the ground. Fink loaded again, a wild smile ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... horse, a spirited and fleet animal. The savage manoeuvred a little to get the wind of the horses, in which he succeeded—approaching within a hundred yards without being discovered. The chase for a few minutes was interesting. My hunter easily overtook and passed the hindmost of the wild drove, which the did not attempt to lasso; all his efforts being directed to capture the leader. But the strength of the horse, weakened by insufficient nourishment of grass, failed in a race, and all the drove escaped. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... time and money, their sons and selves to the good cause, and I was proud of them. But now too many of them have fallen back into the old ways, and their motto seems to be, 'Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.' Cheating, lying and stealing are hard words, and I don't mean to apply them to all who swarm about below there like ants on an ant-hill—they have other names for these things, but I'm old-fashioned and use plain words. There's a deal too much dishonesty in the world, and business ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... until one of them said, "Perhaps it's the Brownie." Whether it was or not, it made them behave better for a good while; till one unfortunate day the two eldest began contending which should ride foremost and which hindmost on Jess's back, when "Crick—crack!" went the whip in the air, frightening the pony so much that she kicked up her heels, tossed both the boys over her head, and scampered off, followed by a loud ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... the black beard were probably ashamed, for they laughed loudly, and not answering, slouched lazily back to their waggons. When the hindmost waggon was level with the spot where the dead snake lay, the man with his face tied up standing over it turned to Panteley and ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... we had succeeded in dispersing and driving before us a rather numerous band, I came up with one of the hindmost Cossacks, and I was about to strike him with my Turkish sabre when he took off his cap ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... at the outer gate, and proceeding along a beautiful path leading above the cliffs. The mules kept in one long string, Bekir with the foremost, which was thus at some distance from the hindmost, which carried Ulysse and was attended by Arthur, while the master rode his own animals and gave directions. The fiction of illness was kept up, and when the bright eyes looked up in too lively a manner, Yusuf produced some of the ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The hindmost were soon passed—each swerving off from the track, as soon as he saw himself headed by the great dark horse that carried the strange and dreaded object upon his back. One by one they were passed, until Black Hawk had forged ahead of the whole ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... supplied.{41} In Wales the habit of lighting bonfires on the hills is perhaps not yet extinct.{42} Within living memory when the flames were out somebody would raise the cry, "May the tailless black sow seize the hindmost," and everyone present would run for his life.{43} This may point to a former human sacrifice, possibly of a victim laden with the accumulated evils ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles



Words linked to "Hindmost" :   rearmost, hindermost, backmost



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