"Hoof" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has his own Manitou, Okki, or guardian power; this divinity's presence is represented by some portable object, often of the most insignificant nature, such as the head, beak, or claw of a bird, the hoof of a deer or cow. No youth can be received among the brotherhood of warriors till he has placed himself, in due form, under the care of this familiar. The ceremony is deemed of great importance: several days of strict fasting are always observed in preparation for the important event, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... man impulsively. "Don't do it! It wouldn't be no good. I've got to see the chickens on the hoof, ...
— The Thin Santa Claus - The Chicken Yard That Was a Christmas Stocking • Ellis Parker Butler
... huckster," answered Dagon, with a reviling laugh. "Thou, Rabsun, shouldst sell dried fish and water on the streets, but not mix up in questions between states. An ox hoof rubbed in Egyptian mud has more sense than thou, though Thou 'art living five years in the capital of light! Oh that pigs ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... ensconced, a company of British cavalry rode up, broken and disorderly enough, cursing and swearing at the Yankees, and telling to unseen ears a bloody story of Concord and its men. Sally trembled, but it was with indignation, not fear, and as soon as the last hoof-beat died away, she urged Long forward; they regained the road, and made their way at once to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... moving, Miss Lawson?" he suggested. "We'll have to hoof it to Thorlakson's and it's a good five miles from here. We can ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... him just what to do; and then he turned into a clod of earth, and stuck himself between Dapple's hoof and shoe on the near forefoot. So the Princess hunted up and down, out and in, everywhere; at last she came into the stable, and wanted to go into Dapplegrim's loose box. This time he let her come up to him, and she pried high and low, but under ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... notice that we have in the Horse a skull, a backbone and ribs, shoulder-blades and haunch-bones. In the fore-limb, one upper arm-bone, two fore arm-bones, wrist-bones (wrongly called knee), and middle hand-bones, ending in the three bones of a finger, the last of which is sheathed in the horny hoof of the fore-foot: in the hind-limb, one thigh-bone, two leg-bones, anklebones, and middle foot-bones, ending in the three bones of a toe, the last of which is encased in the hoof of the hind-foot. Now turn to the Dog's skeleton. We find identically the same bones, but more of them, there being more ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... saw it. The hoof-marks of the horse had displaced the dust where it had several times ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... appearance and singularly antique dress, who, to his great surprise, asked the price of his horses, and began to chaffer with him on the subject. To Canobie Dick—(for so shall we call our Border dealer)—a chap was a chap, and he would have sold a liaise to the devil himself, without minding his cloven hoof, and would have probably cheated Old Nick into the bargain. The stranger paid the price they agreed on; and all that puzzled Dick in the transaction was that the gild which he received was in unicorns, bonnet-pieces, and other ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... that breathe the air of heaven, Some boon of strength has Nature given. In forming the majestic bull, She fenced with wreathed horns his skull; A hoof of strength she lent the steed, And winged the timorous hare with speed. She gave the lion fangs of terror, And, o'er the ocean's crystal mirror, Taught the unnumbered scaly throng To trace their liquid path along; While for the umbrage of the grove, She plumed ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the Venetians to see trees planted in the open air, while hedges and lawns appeared as if by magic. The entire absence of verdure and vegetation, and the silence which reigns in the streets of Venice, where is never heard the hoof of a horse nor the wheels of a carriage, horses and carriages being things entirely unknown in this truly marine city, must give it usually a sad and abandoned air; but this gloom entirely disappeared during his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... desperate risks for the mere sake of the exalted and supreme sense of perfect self-possession that danger brings to some natures. Not, indeed, that she stopped to indulge any psychological speculations. The coast was clear; not a footfall or hoof-stroke sounded from the road, and without delay she began to look about for a wide place between the rails where she might get through. Just as she found it, she was startled by an unmistakable human ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... act in a nervous manner, contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled frog. One would have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into contact with a galvanic battery. I could distinctly hear the dry sound made by its little heel, hard as the hoof ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... was with our solitary traveller; and when the hoof-strokes of a horse were heard at some distance off in the forest, he did nothing more than to make a slight change in the attitude in which he had been reclining; while his steed, also hearing the same sounds, tossed ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... stout, round-made, trotting-nag, which the serving-man, who had attended him, held ready at the door, and took the road to the southward. A sullen and heavy sound echoed from the horse's feet, as if indicating the sorrow of the good-natured rider. Every hoof-tread seemed to tap upon Roland's heart as he heard his comrade withdraw with so little of his usual alert activity, and felt that he was once more ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... laid hands on her fallen into the sorry error of holding their single adversary too lightly. They heard the thud of the gallant Stefano's fall, and they never doubted that mine was the body that had gone down. They heard the rapid hoof-beats of my approach, yet, they never turned their heads to ascertain whether they might not be mistaken in their firm conviction that it was Messer Stefano ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... sheep had crossed this sliding crumbling earth and gravel incline with apparent ease. For us it was go on or go back. There was no middle course. The row of tiny hoof marks running straight across from one safe bank to the other deceived us. It could not be so very difficult. We dismounted; Nimrod threw the bridle over his horse's head and started across, leading his beast. The animal snorted as he felt the foot-hold giving way beneath him, but ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... Glenartney's hazel shade; But when the sun his beacon red Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head, The deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay Resounded up the rocky way, And faint, from farther distance borne, Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... riding slowly around the boulder marked "Palace Hotel, Rates Reasnible," that he came upon the place where a horse had stood, on the side best sheltered from the storm. Deep hoof marks closely overlapping, an overturned stone here and there gave proof enough, and the rain-beaten soil that blurred the hoofprints farthest from the rock told him more. Lone backed away, dismounted, and, stepping carefully, went close. He could see no reason why a horse should ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... yesterday morning a ten-pound note of mine, which he found in a ledger he took out of my room. He had to go to Hebsworth on business, and there he changed the note to buy himself a new hat; I have a witness of it. When he came back hoof course had nothing to say about the money; in fact, he ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... offering his services as a guide. This guide conducted him safely for some distance, but left him when they approached the desert. There were still five watch-towers to be passed, and there was nothing to indicate the road through the desert, except the hoof-marks of horses, and skeletons. The traveller followed this melancholy track, and, though misled by the 'mirage' of the desert, he reached the first tower. Here the arrows of the watchmen would have put an end to his existence and his cherished expedition. But the officer in command, himself a zealous ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... hoof-beats of a horse behind me. I stopped, and looking over my shoulder saw a rider approaching me in the costume of an Indian chief. A red mask covered his face. A crest of eagle feathers circled the edge of his cap. Without a word he rode on at my side. I knew not then that he was the man Josiah Curtis—nor ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of mine that the unnumbered years Evolved from hoof and wing and claw and fin, 'T is ours to bring from out the stress and tears, A godlike figure ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... When a horseman rode forth from his camp in the wood, And paused where a cottage in loneliness stood. The ruthless marauder preceded him there, For the green vines were torn from the trellis-work fair, The flowers in the garden all hoof-trodden lay, And the rafters were black with the smoke of the fray: But the desolate building he heeded not long, Was it echo, the wind, or the notes of a song? One moment for doubt, and he stood ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... their diagonal course of descent putting some distance between them and the camp. In spite of the cold of the night, Drew was wet with sweat as they threaded through heady sage brush. Now came the scent of horses, the sound of a hoof ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... a couple uh weeks this bunch would bring the lowest figure they name," Billy asserted firmly. "Beef shrinks on the hoof like thunder when it's held up and close-herded on poor range. What yuh better do, Dilly, is let me work this herd and ship just the top-notchers—they're all prime beef," he added regretfully, glancing ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... tangled up in one of the dixies that were lying on the floor, and in attempting to kick it off, his foot missed Scotty's head by about six inches. Scotty backed up and so did the mule, still kicking, each kick bringing his hoof ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... in an explanatory tone. "On the hoof. The public-relations job all this has turned into, demands a careful stimulation of all the basic urges. So I want people to think of steaks and chops and roasts. If I could get herds of animals from ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... turnout, and it well deserved all the attention it attracted, which was considerable. The horses were capricious, highly polished grays, perhaps a trifle undersized, but with such an action as is not to be bought for less than twenty-five guineas a hoof; the harness was silver-mounted; the dog-cart itself a creation of beauty and nice poise; the groom a pink and priceless perfection. But the crown and summit of the work was the driver—a youngish gentleman ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the troops filled a space of half a mile, and marched quickly till night hid them—still marching. There was nothing vaporous or indistinct about the appearance of these spectres. So real did they seem, that some of the people went up, the next morning, to look for the hoof-marks of the horses; and awful it was to them to find not one foot-print on heather or grass. The witnesses attested the whole story on oath before a magistrate; and fearful were the expectations held ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... them that were the people of God; but the unclean, types of such as were the children of the wicked one. Now I read, that the clean beasts chewed the cud; that is, thought I, they show us, we must feed upon the word of God: they also parted the hoof. I thought that signified, we must part, if we would be saved, with the ways of ungodly men. And also, in further reading about them, I found, that though we did chew the cud, as the hare; yet if we walked with claws, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... was the reply. "Landed there on ship from round the Horn last week. Got paid off but some sneak thief in the boarding house I was stopping at got my roll. So I had to hoof it." ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... how they were getting on, I found that they had disappeared, and, walking to the place, saw not a trace of the butchery save the trampled ground and a small heap of undigested grass. Mr. Worcester had told me before that I should find this to be the case; not a shred of hoof, hide, or ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Salmon's New York Grocery and turned in the order his friend had given him. After he had seen it filled, he strolled along the sunny street toward the plaza. It was one of those warm, somnolent New Mexico days as peaceful as old age. Burros blinked sleepily on three legs and a hoof-tip. Cowponies switched their tails indolently to brush away flies. An occasional half-garbed Mexican lounged against a door jamb or squatted in the shade of a wall. A squaw from the reservation crouched on the curb beside her display ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... exclamation, which-ever it may be—viz, 'Whoa!' Then I rush down-stairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang them mules,' I says; 'they done run away and busted the doubletree and two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... her eyes, smiled, touching the pearls with her finger, and passed on to her place next to the daughters of Peroa, at one end of the head table which was shaped like a horse's hoof. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... away there came to her the sound of a horse's hoof-beats, short and hard, galloping over the stones. It was a sound that arrested the attention, awaking in her a vague, apprehensive excitement. Almost involuntarily she drew nearer to the window, peering above ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... one of those glances of women, or of men, which would make me think of murder or suicide. Yes, I could hack in pieces whoever insulted me with pity; like Chateauneuf, who, in the time of Henri III., I think, rode his horse at the Provost of Paris for a wrong of that kind, and trampled him under hoof. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... to comfort the little animal; but Rat, lingering, looked long and doubtfully at certain hoof-marks ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... Neither foot nor hoof had passed or even sounded in the distance. There was scarcely a whisper of the trees; an ordinary approach could have been heard for hundreds of yards, a stealthy one for tens. Langholm had heard nothing, though his ears were pricked. And yet ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... rode away on the outlaw's trail. Over pastures, through ravines, across rivers, under forest arches dim as twilight, they hurried on, a pack of hounds yapping in advance, a broken branch, a trampled bush, a hoof-print in the margin of a stream also giving proof that they were on the right path; a herder, who had seen the ruffian pass, likewise testifying to the fact, and giving his service to the company; and so they came to a clearing, where they found ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... silence and solitude prevailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious confidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. I myself, though slightly alive to the possibilities of peril, had so far yielded to the influence of the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... matter, for the last stake had been driven in comparatively soft ground, and despite the fact that it was by this time almost pitch dark, a short search, aided by the light of the lanterns, disclosed the hoof prints of Butlers horse, which led off to the left, and which were followed until the searchers found themselves on the borders of an extensive pine wood growing on hard, steeply rising ground over which it was impossible to trace further the trail in the darkness. This impossibility ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... fear him,—this creature in gray. She stood stock-still, and stared at him, so near that he could see her wink her starry eyes, with the white rings round them. She stamped one hoof, kicked an insect from her ear with another, snorted again, wheeled around, and at last broke away for the thick shelter of the trees, lightly and swiftly as a breeze which skims from ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... distinctness never seen by day, appeared to watch for me and look after me as I rode along, forming an avenue of silent but very stately spectators; and to my fancy, for my fancy was highly excited that night, the rustling of the young leaves upon them whispered the name of Olivia. The hoof-beats of my mare's feet upon the hard roads echoed the name ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... submerged for some long time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an oyster. He is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is more than pearls or oceans or all ascension or song. He reflects for a few years on the subject of cats; and at last discovers in the cat "the characteristic equine quality of caudality, or a tail"; so that cats are horses, and wave on every tree-top the tail which is the equine banner. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... while; when the spirit came again, and, as they all agreed, brought with it seven devils worse than itself. One of the servants now lighted a large candle, and placed himself in the doorway between the two chambers, to see what passed; and, as he watched, he plainly saw a hoof striking the candle and candlestick into the middle of the room, and afterwards making three scrapes over the snuff, scraped it out. Upon this the same person was so bold as to draw a sword; but he had scarce got it out, when he felt ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... SUPPLY.—We hear much these days about the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. With coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going-up—heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not rich to arouse and take thought for the morrow. What are we going to do about it? The tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... brother! But here you shall slip up. The mustang is not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all! Look at his hoof—never have a shoe been there. For myself—attend me! When I ride alone, I think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea he go like a cannon-ball! Consequent, if I ride not thees horse like the cannon-ball, my thought HE arrive first, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... the hymns of the church and the plain-song. But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the blacksmith. There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold him Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cart-wheel Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. Oft on autumnal eves, when without ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... was no longer listening. His soul had turned to ice. For here, in this unguarded moment, the cloven hoof had plainly shown itself. In that suggestion of a particular kind of danger Vance had lifted a corner of the curtain behind which crouched his horrible intention. Vance desired a witness of the extraordinary experiment, but he desired this witness, not merely for the purpose of sketching possible ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... away from the water. Then they ate a little, not because they desired food, but to keep up their strength, and while they did so examined the mare. By now her hind leg was much swollen, and blood still ran from the gash made by the assegai. Moreover, the limb was drawn up so that the point of the hoof only rested on ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... "The hoof-beats of Arabian horses, with white-robed Bedouins flashing their swords; all the glitter and splendour of war were woven into it. Songs of victory, the rush of a cavalry charge, the faith of a dying warrior, even the slow ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... frost-driven mouse to merely exist. So poor was the soil, that the clay came to the surface, and in wet weather a slip of the foot exposed it—the heel cut through the veneer of turf into the cold, dead, moist clay. Nothing grew but rushes. Every time a horse moved over the marshy land his hoof left deep holes which never again filled up, but remained the year through, now puddles, full of rain water, and now dry holes. The rain made the ground a swamp; the sun cracked it as it does paint. Who could pay rent for such a place?—for rushes, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... a strangely distorted talon and gripped my fingers. The thing was almost like the hoof of a deer produced into claws. I could have yelled with surprise and pain. His face came forward and peered at my nails, came forward into the light of the opening of the hut and I saw with a quivering disgust that it was like the face of neither man ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... till they could have been recovered or cured. "Lord bless you, Sir," replied the man, "I tried at more than fifty places, but nobody would take them in at any price, as they all said they would not have them at a gift, and that they should not tread a hoof upon any of their lands on any account, as the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... happened on some lone deserted homestead long given over to owls and cobwebs; then came a sense of furtive watchful hostility, the same shadow of unseen things that seemed to lurk in the wooded combes and coppices. From behind heavy doors and shuttered windows came the restless stamp of hoof or rasp of chain halter, and at times a muffled bellow from some stalled beast. From a distant corner a shaggy dog watched her with intent unfriendly eyes; as she drew near it slipped quietly into its kennel, and slipped out again as noiselessly ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... were too soft to hold up anything so small as a hoof, so when farmers used horses there, they fastened broad wooden shoes on the horses' feet. Nowadays, though, horses ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... wagon with the whip, so suddenly, that the dog left the bone and ran off. Addison picked it up and examined it attentively. "It's a mutton bone, fast enough," said he. "It is one of the leg bones; the hoof is on it and there's enough of the hide to show that it was smut-legged, like ours. But of course we cannot prove much from it," he added, throwing the bone after the dog and getting ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... into the bog in wet weather, and in vain struggling to free himself, had died of starvation. His head was stretched out, as if hopelessly longing for the rich food he saw growing not thirty yards from him, which yet he could not reach. All around the morass were the hoof-marks of his comrades, as if they had been watching him in his dying struggles, scampering round and round, perhaps with terror, or perhaps thinking ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... stretching its flawless length along the water's side. It was alive with swift-moving motor cars swarming like twentieth-century pilgrims toward the mecca of cool breezes and comfort. There were proud limousines; comfortable family cars; trim little roadsters; noisy runabouts. Not a hoof-beat was to be heard. It was as though the horseless age had indeed descended upon the world. There was only a hum, a rush, a roar, as car ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Uri) was quite ready to meet the lion (Leopold), and threw the dust up a little with its hoof. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the edge of the swamp and breathed the earthy smells of spring, and listened to the sounds of life. Over their heads a pair of newly-mated moose-birds fluttered and scolded at them. A big jay sat pluming himself in the sunshine. Farther in they heard the crack of a stick broken under a heavy hoof. From the ridge behind them they caught the raw scent of a mother bear, busy pulling down the tender poplar buds for her six-weeks-old cubs, born while she was still deep in her ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... partners have not been executed,—no, not yet." Therewith, hurling looks of furious wrath at the poor woman, who was almost dead with terror, he drew his stiletto. "O God! O God!" she exclaimed, expecting her death-blow; but at this moment there was heard a rattle of arms in the street, and the hoof-strokes of horses. "The Marechaussee![3] the Marechaussee! Help! Help!" screamed Martiniere. "You abominable woman, you are determined to ruin me. All is lost now—it's all over. But here, here—take this. Give that to your mistress this very night—to-morrow if you like." Whispering these ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... always fit for work, always hungry, always ready to lie down and roll, and always lazy. But when he heard the rush of the brumbies' feet in the scrub he became frantic with excitement. He could race over the roughest ground without misplacing a hoof or altering his stride, and he could sail over fallen timber and across gullies like a kangaroo. Nearly every Sunday we were after the brumbies, until they got as lean as greyhounds and as cunning as policemen. We were always ready to back White-when-he's-wanted ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... glowing in the crimson glory of sunset over the stream of cows and buffaloes, sheep and goats, that pour into the village. Each beast well knows his master and his crib, and turns in at the familiar gate to the stable under the house, or by the side of the hut; and there all spend the night. Not a hoof is left out in the field; the last belated stragglers come in while the gleam of amber still edges the night-blue sky behind the black horizon. Then the silent fields lie under the brightening moon, glittering with dew, untrodden and deserted. It is not cold or climate ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Now by the foot the flying foot were slain, Horse trod by horse, lay foaming on the plain. From the dry fields thick clouds of dust arise, Shade the black host, and intercept the skies. The brass-hoof'd steeds tumultuous plunge and bound, And the thick thunder beats the labouring ground, Still slaughtering on, the king of men proceeds; The distanced army wonders at his deeds, As when the winds with raging flames conspire, And ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Lawrence, that it is the Spanish ship you have seen?" shouted Morton; but he received no answer, for Lawrence had turned Neogle's head, and was galloping off as hard as the little creature could lay hoof to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... Ridge was interrupted in his after-school solitude by the click of hoof and sound of voices on the little bridle path that led to the scant clearing in which his schoolhouse stood. He laid down his pen as the figures of a man and woman on horseback passed the windows and dismounted before the porch. He recognized the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his horses' hoof-beats died out on the road, a second clap of thunder seemed to bring heaven and earth together. She scarcely looked up. She was approaching a little weather-beaten house nestled among trees on the edge of a deep gorge. As ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... that she was about to force him to reveal himself. Some suggested that she might even be the highwayman himself. Lord Grimsby was trying to recall if ever he had heard of the devil guising himself as a young red-headed girl, covering himself, from horned head to cloven hoof, in azure velvet. Lord Farquhart still sat quite unmoved, seemingly as indifferent as ever to the world, apparently unmindful of his champion. Ashley's face was black with rage, and he stood all alone in the midst of the crowd. Lady Barbara had flung ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... along though he had hoped for amity at least. If there were to be a conflict of purpose he could have wished that it be conducted in friendly fashion. But when did Hell-Fire Packard ever clasp hands with the man he opposed in anything, when did he ever see a business rival without cloven hoof, ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... gambrel; let me beg You will look at a horse's hinder leg. First great angle above the hoof,— That is the ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... that, as she has strode to empire, her foot has trodden on many a venerable throne unjustly thrown down, and her skirts have been dabbled with 'the blood of poor innocents,' splashed there with her armed hoof. Be it so!—Still! 'Thou makest the wrath of man to praise Thee.' Still—'we are debtors both to the Greek and barbarian,' and all the more debtors because of ills inflicted. God has laid on us a solemn responsibility. Over all the dust ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of hoof-beats came from down the pike, sounding like the vomitings of a Gatling gun. A horse streaked its way toward them. Crimmins darted into the underbrush bordering the pike. The horse came fast. It flashed past Garrison. Its ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... they must remain there; but even if they were, their presence in that retired spot, whatever surprise it might awaken, could afford, owing to the absence of the saddles and trappings, no clue to their owners. To obviate any risk of their hoof-prints being traced, Paco had had the forethought to take them into the stream, and lead them for some distance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... go," said he, as he arose, pointing to Eadwin. "There is something more important to be settled now than the question whether the young porker shall retain his cloven hoof or not. Wilfred, dost thou know thou hast ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... no one stirred till Thaouka woke them by tapping vigorously against the RANCHO with his hoof. He knew it was time to start, and at a push could give the signal as well as his master. They owed the faithful creature too much to disobey ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... skeletons of Camptosaurus, a large and a small species, and in the American Museum a skeleton of a small species. It suggests a large kangaroo in size and proportions, but the three-toed feet, with hoof-like claws, the reptilian skull, loosely put together, with lizard-like cheek teeth and turtle beak indicate a near relative ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... name to Virbius, but to fame Unknown, through life in Latin woods he strayed. Thenceforth, in memory of the deed of shame, No horn-hoof'd steeds are suffered to invade Chaste Trivia's temple or her sacred glade, Since, scared by Ocean's monsters, from his car They dashed him by the deep. Yet, undismayed, His son, young Virbius, o'er the plains afar The fleet-horsed chariot drives, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... that impatient hoof, snuff not the breezy wind, The further that thou fliest now, so far am I behind; The stranger hath thy bridle-rein—thy master hath his gold— Fleet-limbed and beautiful! farewell! thou'rt sold, my ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... celebrated the midwinter festival. The brownies danced around the Christmas porridge in new red caps. Old gods wandered about the heavens in gray storm cloaks, and in the Oesterhaninge graveyard stood the horse of Hel [Note: The goddess of death]. He pawed with his hoof on the frozen ground; he was marking out the place for ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... through it." The voice was lower than before. "One of my best mares disappeared night before last, and I haven't been able to get trace of a hoof or hair since." ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the witness of his cause, On Spain, the partner of his victories, And yet amid these animating words Rolled the huge tear down his unvisored face - A general swell of indignation rose Through the long line, sobs burst from every breast, Hardly one voice succeeded—you might hear The impatient hoof strike the soft sandy plain: But when the gates flew open, and the king In his high car came forth triumphantly, Then was Count Julian's stature more elate; Tremendous was the smile that smote the eyes Of all he passed. "Fathers, sons, and brothers," He cried, ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... the northern range soon after the Civil War, brought a market to the cattle country. Inevitably the men of the lower range would seek to reach the railroads with what they had to sell—their greatest natural product, cattle on the hoof. This was the primary cause of the great northbound drives already mentioned, the greatest pastoral phenomena in the story of ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... riding hack to convey them to the railway station, and each man was to remain in possession of his private effects. More than this General Hunter would not concede upon any terms. At one period of the negotiations things became so strained that hostilities were almost renewed, but the Hoof Commandant was wise enough to realise that destiny had decided against him and his burgher band. He came from the conclave at last, and gave an order in Dutch to his aide, and in a moment the horseman was flying towards ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of approaching hoof-beats could be plainly heard, and Drysdale turned his head to look back in the direction whence they came. On looking for the ghost again, it was nowhere ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... 'Twas there I mocked him, in his gyves, and gave him dreams for food. For when he laid me down, behold, before the stall there stood A Bull of Offering. And this King, he bit his lips and straight Fell on and bound it, hoof and limb, with gasping wrath and sweat. And I sat watching!—Then a Voice; and lo, our Lord was come, And the house shook, and a great flame stood o'er his mother's tomb. And Pentheus hied this way and that, and called his thralls amain For water, lest his roof-tree burn; and all toiled, all ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... said he, feeling of his head (the hoof had scraped, instead of smashing), "slightly disfiggered, but still ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... riding back, alone, in the afternoon, from an unsuccessful search after strayed horses, and suddenly, all in the lifting of a hoof, the weird prairie had gleamed into eerie life, had dropped the veil and spoken to him; while the breeze stopped, and the sun stood still for a flash in waiting for his answer. And he, his heart in a grip of ice, the frozen flesh a-crawl with terror upon his loosened bones, white-lipped ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... Hungarian bay, by Xenophon and Lena Rivers, was drawn in profile, very erect on his slender, nervous legs. He appeared, on the side nearest the observer, to be pawing the ground impatiently with his hoof, a movement which seemed to be facilitated by his rider, who, drawn in a three-quarters view and extending her hand, allowed the reins to fall over the ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... inmost hearts of all, As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall! The dying turned him to the wall, To hear it and to die! Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... willing to claim credit to myself for the team, every hoof of which reached the Coast in safety. Four steers and two cows were sufficient for our light wagon and the light outfit, not a pound of which but was useful (except the brandy) and necessary for our comfort. I had chosen steers that had never been under the yoke, though ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... interrupted Kinney, as he hammered on his glass for a lead pencil and looked around for a waiter. "Only five hundred for a red steer on the hoof delivered by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe! Where's your state pride, man? Two thousand is what it'll be. You'll introduce the bill and I'll get up on the floor of the Senate and wave the scalp of every Indian old Lucien ever murdered. Let's see, there was something else proud and foolish he did, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... very faint one can tell little of it. Your eye was keen, Dagaeoga, to have seen it at all, though I think the hoof of a buck and not the foot of a man trod here on the fallen leaves, but the tread was so light that it ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... DISHES: Mule salad; mule hoof, soused; mule brains a l'omelette; mule kidneys, braises on ramrod; mule tripe, on half (Parrot) shell; mule tongue, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... reduced to the painful and spectacular expedient of just grazing the heels of your fiery steed with Dick's racer all the way back to Sherrill's and matching up his hoof-beats on the shell-road with a devil's ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Stonor followed the hoof-prints then through the trackless bush, painfully slow going over the stones and the fallen trunks, with many a pitfall concealed under the smooth moss. After an hour of this he finally came upon them all five ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... to reassure him after his own involuntary indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... of a horse's hoofs upon the hard-packed road. It was not unusual in a land where hooch was cheap and stimulating and every drunken roysterer celebrated in the saddle, but there was an ominous, tragic suggestion in the irregularity of the hoof-beats as of an exhausted, failing beast urged on by ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... undeserved and unjust, Job had the audacity to say to God: "O Lord of the world, Thou didst create the ox with cloven feet and the ass with unparted hoof, Thou hast created Paradise and hell, Thou createst the righteous and also the wicked. There is none to hinder, Thou canst do as seemeth good in Thy sight." The friends of Job replied: "It is true, God hath created the evil inclination, but He hath also given man the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... silken fleece What stately time she paced along: Each heartsome hoof-stroke wrought increase Of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... he could do aught but groan and rub his hurts, I heard the sound of approaching hoof-strokes and, turning, beheld a lady bravely mounted who galloped furiously towards us down the avenue. When almost upon us she swung her powerful beast aside and, checking him with strong wrist, sat looking down at me from the shade of her ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... lake to refresh themselves in the waters, for the greatness of the heat; and when the kine had returned from the lake, the binding of the leather satchel containing the gospel-book caught about the hoof of a cow, and so the cow dragged the book-satchel on her hoof as she came to land. And the gospel-book was found in the rotten leather satchel, perfectly dry and clean, without any moisture, as though it had been preserved in a book-case. ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... This was the first time he had intruded upon her solitary refuge. When Nelly climbed the ascent, and saw the mansion house, with its encumbered court, she could distinguish the sharp sound of a horse's hoof. Its rider was already out of sight on the bridle-road. Michael Armstrong, the laird's man, was mounting his own nag; Wat Pringle, the grieve, and other farm folk, stood looking after the vanished traveller; ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... storm-cloud, the heathen came down upon the Christian few, the thunder of hoof-beats waked the echoes of Roncesvalles, and the hard earth reeled with ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... heedless little one to follow. She is thinking only of him; and now you see her feet free to take care of themselves. As she rises over the big windfall, they hang from the ankle joints, limp as a glove out of which the hand has been drawn, yet seeming to wait and watch. One hoof touches a twig; like lightning it spreads and drops, after running for the smallest fraction of a second along the obstacle to know whether to relax or stiffen, or rise or fall to meet it. Just before she strikes the ground on the down plunge, see the wonderful hind hoofs ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of gallants which approach To kiss thy hand from out the coach; That fleet of lackeys which do run Before thy swift postillion; Those strong-hoof'd mules which we behold Rein'd in with purple, pearl, and gold, And shod with silver, prove to be The drawers of the axletree. Thy wife, thy children, and the state Of Persian looms and antique plate; All these, and more, shall then afford No joy to thee, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... a hoof, which Mrs. Cahill touched gingerly. She was not used to shaking hands with horses. Teddy and Phil, however, each grasped the pony's extended foot, giving it a good shake, after which Phil thrust a lump of sugar into ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... antelopes anchored in the shade; hartebeest, impala, and roan after their kind. They heard the click of horn and the stamp of hoof, but troubled not. They passed the place where a leopard lay asleep up a tree, and saw a devil's whip of a ten-foot mamba snake—and the bite of that same is a sixty-second short cut to the grave—flee ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... rhetoricians he remains serene, moderate; his voice is for the more part subdued; in its most emotional abandonments there is a dry undertone, almost harsh. He quells disorder with a look, with a word, with a sharp touch of the bell. The cloven hoof of the Socialist peeps out from a little group. At once "The Congress shall be captured by no party!" And the Congress is ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... nothing. As he came to the kloof he was afraid of something in front of him. He said he felt like a man in grave-clothes. So he turned, and then the ... whatever it was . . . seemed to come after him; so he galloped and galloped as hard as the horse could lay hoof to the earth, and prayed till his heart nearly burst. And then, not knowing where he was going, he jumped the wall and came among us. We were all silent when he ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... bone" had long since sunk in the effort; as it was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's chamfrain more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts of the noble animal showed his distress; each instant they became more loud and frequent; when his hoof touched the strand, "the horse and his rider" stood once again in ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... not appear to have been lately inhabited. The game continues abundant: we killed the largest male elk we have yet seen; on placing it in its natural erect position, we found that it measured five feet three inches from the point of the hoof to the top of the shoulder. The antelopes are yet lean and the females are with young: this fleet and quick-sighted animal is generally the victim of its curiosity: when they first see the hunters they run with great velocity; if he lies down on the ground and lifts up his arm, his ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... the great caribou migration. The ground was tramped like a barnyard, in wide roads, by vast herds of deer, all going to the eastward. There must have been thousands of them in the bands. Most of the hoof marks were not above a day or two old and had all been made since the last rain had fallen, as was evidenced by freshly turned earth and newly tramped vegetation. We saw none of the animals, however, and there were ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... a hound of Hindustan had struck a Euzufzai, Wherefore they spat upon his face and led him out to die. It chanced the King went forth that hour when throat was bared to knife; The Kaffir grovelled under-hoof and ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... how them fellers livin' down ter the Landin' might act. Thar's a lawyer thar named Haines, as sharp as a steel trap, who tended ter all the ol' Jedge's business, an' Joe he don't wanter run foul o' him. Thet's why we tied up ter the shore below town, in the mouth o' thet crick, an' then hed ter hoof it up yere in the dark. Of course we got the law with us, but we wanter pull this job off an' not stir up ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... up Nora, and then climbed on to the little steed himself; and as soon as they were properly seated the little man said "swish," and away went the steed, galloping over the sea without wetting hair or hoof. But fast as he galloped the nine little pipers were always ahead of him, although they seemed to be going only at a walking pace. When at last he came up rather close to the hindmost of them the nine little pipers ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... spurred his horse into a gallop. When we next paused to listen, the hoof-beats were not audible, and we relaxed our pace. Then we heard them again. Sapt jumped down and laid his ear to ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... like, live underground, whence they contract a certain unpleasant smell; or because their flesh, through being too moist or too dry, engenders corrupt humors in the human body. Hence they were forbidden to eat the flesh of flat-footed animals, i.e. animals having an uncloven hoof, on account of their earthiness; and in like manner they were forbidden to eat the flesh of animals that have many clefts in their feet, because such are very fierce and their flesh is very dry, such as the flesh of lions and the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... intervals, each behind its trim lawn, or old-fashioned flower-garden, relieved, even in the darkness, against a great rear-wood screen of lofty trees. Up the driveway of one of these he turned, his horse's hoof-beats dropping clear and sharp on the hard macadam. He reined up at the house and rapped a loud tattoo with the stock of his whip on a ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... making the music which is itself the charm and terror of things; and when a glen invites our visiting footsteps, fancy that Pan leads us thither with a gracious tremolo; or when our hearts quail at the thunder of the cataract, tell ourselves that he has stamped his hoof in ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... porcelain-lined pitcher, and other miscellaneous pieces of silver used for table service. The pieces of the tea and coffee service are mounted on four feet that are fastened to the bowl with cattle heads with branched horns. Each foot stands on a cloven hoof. The knob of each of the pots is a tiny horse jumping over a ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... mount Olympus, in imitation of Hercules, whom he proposed to himself as a model in this action. Another time having seized a bull by one of his hinder legs, the beast could not get loose without leaving his hoof in his hands. He could hold a chariot behind, while the coachman whipt his horses in vain to make them go forward. Darius Nothus, king of Persia, hearing of his prodigious strength, was desirous ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Sometimes he revolved once more his favourite plan of an Epic poem, and "Edward the Black Prince" loomed for a season before him as its hero. Sometimes he looked up with an ambitious eye to Homer, and we see his hand "pawing" like the hoof of the war-horse in Job, as he smelled his battle afar off, and panted to do for Achilles and Hector what he had done for Turnus and AEneas. He meant to have turned the "Iliad" into blank verse; but, after all, translated the only book of it which he ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... "She was a cow, and I want pay for her." "How much?" asked the manager. "Two hundred dollars!" replied the farmer. "Now look here," said the manager, "how much did the cow weigh?" "About four hundred, I suppose," said the farmer. "And we will say that beef is worth ten cents a pound on the hoof." "It's worth a heap more than that on the cow-catcher!" replied the indignant farmer. "But we'll call it that, what then? That makes forty dollars, shall I give you a cheque for forty dollars?" "I tell you I want two hundred dollars," persisted the farmer. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... suppression of its privileges. It was written, to all appearances, at a later date, and is inferior in style. The Goliardi had already, we learn from it, exchanged poverty for luxury. Instead of tramping on the hard hoof, they moved with a retinue of mounted servants. We seem to trace in the lament a change from habits of simple vagabondage to professional dependence, as minstrels and secretaries, upon men of rank in Church and State, which came over the Goliardic class. This poem, it may be mentioned, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... pleasantest to his rider.... Such impressions'—those of touch—'being in the neurotomized subject, so far as regards the feeling of the foot, altogether wanting, a bold, fearless projection of the limb in action will be the consequence, followed by a putting down of the hoof flat upon the ground, as though it were a block, creating a sensation alike unpleasant ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... dramatist or a novelist. If he is consistent the most portentous human tragedy must seem to him only a tiny gasp for breath, the most delightful human comedy only a tiny flutter of joy. Against a background of suns dying on the other side of Aldebaran any mole trodden upon by some casual hoof may appear as significant a personage as an Oedipus or a Lear in his last agony. To be a novelist or dramatist at all such a cosmic philosopher must contract his vision to the little island we inhabit, must adjust his interest ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... produce 1 pound increase in the live-weight of the animals fed, and if they bring 6 cents a pound on the hoof, the gross returns aggregate $107.50 from the four acres, barring losses from accidents, animal ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... hearers glanced approvingly at one another now and then, but no one spoke or moved. Suddenly they were aware that a new mood had crept into the notes. Quick, sharp flashes of fear alternated with passages of clear, sunlit strength, and underneath the changing melody galloping hoof-beats rose and fell. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... knocking, awoke completely, and remembered everything. The cold cart was his dead and frozen master lying upon him. And the knock was produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge with his hoof. ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... soldiers, who perhaps would have obeyed them, to arrest the agent, and if the soldiers had disobeyed, should have allowed themselves to be formally dragged to prison, so that the people could see, under their own eyes, out in the open street, the filthy hoof of the coup d'etat trampling upon ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... elbows planted on the unpainted sill, and watched the trail listlessly. Her eyes were big and wistful, like a hurt child's, and her cheeks were not red as usual, nor even pink. But the trail lay again brown, and silent, and lonesome, with no quick hoof-beats to send the dust ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags ...
— The One Hoss Shay - With its Companion Poems How the Old Horse Won the Bet & - The Broomstick Train • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man's chest. It was gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large, sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise—a cruel kick from the horse's hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in the wheel and turned round with it for ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... elephants, although, having short legs, they were of a very different height, indeed, their bellies almost sweep the ground as they walk. Their feet are constructed in a very curious manner, to enable them to walk among the reeds and over the mud, as also to swim with ease. The hoof is divided into four short unconnected toes, which they can spread out like the feet of the camel when moving over the soft mud, or when swimming. The skin, which is almost entirely hairless, except in a few spots, is of a yellowish colour, the lower part assuming ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... rising from the highroad close to the stream, and a quaint old Maryland cabriolet, drawn by a venerable gray horse, is slowly coming around the bend. The soldiers grouped about the gateway, back at the farmhouse, turn and look curiously towards the hollow-sounding hoof-beats, but neither the colonel nor his junior officer seems to notice them. Abbot's thoughts are evidently far away, and he makes no reply. The surgeon who sanctions his return to field duty yet a while would, to all appearances, be guilty of a professional blunder. The lieutenant's ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... now came from the front. There were shoutings and confusion, hoof-beats and desultory cheers. Away to the rear, in the sleeping camp, were a singing of bugles and grumble of drums. Pushing through the thickets on either side the roads came the Federal pickets, in full retreat, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... sick-call. There were, of course, a hundred explanations from as many amateurs as to the cause of the accident. Then a quiet farmer, who suspected something, found a long needle driven deep into the hoof. It had gone deeper and deeper as the action of the horse forced it, until it touched the quick, and the horse ran dead lame. The wound festered, and the animal had to be strung up with leather bands to the roof of his stable for three months. Father Letheby felt the matter acutely; ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... again alighted within an inch of my former distance. And once again, Will Peake landed in my very hoof- marks. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... outstripped all his companions, like Fitz James, and is the only one in at the death. To commemorate his triumph he frames a basin for the spring whose waters were stirred by his victim's dying breath; he plants three stone pillars to mark the creature's hoof-prints in its marvellous leap from the mountain to the springside; and he builds a pleasure house and an arbour where he comes with his paramour to make merry in the summer days. But Nature sets her seal of condemnation upon the cruelty and vainglory of man. "The spot is curst"; no flowers ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... spread the dusky heavens, Silent below us lay the smoky vale, Silent beyond, the dreadful crest of hills. Anon the neigh of horse, a sentry's call, Or rapid hoof-beats of a flying steed Bearing an aid and orders, broke the dread, Portentous silence. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... usually loath to return homeward, now rushed together, and, without waiting for their keepers, deserted their pasturage and ran towards the barn. The bull dug up the ground with his hoof and ploughed it with his horns, frightening all the herd with his ill-omened bellowing; the cow kept raising her large eyes to the sky, opening her mouth in wonder, and lowing deeply. But the boar lagged behind, fretting and gnashing his teeth, and stole ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... thud-thud of an unseen horse, walking slowly somewhere out upon the prairie, brought him up with a jerk. He peered into the moonlight in a vain effort to see. Placing his ear to the ground he caught the sound again and after a moment made out that the hoof beats were coming slowly toward ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... his repeater into the darkness; but the clatter of hoof beats down the dry gravel bed ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... with fog that one could scarcely see a cow's length across a field. Every blade, twig, bracken-frond, and hoof-print carried water, and the air was filled with the noise of rushing ditches and field-drains, all delivering to the brook below. A week's November rain on water-logged land had gorged her to full flood, and she ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... thinking of turning in. He was beginning to fell a little queer. He was thinking of the sexton, and could not get the fixed features of the dead man out of his head, when he heard the sharp though distant ring of a horse's hoof upon the frozen road. Tom's instinct apprized him of the approach of a guest to the George and Dragon. His experienced ear told him that the horseman was approaching by the Dardale road, which, after crossing ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... brutal and, amid This ripening world, suggest a lion-hunt And lion's-vengeance for the wrongs men did And do now, though the spears are getting blunt. We only call, because the sight and proof Of lion-strength hurts nothing; and to show A lion-heart, and measure paw with hoof, Helps something, even, and will instruct a foe As well as the onslaught, how to stand aloof: Or else the world gets past the mere brute blow Or given or taken. Children use the fist Until they are of age to use the brain; And ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... supper customer! I'll brain you! I had rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof, without a doss to sleep on—a town pauper, done on the vag—than to have made been scurvy in the sight of that child and deserve his words ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... well as the latest, of the agents of destruction. In our island various cherished antiquities have been often most unnecessarily swept away in constructing these race-courses for the daily rush and career of the iron horse. His rough and ponderous hoof, for example, has kicked down, at one extremity of a railway connected with Edinburgh (marvellously and righteously to the dispeace of the whole city), that fine old specimen of Scottish Second-Pointed architecture, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... my horse's hoof striking a stone caused the three men to look up. One was Connor, one was his helper, and the other, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... from the doze into which I had fallen by the sound of rapid hoof-beats down the road. We listened to them in silence, as they drew near and nearer. I did not doubt it was my father, for few others ever rode our way. He had been from home all day, as he frequently was of late, only he did not usually return so early ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... now any one saying that he was tipsy would have maligned him. But he was flushed with much wine, and he was a man whose arrogance in that condition was apt to become extreme. "In vino veritas!" The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest. Mr. Bonteen looked Phineas full in the face a second or two before he answered, and then said,—quite aloud—"You have ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... packsaddle. He appeared in a moment tugging at the halter. He could only say: "Come! Come! Come! Queek! Queek! " They slid hurriedly down a bank to the road and started to do again that which they had accomplished with considerable expenditure of physical power during the day. The hoof beats of the cavalry had already died away and the mountains shadowed them in lonely silence. They were the rear ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... rest and their labor To the hoof-beaten road do they gather? Why turns every one to his neighbor The jubilant tidings to hear? Thou know'st whence he comes, wretched father? And thou long'st for his news, hapless mother? In fight brother fell upon brother! These terrible ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... very curious scene. A horse was standing fixed in a kind of stocks, a machine for holding animals fast while they were being shod. But it (the horse) had only three legs: close by stood a Bishop, or mitred Abbot, holding the horse's missing fore quarter, on the hoof of which a smith was nailing a shoe. Of course the power which had so easily removed a leg would as easily ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... came the hoof-beats. The birds were plucking at their feathers with an unconcern all too apparent. They ruffled their wings and preened their plumage, a sure indication of satisfaction. One of the galloping horses slackened its gait. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... barren ridges began to appear, their white mossy sides marked by caribou trails which formed a network over the country we were passing through, and all were freshly cut with hoof marks. Every day there were herds or single deer to be seen along the way, and at a number of points we passed long piles of whitened antlers. Other game too, ducks, geese, and ptarmigan had become plentiful since we entered the caribou country, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... however, is easy. The cow and her products can minister to all sacrifices. In the case of those that are able, full libations of clarified butter, of milk, and of curds, are sufficient to enable them to perform whatever sacrifice they wish. As regards those that are poor, the dust of a cow's hoof and the water in which a cow's tail and horns have been washed, are quite sufficient to enable them to perform their sacrifices. Purnahuti should not, I think, be taken as different from clarified ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... needs no more proof My chaunt I concludes, and shall now pad the hoof; [5] So nobles and gents, lug your counterfeits out, I'll take brums or cut ones, and thank you to ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer |
