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Hornet   /hˈɔrnɪt/   Listen
Hornet

noun
1.
Large stinging paper wasp.



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"Hornet" Quotes from Famous Books



... one side, with a sharp suddenness that all but threw his back out of joint. The knife whizzed through the still air like a great hornet. The breath of its passage fanned Gavin's averted face, as he wrenched his head out ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... bullet breezed by his head, droning like a hornet, and glanced sullenly against a flat rock. Immediately afterward, The Kid heard the sharp bark of a .45. He knew by the sound of the bullet and by the elapsed time between it and the sound of the gun that he was within dangerous ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... common cause, in which case it will be difficult for France not to interfere, so he thinks; so do not I, and am more disposed to believe that Louis Philippe is too prudent to run his head into such a hornet's nest, and that he will content himself with keeping matters quiet in France, without meddling with the Spanish disputes. He had not yet received any ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Theodose went to the office of the banker of the poor, to see the effect produced upon his enemy by the punctual payment of the night before, and to make another effort to get rid of his hornet. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... him with an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... sides of the river. The boatmen in their sheepskin coats and hats walked slowly to and fro, and gave animation to the picture. While I wrote my journal the horses above me danced as though frolicking over a hornet's nest, and reduced sentimental thoughts to a minimum. To render the subject more interesting two officers and the priest grew noisy over a triple game of cards and a bottle of vodki. I wrote in my overcoat, as the thermometer ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... were burning, a few rods on our right. The fire at last reached a lot of shells, which had been thrown from the wagons, to keep them from falling into the hands of the Yankees. They went off with a frightful clatter. The captain bounced from the ground as if a hornet had lifted him. "FALL IN!" he shouted, grasping his sword. Of course, all who were awake comprehended the situation, and prudently lay still, to avoid the flying fragments. As the truth dawned upon him, the captain at first looked "sold" and disgusted, and then joined ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]— but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced at ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the school with their canes, shouting "S-s-s-s-i-lenc-c-c-c-e" at the top of their voices. However, the chief offenders for the time were flogged and kept in bounds; but the victorious party had brought a nice hornet's nest about their ears. The landlord was hissed at the School-gates as he rode past, and when he charged his horse at the mob of boys, and tried to thrash them with his whip, was driven back by cricket-bats and wickets, and pursued ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... which has more hidden or treacherous depths and cross-currents. For when you interfere with the private member, you suddenly come in collision with a vast number of personal vanities, and when you touch anything in the shape of personal vanity in politics you have got into a hornet's nest, the multitudinousness, the pettiness, the malignity, the unexpectedness of which you can never appreciate. I sometimes gaze upon the House of Commons in a certain semi-detached spirit, and I ask myself if there be any place in the ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... caused by the Roosevelt dinner. The dinner itself passed off quietly, pleasantly, and without particular event. It was not until he took up the papers at his little hotel in New York the next morning that he found that he had again stirred up a hornet's nest similar to that of four years before. The denunciation was if anything more violent; for, as many of his assailants said, he should have profited by the protests of four years before. In an editorial entitled, "Booker Washington's ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... in Silver Street—the regiments was out, They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!" That drew them like a hornet's nest—we met them good an' large, The English at the double an' the Irish at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... actions of national vessels, and the raids of the privateers. The first gave to the United States the most brilliant successes of the war. When it began two small squadrons were getting ready for sea at New York; the frigate "President" (44) and sloop "Hornet" (18), under Commodore John Rodgers, who had also the general command; and the frigates "United States" (44) and "Congress" (38), with the brig "Argus" (16) to which two guns were afterwards added, under Captain Stephen Decatur. Rodgers would have preferred to keep his command ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fascination there is about that old fort at Annapolis!—"the hornet's nest", as it was called in the olden time; the stronghold which withstood so many sieges, and was the subject of constant contentions in ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... a radiant morning in June, and they are in the dining-room; the balcony door is open wide, and a large hornet buzzes loudly in the vine. Louise is still at the piano; she is singing this time, and trying to reach the low tones of a dramatic romance where a Corsican child is urged on ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... therefore can only say that I am laying close siege; that my lines of circumvallation do not proceed quite so rapidly as my desires; but that I have just blown up the main bastion; or, in other words, have prevailed on Sir Arthur to send this hornet, this Frank Henley, back to England. The fellow's aspiring insolence is not to be endured. His merit is said to be uncommon. 'Tis certain he strains after the sublime; and in fact is too deep a thinker, nay I suspect too deep a plotter, not to be ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... execute it, it turned out that the estate on which he had a lien was a joint family possession, with the shares so inextricably mixed up that he could neither trace the property mortgaged to him nor discover who was liable for the proportion of profit derived from it. As well poke one's fingers into a hornet's nest as into a joint family estate! Sham Babu was glad to accept an offer of Rs. 5,000 from Gopal's co-sharers, in return for a surrender of his claims. Despite his heavy loss, enough remained to preserve him from penury; and he was even able to start Susil in a small way of ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any bald hornet. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... worm. 'You're wrong, Mrs. Barrett,' he says, lookin' like th' meek puppy he is, 'an' you'll have t' look some place else for th' person that done it.' But she wouldn't talk no longer—jus' walked out, as mad as a hornet." ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... a hornet, his eyes were as red as a burning fire and he rode on a tall horse six spans across and more than 20 long with six giants tied up to his saddle-bow and one in his hand which he gnawed with his teeth. And behind him came boars with tusks sticking out of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... old Brax had been mad as a hornet. He was not much of a drillmaster or tactician, but he thought he was, and it delighted him to put his battalion through the form of review, the commands for which he had memorized thoroughly and delivered with resonant voice and with all proper ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... soft mud on the hand," returned Dick. "There is nothing better to draw out the pain of a hornet's sting." ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. He ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... would have made the Baptists happy with a half an acre, long since, and so, in his belief, scotched a hornet's nest. But he had never breathed any suggestion of the ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... plate, red in the face, mad as a hornet, and he sidestepped every time Rube pitched a ball. He never even ticked one and retired in disgust, limping and swearing. Ashwell was next. He did not show much alacrity. On Rube's first pitch down went Ashwell flat in the dust. The ball whipped the ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... but, like the others, he is a species of incapable; and the word dandin in the old French dictionaries is given as signifying inaptness or incapacity. [10] The oyster and lawyer story is also treated in Fable XXI., Book I. (The Hornet and the Bees). ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... "Of course you are perfectly right, Miss Farrell," said he, with a little bow. "I'm sorry that circumstances ... But come! She'll have this hornet's nest about our ears in a brace of seconds. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... grateful sense of the King's liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good offices of so ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... King thy brother fool?' Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrilled, 'Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools! Conceits himself as God that he can make Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk From burning spurge, honey from hornet-combs, And men from beasts—Long live the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... at golf. The infinite details of a great business crowded upon him. Inexperienced, he had not learned the ways in which seasoned "executives" protect themselves against useless intrusion. His telephone buzzed like a hornet. Not five minutes went by without callers or interruptions of ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... continuous firing on both sides of the line. At about 6 o'clock the firing ceased, and the rebels withdrew to a safe distance from the landing. The casualties of the day were three killed and six wounded, two of the latter dying shortly afterward. The fight at what was known as the "hornet's nest" was most terrific, and had not the First battery held out so heroically and valiantly the rebels would have succeeded in forcing a retreat of the Union lines to a point dangerously near the Tennessee river. Capt. Munch's horse received ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore

... neighbors or cuss them about their opinions. I've heard more politics in a country store in Horsford in a day than I've heard here in Eupolia in a year—and we've got ten thousand people here, too. I moved here last year, and am doing well. I wouldn't go back and live in that d—d hornet's nest that I felt so bad about leaving—not for the whole State, with a slice of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... exchanged shots with them. All were Boxers in this new uniform; but although we tried to entice them on and corner them in houses, they were too cunning for us, and broke back each time. In the end we had so stirred up this hornet's nest that the scattered firing became more and more persistent, and stern orders came for us to ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be carried to his house."—"Gallou ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and chilly. We wore our greatcoats most of the afternoon, and looked for bits of sunlight to get warm. About two o'clock the heavy guns gave us a regular "black-smithing". Every time we fired we drew a perfect hornet's nest about our heads. While attending to a casualty, a shell broke through both sides of the trench, front and back, about twelve feet away. The zigzag of the trench was between it and us, and we escaped. From my bunk the moon looks down ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae

... last chance: so he pounced down upon Charlie's candy; and being cross, and not knowing Flyaway from any other little girl, he stung her on the thumb. Then how she cried, "'Orny 'ting me! 'Orny 'ting me!" for she had been treated just so before by a hornet. "O my ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May

... in ancient sages, Have been like cobwebs in all ages: Cobwebs for little flies are spread, And laws for little folks are made; But if an insect of renown, Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone, Be caught in quest of sport or plunder, The flimsy fetter flies in sunder. Your simile perhaps may please one With whom wit holds the place of reason: 10 But can you prove that this in fact is Agreeable to life and practice? Then hear, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... another expedition, as she needed fitting up. Yet Captain Barry was not permitted to be idle. On May 8th, Robert Morris, for the Marine Committee of Congress, directed him to go down the Delaware River in the sloop "Hornet," commanded by Captain Hallock, and to take the officers and men of the "Lexington" to supply the Provincial armed ship, commanded by Captain Read, the Floating Battery and the "Reprisal," under Captain Wickes, with men sufficient to have these vessels "fit for immediate action," and ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin

... danger, furnishes a somewhat greater mental stimulation, and thence is better for everybody. I regret to say that I am gaining in weight. It was my hope to come back thin and gaunt and interesting-looking. Instead of which, you will likely be mad as a hornet to find me so sleek, while you at home have done all the thinning down. Truth to tell, if you compare our relative peace and war status, you are much more at war ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... mountains grind and crash to pieces, and the thunder of Thor's chariot wheels rushing through the heavens. A frenzied horror seized upon Loki's mind. If these wretched dwarfs were going to make anything to add to Thor's strength he knew that it would be his own ruin. So, changing himself to a hornet, he sprang upon the forehead of Brok, and dug so fiercely into his eyelids that the blood trickled down and blinded him. Then the dwarf let go of the bellows for one moment to clear his eyes, and ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... disgusting as they could desire. And in many cases they succeed in inflicting a good deal of pain. A very low, vulgar, petty, and uncultivated nature may cause much suffering to a lofty, noble, and refined one,—particularly if the latter be in a position of dependence or subjection. A wretched hornet may madden a noble horse; a contemptible mosquito may destroy the night's rest which would have recruited a noble brain. But without any evil intention, sometimes with the very kindest intention, there are those who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... evening of the 31st our right wing seemed to have run against a hornet's nest, and we could hear the musketry and cannon speak out real spiteful, but nothing came down our way. We had struck the railroad leading south from Atlanta to Macon, and began tearing it up. The jollity at Atlanta was stopped right in the middle by the appalling news that the Yankees hadn't ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... comparatively small permanent effects which it produces upon the joints in the way of crippling, or even stiffening. To gaze upon a rheumatic knee-joint, for instance, in the height of the attack,—swollen to the size of a hornet's nest, hot, red, throbbing with agony, and looking as if it were on the point of bursting,—one would almost despair of saving the joint, and the best one would feel entitled to expect would be a roughening of its surfaces ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... asthma tore them down, too, and burned them slowly and stooped over the smoldering mass and inhaled the fumes and the smoke which arose, because the country wiseacres preached that no boughten stuff out of a drug store gave such relief from asthma as this hornet's-nest treatment. But it remained for this man to find a third use for such a thing. He brought it into the office of Gafford's wagon yard, where some other men were sitting about the fire, and he held it up before them and ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... scarcely had I laid me down, When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe? I'm calling you from Williamstown! Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'" Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two— The table shook, I banged it so— "Not Joe!" they ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Kenny swung to his feet in smoldering fury. He expressed his opinion of Whitaker, editors, Brian and sons. The sum of them merged into an unchristian melee of officiousness and black ingratitude. He recounted ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks Part and parcel of her joy. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... jury? He did discharge the jury, and then, gentlemen, we had another surprise! No sooner had those jurymen left the box than in marched Burr once again, and said he regretted that the jury had been discharged, and asked the reason. Daviess buzzed up, like a mad hornet, and explained that one of his principal witnesses, Davis Floyd, was in Indiana attending a territorial legislature. Everybody burst out laughing, and the judge had to call the court to order. You ought ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit, indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... he was going to say. Instead he jumped back as though he had been stung by a hornet, and let ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... drive for luck at what I could see. It was a fool thing to do, of course, but I just happened to feel careless and confident. There was a snort and a crash, and old Whitehead loomed up madder than a hornet. I had shot him in the haunch and he felt insulted. He made a rush at me, and I skipped aside and jumped for a small tree standing on the brink of a little ravine. My rifle dropped into the ravine, and I went up the tree like a monkey up a pole, and by the time ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... Pailon, in Esmeraldos, Ecuador, i.e. on the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says, he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating a church organ to great perfection. The good people of Trinidad believe that the fish which makes this noise is the trumpet-fish, or ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... have noticed any signaling, and if she did she certainly ignored it. Perhaps she believed that her hornet's nest of women could stand off any invasion or interference from without. At any rate, she went on unfolding her instructions to destiny with ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... an' her face, which is stern an' heroic, carries a capac'ty for trouble lurkin' 'round in it, same as one of them bald hornet's nests on a beech limb. Nacherally my grandfather's gaze gets riveted on this lady a whole lot, his pipe hangin' forgetful from his lips. The lady's eyes all at once comes down on my grandfather, partic'lar an' personal, like a ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... 2 stod utanfr p vakt. Han vaktade med allvar, gav ock p mjdet akt. En sed den gamle hade: han jmt i botten drack, och intet ord han sade, blott hornet in han stack. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... times when he could have taken the neck of the Prince between his strong fingers and choked out his worthless life. These attacks of envy were short-lived—he could not ascribe them to the reading of the little hornet-like anarchist sheet, Pere Peinard, which the other waiters lent him; rather was it an excess of bile provoked by the coveted beauty ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... curious representation of an insect with a pointed beak-like structure and a spine at the posterior extremity of its human-like body. It is engaged in apparent conflict with a man and may represent a hornet. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick reached his lodgings and at once retired. His sleep was fitful. He dreamed that Alice Windham and Sheriff Scannell were fighting ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... John, Master of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... a Fat man of his little clam-bake, and it would be full as pleasant as settin' down onto a Hornet's nest, when the Hornet family were all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... I will give you the whole Gulf of Mexico if it isn't a big thing," replied Dave with his most expansive smile. "You done get into a hornet's nest, Captain Passford." ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... as a hornet ef I don't get any of ye," he remarked, sadly. "She's paid Sam Cotting fer this courtin' suit, an' he won't take back the gloves on no 'count arter they've been wore; an' thet'll set ma crazy. Miss Patsy, ef yo' ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... the bee and the ant taught man wisdom from the first? I was highly edified the past summer by observing the ways and doings of a colony of black hornets that established themselves under one of the projecting gables of my house. This hornet has the reputation of being a very ugly customer, but I found it no trouble to live on the most friendly terms with her. She was as little disposed to quarrel as I was. She is indeed the eagle among ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... horseback, and left their horses in the bushes and crowded the streets and filled the saloon of one Jack Woods—who had the cackling laugh of Satan and did not like the Guard, for good reasons, and whose particular pleasure was to persuade some customer to stir up a hornet's nest of trouble. From the saloon the crowd moved up towards the big spring at the foot of Imboden Hill, where, under beautiful trunk-mottled beeches, was built the ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... Captain Vanderbilt soon found that he had put his head into a hornet's nest. The State of New York had granted to Fulton and Livingston the exclusive right of running steamboats in New York waters. Thomas Gibbons, believing the grant unconstitutional, as it was afterwards declared by ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... am acquainted; and as his great work partially covers the same period to which Taine has recently devoted himself, I ventured to mention his name in this connection. But I might as well have stirred up a hornet's nest. "Von Sybel," said Taine, "wrote his book to prove that Prussia was perfectly right in taking part in the partition of Poland, and some other things of like nature." He seemed to think this assertion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... swirling bombs toward the enemy. The scythe-blades dripped as they cut swaths through massed rows of human flesh. But from far down the street a swarm of red sparks came rushing at the bombs like hornets. They swirled about them, humming angrily. And then the bombs and the hornet-sparks were gone. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... the arrangements for the purchase of the sheep-ranch, and that he intended to go and take possession of it in a few days. Meantime, he appeared to be considerably shot up over June. In spite of Mrs. Reed's frowns, he hung around her like a hornet after a ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... and as the wasps and hornets claimed to be their cousins Wakonda was good-natured enough to give them the same sort of weapons. Some people, especially boys, think this was a, great mistake, and would be very glad if Wakonda had refused to give stings to the yellow wasp and the black hornet." ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... Buol stirred up a hornet's nest of indignation. The people of England and France became incensed as they saw that Austria showed no inclination to fight. Prussia flatly refused to assist Austria in any warlike undertaking. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, "Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... they lodge, and make him legion. Of brethren he's a false accuser; A slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil times, Where virtues are imputed crimes. His ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... sole-leather trunk, the whole cut of his jib told you at once that he was a regular man-of-war's man—one of a class whose faults I can hardly recall while remembering their sense of duty, their utter disregard of danger, and the reliance with which you can lead them on to attack anything, from a hornet's ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... thought that I had finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this ...
— The Republic • Plato

... he; I will not hear it. As for Pamela, she has a lucky knack of falling into fits, when she pleases. But the cursed yellings of you both made me not myself. I intended no harm to her, as I told you both, if you'd have left your squallings: And I did no harm neither, but to myself; for I raised a hornet's nest about my ears, that, as far as I know, may have stung to death my reputation. Sir, said Mrs. Jervis, then I beg Mr. Longman may take my accounts, and I will go away as soon as I can. As for Pamela, she is at her liberty, I hope, to go ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... she write the letter 'stead er gittin' that husband er hern ter write fer her? I'd 'nough rather she'd told Mis' Brimblecom she wuz comin', 'stead er leavin' me ter tell her. She'll be mad's a hornet, an' I vaow I ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... headstrong creation of an anomalous social position, that Gwen could not decide, nominally omnipotent as she was in her parents' absence, on telling the servants to serve her dinner in the room Mrs. Picture occupied. Had it not been for her suspicion of a hornet's nest at hand, she might have dared to ordain that Mrs. Picture should be her sole guest in her own section of the Towers, or at least that she herself should become the table-guest of the old lady in Francis Quarles; "might ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... noise! Gholson, hold the horses. Come. Lieutenant, come Smith, maybe he's killed himself, but it seems too good to be true. Here, girl, go cram what you can get into a pillow-case, and mount behind my saddle again; be quick, we're going to burn this hornet's nest too." Harry and I had already run to the old man's room, and, sure enough, there lay the aged assassin hideous in his fallen bulk, with his own bullet in ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... recalled to the House by his agitated colleague, recognised that his old Parliamentary hand had got into a hornet's nest, and promptly withdrew it. To the best of my recollection this is the first time on record that a Government measure has perished before its first reading. Conceived in secrecy and delivered in pain, its epitaph will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various

... The Arabs, however, stood their ground, and, firing their rifles wildly in all directions, killed and wounded a good many horses and men, so that the squadrons were content to bring up their right still more, and finally to ride out of the hornet swarm, into which they had plunged, towards Surgham Hill. The pursuit was then suspended, and the Egyptian cavalry joined the rest of the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... circular. The circular was tended by a powerful, sombre-visaged old mill-hand called 'Lije Vandine, whose office it was to trim square the ragged ends of the "stuff" before it went down the slide. At the very back of the table hummed the saw, like a great hornet; and whenever Vandine got two or three deals in place before him he would grasp a lever above his head, and forward through its narrow slit in the table would dart the little saw, and scream its way in a second through the tough white spruce. Every time ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the plea that the American frigates were almost ships of the line in disguise, and that their superior size and armament carried an unfair advantage. The same plea could not be offered in explanation of the victories won by American sloops, in the case of the American Hornet and British Peacock, of about equal strength, while the American Wasp was considerably inferior in guns and weight of metal to the British Frolic. Master-Commandant James Lawrence, of the Hornet, captured the Peacock in eleven minutes from the beginning of the action, the American guns ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... provided her with a tall lank mule, "By Gosh," to ride, and she had never been aboard an animal before. Every time By Gosh flopped an ear she thought he was trying to slap her in the face. On a steep part of the trail a hornet stung the mule, and he began to ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... Gabriel mentally thought of the high-coloured young lady in the bar. His conscience was not at ease regarding his admiration for her; and he dreaded lest the officious Cargrim should talk about her to the bishop. Altogether the chaplain, like a hornet, had annoyed both Dr Pendle and his son; and the bishop in London and Gabriel in Beorminster were anything but well disposed towards this clerical busybody, who minded everyone's business instead of his own. It is such people who stir up muddy ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... chair in the middle. I am then insulated, and, though myriads of fleas jump on the paper, the powder stupefies them, and they are easily killed. I have been obliged to rest here at any rate, because I have been stung on my left hand both by a hornet and a gadfly, and it is badly inflamed. In some places the hornets are in hundreds, and make the horses wild. I am also suffering from inflammation produced by the bites of "horse ants," which attack ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... drank so much that our senses clean forsook us. As to my indiscreet speech touching your majesty, neither disrespect nor disloyalty were intended by it. I was goaded to the rejoinder by the sharp sting of this hornet." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... common salt in as little water as possible, which he gave to the young man, and, after several swallows of the potion, the symptoms disappeared as if by enchantment. There is a recent account from Bridgeport, Conn., of a woman who, while eating a pear, swallowed a hornet that had alighted on the fruit. In going down the throat the insect stung her on the tonsil. Great pain and inflammation followed, and in a short time there was complete deprivation ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... reckoning with, gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure on Morgan's impatience. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... my study, with the windows open, the occasional incident of the visit of some winged creature,—wasp, hornet, or bee,—entering out of the warm, sunny atmosphere, soaring round the room with large sweeps, then buzzing against the glass, as not satisfied with the place, and desirous of getting out. Finally, the joyous uprising curve with which, coming to the open part of the window, it emerges ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... big sody water bottle on wheels, and it busted and squirted sody water all over me. Wall one of them fire fellers, lookin' jist like I'd seen them in picters in Ezra Hoskin's insurance papers, he cum up to me madder'n a hornet, and he sed "what are you tryin' to do with that box?" So I told him I'd jist writ a letter home, and I wuz a tryin' to mail it. He sed "why you durned old green horn, you've called out the hull fire department ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart

... dirty business down there—once we start," he said. "Business for men; and you're a better man than most of us, girl; but you surely didn't reckon that Cal and me would let you go careening down in gunshot of that hornet's nest." ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... learn how to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it. And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... curtains; and I have already mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting of a hornet. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... cool to drink is what you want," said Charteris, half helping, half pulling him off his horse. "Lie down here and take this. I give you fair warning, Master Gerrard, you ain't going to die on my hands and leave me to settle with this hornet's nest you have stirred up ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... no less drily, "but hornet's nests are exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin to stir up this particular one I propose to travel for a few years, with the especial object of finding out what nations now existing are the best, ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... the idea of barging in on the main office of the company but I figured that might be too much like poking my head into a hornet's nest. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... general is no fool. He saw his danger, and, like a wise man, he dodged it. Gatacre's generalship was simply superb. Let the idiotic band of critics who sit in safety in England howl to their heart's content; Gatacre deserves well of his country. Had he dashed recklessly into this hornet's nest he would have sacrificed four-fifths of his gallant officers and a host of his men. Had I to write his military epitaph to-day I should say that "he won with brains what most generals would ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales

... aviary were all the birds of creation, divided into classes, from the humming-bird, the size of a hornet, to the ostrich. This was, to tell the truth, the part that interested Mother Etienne most of all. She was more used to creatures of this kind, they reminded her of her beloved poultry-yard. In spite of the signs put up ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar

... Found the people in confusion, Heard of all the misdemeanors, All the malice and the mischief, 5 Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hard his breath came through his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming like a hornet. 10 "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, 15 That my vengeance shall not reach him!" Then in swift pursuit departed Hiawatha ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... image!—It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft

... tormentin' critter!" exclaimed Walter, mopping his brow as he stood at the little gate of Mrs. Elmer's yard, returning thither, after his fruitless searching, in the hope of finding his brother among the familiar faces. "Mad ez a hornet, I'll be bound, an' lef' me in the lurch. Beat arter ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... family at home, and screened by the profound ignorance of Congress concerning men and affairs abroad, Lee was able for a long time to run his mischievous career without discovery or interruption. He buzzed about Europe like an angry hornet, thrusting his venomous sting into every respectable and useful servant of his country, and irritating exceedingly the foreigners whom it was of the first importance to conciliate. Incredible as it seems, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... 1827, thirty-two sail of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians, attacked and vanquished in the Levant an Ottoman fleet of three ships-of-the line, twenty-five frigates, and a swarm of fire ships and hornet craft. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... his putting a hornet in a sluttish maid's shoe, which was credible, if scarcely meriting that elfish laughter which made his auditor shrink, but when he told of dancing over the mud banks with a lantern, like a Will-of-the-wisp, till he lured boats to get stranded, or horsemen to get stuck, in the hopeless mud, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... although the outlaws had continued to gain in numbers, their natural increase was not proportionate to the growing power of their adversaries. Little by little the Doomsmen began to lose ground; already they had been defeated several times in pitched battle, and it looked as though the hornet's-nest would soon be ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... give out," agreed Martin. "Lyman Mertzheimer will feel those hornet stings for a few days. While I've always been taught not to rejoice at the misfortunes of others I'm not sorry I saw him. I'll call our account square now. You pitied him, didn't you?" he asked Amanda suddenly. "I saw it in your eyes. So ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... to say "I told you so."] Streak of poor judgment! Do you remember the day you rode Billy at a six-foot stone wall, and he stopped and you didn't, and there was a hornet's nest [MATTHEW rises.] on the other side, and I remember you were hot just because I said you showed poor judgment? [She laughs at the memory. A general movement of disapproval. She remembers the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... its allies (except in another species from Java)—the expanded wings, the white band on them, and the oval scale-like elytra.[109] Another remarkable case has been noted by Mr. Neville Goodman, in Egypt, where a common hornet (Vespa orientalis) is exactly imitated in colour, size, shape, attitude when at rest, and mode of flight, by a beetle of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... hard as they could. Donald ran up and down Wishbone Valley, calling upon them to stop, and declaring that if turkey should ever be put upon the table again he would eat nothing but the stuffing. When Donald found that the wishbones were sticking into his neck like so many hornet stings, he made up his mind that he would run for the house. Finally the wishbone tattoo stopped, and when he looked around, the gobbler, who was twenty feet away, said: "When a Thanksgiving turkey dies, his ghost comes down here to Wishbone Valley to join his ancestors, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make a fair entomological ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... are kings, Queens, bishops, knights, rooks, pawns; the World's a game; Save that the puppets pull at their own strings, Methinks gay Punch hath something of the same. My Muse, the butterfly hath but her wings, Not stings, and flits through ether without aim, Alighting rarely:—were she but a hornet, Perhaps there might be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... I-told-you-so air, but softly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably barked, with a perforated ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... have been back to San Antonio yesterday," he exclaimed. "But I was delayed in Denison. I suppose Perry Watson will be as mad as a hornet when I get back because I didn't make it as quick as he expected. He expects an awful lot from ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... that he might not hear her sobs, if he could have perceived how Thyone's wrinkled old face contracted as if she were swallowing a colocynth apple, while at the same time she patted his strong shoulder briskly, exclaiming with forced cheerfulness: "Go on, my boy! The steed rears when the hornet stings! Try again, if it only soothes you! We will take everything out of your way. You need not mind the water-jars. The potter will make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... still for a moment, and a mocking laugh was heard from among the clouds, for it was a little hornet that had asked to go out and meet the power of the ruler of ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... there procured, and we barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a decoy and a hornet's nest. I despise war and men of war so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a good tactical defensive position—is that the vain term?—to send a volley out the main door, and a flank fire on every door ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... you met in the woods east of the big river, and whom you tried to persuade to line a yellow hornet to his nest: as if my eye was not too true to mistake any other animal for a honey-bee, in a clear day! We tarried together a week, as you may remember; you at your toads and lizards, and I at my high-holes and hollow trees: and a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... now only seven sea miles distant from the Dean Tail Buoy. Within ten minutes of the receipt of the wireless she was on the spot—one of the very first of a regular hornet flotilla bent upon adding yet another of Von ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... they can never do any thing but good. But you and I are now at that time of life when our call to another state of being cannot be distant, and may be near. Besides, your government is in the habit of seizing papers without notice. These letters might thus get into hands, which, like the hornet which extracts poison from the same flower that yields honey to the bee, might make them the ground of blowing up a flame between our two countries, and make our friendship and confidence in each other effect exactly the reverse of what we are aiming at. Being yourself thoroughly possessed of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Baby, is easily puzzled," smiled Raymonde serenely. "It's meant to wear fluffy curls, and not to engage itself in abstruse problems. I don't advise you to worry yourself over this, unless you can turn it to some account. If the Hornet should ask you for an original example, you might begin: 'Let A represent a fountain pen, and B my schoolmate, C ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... "prisoner's base," "town-ball," "Antney-over;" "bull-pen" and "knucks," the hand to hand engagements with yellow jackets, the Bunker Hill and Brandywine battles with bumblebees, the charges on flocks of geese, the storming of apple orchards and hornet's nests, and victories over hostile "setting" hens. Then I witnessed the old field school "Exhibition"—the wonderful "exhibition"—they call it Commencement now. Did you never witness an old field school "exhibition," far out in the country, and listen ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... said the Elephant's Child. 'But it's very useful,' and he picked up his hairy uncle, the Baboon, by one hairy leg, and hove him into a hornet's nest. ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... a raid," said Kynan. "It stirs up such a hornet's nest round one's ears. However, we on the border are somewhat used to it. We ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... Gentiles had brought all this trouble upon Mur, since before we came the Abati, although threatened, had lived in peace and glory—he actually used the word glory!—for generations. But now we had stung the Fung, as a hornet stings a bull, and made them mad, so that they wished to toss the Abati. He proposed, therefore, that we should at once be ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... castle, the mole and crown batteries, while within range were ten other batteries, mounting, all told, a hundred and fifteen guns. Between the Philadelphia and the shore lay a number of Tripolitan cruisers, galleys and gunboats. Into this hornet's nest, Decatur steered his little vessel of sixty tons, carrying four small guns, and having a crew ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... vineyards, will trample down all the rich clusters in order to slake its own thirst. Find a man who yields to his desires after his neighbour's goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet in a spider's web. Be he a Napoleon, and glorified as a conqueror and hero, or be he some poor thief in a jail, he has let his covetousness get the upper hand, and so all wrong-doing is possible. Nor is it only the second table which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... that many women delight to excite envy, even whilst they affect to fear its consequences: but they, who imprudently provoke it, are little aware of the torments they prepare for themselves.—"Cover your face well before you disturb the hornet's nest," was a maxim of ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... himself as second in command on board the sloop Hornet, of ten guns, one of two vessels then preparing for a cruise under Commodore Hopkins, for this was in the early part of the revolution. The sloop fell in with a British tender, which she might have captured, but for the timidity of the American captain. The ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... that our ancestors Have not been over-prudish with our kings; It is no fall to pick up handkerchiefs When on the handkerchief a lily's broidered. But honor never will accept a rag Which bears the Bonapartist weed and hornet, Woe to ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... the while I told him a lot of things about true politeness—things that I wasn't living up to worth mentioning. He yelled to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet's-nest I'd got into. The waiter and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that I was on old King's territory, and that they were ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... answered. "Came a few minutes after you took off, but when I refused him a ship he got mad as a hornet, bawled out the light crew and—and me, and then jumped back in his car and rode off. Rather ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... softest sound you ever heard—she was mad as a hornet, too." The General's swift chuckle caught him. "'Hyer,' she said it," he repeated. "'Hyer.'" He liked to say it, evidently. "I stood holding my cap in my hand, so tame by this time you could have put me on a perch in a cage, for the pluck of the girl was as fascinating as her looks. I spoke up ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... a hornet, one of those long brown double chaps that boys call mud-wasps, crept out of his mud shell at the top of my window casing, and buzzed in the sunshine till I opened the window and let him go. Perhaps he remembered his warm quarters, ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... "the day for me to buck agin you is past. I don't mind markin' yearlin' calves and I don't hold off when it comes to breakin' up a hornet's nest, but I stand ready and willin' to fling up my hands when it comes to pullin' agin you. I have been kept busy many a time in my life; I have been woke up at mornin' and kept on the stretch pretty nigh till midnight, but you can come ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read

... showing his great fear, Roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the Polaris resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. He could hear the hatch slam closed below as Loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to watch ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... obeyed in silence had not Miss Fenshawe thought fit to help him. She had found Mrs. Haxton's airs somewhat tiresome during the long journey from London, and she saw no reason why that lady should be so ready to bring a hornet's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... full of wrinkles. It was hard to realize that this little body held one of the great driving minds of the country. He was an intensely nervous and irritable man, bitter and implacable—by all odds the most hated and feared man in Wall Street. He was swift, imperious, savage as a hornet. "Directors at meetings that I attend vote first and discuss afterward," was one of his sayings that Montague had heard quoted. Watching him here by the fireside, rubbing his hands and chatting pleasantly, Montague had a sudden sense of being behind the scenes, of being admitted to ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... made a trip to Berlin to borrow money for the war. And it is likely that the Sultan may soon have so many enemies to fight that he will wish the Powers had allowed him to arrange the Cretan matters for himself, without interfering and bringing this hornet's nest about ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... I don't wonder. But don't you think, Verena, I was a very brave woman to put myself into such a hornet's nest?" ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told it, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... there was greater safety. The cave, as she called it, was dimly lighted with a paraffin lamp, and was very damp and chilly, but it was good to be there in this hiding-place, for at regular intervals she could hear the terrible buzzing noises of a shell, like some gigantic hornet, followed by its exploding boom; and then, more awful still, the crash of a neighbouring ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... couldn't think er hevin' a man that warn't a church-member, that hadn't experienced religion, or even ben struck with conviction, an' all the rest on't. Ef anny one hed a wanted tew hev seen a walkin' hornet's nest, they could hev done it cheap that night, as I went hum. I jest stramed intew the kitchen, chucked my hat intew one corner, my coat intew 'nother, kicked the cat, cussed the fire, drawed up a chair, and set scaoulin' like sixty, bein' tew mad for talkin'. The young woman that was nussin' aunt,—Bewlah ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott



Words linked to "Hornet" :   vespid, yellow jacket, white-faced hornet, Vespula maculata, bald-faced hornet, Vespa crabro, vespid wasp, giant hornet, Vespula maculifrons



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