"Horny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... 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 ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... 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 ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... my slender palm your horny fingers clasp, For I love the hand of honest toil, its firm and heartfelt grasp; And I know, O miners brave and true, that not alone for self Have ye heaped, through many wearying months, your ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... hands with the three, and the grip that they received from the horny palms made them ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... him. In one year, two young fellows, named Martin and 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 three young ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... closer still, the fat hard and skinny, the lean of a deep red, and a stronger scent. Ox-beef is the reverse; it is also the richest and the largest; but in small families, and to some tastes, heifer-beef as better still, if finely fed. In old meat there is a horny streak in the ribs of beef: the harder that is, the older: and the flesh ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... leather, curiously wrought, 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 tender hoofs of the wild deer, dried, scraped, and otherwise prepared ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... outer scales enclose inner medullary cells, which often contain pigment matter. A transversed section of the wool fibre shows the presence of a large number of cells. Sometimes wool fibres are occasionally met with which have a peculiar white horny appearance; these do not felt or dye well. They are known as "kempy" fibres. See figure 2. The microscope shows that they are largely devoid of structure, and are formed of very horny, impenetrable tissue, which is difficult to treat in the ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... was 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 understanding of the nature of primitive man, hidden in all of us, and by ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... she had such a worthy motive for her ball? But, do you know, sometimes in fashionable life we catch a glimpse of the simple-minded, homely kindliness which we are taught to believe exists only among horny-handed farmers, rough miners, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... to talk or even to listen, and when not obliged to labour at the oars they tried to sleep; but "Nature's sweet restorer" did not always come at the first invitation, as was his wont in other days, and too frequently they were obliged to resume work unrefreshed. Their hands became hard and horny in the palms at last, like a man's heel, and their backs and arms ached from ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... George, We shall by penalties persuade The idle unrepentant Great To serve (inadequately paid) The State,— All working for the general good, While painful guillotines confront The individual who could And won't: But horny-handed sons of toil, Who now purvey our meats and drinks, Our gardens devastate, and spoil Our sinks, Shall seldom condescend to take That inconsiderable sum For which they daily butch, and bake, And plumb; Such humble votaries of trade No more shall follow arts like these; Since ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish. We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month. Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow and horny, and the stems themselves grew as hard as wood while the nettle, armed with a long white beard, p 203 presented only a menacing and awful aspect." The roots of many kinds of ferns, perhaps of all of them, are edible. Our ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... they Left, the Lych to devour, The Sallow kite and the Swart raven, Horny of beak,— and Him, the dusk-coated, The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy, The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast, The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter Aye on this Island Ever hath been, By edge of the Sword, as book ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... 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, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... through close-growing bush comes the unkempt figure of a man. A familiar figure, but so changed as to be hardly recognizable. His clothes are rent and scored by the horny branches. His feet crush noisily over the pine-cones in moccasins that have rotted from his feet with the journey over melting snow and sodden vegetation. There is a quivering fire burning in his eyes, an uncertain light, like the sun's reflections ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... poorly kept, and so badly driven that one burns with indignation at the sight of them. There is no bit and the bridle is always bad. The nose piece is fitted tight and has on the under side a bit of horny fish skin, its spikes turned towards the flesh. These are jerked into the flesh of the poor horse until, in its frenzy, it dashes madly from one side of the ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... least among them I have been a witness to their struggles and triumphs, and for this reason I do most heartily dedicate this little book to the memory of each horny-handed pack-laden miner "musher" who has ever lifted a finger to assist, encourage, or strengthen the author of The Trail of ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... A long, 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 to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... 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 roped the savage beast and tied him to a tree before he came ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the rites, etc., see Riggs' "Tahkoo Wahkan", Chapter VI. The Ta-sha-ke—literally, "Deer-hoofs"—is a rattle made by hanging the hard segments of deer-hoofs to a wooden rod a foot long—about an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapering to a point at the other. The clashing of these horny bits makes a sharp, shrill sound something like distant sleigh-bells. In their incantations over the sick they sometimes use ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... flash in all his movements. Thus the two girls were left very much to themselves, and were able to talk as they liked, only occasionally giving their attention to some newly-discovered wonder of Vernon's, a tadpole in the act of shedding his horny beak, or some gigantic development of the genus toadstool, which species was ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... spent the afternoon doctoring the poultry. To my surprise every hen and chicken I caught had "pip," a horny substance under the tongue and rather hard to get off. I operated on nearly thirty. The fowls are rather a trouble, from their habit of getting into all sorts of impossible places. The other day I found a hen on the pillow and her chickens on ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the tightest wads that ever sunk a dollar into the toe of a sock. There was a fair going on in the place, and I blew in there one September day; my turn just then was taking orders for crayon portraits of rural gentlemen with horny hands and plenty of chin fringe. I figure it out that about sixty per cent. of the parlors in the middle west are adorned with one or more of these works of art, but Langtry, Ohio, would not listen to the proposition for a moment; as soon as they discovered that I wasn't giving ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... feet high. Its wings are so small that they can scarcely be called wings, and are not easy to find under the general plumage of the body. Its nostrils, strange to say, are at the tip of the beak. The toes are strong, and well adapted for digging, the hind one being a thick, horny spur. To add to the singularity of this creature, it has no tail whatever. The kirvi-kirvi conceals itself among the extensive beds of fern which abound in the middle island of New Zealand, and it makes a nest of fern for its eggs in deep holes, which it ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... 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 intention of hunting ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... fourth, and one on the last segment but one; this is taking the head as the first segment with regard to the first four spines These spines are rough and covered with sharp points all round, and their extremities are fork-like. In the first three stages they are horny; in the last three stages these spines are fleshy, and much shorter in proportion than they are in the first three stages. The color of the spines in the last three stages is coral-red, yellowish, or black. In the fifth and sixth stages the spine ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... only the most elegant but most politic way of writing that a poet can use, for I know no defence like it to preserve a poem from the torture of those that lisp and stammer. He that wants teeth may as well venture upon a piece of tough horny brawn as such a line, for he will look like an ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... I can't afford to go to the White Mountains, and swell round at the aristocratic summer resorts like some people," returned Ricker. "I'm a horny-handed son of ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... quite a common thing to see the Convener of an adjacent county,[A] the city magnate, the suburban magistrate, the Free Kirk minister, and the handsome matronly lady, standing side by side with the horny-handed mechanic, the office-boy, the overgrown schoolboy, and the Buchanan Street "swell." They all watch the game and surroundings in their own particular way. I once heard a quaint, but nevertheless true, idea of how some of the more ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... by 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 kissed it ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Shark,—the 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 pillow-cases ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... 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, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... 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
... taste. We ourselves remove the parchment-like skins from a mess of pease-pudding, as from a culinary point of view they are so much waste matter. The larva of the Bruchus, like ourselves, dislikes the skin of the pea. It stops short at the horny covering, simply because it is checked by an uneatable substance. From this aversion a little miracle arises; but the insect has no sense of logic; it is passively obedient to the superior logic of facts. It obeys its instinct, as unconscious ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... delight, he whom I likened to the parrot exclaiming—"Weel, mon, what brought you here?" I answered in his own words, for want of better—"Eh, sirs, it was aw' for the love of the siller." He dropped his piece, and fled in consternation, calling lustily—"Its auld clooty himsen, mon, its auld Horny, I tell ye; come awa, come awa." His friend, who seemed more acquainted with our species, encouraged him to return; and offering me some fruit from his basket, said—"Why, Poll, you cratur, what brought you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... one of the most highly appreciated officers of the Second Bureau. Had anyone examined the hands of "The Lawyer" just then, he would have seen that they were roughened and had horny lumps on them of recent formation. His fingers, all twisted out of shape at the tips, seamed with scars, led one to suppose that the captain was not entirely a man of sedentary office life. In fact, he had just returned after ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... dead, then took a forked stick and held it up to view. It had beautiful diamond markings of dark- colors on cinnamon-red ground. The belly was of creamy white, and the tail had eight rattles attached to it by means of a peculiar fibrous ribbon. These rattles seemed to be of dry horny skin that made the buzz-sound when shaken. The head had been so crushed open that Polly could easily show the curious girls the poison-fangs which were ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... said another mother, "had scarcely crept out of the egg, when he was already off on his travels. He's all life and spirits; he'll run his horns off! What joy that is for a mother! Is it not so, Mr. Beetle?" for she knew the stranger by his horny coat. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half stretched out her hand to Mary's face, but drew it in again suddenly, as if she was afraid of soiling Mary's delicate skin with her hard, horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and scraped away a little patch of mud that was ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... 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. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... a hard horny hand, and took the boy's small one. 'Here's my hand on't!' he said with his grim smile. 'I may be a fool for believing you, but if you're sorry for the past, I won't be the one to rake ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... perfumers are born under the 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 ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... ruffed grouse from their snug retreats in the snow; while in the weedy fields, many a fairy trail shows where bob-white has passed, and often he will announce his own name from the top of a rail fence. The grouse at this season have a curious outgrowth of horny scales along each side of the toes, which, acting as a tiny snowshoe, enables them to walk on soft snow with little danger of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... must suck the water through a swan's bone without applying her lips to the cup. She may eat no fresh meat or fish except the flesh of the porcupine. She may not undress, but sleeps with all her clothes on, even her mittens. In her socks she wears, next to the skin, the horny soles cut from the feet of a porcupine, in order that for the rest of her life her shoes may never wear out. Round her waist she wears a cord to which are tied the heads of femurs of a porcupine; because of all animals known to the Tinneh the porcupine suffers ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... horny box which encloses the lower part of the leg. The front part of the hoof, near the ground surface, is called the toe; the side portions, the quarters; and the rear parts, the heels. The outer portion of the hoof is termed the wall, which is divided into a hard, fibrous outer ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... 2. Sub-horny Quittor Definition Causes Symptoms and Diagnosis Complications Necrosis of the Lateral Cartilage Pathological Anatomy of the Diseased Cartilage Necrosis of Tendon and of Ligament Ossification of the Cartilage Treatment Operations for Extirpation of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... familiar to a large class of persons. It appears only necessary, when a variety has been thus produced, that a union should take place between individuals similarly characterized, in order to establish it. Early in the last century, a man named Lambert, was born in Suffolk, with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch long, thickly growing all over his body. The peculiarity was transmitted to his children, and was last heard of in a third generation. The peculiarity of six fingers on ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... and was about to intrude upon them. Elisaveta gave a sudden faint outcry at the unexpectedness of an unseemly apparition. A dirty, rough-looking man, all in tatters, was almost upon them; he had approached them upon the mossy ground as softly as a wood fairy. He stretched out a dirty, horny hand, and asked, not at all ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... 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
... indignant grunt, followed by a flabby groan and a straining and squeaking of the jerry-built staircase as Kasheed Hassoun vigorously applied a lath to the horny ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... hefted his poke in a horny hand. There was a flutter of the heliotrope curtains, and the face of Lulu, peeping over the plush edge of a box, smiled bewitchingly upon him. With another delighted chuckle the old ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... brought about. Then, of course, he also wanted to hear of the doings at Stormount Tower, and how Margery had been carried off by the smugglers, and how Charley and Tom had recovered her. "Tom, dear old Tom, how I shall like to wring his horny fist again; it's as honest a palm as any in England!" cried Jack. "And you, Charley, what a fine fellow you are; I don't like to talk of giving Margery to any one, but I would rather give her to you, when the time comes, than to anybody else in the world; and I suspect ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 appeared as ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... which the insect passes before it comes to be a butterfly. The maggot or worm having ceased to eat, fixes itself in some place till its skin separates, and discovers a horny, oblong body, which is ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... 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
... "They're a bit horny certainly; but then that may be only your dam artfulness. Come on and talk ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... that day. The angry-faced official communicated the intelligence to a large group of Anadolian, Caramanian, Bosniac, and Roumelian Turks,—sturdy, undersized, broad-shouldered, bare-legged, splay-footed, horny-fisted, dark-browed, honest-looking mountaineers, who were lounging about with long pistols and yataghans stuck in their broad sashes, head-gear composed of immense tarbooshes with proportionate turbans coiled round them, and two or three suits of substantial ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... flesh-flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from a 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 some ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... temporary horn or protuberance upon the upper mandible, and they are so placed in the shell that this point is in immediate contact with its inner surface; as soon as they are fully developed and begin to struggle to free themselves, the horny growth "pips" the shell. Their efforts then continue till their prison walls are completely sundered and the bird is free. This process is rendered the more easy by the fact that toward the last the shell becomes very rotten; the acids that are generated ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... 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 beginning to turn as the hard ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... any meat we tasted on the coast. The water fell two feet at this place during the night. Our nets produced a great variety of fish, namely a salmon trout, some round-fish, tittameg, bleak, star-fish, several herrings and a flat fish resembling plaice, but covered on the back with horny excrescences. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... and well-weaponed boots. It was a real figure of the river, buoyant, daring, almost vicious. The head was bare; there were plain gold rings in the ears; and the stark, half-malevolent eyes looked out, as though searching for a jam of logs or some peril of the river. In the horny right hand was a defiant pike-pole, its handle thrust forward, its steel ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... they show a strong enough interest—and bank account. I follow up the best prospects and visit them in person. I've talked to fifty horny-handed he-men ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... aquiline nose and flowing beard, gave an Olympian cast to his noble head. Withal, I could not help noticing that his countenance was lined with care, his black coat seamed and threadbare, his hands rough and horny, like those of a workman. If he appeared a god, it was a god in exile or disgrace; a Saturn ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... 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
... prominent canine teeth; the upper jaw has also a pair of projecting teeth of similar character. Each of the jaws consists of two loosely sutured segments, the articulation of the lower being much the freer. The gullet is horny and rasp-like, and in its exterior opening is an auxiliary set of teeth of most remarkable formation. The upper part of this interior set in some respect resembles the under jaws of a land animal, but there are marked distinctions. It consists of two ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... which many of our Modern Philosophers suppose to be the Seat of the Soul, smelt very strong of Essence and Orange-flower Water, and was encompassed with a kind of Horny Substance, cut into a thousand little Faces or Mirrours, which were imperceptible to the naked Eye, insomuch that the Soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... exposed to the light. The rapidity of the change of color is proportioned to the intensity of the light. It is insoluble in nitric acid, but readily soluble in ammonia; it fuses without decomposition, forming, when cold, a tough, horny mass, and is reduced by hydrogen and by fusion with carbonate of soda, or ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... defect of being open at both ends. In such plight lacking special organs it would be at cruel advantage in the struggle for existence. The posterior segment of the body is therefore developed into an operculum-like organ, smooth and of horny texture, which closes the narrow end of the tube. The other extremity is more elaborately guarded, the anterior segment being fringed with a frontal membrane, while the second segment forms a disc, the minute mouth orifice with the true tentacles and gills being ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was the justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed labor leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to for other leaders—to the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... 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
... Liberty, for the fancies of Poets are no more than waking Dreams, and never imposed as dogmatical precepts, which are more agreeable to truth or falshood, or according to the Poets Language, which proceed from the Horny or Ivory Port, will be sentenced according to the Humour and Interest of several Parties who in spite of our Teeth will be our judges. Where I have been satyrical, 'tis without Malice or Revenge; and though I brag not of my Talent therein, I could have said ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... went to examine a scrub through which we wanted to pass, and while out, shot a fine cassowary; it was very dark and heavy, not so long on the leg as the common emu, and had a larger body, shorter neck, with a large red, stiff, horny comb on its head; Mr. Wall skinned it, but from the many difficulties with which he had to contend, the skin was spoiled before it ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... of exactly the same size as the one figured, but apparently much more perfect. Each of its tentacula terminates in a small feathering tip when it is in the water, like the little figures at the side, and by the help of which they swim; these have a horny feel to the touch, are destitute of smell, and look like a transparent scale when they lie ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... of Councillor Kirsten from the Wuenschengasse down in Weimar, who, with their friends Bundang, Ernst von Schiller, and Horny, came up to see the old Sperbers and made real festivities of their visits. The old people loved them very dearly, for they knew how to be merry and pleasant and were full of youthful audacity and exuberance that cheered the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... gone to a 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
... 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
... contains one or other of them, though, in other respects, the composition of living bodies may vary indefinitely. Thus, some plants contain neither starch nor cellulose, while these substances are found in some animals; while many animals contain no horny matter and no gelatin-yielding substance. So that the matter which appears to be the essential foundation of both the animal and the plant is the proteid united with water; though it is probable that, in all animals and plants, these are associated with more or less fatty and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... with 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, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... perseverance and ingenuity.[2] In the dry season, when scarcely any verdure is discernible above ground, the sheep and goats feed on their knees—scraping away the sand, in order to reach the wiry and succulent roots of the grasses. From the constancy of this practice horny callosities are produced, by which these ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... of character within, Roger is quite another man. If his rank in this world is the lowest, many potentates may envy him his state elsewhere. His heart is as soft, as his hand is horny; with the wandering gipsy or the tramping beggar, thrust aside, perhaps deservedly, as impudent impostors from the rich man's gate, has he often-times shared his noon-day morsel: upright and sincere himself, he thinks as well of others: he scarcely ever heard ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... 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 beseech Thou givest ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... applications. We have been told that drying oil mixed with mastic varnish has been, though not very recently, used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject, believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without much reflection. A new varnish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... shells on San Lorenzo, I found light corallines, the horny ovule-cases of Mollusca, roots of seaweed (Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill found pieces of seaweed in an upraised pleistocene deposit in Scotland. See his admirable Paper in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" volume ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... one 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 the dark and cool moat. Then he came back with a purpose in ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... perfectly controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses, and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle's horny back is all ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... on, as 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 the wolf at ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... steps to pursue those inquiries which are necessary for a satisfactory estimate of the political situation. My experience as a lightning change artiste is quite invaluable. I visit the Liberal Committee-rooms, and attend Liberal meetings in a complete suit of corduroys and horny hands. Five minutes afterwards I find myself in a military moustache, a frock coat, and patent leather boots at the Conservative head-quarters. In the former disguise I enthusiastically advocate the Newcastle Programme, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... monkey bounded off, the snake stung the elephant's toe nails, those horny plates around his feet. This is a vital spot, as the arteries come very near the surface. Knowing this, Kari raised his foot. Evidently he was not hurt, but I was not sure how long he could stand on three legs. I ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and passed him without a word. The time might come in which he ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... You drive me frantic with your meek and mild ways," cried the other passionately. "My own feet are strong enough for me to stand on and my hand, though it is horny, can carry out what my brain ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... army were silk-hatters at home. They were in the ranks, too, a lot of them—just like John Ward. And some of the worst cowards and shirkers and slackers that ever lived belonged to our ancient and noble order of the horny-handed sons of toil, that Jake Vodell orates about. But what gets me, is the way some of those fellows who were everything but slackers in France act, now that they are back home. Over there they were on the job with everything they had, to the last drop of their blood. But now that they ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... he grasps the horny hand of the sailor, and warmly presses it. The pressure is returned by a squeeze that gives assurance of more than ordinary friendship. It is the grip of true gratitude; and the look which accompanies it tells of a ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 when doing so. The ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... variety. A pitch had been mown in the middle of a meadow (kindly lent by Farmer Rollitt on condition that he should be allowed to umpire, and his eldest son Ted put on to bowl first). The team consisted of certain horny-handed sons of toil, with terrific golf-shots in the direction of square-leg, and the enemy's ranks were composed of the same material. Tom and Dick, in ordinary circumstances, would have gone in to bat in such a match with a feeling of lofty disdain, as befitting experts from the civilised world, ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... tall 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 ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... in my information; there is a marked revulsion of feeling upon the town versus country question; the tide of the rural exodus has really turned, as I might have discerned without going far afield. At many a Long Island home I might see on Sundays, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with butter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be desired—unless ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... the necessary pitch of passion or of obstinacy. There is even a lovely old fairy-tale of our schoolboy days, which is still to be found in ancient works on natural history, to the effect that the King of Beasts himself was provided with a small, horny hook or spur at the end of his tail, with which he lashed himself into a fury ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... proud foe, worlds common enemy, In his greatest hight and chiefest Iollitie, 1900 In the Sacred Senate-house is done to death: Euen as the Consecrated Oxe which soundes, At horny alters, in his dying pride: VVith flowry leaues and gar-lands all bedight, Stands proudly wayting for the hasted stroke: Till hee amazed with the dismall sound, Falls to the Earth and staines the holy ground, The spoyles and riches of the conquered world, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... use could doubtless be found, although there were neither umbrellas nor stays used at Granite House. The upper part of the mouth of the cetacean was, indeed, provided on both sides with eight hundred horny blades, very elastic, of a fibrous texture, and fringed at the edge like great combs, at which the teeth, six feet long, served to retain the thousands of animalculae, little fish, and molluscs, on which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... intercourse went only to the tune of charity and pity. Suddenly he wanted to enter into this world; not indeed with the intention of naturalising himself as its inhabitant nor with the intention of staying there for ever, but as a navvy might stop on his way to work and refresh his horny sweating body by a swim in a sunny pool. He felt a thirst, a thing that stopped the breath for her pity. And although his desire was but for participation in kindness, his instinct for conformity was so suspicious ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... 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
... THE SKIN. 1. A hair. Notice there is a deep depression of the surface to form a small bulb from which the hair grows. 2. The superficial or horny layer of the skin; the cells here are joined to form a dense, smooth, compact layer impervious to moisture. 3. The lower layer of cells. In this layer new cells are continually being formed to supply those which as thin scales ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... circumscribed yellowish-white, thickened and horny patches of one of the layers of the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... amputation takes place, which rarely occurs, the patient generally hastening the process by his own operation, or by seeking surgical treatment. A dry scab forms at the furrow, and when picked and repicked constantly re-forms, being composed of horny desquamation ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a 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 ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... black hair ferociously, standing it on end with horny fingers. "I loved her, Lem Crabbe," he continued hoarsely. "I loved her, that I know! And ye can let that devilish grin ride on yer lips when I say it and I don't give a hell; but—but if ye say that she didn't love me, if ye so much as smile when I say that she died a callin' me, that she ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... as landsmen, ordinary seamen, and able-bodied seamen, according to their skill, and a number of men, hastily enlisted for the purpose, were made machinists, firemen, coal-passers, painters, and carpenters. Some of these had seen service in the regular navy, and they were visibly horny-handed sons of toil. One Irishman, whose brogue was painful, looked with something very like contempt on ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Buddhist of an Irishman and you do not change his nature—he'll turn up at the next political convention just the same. And the man who's too good to take a hand in practical politics; who's too nice to mingle with the horny-handed at the ward primaries; who's too busy to act as delegate to the convention—who deliberately neglects his duty as an American citizen—finds that Pat's activity has been rewarded with a place on the police force, and blames it all ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... a horrid semblance of life might look as he did—with 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 ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... music. And when she reached the body of Ceyx and would fain have kissed his marble lips, Halcyone found that no longer were her own lips like the petals of a fair red rose warmed by the sun. For the gods had heard her prayer, and her horny beak seemed to the watchers on the shore to be fiercely tearing at the face of him who ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... 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 form and colour without interfering with their ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... not stoop. On the contrary, he habitually threw back his head, with a certain coldly aggressive stiffness, so that he easily looked above the person with whom he was talking. Though he had never been given to any sort of bodily exercise, his hands were naturally horny, and they were almost always cold. For the rest, he was careful of his appearance and scrupulous in matters of dress, like many of his fellow-countrymen. In his household he insisted upon a neatness as fastidious as his own, and nothing could have induced him to employ a Neapolitan ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing even and morn— Though ravenous, taught to abstain ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... 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, ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... been misunderstood. DrG. could suggest nothing for almond, but on looking at the drawing of the male Whelk (Buccinum undatum) creeping, in the Penny Cyclopdia, v.9, p.454, col.2 (art. Entomostomata), it is quite clear that the almond must mean the animal's horny, oval operculum on its hinder part. 'Most spiral shells have an operculum, or lid, with which to close the aperture when they withdraw for shelter. It is developed on a particular lobe at the posterior part of the foot, and consists of horny layers sometimes hardened with shelly ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... 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 in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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 ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... coarsely areolate; skin of flanks, throat, chest, undersurfaces of arms, tibia, tarsi, dorsal surfaces of thighs, tarsi, hands, and feet smooth; skin of dorsal surfaces of tibia, forearm, back, and top and sides of head having large horny ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch
... it is not very improbable, but, (that Fish having also more than one Enemy, whereof a small Fish called the Thresher is one, who, by Mr. Terry's Relation in his East-Indian Voyage, with his nimbleness vexes him as much, as a Bee does a great Beast on the land; and a certain horny Fish another, who runs its horn into the Whal's belly) it may have been kill'd by the latter of these two; which kind of Fish is known, sometimes to run its horn into Ships (perhaps taking them for Whales) and there snapping it asunder; as hapned not long since to an ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... white 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
... of C. Quintius Atta. A close-up shows a very comic little being, encased in a prickly, chestnut-colored armor, which should make him fearless in a den of a hundred anteaters. The front view of his head is a bit mephistophelian, for it is drawn upward into two horny spines; but the side view recalls a little girl with her hair brushed very tightly up and back ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... a close coil the size of her thumbnail, then spatted it together until it seemed no longer a cord, but a solid piece of wood. Thus she made the base of her basket; then, threading her needle, which was but a horny cactus stem set in a head of hardened pitch, she stitched in and out over the upper and under the lower layer, drawing her thread firmly each time. The thread was the creamy, satin-like kah-hoom. Round and round she coiled the chippa, ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... shade generally stood at 98 deg. from 1 to 3 p.m., but it sank as low as 65 deg. by night, so that the heat was by no means exhausting. At the surface of the ground in the sun it marked 125 deg., and three inches below 138 deg. The hand cannot be held on the ground, and even the horny soles of the natives are protected by hide sandals, yet the ants were busy working in it. The water in the floods was as high as 100 deg., but as water does not conduct heat readily downwards, deliriously cool water may be obtained by anyone walking ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... 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 his lower lip hung away ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... six or seven feet long, with a huge dorsal fin, blue with black spots, looming above the water like the sail of a strange craft. But the real difference is in the spear or sword. In the case of the spear-fish it is bony, being a prolongation of the skull; in the case of the swordfish it is horny, and horns, as you probably know, are formations of skin rather than bone. Now the narwhal's tusk," he continued, "is again an ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, 'that it need signify much to you. But I'll tell you what I do see, Arthur,' glancing up at the windows; 'I see the light of fire and candle ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a certain class of vertebrate or backboned animals, which, on the whole, may be described as possessing scales or horny shields since most of them may be distinguished by this outer covering, as the mammals by their hair and the birds by their feathers. Such animals as thousand-legs, scorpions, tarantulas, etc., though often erroneously ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... 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 shoves 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 worked out— Shall die and leave his ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... 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
... preposterous wish was quite as bad as, and was the root of, his absurd offer to bribe Peter. Bribe Peter, indeed! Some of Peter's successors would have been amenable to such considerations, but not the horny-handed fisherman who had once said, 'Silver and gold ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... knew that as soon as it grew dark, the crocodile came to life again, and padded noiselessly about the passage on its scaly paws seeking for its prey, with its great cruel jaws snapping, its fierce teeth gleaming, and its horny tail lashing savagely from side to side. It was also a matter of common knowledge that the favourite article of diet of crocodiles was a little boy with bare legs in a white suit. Even should one be fortunate ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... did 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 ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... said Joe, holding out his big horny hand, "let me congratulate you on comin' home. May the Lord dwell in your house, and write His ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... was the case. Clad in coarse, greasy, and patched fustian unmentionables and jacket, thick canvas shirt, great heavy hob-nailed boots, her features completely begrimed with coal-dust, her hard and horny hands carrying the spade, pick, drinking-tin, sieve, and other paraphernalia of her occupation, her not irregular features wearing a bold, defiant expression, and nothing womanly about her except two or three latent evidences of feminine weakness, in the shape of a coral necklace, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the feet the first thing to examine will be the horny portion of the hoof. For soundness of foot a thick horn is far better than a thin. Again it is important to notice whether the hoofs are high both before and behind, or flat to the ground; for a high hoof ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... fastidiousness could have stood the conditions of literary existence without private means was now and then debated by his friends; it could probably have done so better than was supposed, for he sometimes startled those who set him down as a dilettante by a horny way of retiring into his shell for the finish ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that, after three years' marching, they have not yet reached Khiva. But were the distance, the snows, the famine, and thirst nothing, is the bloodshed nothing? Russia is a colossus, and Bokhara, Khiva, Kokan, &c., are dwarfs. But the finger of a colossus may be no match for the horny heels of a dwarf. The Emperor Tiberius could fracture a boy's skull with a talitrum, (or fillip of his middle finger;) but it is not every middle finger that can do that; and a close kick from a khan of Toorkistan might leave an uglier scar than a fillip at arm's length ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... that day held the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, White-tailed erne and sallow glede, Dusky raven, with horny neb, And the grey deer, the wolf of ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... crevices of the rocks, and extracting thence the luckless crab that had thought itself secure from so bulky a foe. Each of the arms is covered with what are called suckers. Each sucker consists of a little round horny ridge, forming a little cup, which is attached to the arm by a stem. When the arm is pressed upon an object, the effort to escape from the grasp of the arm causes a suction which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... tell of Siegfried, how he slew a dragon with his own hand and sword, and how he bathed him in the dragon's blood, and made his skin so hard and horny that no sword may pierce it. Let us. therefore receive him with all courtesy; for verily he is a right strong and valiant knight, and 'tis better, I ween, to be his friend than ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... 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, they ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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 rush to ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... rescue. She passed her sword through one of the fishers that pressed her, and then thrust the body towards the turtle. The great neck swooped towards it; the long slimy feelers which protruded from its head quivered and snuffled; and then the horny green jaws crunched on it, and drew it down ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... and toe-capped, and put them carefully under the table, 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. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... for Love these days? How shall we make an altar-blaze To smite the horny eyes of men With the renown of our Heaven, And to the unbelievers prove Our service to our dear god, Love? What torches shall we lift above The crowd that pushes through the mire, To amaze the dark heads with strange fire? I should think ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... his old, rheumatic bones, bent over the dying embers, pushed together the blackened and half-burned "chunks," and blew them until they glowed. Then, hitching his stool close into the ashes, he spread his horny palms to the blaze, and basked in its genial warmth as it crackled up the wide chimney. Reaching his pipe from its nook, he filled it, dipped it skillfully in the coals so as to ignite without wasting the precious weed, and drew ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux |
