"Horny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Nibelungenlied, the old German epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became covered with an invulnerable horny hide, only one small spot between his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into this spot the treacherous ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not the fire flash into his honest eyes, and leap into his swarthy cheek, and nerve his brawny arm, and clinch his horny fist, as he marched straightway up to the doomed offender, fiercely denounced his dishonesty, and violently demanded redress? Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, and eagerness and delight on every countenance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of all these signs the face of the man was handsome, and not without traces of hauteur. His hands were red and rough, but not hard and horny as those of other craftsmen were; and his whole bearing would have impressed a critical observer that this man at least was ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... mother. It would be a real treat to the youngsters to have a hand in such a job,—and he was right, for when they were taken into confidence one flourished his hatchet with enthusiasm, and the tether struck his horny fist against his left palm as gleefully as though he were bidden to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... days Horace Greeley, returning from his California tour, halted to cast his eye over the now West. The miners primed an old blunderbus with rich dust, and judiciously salted Gregory gulch. Of course Horace was invited to inspect it. Being somewhat horny-handed, he seized pick and shovel and went to work in earnest. The pan-out was astonishing. He flew back to New York laden with the glittering proofs of wealth; gave a whole page of the Tribune to his tale of the golden fleece; and a ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... then soon be added to the mental anguish of dread. For, once the snake's horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the fangs if he ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... are exceedingly vigorous and poetic; some to our taste not so much so. Note the epithets in "the lank wolf," "the wan raven," "bird greedy for slaughter," "the dewy-winged eagle," "dusky-coated," "crooked-beaked," "horny-beaked," "the maid, fair-cheeked," "curly-locked," "elf-bright." To the Anglo-Saxon poet, much that we call metaphorical was scarcely more than literal statement. As the object pictured itself to his responsive imagination, he expressed it with what was to him a direct ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... copiously, and even Hiram Peters could not help drawing the backs of his horny hands now and then across his kind, moist ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... of household refuse, or the needy peasant with his great, cruel clogs—these are chained to heavy carts or shapeless barrows; they are filthy, mangy, hairless, emaciated, starving; and follow till they die the circles of a hell into which they were thrust by a few coppers dropped into some horny palm. And, in a world less directly subject to man, there must evidently be partridges, pheasants, deer, hares, which have no luck, which never escape the gun; while others, one knows not how or why, emerge unscathed from ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... orders. The frigate seemed to leap at the object before her as at a prey; and dire was the crash that ensued. As we may suppose the wrathful lioness springs upon the buffalo, and, meeting more resistance from its horny bulk than she had suspected, recoils and makes another spring, so did the Eos strike, rebound, then strike again. I ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... turned with a snarl, and, clenching his huge, horny fist, let drive full in the other's face and knocked him ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... farm-house on the plains beyond the suburbs behind us. He will not return till daybreak,' continued the Hun, tossing his money carelessly in his great, horny hands. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... lost his temper, become momentarily a real human being, and found an unexpected safety valve in speech. Men merely vary in the choice of words. One says "Oh, dear me!" Another "Oh, Fudge!" another "Oh, Pshaw!" and so on down to the common, vulgar, horny-handed sonofagun who blurts out "Damn it all!" or worse and—the judge finally got to the limit. One writes this with glad, cheerful hopefulness for the entire human race because it's a fine thing to be natural and human, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... popular sea-game with cards, wherein the loser is beaten over the palms of the hands with a handkerchief tightly twisted like a rope. Very popular with horny-fisted salts. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... dark horny head with two cruel eyes and rows of saw-like teeth in its long jaws, sped through the waters. The hippopotamus turned savagely on the intruder and the two snapped savagely at each other for several minutes when the crocodile, mortally wounded ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... day the king sent for me as we wrought at the fort, and both he and I were horny handed and clay stained from the work. I came with spade in hand, and he leaned on ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... awfully funny looking turtle," Rose said. "See how high up it is." None of them had ever seen a wood tortoise before, and the box-like, horny shell was not like that of the little mud-turtles in Rainbow River or the snapping turtle Laddie had found ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... Conway yelled, and forthwith he beat Farrel between the shoulder-blades with a horny old fist ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... blackened his shoulder, and a whole hatful of rubbish landed on him from the top of a house which was building. He did not notice it; and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having planted his halberd beside him, was shaking some snuff from his box into his horny hand, did he recover himself a little, and that because the watchman said, "Why are you poking yourself into a man's very face? Haven't you the pavement?" This caused him to look about him, and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... but warm and comfortable enough for a day's hunt. We trudged about until noon, firing but once, and then at an alligator in a bayou, whose coat of mail laughed to scorn our puny bullets, and, barely flirting his horny tail in contempt, he slid from his perch back into the greasy and turbid stream. Seating ourselves upon a dead cotton-wood, we made a slight repast upon some cold pone, which, moistened with a ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... all they can think of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest, tenderest, funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or want to see. But Tom saw that she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister: but instead of being gnarly and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, she was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who ever nursed a baby; and she understood babies thoroughly, for she had plenty of her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and has to this day. And all her ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... then, as the old man took the fifteen dollars extended to him, that Beth noted a flash in the mild blue eyes and a trembling of the horny hands. Hucks was very glad to get the money; there was little ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... suspected," sighed Psmith, as one mourning over the frailty of human nature. "About how many horny-handed assistants should you say that he would be likely to bring? Will you, for ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... of their bodies are animals thus dependent upon plants? Certainly not for their horny matter; nor for chondrin, the proximate chemical element of cartilage; nor for gelatine; nor for syntonin, the constituent of muscle; nor for their nervous or biliary substances; nor for their amyloid matters; nor, necessarily, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,—but clutching his sister's fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he trotted meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square into the silence and darkness of Notre Dame. Their mother watched their little plump figures disappear with a feeling of mingled amazement and gratitude,—miracles were surely beginning, she thought, if a few ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... kerosine tins, fight like demons. Goats sit up and strike with their cloven hoofs, and butt and stab with their horns. The silly sheep canter gaily to the battle, deliver thundering blows on one another's foreheads, and then retire and charge once more. The impact of their horny foreheads is sufficient to reduce a man's hand to a shapeless pulp, should it find its way between the combatants' skulls. Tigers box like pugilists, and bite like French school-boys; and buffaloes fight clumsily, violently, and vindictively, after ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Rectory to Squire Stubbs' at the Grange, from the Squire to the Baronet's steward at his neat white house on the heath, from the steward to the bailiff, and from him through a huge circle of honest dames and gaffers, by whose hard and horny hands it was generally worn to pieces in about a month ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As before, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... beauty. More than the long-vanished comeliness shall on that day rest on faces that were here haggard with anxiety, and pinched with penury and years. There will be no more palsied hands, no more scattered grey hairs, no more dim and horny eyes, no more stiffened muscles and slow throbbing hearts. 'It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.' It is sown in decaying old age, it is raised in immortal youth. His servants shall stand in that day among 'the young-eyed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Mr W. Cullen (Jour. Soc. Chem. Ind., Jan. 31, 1901) says:— "Undoubtedly the advent of the horny smokeless powders of modern times has made it a little difficult to give the test the same scope as it had when first introduced." As a rule a simple explanation can be found for every apparently abnormal result, and in the accidental retention of a portion of the solvent used in the manufacture, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... four seasons—spring, summer, autumn and winter. Spring is the most joyful season of the year. It is then that the green grass and the lavender pants come forth. The little robbins twitter in the branches, and the horny-handed farmer goes joyously afield to till the soil till the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Come, lusty knaves, And fit for graves Brave Lobkyn soon will make ye; So fight, say I, Nor turn and fly, Or, when ye die, Then may old Horny ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... dream. We did our handsomest to make those Nutmeggers believe that they needed Rajah in their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty horny-handed plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer cottagers; but the nearest we came to making a sale was to a brewer ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... men came and looked inside the cask, felt the greasy mass with their horny fingers, and each shook his head until the tenth man, who, the moment he saw it, ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... placed one on top of the other. These, beginning to putrefy, were turning green beneath a river of blood. Spongy and blistered, they were horrible, the flesh tumefied, swollen over the head of the spike, and the gripping toes, with the horny blue nails, contradicted the imploring gesture of the hands, turning that benediction into a curse; and as the hands pointed heavenward, so the feet seemed to cling to earth, to that ochre ground, ferruginous like the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... a gentle horny glimmer, and loop-holes of large exaggeration at the top, were casting upon anything quite within their reach a general idea of the crinkled tin that framed them, and a shuffle of inconstant shadows, but refused to shed any light on friend or stranger, or clear up suspicions, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... fen-monster. This monstrous being, half-man, half-fiend, dwelt in the fens near the hill on which Heorot stood. Terrible was he, dangerous to men, of extraordinary strength, human in shape but gigantic of stature, covered with a green horny skin, on which the sword would not bite. His race, all sea-monsters, giants, goblins, and evil demons, were offspring of Cain, outcasts from the mercy of the Most High, hostile to the human race; and Grendel was ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... of the chase will make him for a while forget all this; but on his return, and when he endeavours to repose himself, it is with difficulty that he can be got up again. The toes become enlarged, the skin red and tender, and the horny sole becomes detached and drops. Local fever, and that to a considerable extent, becomes established; it reacts on the general economy of the animal, who scarcely moves from his bed, and at length refuses all food. At other times a separation takes ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... prodigies of teaming, lifting, and joinering, and even of quarrying stone for the well that was being dug. A few weeks had wrought a wonderful change in the man of books; his study was wherever he chanced to be; his white hands had become horny and browned, his pale face tanned. His retiring habits had given place to a broad sociality, his diffidence to a generous self-reliance, and it seemed to him that he could do and dare almost anything. From early morning till ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... did not take any notice of this. He took from his pocket a little book covered with horny parchment, which he opened and presented to my dear teacher and myself. It contained an old Greek text, full of abbreviations and ligatures which at first gave me the effect of an illegible scrawl. But M. Coignard, having put on his barnacles and ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... and bony, immensely powerful, and his black skin showed with a grayish shine upon it through the rents in his rags. His gray-black, horny toes protruded through what once had been shoes, and a shapeless, colorless felt hat covered his bullet head. His corded black arms emerged from the torn sleeves of his checked shirt, and his hairy chest was ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... must hold the reins on ourselves tight. Baroness Turckems is a most estimable person on the side of her duty. Why, the Dragon of Wantley sat on its eggs, you may be convinced! She is a praiseworthy dragon. The side she presents to us is horny, and not so agreeable. Talk German when she is on guard. Further I need not counsel a clever old son. Counsel me, Richie. Would it be adviseable to run the prince down to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of ten thousand—ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle—there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... around my son and heir, who was dabbling with a stick in the abandoned hole. They appeared to be diverted by something and one of them, my friend Harry Bolles, who had his handkerchief up to his mouth, made a bee-line to meet me. From his lips I learned what had happened, which was this wise: The horny-handed pot-hunter, having presently pulled a solitary pickerel out upon the ice and freed it from his hook, turned aside to cut another piece of bait; whereupon my hopeful picked up the fish and popped it back into its ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... cannot hale Utopia on by force; But better, almost, be at work in sin, Than in a brute inaction browse and sleep. 200 No man is born into the world whose work Is not born with him; there is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will; And blessed are the horny hands of toil! The busy world stoves angrily aside The man who stands with arms akimbo set, Until occasion tells him what to do; And he who waits to have his task marked out Shall die and leave his errand unfulfilled. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... to think that the world's horny eyes could not receive the severe light of knowledge,—mad as was he who ran through the streets and cried, "Eureka!" The head and front of my madness have this extent,—no more. And for this I must write the rest of my story here amid iron gratings, through which, however, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... slow in movement until they sense the immediate presence of their natural food, which is live mice, rats, gophers, squirrels, young rabbits, and sometimes, though rarely, birds. Then it is they become alert, and the horny appendage on their tails vibrates with a high-pitched, buzzing sound, simulating, although not similar to, the ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... secured him to a tree, and then stalked within twenty yards of the huge beast under cover of a large strong bush. Borele, hearing me advance, came on to see what it was, and suddenly protruded his horny nose within a few yards of me. Knowing well that a front shot would not prove deadly, I sprang to my feet and ran behind the bush. Upon this the villain charged, blowing loudly, and chased me round the bush. Had his activity been equal to his ugliness, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... Stony-hard, horny "flet milk" cartwheels locally nicknamed "bang." Never popular anywhere, it has stood more abuse than Limburger, not for its smell but ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... cannot tend the sick, I can at least bury the dead," he said, drawing his horny hand across his eyes, remembering for whom he had but lately performed that last sad office. And Raymond, to whom this offer was addressed, accepted his company gladly, for he knew by recent experience how great was the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other a Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them—the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... dearest, and that the others only come after you. I was speaking of Gertrude Merryweather; oh! how you and she will love each other, Margaret! I don't see how I can wait to have you know each other. And by the 'except one,' I meant Grace Wolfe, our Horny Owl, and our Goat, and a good ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... skull, a backbone and ribs, shoulder-blades and haunch-bones. In the fore-limb, one upper arm-bone, two fore arm-bones, wrist-bones (wrongly called knee), and middle hand-bones, ending in the three bones of a finger, the last of which is sheathed in the horny hoof of the fore-foot: in the hind-limb, one thigh-bone, two leg-bones, anklebones, and middle foot-bones, ending in the three bones of a toe, the last of which is encased in the hoof of the hind-foot. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... banished upstairs. In another corner was a sort of bower, made of bright-colored pieces of stuff the child had begged from the neighbors, and called by her the "Witch's Cave;" here little Mercedes loved to sit and tell the fortunes of her friends. These were mostly Jamie's horny-handed friends; the women neighbors took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not hear of a public school. Here she learned quickly ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... eels from his basket, and grasping Flora's hand in his hard horny palm, said, "May the Lord grant you prosperity! an' bless you an' your husband an' the little 'un, an' bring you safe to the far land to which you are journeying! May it prove to you a haven of rest! ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... God: nearly every one of them came to a miserable end. Roquefort and Farges were attacked by strange and hitherto unknown diseases, recalling the plagues sent by God on the peoples whom He desired to punish in bygone ages. In the case of Farges, his skin dried up and became horny, causing him such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A horny hand gripped him by the arm. He felt himself being drawn to the surface. As his head appeared, he swung round and dealt the seaman a powerful blow with his fist. The man, taken completely by surprise, relaxed his grip. Von Hauptwald's blow had ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... himself, and then, finding that he was still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at Mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. The dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the Arab's horny foot had left him. ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shake the horny hand stretched forward in the action of blessing. She pressed it between both of hers, as she rapidly poured out questions. Mr Bellingham was not altogether comfortable at seeing one whom he had already begun to appropriate as his own, so tenderly ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... all the fellers 'll stand firm and bring the bosses up with the short turn. We kin do it, for we're the lads as makes their money for them. What them kerridge fellows needs is a bash or two in the jaw from the horny hand of toil. I goes in fer rotten-eggin' all the scabs as agrees to work lower nor the wage we set, and if that won't do, I goes in fer duckin' 'em; and if duckin' won't do, I goes in fer fixin' 'em so's they won't work nowheres. If this is a free country, let's have ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to soothe; and coming at length into a broader lane, said, "I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own dire wrestle with ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... how Horny yelled and cried, And all the artful tricks he tried, To ease his tribulations, Would more than fill a bigger book Than ever author undertook, Since the Book ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... ultimate end of becoming a full-fledged dressmaker, has been the height of ambition with the major part of our girls when brought to the institution by their horny-handed fathers and mothers fresh from the soil of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, or Florida. After the last gripless hand-shake, with the tremulous, "Take care of yourself, honey," the hard-working father and mother have turned their ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... middle of the following night, accompanied by seven of his warriors, directed by the blaze, to the place where Byzun was confined. The neighborhood was infested by demons with long nails, and long hair on their bodies like the hair of a goat, and horny feet, and with heads like dogs, and the chief of them was the son of Akwan Diw. The father having been slain by Rustem, the son nourished the hope of revenge, and perpetually longed for an opportunity of meeting him in battle. Well ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... make for the chief town of the department, leaving Plassans on its left; but the plan of campaign might at any time be altered; moreover, it sufficed for these cowardly cits to know that there were insurgents a few miles off, to make them feel the horny hands of the toilers already tightened round their throats. They had had a foretaste of the revolt in the morning; the few Republicans at Plassans, seeing that they would be unable to make any determined move in the town, had resolved to join their brethren of La Palud and Saint-Martin-de-Vaulx; ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... sent to the trouting first; and then all night long he glides about on the dark bay and hears the sounds from the moor and the woods. It falls cold toward the dawn, and the boy grows hard and strong through his nightly ordeal. When his hands are properly hardened like his horny feet, he is allowed to row the coble with crossed oars; and then he becomes very useful, for the men are left free to haul nets and plash on the water to frighten the trout. When he reaches the age of sixteen, the fisher-lad clothes himself in thick pilot-cloth and wears ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... such can very rarely occur in the higher animals, since they possess none of those facilities for the almost infinite modifications of external form which exist in the very nature of insect organization. The outer covering of insects being more or less solid and horny, they are capable of almost any amount of change of form and appearance without any essential modification internally. In many groups the wings give much of the character, and these organs may be much modified both in ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the miracle of which was that ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... long slope before them, and so came through a waste of prickly, twisted bushes and strange dry shapes of horny branches that grew amongst the rocks, into the levels below. And there the trail grew faint, for the soil was scanty, and the only herbage was this scorched dead straw that lay upon the ground. Still, by hard scanning, by leaning beside the ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... as anything could be in a coal-camp. The first impression of his face was of its pallor, and then of the benevolence in the faded dark eyes; also his voice was gentle, like a caress. He rose to greet his visitors, and put out to Hal a trembling hand, which resembled the paw of some animal, horny and misshapen. He made a move to draw up a bench, and apologised for his unskillful house-keeping. It occurred to Hal that a man might be able to work in a coal-mine at sixty, and not be able to work in it ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... sit, miserable in their tawdriness, their painted cheeks peeling in the hot sun, which they cannot shut out if they would. Throughout the long day the wearied minstrels pant over their greasy tubes of brass, or scrape their grimy instruments with horny fingers, praying for the deep night; and there, through the long day, does the echoing floor rebound with the beating of vigorous feet; for salt-water Jack is there, and fresh-river Jack is there, and while there is a ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... fat, and loves not wine, and fasts, And stills the folk with waving of his hand, And threats the knights and thunders at the Pope. Make way for Gris, ye who are whole of limb! Set me on yonder ledge, that I may see." Forthwith a dozen horny hands reached out And lifted Gris Grillon upon the ledge, Whereon he lay and overlooked the crowd, And from the gray-grown hedges of his brows Shot forth a glance against the friar's eye That struck him like an arrow. Then the friar, With voice as ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... paper comes on Saturday, and I read all the letters in the Post-office Box first. I have a pet. It is a very funny one. It is a horny toad. I found it near Pocket Creek. I would like to know what to feed it with. Papa found a little bug this morning on the sweet-potato vines. It changes its color very often. Sometimes it is gold, sometimes green, sometimes red. Can any one tell me ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Cuttle-fish, it should be observed, are fixed in the body because there is no head to which they can be articulated. They are of horny substance, and resemble the bill of a parrot. They are in the centre of the under part of the body, surrounded by the arms. By means of these parts, the shell-fish which are taken for food, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... was doing all right, Ali's fingers closed on Dane's arm in a pincher grip as painful as if he had been equipped with the horny armament ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... did wrap me round Your upright ears I always saw, And on my outflung hand I found The blessing of your horny paw; ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... numberless wrinkles, Like drought-shrivelled earth. And he altogether Resembled the earth, 430 Thought the Barin, while noting His throat, like a dry lump Of clay, brown and hardened; His brick-coloured face; His hands—black and horny, Like bark on the tree-trunk; ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... was a reason for that. The tall, slender man had gained the upper hand. He was stretched across the prone form of his antagonist, his slim, horny hands even now gliding toward the other's throat. And, right there, Johnny had decided to draw the line. He was not going to allow himself to witness the strangling of a man. That wasn't his idea of fighting. He would end the fight, even ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... and will not object to seeing his name in the paragraphs of Society papers. It is not absolutely necessary that the young M.P. should be bald, but it is essential that he should wear a frock-coat. It is well, also, that his dress should be neat, but not ostentatiously spruce, lest the more horny-handed of his supporters should take umbrage at an offensive assumption of superiority over those whose votes ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... a horny-handed son of the soil. I'm a cattle-farmer; I'm a sheep-farmer; I don't know which. One day I'm the one, and the next day I'm the other." Lydia looked mystified, and Staniford continued: "I mean that I have no profession, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... man doesn't get a name like that for just parting his hair nice," Atkinson remarked. "He told me to stretch 'em"—a horny thumb jerked towards the workmen—"and you'll see some real work hereabouts for the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... vase-like form of cell, which is given by the continuation upwards of the broad avicularia in nearly a straight line, and their prolongation into a sharp angular spine, on the inner side of which is a shallow cup-like cavity, whose sides are usually more horny than calcareous. The number of fenestrae ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the solido on the screen, trying to make some judgment of the man. Bare, horny feet. A bulky, ragged length of cloth around the waist was the only garment. What looked like a piece of green vine was hooked over one shoulder. From a plaited belt were suspended a number of odd devices made of hand-beaten metal, drilled stone and looped leather. The only recognizable ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... the pail, squirt, squirt, squirt. Eben had often tried, but pull as he would, he could only get out a few drops. And even as Andrew Brewster had milked his cows morning and evening until his hands were horny, so had his father done before him. Yes, and his father's father, too. For three generations of Brewsters had hardened their hands milking cows on Green Mountain Farm. Then there came this exciting day, and a new way of milking began at the ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... horny part of the foot surrounds only the extreme front. Behind this crescentic horn is a shallow concavity which gives the horny hoof a chance to get its hold. Both the main digits and the dewclaws terminate in black, rubber-like, rounded and expanded soles, which are of great service in securing a ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... or weapons the wilderness of that unknown land was only less dreadful than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit, streams where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish—El Lagarto he was called by the discoverers,—no grain or cattle which might be taken by stealth—this was the realm into which they had been exiled. When they ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they were captured by Acan Xooc, the cacique of another province, ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... all accounts it would be easy to reckon them; but seriously, is it true that the lower joint of your right thumb is horny, in consequence of having caught the character of your conscience from having ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... just such sunken cheeks and ashen lips and frozen eyes; with just such a collapsed and shuddering form; yet, withal, could not have shown that terrific look of utter, incurable despair! His fingers, talon-like in their horny paleness and rigidity, clutched his breast, as if to tear some mortal anguish thence, and his glassy eyes were fixed in unutterable reproach upon her face! Thrice he essayed to speak, but a gurgling noise in his throat was the only result. With a last great effort to ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... green-flecked red, in which the phosphorescence flickered. Their long muzzles, lips half-open in monstrous grin, held rows of glistening, slender, lancet sharp fangs. Over the glaring eyes arose a horny helmet, a carapace of black and orange scales, studded with ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... with horny hands, Who swung the axe, who tilled his lands, Who shrank from nothing new, But ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... jute, and his trousers were of sailcloth, cut in a style that would not have met the approval of a Maryland Club member. He was thick-set, with a slight stoop. His wrists were tattooed, his hands horny. His eyes were a placid blue pair. Above the left one ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... look at them, and you see there the tally of vanished generations—the heavy boot of the conquistador; the sandaled foot of the old padre; the high heel of a dainty Spanish-born lady; the bare, horny sole of the Indian convert—each of them taking its tiny toll out of stone and mortar—each of them wearing away its infinitesimal mite—until through years and years the firm stone was ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... plenty of young women in the village?' answered the cornet's wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox with her horny hands. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... the doctor, and the former sat with his elbows on the table holding the snakeskin belt with his hands near the ends, so that they hung down over the fingers, softly lissome, while the horny middle sank in ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... swung out the cylinder and pointed with a gnarled and horny finger. The men closed in and gazed in silence. One of ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... as possible. But he said nothing of all this, and to escape further questions devoured three or four little cakes that were offered him. Before taking them he removed his gloves and displayed a pair of chapped and horny hands. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... others, especially of men. By the time he was four years old he had learned to eat without help. Paul was very supple, was fond of climbing, and had great strength in his arms and hands especially; these had actually a horny appearance, and thus reminded one of the hands of the chimpanzee. He could sit on the ground with his legs wide apart. His gait was uncertain, and he was apt to tumble; he ran with knees bent forward and legs crooked; he was fond of hopping, and seemed particularly ape-like ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... sign of our nobility, the means by which the intellect gives form and shape to its artistic conceptions, by which it gives reality to the mandates of its will, by which it exercises the dominion that God conceded to man over all other creatures. The rough, strong, sinewy, horny hand, it may be, of a laborer, a workman, testifies nobly to this dominion, but on its rudest and least intellectual side. The hands of Pepita, on the contrary, transparent almost, like alabaster, but rosy-hued, and in which one can ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... fear his red-rimmed horny eyes. It is with him I must struggle all through this night till day come, till he or I lie dead, gripping him by the sinewy throat till... Till what? Till he yield to me? ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... relations between the two classes were any less cordial. It meant only that the clear social atmosphere of the colony had not yet become dimmed by the mists of court duplicity. The habitants of New France respected the horny-handed man in homespun whom they called their seigneur: the depth of this loyalty and respect could not fairly be measured ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... curtains, the big-bellied earthenware on the cupboard, the long-legged clock in the corner, the thick, quiet light of the small, deeply-set window; the mixture, on all things, of smoke-stain and the polish of horny hands. Into the midst of this "la Rabillon" or "la Mere Leger" brings forward her chairs and begs us to be seated, and seating herself, with crossed hands, smiles handsomely and answers abundantly all questions about her cow, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... tears in my eyes as I stood up and gazed down at this mystery called death. And while I did so, a hand, horny and hard, closed over mine. The innkeeper, with blinking eyes, stood at ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... with the stained quills of the porcupine, encircled each leg, immediately under the knee, where it was tied in a bow, and then suffered to hang pendant half way down the limb; to the fringes of the leggings, moreover, were attached numerous dark-coloured horny substances, emitting, as they rattled against each other, at the slightest movement of the wearer, a tinkling sound, resembling that produced by a number of small thin delicate brass bells; these were the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... owning herself a praedial servant, she would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should have ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... grandfather, of the neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... in order to lay their eggs where they can alone find the requisites for their development. Insects lay their eggs in the most varied kinds of situations,—in sand, on leaves, under the hides and horny substances of other animals; they often select the spot where the larva will be able most readily to find its future sustenance, as in autumn upon the trees that will open first in the coming spring, or in spring upon the blossoms that will ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... pseudospretella. It loves damp and warmth, and eats any fibrous material. This caterpillar is quite unlike any garden species, and, excepting the legs, is very similar in appearance and size to the Anobium. It is about half-inch long, with a horny head and strong jaws. To printers' ink or writing ink he appears to have no great dislike, though I imagine that the former often disagrees with his health, unless he is very robust, as in books where the print is pierced a majority of the worm-holes I have seen are ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... against thy horny breast, I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins; Tingling with buds, thy great hands open towards the west, To catch the sweetheart winds that bring ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... full of hollow pits; His gnarled hands wander idly as he sits Bending above the hearthstone's feeble smoke. Threescore and ten slow years he tilled the land; He wrung his bread from out the stubborn soil; He saw his masters flourish through his toil; He held their substance in his horny hand. ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... cannot stand that tremendous pace, and down goes Creeping Peter on his knees. Every man who had bet against him set up a howl of rapture, but Mr. P. never relaxed a muscle, and on went Creeping Peter, just as fast as ever, his horny bones dashing away the sand and gravel like spray from the cut-water of a scudding yacht, and, amid the wildest clamor, he shot past the judges' stand on his nose and one leg, making his mile in two minutes and ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work withal, for those who will; and blessed are the horny hands of toil.—LOWELL. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... shadows gather round. No lamp Save in yon shop, whose sable minister His evening customers attends. Anon, With squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,—and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... him simultaneously with outstretched horny palms. He noticed that even their dress was precisely similar, with the single exception that one wore a red, the other a yellow bandanna handkerchief loosely ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... entered the study, he found no one there except an old farmer. He was tall and rough, with hands large and horny from hard work. He wore neither robe nor collar, but only leather breeches and a long white homespun coat, like the other peasants. He arose and bowed as ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... distraction. Such work before going to that sublime region at Erymanth! He laid hold of Harold's hands—shapely hands, and with that look of latent strength one sees in some animals, but scarred with many a seam, and horny within the fingers—and compared them with those he had nursed into dainty delicacy of whiteness, till Harold could not help saying, "I wouldn't ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... congeners, the zebra and co., have smooth short-haired tails, ending in a single bunch or fly-whisk of long hairs collected together in a tufted bundle at the extreme tip. The horse, on the other hand, besides having horny patches or callosities on both fore and hind legs, while the donkeys have them on the fore legs only, has a hairy tail, in which the long hairs are almost equally distributed from top to bottom, thus giving ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen |
