"Horny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horny hands together and gazing at Denver benevolently, "we think the indications are good—were you thinking of locating in ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... of insects are as follows: the flies, with two wings only; the bees, wasps, and ants, with four delicate wings; the beetles, with four wings—two hard, horny ones covering the two more delicate ones. When the beetle is at rest its two hard wings meet in a straight line down the back. This peculiarity distinguishes it from the true bug, which has four wings. The two outer wings are partly horny, and in folding lap over each other. Butterflies ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... gentlemen, so big, so vast, that it makes even your president feel a pulse of pride. This project is nothing more nor less than the opening of a region of waste country which an all-wise Creator has permitted to slumber for ages, for no less purpose than to reserve it to the horny-handed son of toil of our glorious country. It will awaken to the clarion call of our wealth, our brains, and our genius." He then mentioned Corrigan and the Midland grant—another reservation of Providence, which a credulous and asinine Congress ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... the employing and professional classes to bind to their chariot-wheels those who labored with their hands. Gigantic trusts had "cornered" all the necessaries of life, and a few lily-fingered plutocrats in their marble palaces dictated to the horny-handed sons of toil the amount of their beggarly wages, and the prices they must pay for every needed article, until every job of work and every bone of charity was fought for by multitudes who mercilessly stabbed each other in ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the inside of the case critically, and, swearing admiringly to himself, handed it over to Louis Savoy. With numerous 'By gars!' he finally surrendered it to Prince, and they noticed that his hands trembled and his eyes took on a peculiar softness. And so it passed from horny hand to horny hand—the pasted photograph of a woman, the clinging kind that such men fancy, with a babe at the breast. Those who had not yet seen the wonder were keen with curiosity; those who had became silent and retrospective. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... from him, put it on a chair, and then they all shook hands with him. He first found his hand in that of the Marquis, and heard the old man bless him, and then the Priest blessed him, and then he felt the soft, sweet hands of those bright angels within his own horny palm; he heard them speaking to him, though he knew not what they said; and then he could restrain himself no longer, for tears forced themselves into his eyes, and, in the midst of them all, he ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... harm's way, but are hovering around her on all sides in a dangerous proximity. Like the poet, she looks not forward nor behind. If they are beyond reach, very well; if they are not, all the same; scratch, scratch, scratch in the soil goes her great, strong, horny claw, and up flies a cloud of dust, and away goes a poor unfortunate, whirling involuntary somersets through the air without the least warning. She is a living monument of the mischief that may be done by giving undue prominence to one idea. I only wonder that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... to bring this fly as life-like as possible before my readers, I may compare its head to most tiny miniature of an elephant's, because it has a black proboscis and a pair of horny antennae, which in colour and curve resemble tusks. The black proboscis, however, the simply a hollow sheath, which encloses, when not in the act of biting, four reddish and sharp lancets. Under the microscope these four lancets differ in thickness, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... commonplace—to prefer Macaulay to him, is like giving the preference to Birket Foster over Salvator Rosa. But if it is not Macaulay, who is it to be? Mr. Hepworth Dixon or Mr. Froude? Of Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman it behoves every ignoramus to speak with respect. Horny-handed sons of toil, they are worthy of their wage. Carlyle has somewhere struck a distinction between the historical artist and the historical artizan. The bishop and the professor are historical artizans; artists they are not—and the great ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... this thing did prove to be; for there came very quick, a great and ugly thing, that had an ugly way of putting down the feet, and did have seven feet to each side, which was very strange; and the back was as that it were horny, and the belly of the thing did seem to brush heavy upon the earth, and it grunted, as it went, and shook the earth with the weight of it; so that a monstrous noise came from it, upon so hasty a journey. And I did wot that ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... into fuller view, her chiragh rose with it—and so remained; stranded high and dry somewhere near the horny shoulder; tilted sideways, she judged from the slope of the flame; the oil, its life-blood, trickling away. And as the mugger moved leisurely on, in the wrong direction, breaking up the gold network of reflections, she had her answer—or no answer. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Abrahamites is a horrid jargon, composed for the most part of low English words used in an allegorical sense—a jargon in which a stick is called a crack; a hostess, a rum necklace; a bar-maid, a dolly-mort; brandy, rum booze; a constable, a horny. But enough of these Pikers, these Abrahamites. Sufficient to observe that if the disguised priests associated with wandering companies it must have been with these people, who admit anybody to their society, and not with the highly ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... horny fist, forgetful of the balance of snuff contained therein, and thus causing me to sneeze again, as well as nearly blinding me for a second time, the rough old sailor caught hold of my father's disengaged hand with a ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a sliver from a horny finger and recalled the fact that Tarzan had once said that the trees talked to one another, and Gozan recounted having seen the ape-man dancing alone in the moonlight with Sheeta, the panther. They did not know that Tarzan had ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... once a tortoise held, Safe in his horny house concealed, Which he in vain essayed to break With all the fury of his beak. As with his prey he wing'd the air, A wily raven ventur'd near: "Your prize is excellent," says she, "And if you'll give a share to me, I know, for all his iron hide, How we the dainty may divide." The ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... were mingled with a few hisses ("due to the report that the newcomer was an English Freemason, and wanted to destroy the Catholic religion"), the next evening the management took the precaution of filling the pit with a leather-lunged and horny-handed claque. This time the bill consisted of a comedy, Der Weiberseind von Benedix, followed by a cachucha and a fandango with ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... urged from the corner of his mouth. "Cutthroats, banditti, hoss thieves—jus' downright bad hombres, that's us. They expect us to be on the peck, all horns an' rattles. Don't disappoint 'em none! Their tails is half curled up already, an' they're ready to run if a horny toad yells Boo!" ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... privilege of shaking hands with a lady?" the Irish Mac asked, extending an honest, horny hand; and the privilege, if it were one, was granted. Finally all was ready, and the waggons, one behind the other, each with its long swaying line of bullocks before it, slid away from the Warloch Ponds and crept into the forest, looking like three huge snails with shells ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... cried a burly man, whose dress bespoke him a farmer no less than his ruddy cheeks and horny hands. "Would that I had been there! He should not then have escaped ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the monotony of his voice, decided at last to come out of her shell. First she showed the point of her little horny nose, then her black eyes, her flat-pointed tail, and finally her strong little claw-tipped feet. Seeing the melon, she made a gesture of assent, and began ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Caterpillars everywhere, bristling, smooth, green, pink, eye-marked and eyeless; caterpillars standing on their tails, or crouching in every conceivable attitude of defense; and in their midst the little Snoodle, frisking and fawning and endeavoring to come to grips with the horny and horrified worms. There was one old Hickory Horn-Devil in particular, who had come out in front of the others like Goliath before the ranks of the Philistines; and the Snoodle was dancing around him in an ecstasy of anticipation. Though he was so excited, he looked ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... of 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 Hagen ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 placed the book ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... connection of the nail is maintained. If we look on the surface of the nail, we see an indication of this structure in the alternate red and white lines which are there observed. The former of these correspond with the sensitive laminae; the latter with the horny plates. The ribbed appearance of the nail is due to the same circumstance. These sensitive laminae are provided with an unusual number of capillary vessels for the formation of the nail, and hence they give a red tint to the portion under which ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... dressed in his usual clothes, was in the room—beside the table. He leaned upon the shoulder of his solitary friend; and on his livid face, and on his horny hands, and in his glassy eyes, and traced by an eternal finger in the very drops of sweat upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... position with regard to us which may be described, in military phrase, as an echelon movement upon our flank, and we went surging through a fleet of little green fishing-boats, manned each by a single fisherman in a red shirt, whose two horny hands appeared to be a couple too few for the hauling in of the violet and silver porgies, with which the well of his little green craft was alive and flapping. In the middle of this fleet we rounded to, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... the maggots which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Weesel, both belonging to the village, were shot by his keepers, Martin in the leg and Weesel in the back, because they were found near a rabbit-warren at a suspicious hour in the evening; and an old fellow, whom they called Horny Owl, was so severely beaten on the head by one of the Baronet's men, that he only lived two days afterwards. Old Horny was concealed in the trunk of a hollow oak, and was found there with no less than ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... strange smile, half mournful, but, meseemed, half proud; then he held forth his horny, hard-worked hand, and said that to be sure it was an ill-matched pair when such a hand as that should clasp a soft and white one such as might come out of a velvet sleeve; that whereas, in order to win the woman he loved, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are armed against the animals, so the animals are armed against each other. Many of the insects and reptiles are extremely poisonous; the greater the heat of their habitat, the more dangerous are their bites. The horned toad, while not poisonous, is protected by having horny spines upon its head and back. The little rattlesnake known as the "side-winder" is perhaps the most dangerous of all, although the tarantula, centipede, and scorpion are formidable foes. The Gila monster, long believed to be so dangerous, is ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... Although asbestos is reported to exist of a remarkably long fibre and soft texture, I have never met with it except in the coarse form which is common in many portions of the island, especially on the Troodos range, where the base of this stone is a shining greenish substance of a horny texture, which gradually terminates in bristles of asbestos. I have also seen it in thin veins of metamorphic rocks, glittering like silver, and when scratched with a knife, it resolves into a downy condition like scraped cotton. All these ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... gradually loses the half-cured, and assumes a blue colour; and when the produce is properly cured and fit for the mill, not the slightest dark spot will be perceptible in the bean, but it will exhibit a horny blue colour. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... appear in the cells at the end of the growing branches; as they move independently of the polypi, and do not appear to be in any way connected with them; and as they differ in size on the outer and inner rows of cells, I have little doubt, that in their functions, they are related rather to the horny axis of the branches than to the polypi in the cells. The fleshy appendage at the lower extremity of the sea-pen (described at Bahia Blanca) also forms part of the zoophyte, as a whole, in the same manner as the roots of ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... third time," Frank said to his father, "he'll control the town. He'll elect a full Board of Supervisors ... that is freely prophesied if Union Labor wins. You ought to see his list of candidates—waffle bakers, laundry wagon drivers—horny-fisted sons of toil and parasites of politics. Heaven help us if ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... know them, and rattle impatient in their cones. "Blow stronger, blow fiercer, slow air-mothers, and shake us from our prisons of dead wood, that we may fly and spin away north-eastward, each on his horny wing. Help us but to touch the moorland yonder, and we will take good care of ourselves henceforth; we will dive like arrows through the heather, and drive our sharp beaks into the soil, and rise again as green trees toward the sunlight, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... hot air upon the peat is, in the first place, to soften and cause it to swell; it, however, shortly begins to shrink again and dries away to masses of great solidity. It becomes almost horny in its character, can be broken only by a heavy blow, and endures the roughest handling without detriment. Its quality as ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... leans panting on his hoe. In the heat of his toil he has thrown off his hat and blouse, which now lie together on the ground behind him. His damp hair is matted together on his forehead, his brawny chest is exposed by the open shirt, his horny hands are clasped over the hoe handle. Some distant object catches his eye. It may be a farm wagon moving across the plain, or perhaps a bird flying through the clear air. To follow the course of such an object a moment is a welcome change from the monotonous ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... to swell up in lukewarm water, and to become tacky, so that in this condition it can retain powdered color which had been dusted on it. Wherever, however, the chromated gelatine has been acted on by light, the surface becomes horny, undergoes no change in warm water, and loses all sign of tackiness. In this process absolute opacity in the lines of the original drawing is by no means necessary, for it reproduces gray, half-tone lines just as well as it does ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... so, the lowering of his head threw his horny ruff far forward, exposing the folds of naked hide on the back of his neck. The silent man-creature on the branch above was quick to note the opportunity. He was displeased at the monster's triumph. He was also interested to see if he had any power to hurt so colossal and well protected ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... or even subcolumnar), 5 to 6 cm. in diameter (doubtless becoming larger): tubercles 8 to 10 mm. long, woolly in the upper axils: radial spines 4 to 6, rigid, 4 to 6 mm. long, the upper one stouter than the rest and sometimes shorter, reddish-brown and horny, straight or slightly curved, the remainder straight and white with dusky tips; central spine stout and horny, reddish-brown, 7 to 10 mm. long: flowers greenish-white or tinged with red: fruit unknown ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... madman's fancy; in the darkness she saw enormous toads, with paws pressed to their flanks, and huge limping scarabs, shelled creatures the like of which she had never seen, and noisome brutes with horny scales and round crabs' eyes, uncouth primeval things, and winged serpents, and creeping animals begotten of the slime. She heard shrill cries and peals of laughter and the terrifying rattle of men at the point of death. Haggard women, dishevelled and lewd, carried wine; and when ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... are supposed to have separated these cells, and above, (a), we see some of the cells from the central pith or medulla, and fat globules; between, (b), some of the intermediate elongated or angular cells; and below, (c), two flattened, compressed, structureless, and horny scales from the outer portion of the hair. Now these latter flattened scales are of great importance. Their character and mode of connection with the stratum, or cortical substance, below, not only make all the difference between wool and hair, but also ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the home of the wild yaks the ground is almost everywhere bare and barren, and yet these great beasts roam about and thrive excellently. They live on mosses and lichens, which they lick up with the tongue, and for this purpose their tongues are provided with hard, sharp, horny barbs like a thistle. In the same way they crop the velvety grass, less than half an inch high, which grows on the edges of the high alpine brooks, and which is so short that a horse cannot get hold ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... take these rattles along, Bandy-legs?" asked Owen, who had severed the horny looking appendage at the end of the tail; "it'll serve to remind you of what a silly job it is to play with a snake that you've ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... above, tympanum scarcely visible; back rather convex, high on the sides; skin smooth, not porous; limbs rather short; toes 4.5, tapering to a point, nearly free, the palms with roundish tubercles beneath; the fourth hind toe elongate, the rest rather short; the ankle with an oblong, compressed, horny, sharp-edged tubercle on the inner side at the base of the inner toe; the male with an internal vocal sac ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... 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
... pressed close 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 ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... scaly that he could not get round her, while his sword glanced, blunted, from off her skin. Blow after blow he struck, but they only served to increase her fury, till, gathering all her strength together, she wound her great tail about his body, pressing him close against her horny bosom. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... in a dream at this sudden horror; but he kept his senses; once or twice the great beast moved, and drummed on the pavement with a horny paw. So Paullinus drew the prostrate body of the priest outside the screen and closed the door. Then he went with swift steps out of the temple and to the water's edge; he drew up a little water in his hand, looking into ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pulp of which is sweetish, acidulous, and pleasant. Its outer coat, like those of the other rotans, is covered with scales, or the appearance of nice basket-work. It incloses sometimes one, two, and three kernels, of a peculiar horny substance. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... loathsome 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 one of mankind's most bitter enemies; hence his ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the forenoon, when Tessibel returned home from an errand to Kennedys', she found Daddy Skinner on the bench at the side of the shanty, one horny hand clutching the bowl of a pipe in which the ashes were dead. It took but one sharp glance from the red-brown eyes for Tess to note that his face was white, almost grey; she saw, too, with a quiver of loving sympathy, that ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... fairly foaming with curls,—light-footed, light-hearted, most ecstatically light-headed, she tripped down into the sunshine as though the great, harsh, granite steps that marked her descent were nothing more nor less than a gigantic, old, horny-fingered hand passing her blithely out to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... that was not in the least degree depressed by the recognition of past failure. All night long they had been dropping the net overboard, and drawing it in, and with horny, wet hands seeking in its meshes, and finding nothing. Then overboard with it again, and more pulling at the heavy sweeps, till the dawn began to show, and all in vain. Now the weary task must be done all over again, though in all the past hours though they were the best, there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... money panic comes—it'll be in my day, too—you'll see the streets of Chicago running with blood. These fellows will go after the rich, and they'll get 'em. You will live to see the day when women who wear diamonds around their throats will have harsh, horny ringers there instead. There will be rich men's blood on every paving stone and beautiful necks will be slit with less mercy than marked the French butchery years ago. That's my prophecy. Some day you'll recall it to mind, especially if you happen to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... slight cauliflower in one ear, his broad, kindly humorous face and alert, bustling manner was assurance that he would be an easy man to get along with. When the Old Man introduced him to Matt, he extended a horny right hand that closed on Matt's like the jaws of a dredger, the while he ran an equally horny left hand up and down the ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... the latter the native bee extracts a most delicious honey. A small tree, with stiff alternate leaves scarcely an inch long, was covered with red fruit of the form of an acorn, and about half an inch long, having a sweet pericarp with two compressed grain-like seeds, which had the horny albumen of the coffee, and were exceedingly bitter. The pigeons, crows, and cockatoos, fed upon them, we also ate a great number of them; but the edible portion of each seed was very small. It is a remarkable fact that trees, which we had found in full ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... 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
... said he. "The mill is now open to all comers. We hope to make this thing a success; we hope to see every horny-handed, hump-backed farmer in the country rosin the soles of his moccasins, and shove his plough through twice as much ground as he ever did before, and if he comes here with his plunder, we'll give him ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... rhinoceros, standing within a hundred yards of me. Dismounting from my horse, I 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 ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... in the faithful fellow's eyes. 'I believe you, Andy,' said his master, giving his hand to the servant for a grasp of friendship, which, if it oftener took place between the horny palm of labour and the whiter fingers of the higher born, would be for the cementing of society by such ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... solely for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... for Mr. Egerton with a rapidity that took away his breath. He longed to slink away,—longed to get at L'Estrange, whom he supposed would be as wroth at this turn in the wheel of fortune as himself. But how, as Egerton's representative, escape from the continuous gripes of those horny hands? Besides, there stood the parish pump, right in face of the booth, and some huge truculent-looking Yellows loitered round it, as if ready to pounce on him the instant he quitted his present sanctuary. Suddenly the crowd round the booth receded; Lord L'Estrange's carriage drove up to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these little horny patches at the ends of the toes grow out into long, curved hooks, or broad, digging chisels and scoops; but on our own fingers, they simply make a little mould over the finger-tip. If, however, they are protected from being broken off, they will grow four or five inches long; ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the sharp end of the pencil half an inch in his mouth, and on the palm of his horny hand commenced the list, talking all the while aloud—slowly, just as if writing—'Let me see. My mem'y isn't more than an inch long, and there's ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior—by which it could make buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly green plant, it produced oxygen, but that, instead of releasing it, it stored the gas in spongy compartments within its horny shell, using it to support an animal-like tissue combustion to keep its vitals from freezing ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... recklessly destroyed before his eyes; it was the ship which he had first gone to sea in as a boy, and which it had been the ambition of his life to command. It was too much, and turning his head away as the tips of her spars sank from view, he wiped away a tear from his eye with the back of his horny hand. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... There were monstrous studs upon a glorious expanse of 'biled' shirt; a small investment of cheap, tawdry rings set off the chimpanzee-like fingers; and, often enough, gloves invested the hands, whose horny, reticulated skin reminded me of the black fowl, or the scaly feet of African cranes pacing at ease over the burning sands. Each dandy had his badine upon whose nice conduct he prided himself; the toothpick was as omnipresent as the crutch, nor was the 'quizzing-glass' ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... round GRANDOLPH to shake the horny hand of the intrepid explorer, the dauntless lion dompter. A cold air whistles along the row of Ministers ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... of that peculiarly brilliant color noticed in that delightful esculent vegetable, the carrot, when boiled and prepared for table. She wore it twisted in a hard, horny knob at the top of her head, which strained her blue-green eyes, and gave them the expression of those of a choked grimalkin. Her nose turned divinely upwards; her blubber lips turned downwards with a grievous, watery expression. Her cheeks were ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... 116) is nearly spherical in form, and is surrounded outside, except in front, by a hard, horny coat called the sclerotica (S). In front is the cornea (A), which bulges outwards, and acts as a transparent window to admit light to the lens of the eye (C). Inside the sclerotica, and next to it, comes the choroid ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... chuse an old Boar, for the older he is, the more horny will the Brawn be: We must provide for this use a Frank, as the Farmers call it, which must be built very strong to keep the Boar in. The figure of the Frank should be somewhat like a Dog-Kennel, a little longer than ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... they have eight children to work for! Do you know sisters, that in the last week before I left Stockholm, I cut out a hundred and six shirts! I hope I can meet with a good sempstress here; at home; look at my finger, it is quite hard and horny with sewing. God bless the children! one has one's trouble with them. But tell me, how is it with our mother? They have always been writing to me that she was better—and yet I find her terribly gone off; it really grieves ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... now suppose the case of some dangerous game: a Praying Mantis, for instance, brandishing her lethal limbs, each hooked and fitted with a double saw; an angry Hornet, darting her awful sting; a sturdy Beetle, invincible under his horny armour. These are exceptional morsels, hardly ever known to the Epeirae. Will they be accepted, if supplied by ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... reaching forth his hand and trying to grasp the great horny fist of his son, "strive to be humble. Think not too well of thyself. Seek counsel from God in all things. Be not wise in thine own eyes. If thou art self willed, vain, and headstrong, grief and pain will be thy ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... not that Men tremble at My power of place And lordly sway,— I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day— Yield me his horny palm to hold, And I'll not pray For gold;— The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth— The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. And so I reach, Dear Lord, to Thee, And do ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 intention of hunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... with me in deriving variations from germinal selection will regard that process as an essential aid towards explaining the selection of distinctive courtship-characters, such as coloured spots, decorative feathers, horny outgrowths in birds and reptiles, combs, feather-tufts, and the like, since the beginnings of these would be presented with relative frequency in the struggle between the determinants within the germ-plasm. The process of transmission ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... edge." Eve made answer, "As my teeth were set on edge, so may the teeth of all living beings be set on edge."[68] The first result was that Adam and Eve became naked. Before, their bodies had been overlaid with a horny skin, and enveloped with the cloud of glory. No sooner had they violated the command given them than the cloud of glory and the horny skin dropped from them, and they stood there in their nakedness, and ashamed.[69] Adam tried to gather leaves from the trees to cover part of their bodies, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... noise too, one day, as he was standing still to light his pipe in the Vicolo dei Soldati. When it struck his ear he let the match burn out till it singed his horny fingers. His expression became even more blank than usual, but he looked up and down the street, to see if he were alone, and upward at the windows of the house opposite. Nobody was in sight, but in ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... that sent the echoes flying back and forth across the pond, and its owner ducked his head, arched his back, and dived to the bottom. It was a very curious tail, for besides being so oddly paddle-shaped it was covered with what looked like scales, but were really sections and indentations of hard, horny, blackish-gray skin. Except its owner's relations, there was no one else in all the animal kingdom who had one like it. But the strangest thing about it was the many different ways in which he used it. Just now it was his rudder—and a ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... out my long tongue. It has a sharp, horny tip, and has barbs on it too. Very tiny insects stick to a liquid like glue that covers my tongue. I suppose I must tell you that I like a taste of the ripest fruit and grain. Don't you think I earn a little when I work so ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... shut the window, snib it on the inside, and get away in the way that he originally came. As a minor point it may be noted," he continued, fingering the rope, "that our wooden-legged friend, though a fair climber, was not a professional sailor. His hands were far from horny. My lens discloses more than one blood-mark, especially towards the end of the rope, from which I gather that he slipped down with such velocity that he took the skin ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... did the 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Skate and the Dog-fish,—are more careful of their eggs. Have you ever found their empty eggs on the sea shore? Children call them "mermaids' purses." But they are more like little horny ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... the Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty. The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more difficult; and with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which tears of gratified ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... my boy," said the old man, shading his bleared eyes with his horny hand as he gazed at the blackened skeleton of the living-van. "An' all considered, you ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... works, the 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 almost see the pure and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... turned with a snarl, and, clenching his huge, horny fist, let drive full in the other's face and ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... a passion with me, but no more for the conquest of golden sunfish and speckled chubs and horny catfish than for the haunting sound of the waterfall and the color and loneliness of the cliffs. As a man, and a writer who is forever learning, fishing is still a passion, stronger with all the years, but tempered by an ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... conical teeth. At one of these intervals, while its mouth was open, the kite struck quickly upward, and seized the lower jaw of the reptile in his beak. The latter closed its mouth on the instant; but the horny mandible was impervious to its sharp teeth, and the bird regarded ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... as phosphate of lime? When a man's fingers have been amputated, imperfect nails have been known to appear on the stumps, and I could as soon believe that these vestiges of nails are developed in order to excrete horny matter, as that the rudimentary nails on the fin of the manatee have been developed ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... astonished by the advent of a vast army of invaders to which they were not at all accustomed. These were locusts, probably of the kind we now call seventeen-year locusts; and the people were amazed to see these creatures come up out of the ground, clad in their horny coats of mail, which they afterwards cast off, when they ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... we were naturally not content, so we sent back to the boat for our own sheet chart to try and get more satisfactory information. But when it lay on the table in this old shellback's cabin all he did was to put down on it a huge and horny thumb that was nearly large enough to cover the whole historic island, and "guess we were ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces. They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly. The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... square leagues her pennons broad expand, And twilight swims upon the shuddering sand; 465 Perch'd on her crest the Griffin Discord clings, And Giant Murder rides between her wings; Blood from each clotted hair, and horny quill, And showers of tears in blended streams distil; High-poised in air her spiry neck she bends, 470 Rolls her keen eye, her Dragon-claws extends, Darts from above, and tears at each fell swoop With iron fangs ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... bargain was completed and the timber merchant had gone away, Jehiel Hawthorn walked stiffly to the pine-tree and put his horny old fist against it, looking up to its spreading top with an expression of hostile exultation in his face. The neighbor who had been called to witness the transfer of Jehiel's ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... the footsteps of the child, and to the question, "What is a sponge?" I fancy science will be able to return a direct answer. First of all, we may note that a sponge, as we know it in common life, is the horny skeleton or framework which was made by, and which supported, the living parts. These living parts consist of minute masses of that living jelly to which the name of protoplasm has been applied. This, in truth, is the universal matter of life. It is the one substance with which life everywhere ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... dishonestly, he is often either a manslayer or a murderer), but because he plumbs well, and saves the community from danger and damp, disease, and fire and water. Makers of useless machine-made ornaments are, however 'horny-handed,' really 'anti-social persons,' baneful to the community as far as their bad work goes; more baneful, possibly, than the consumers of these bad articles, quite as baneful as ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... say, when I think of them days they seem like a mince-pie 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 ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... as it sounded, for all through the big rooms was scaffolds and ladders and a dozen or more original members of the Overalls Club splashin' mortar and paint around. I was glancin' at these horny-handed sons of toil sort of casual when all of a sudden I spots one guy in a well-daubed suit of near-white ducks who looks strangely familiar. Walkin' up to the step-ladder for a closer view I has to stop and let out a ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... keep a maid; Philippina helped in the kitchen; this ruined her complexion, and made her skin rough and horny. Frequently she got out of washing dishes by simply running away. On these occasions Theresa would create such an uproar that the neighbours would come to the window and look out. Philippina avenged herself ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the great horny palm in both her hands. "You make me very happy," she said, simply, looking at him above the head of his child, "and I'm sure your wife is going to help you. I shall enjoy the holidays far more for this visit. You've ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... hesitatingly. To Helen they all looked alike, tall, awkward, with brown faces and big hands. When Colonel Zane cheerily cried out to them, they stumbled forward with evident embarrassment, each literally crushing Helen's hand in his horny palm. Afterward they leaned on the rail and stole glances ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... a box covered with net, in which a huge apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides, and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace asked if she was going to keep it. "Yes, till it buries itself," said the child. "Aunt Ermine thinks it is the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you give me up, Humfrey,' she said, as she eagerly laid her neatly gloved fingers in the grasp of the great, broad, horny palm, 'or at least ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wigwams, and people of all sorts, colors, conditions, nations, and tongues. A country muster or ordination dwindles into nothing in comparison. It was a second edition of Babel. The Governor's life-guard, in splendid uniform, prancing to and fro, 'Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.' Horny-hoofed, galloping quadrupeds make ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... broad, burly frame seeming to fill up all the little room. She could not lift up her head, but her face was turned toward us, and she held out her small, wasted hand to him, smiling faintly. He fell on his knees before he took it into his great, horny palm, and looked down upon it as he held it very carefully with, tears standing in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... ye no word of welcome for a chum after a month's absence?" said Slugs, holding out his horny hand to the Black Swan, who gravely ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... Balance, and all who think that it is their business to straighten things out. Poisoners and assassins are born under the Scorpion. Cross-eyed people who look at the vegetables and sneak away with the bacon, are born under the Archer. Horny-handed sons of toil are born under Capricorn. Bartenders and pumpkin-heads are born under the Water-Carrier. Caterers and rhetoricians are born under the Fishes: and so the world turns round, just like a mill, and something bad always comes to the top, and men are either being born or else they're ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... movement in every cot. Eyes were all front, gazing in the direction of a golden-haired beauty, who blushed a deep pink when she realised how many pairs of eyes from the train were focussed on her. Soon horny hands were being kissed in her direction. Shyly, she sent a kiss or two back, and then ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... (and far be flattery hence), This good had full as bad a consequence: The Book thus put in every vulgar hand, 400 Which each presumed he best could understand, The common rule was made the common prey; And at the mercy of the rabble lay. The tender page with horny fists was gall'd; And he was gifted most that loudest bawl'd. The spirit gave the doctoral degree: And every member of a company Was of his trade, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... region they have made their own that all the larger flowers there have been developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like honey-collector. In most parrots the mouth is dry and the tongue horny; but in the lories it is moist and much more like the same organ in the humming-birds and sun-birds. The prevalence of very large and brilliantly coloured flowers in the Malayan region must be set down for the most part to the selective action of these aesthetic ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... murmured, smearing his dirty forehead with a horny hand in the effort of his task. Then he brightened. "Why, gener'ly speakin'," he went on, with sudden enthusiasm, "they ain't much better'n skippin' sheep. Y' see they want to but darsent. So—wal—they jest set me up to ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... John-Willy?" asked Ishmael of the little old man, who rolled an ear of barley in his horny ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... cold thrill. And his nerves tightened for the crisis, while his horny hands gripped on the brake. The car was running wild, with a curve just ahead. It made an unearthly clatter. The Indians would hear that. But they would have to be swift, if he stayed on the track. Almost before he realized it the car lurched at the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... forth my words not unto empty winds. In first place, body on its outer parts— Since these are touched by neighbouring aery gusts— Must there be thumped and strook by blows of air Repeatedly. And therefore almost all Are covered either with hides, or else with shells, Or with the horny callus, or with bark. Yet this same air lashes their inner parts, When creatures draw a breath or blow it out. Wherefore, since body thus is flogged alike Upon the inside and the out, and blows Come ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... with broad wooden balconies stained blood-red and turquoise, umber and yellow, gold and pale green; and all of these were crowded to bursting with the blue and white horny chests and the big-eyed faces of the bug things. Weaver swung in his revolving seat past first one level and another, and the twittering voices burst around him like the stars of a ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... Helston felt nervous he did not show it, but slid gently down, his hands being too horny from constant handling of ropes to be injured by the friction; neither did the task on hand seem difficult, as he went down and down, swaying more and more as the length of rope between him and the iron bar increased, and gradually ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... son; don't you ever be afraid to say what you mean, and to say it straight from the shoulder. That's the Blount way, and I reckon we've got to keep the family ball rolling—you and I. Don't forget that, when you're making your appeal to those horny-handed sons of toil over yonder at Ophir. Give 'em straight facts, and back up the facts with figures—if you happen to have the figures. When do you pull out ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... James Starr wrung the horny hand of the oldest miner, whose eyes were dim with tears. Then the overmen of the different pits came forward to shake hands with him, whilst the miners waved their caps, shouting, "Farewell, James Starr, our ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... prickle; a small sharp point; specifically, an ovipositor, especially when sting-like, as in Hymenoptera; in male Tipulidae a slender, horny, often curved and pointed piece, projected when ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... whisper,—intimates that he can put the "Captain" (he'd promote you to be "Admiral" on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the "lay" of some cigars—"smuggled," he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke—the like of which may be found in no tobacconist's establishment in the United Kingdom. There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... sure, 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 drop of "Mon'galy," proved, I must needs confess, upon such occasions, viands as ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... have an aristocracy? Shall Welsh perish? Is Platonic love possible? Did Shakespeare write "Coriolanus"? Is there a skull in Holbein's "Ambassadors"? What is the meaning of Dryden's line, "He was and is the Captain of the Test"? or of the horny projection under the left wing of the sub-parasite of the third leg of a black-beetle? Was Orme poisoned? Are there fresh-water jelly-fishes? Is physiognomy true? or phrenology? or graphology? or cheiromancy? If so, what are their laws? Opinions on Guelphs and Ghibellines, fasting displays, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... 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 after ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and scattering among its members produced by your turning the old stone over! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled,—turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes |
