"Horny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... doesn't get a name like that for just parting his hair nice," Atkinson remarked. "He told me to stretch 'em"—a horny thumb jerked towards the workmen—"and you'll see some real work hereabouts for the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... a sudden, not ten yards from us; it was that which made us start so. We noted the two men distinctly, and, waiting until the light was out again, we then advanced, and Schillie touching one and I the other, we took hold of some hard horny hands, and made the signal by shaking the ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... we should chuse an old Boar, for the older he is, the more horny will the Brawn be: We must provide for this use a Frank, as the Farmers call it, which must be built very strong to keep the Boar in. The figure of the Frank should be somewhat like a Dog-Kennel, a little longer than the Boar, which we put up so close on the Sides that the Boar cannot turn about ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... coast. The water fell two feet at this place during the night. Our nets produced a great variety of fish, namely, a salmon-trout, some round fish, tittameg, bleak, star-fish, several herrings, and a flat fish resembling plaice, but covered on the back with horny excrescences. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... dead, then took a forked stick and held it up to view. It had beautiful diamond markings of dark- colors on cinnamon-red ground. The belly was of creamy white, and the tail had eight rattles attached to it by means of a peculiar fibrous ribbon. These rattles seemed to be of dry horny skin that made the buzz-sound when shaken. The head had been so crushed open that Polly could easily show the curious girls the poison-fangs which were hinged to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... suspicion fastened on a farmer who was working his plow. Nothing was found on him. Next day the same thing happened and again the watch was set. This time our efforts were rewarded; the scout saw the farmer shoot and throw the rifle down. He reported to the officer and we went over. The horny-handed son of toil was very busy at the plow as he saw us coming. He couldn't speak English. The officer sent to the nearest French battery and presently a French soldier came who interpreted the officer's questions and the man's replies. He knew nothing, whatever, he ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... a Hogg, I found them to be first a hard transparent horny substance, without the least appearance of pores or holes in it; and this I try'd with the greatest care I was able, cutting many of them with a very sharp Razor, so that they appear'd, even in the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... to the lizards, the cold-blooded life of Earth? Was this rocky exterior merely a horny shell like that of a turtle? No. Horn is horn and rock is rock. The ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... through one of the fishers that pressed her, and then thrust the body towards the turtle. The great neck swooped towards it; the long slimy feelers which protruded from its head quivered and snuffled; and then the horny green jaws crunched on it, and drew it ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... "Thkoo Wahkan", Chapter VI. The Ta-sha-ke—literally, "Deer-hoofs"—is a rattle made by hanging the hard segments of deer-hoofs to a wooden rod a foot long—about an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapering to a point at the other. The clashing of these horny bits makes a sharp, shrill sound something like distant sleigh-bells. In their incantations over the sick they sometimes use ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... their brood. They stopped plucking fruits with their long beaks and tossing them into their throats and flew heavily to their nesting tree. The spectacle that greeted their eyes filled them with consternation. They rattled and clattered their horny mandibles and yelped dog-like while they swung about the branches like the accomplished acrobats they were. Their cries of distress brought others of their tribe from a distance who lent their voices to the din until the treetops were filled with ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... Clodio while bathing in that river. In time she gave birth to a child, more monster than man, the spine being covered with bristles, fingers and toes webbed, eyes covered with a film, and thighs and legs horny with large shining scales. Clodio, though aware of the real paternity of this creature, adopted it as his own son, as did King Minos in the case of the Minotaur, giving him the name Merovig from his piscatory origin. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... tremble at My power of place And lordly sway,— I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day— Yield me his horny palm to hold, And I'll not pray For gold;— The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth— The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. And so I reach, Dear Lord, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... discussion. "Yes, madame/," said Labassandre, addressing Charlotte; "the man of the future, the coming man, is the mechanic. Rank has had its day, the middle classes theirs, and now it is the workman's turn. You may to-day despise his horny hands, in twenty years he will lead ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... a dream at this sudden horror; but he kept his senses; once or twice the great beast moved, and drummed on the pavement with a horny paw. So Paullinus drew the prostrate body of the priest outside the screen and closed the door. Then he went with swift steps out of the temple and to the water's edge; he drew up a little water ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the hill and across the next field, making for a spot some distance ahead of the procession. As it passed him, he joined the chief mourner, who went plodding on with his arms hanging by his sides. Creeping close up to him, he slid his little soft hand into the great horny hand of the peasant. Instinctively the big hand closed upon the small one, and the weather-beaten face of a man of fifty looked down on the boy. Not a word was said between them. They walked on, hand ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the usual tympanic pods of its kind—a band of muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior—by which it could make buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly green plant, it produced oxygen, but that, instead of releasing it, it stored the gas in spongy compartments within its horny shell, using it to support an animal-like tissue combustion to keep its vitals from freezing during ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... brain-storm,—fairly bubbling with dimples, fairly foaming with curls,—light-footed, light-hearted, most ecstatically light-headed, she tripped down into the sunshine as though the great, harsh, granite steps that marked her descent were nothing more nor less than a gigantic, old, horny-fingered hand passing her blithely out to some ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of ten thousand—ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle —there isn't one who is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was of an uproar with the din of cursing, howling, and hard blows. For my own lot I had old Simon to deal with, as I knew at once by the cold, greasy feel of his leathern jerkin, he being enraged to make me his prisoner for the ill I had done him. Hooking his horny fingers about my throat, he clung to me like any wildcat; but stumbling, shortly, over two who were rolling on the floor, we went down both with a crack, and with such violence that he, being undermost, was stunned by the fall. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... chromated gelatine which has not been acted on by light to swell up in lukewarm water, and to become tacky, so that in this condition it can retain powdered color which had been dusted on it. Wherever, however, the chromated gelatine has been acted on by light, the surface becomes horny, undergoes no change in warm water, and loses all sign of tackiness. In this process absolute opacity in the lines of the original drawing is by no means necessary, for it reproduces gray, half-tone lines just as well as it does black ones. Pencil drawings can also be copied, and in this lies ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... nap in the chimney corner, and, finding himself chilled through all his old, rheumatic bones, bent over the dying embers, pushed together the blackened and half-burned "chunks," and blew them until they glowed. Then, hitching his stool close into the ashes, he spread his horny palms to the blaze, and basked in its genial warmth as it crackled up the wide chimney. Reaching his pipe from its nook, he filled it, dipped it skillfully in the coals so as to ignite without wasting the precious weed, and drew a long whiff by way of ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... then soon be added to the mental anguish of dread. For, once the snake's horny snout grazed the top of his head, he would be forced to keep his head raised, on penalty of being pierced by the fangs if he ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... every social condition of life: some of them were the most prominent men in the professional, social, and political life of their States; owners of great estates, employing many slaves; and thousands of them, horny-handed sons of toil, earning their daily bread by their daily labor, who never owned a slave ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... about, he followed me at such a furious pace for several hundred yards, with his horrid horny snout within a few yards of my horse's tail, that I ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... gives form and shape to its artistic conceptions, by which it gives reality to the mandates of its will, by which it exercises the dominion that God conceded to man over all other creatures. The rough, strong, sinewy, horny hand, it may be, of a laborer, a workman, testifies nobly to this dominion, but on its rudest and least intellectual side. The hands of Pepita, on the contrary, transparent almost, like alabaster, but rosy-hued, and in which one can almost see the pure and subtle blood circulate that ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... of the Cuttle-fish, it should be observed, are fixed in the body because there is no head to which they can be articulated. They are of horny substance, and resemble the bill of a parrot. They are in the centre of the under part of the body, surrounded by the arms. By means of these parts, the shell-fish which are taken for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... flight more graceful, never more perfectly controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses, and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle's horny back is all ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... sphere of grovelling sympathies— Has knocked himself full-butt, with blundering trouble, Against a mountain he can neither double Nor ever hope to scale. So like a free, Pert, self-conceited scarabaeus, he Takes it into his horny head to swear There's no such ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... he loathlier found me, bairn in the burg, than his birthright sons, Herebeald and Haethcyn and Hygelac mine. For the eldest of these, by unmeet chance, by kinsman's deed, was the death-bed strewn, when Haethcyn killed him with horny bow, his own dear liege laid low with an arrow, missed the mark and his mate shot down, one brother the other, with bloody shaft. A feeless fight, {32b} and a fearful sin, horror to Hrethel; yet, hard as it was, unavenged must the atheling die! Too awful ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... mixed with mastic varnish has been, though not very recently, used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject, believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without much reflection. A new varnish has appeared, "Bentley's." We believe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... of a dark green colour in the early season; later it becomes grey, with an exudation; the leaves are arranged in rosette form, having stout stalks, channelled or folded on the upper surface; there are three deep divisions, and others less cut; the segments are subulate, bent back and tipped with horny mucrones, whence its specific name; these horn-like points are bent under, which, together with their transparency, renders them all but invisible; they can, however, be clearly seen if brought near the eye and looked for on the under side of the foliage. The leaves ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... his dank black hair ferociously, standing it on end with horny fingers. "I loved her, Lem Crabbe," he continued hoarsely. "I loved her, that I know! And ye can let that devilish grin ride on yer lips when I say it and I don't give a hell; but—but if ye say that she didn't love me, if ye so much as smile when I say that she died ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... around a corner of the cabin, advancing hesitatingly. To Helen they all looked alike, tall, awkward, with brown faces and big hands. When Colonel Zane cheerily cried out to them, they stumbled forward with evident embarrassment, each literally crushing Helen's hand in his horny palm. Afterward they leaned on the rail and stole glances ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... occurs, the patient generally hastening the process by his own operation, or by seeking surgical treatment. A dry scab forms at the furrow, and when picked and repicked constantly re-forms, being composed of horny desquamation or necrosis. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... skin, after being water-proofed, is finished with hard varnishes, and then presents a solid, perfectly smooth, and horny surface to the action of the water, unbroken by joint, lap, or seam. This surface admits of being polished as smooth as a coach-panel or a mirror. Unlike wood, it has no grain to be cracked or split, it never shrinks, and, paper being one of the best of non-conductors, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... ganoid order all the fishes that are covered, whatever the consistency of their skeleton, by a continuous or nearly continuous armor of enamelled bone, or by great bony plates that lock into each other at their edges. Out of the remaining fishes,—those covered with scales of a horny substance, and which now comprise nearly nine tenths of the whole class,—he erected two orders more,—a Ctenoid order, consisting of fishes whose scales, like those of the perch, are pectinated at their lower edges like the teeth of a comb, and a Cycloid order, composed of fishes ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... her skin. Blow after blow he struck, but they only served to increase her fury, till, gathering all her strength together, she wound her great tail about his body, pressing him close against her horny bosom. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose, however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel, hard rubber, and celluloid have ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the manly purchase of heel, and the waving line of beauty which here distinguishes shin-bones. There were monstrous studs upon a glorious expanse of 'biled' shirt; a small investment of cheap, tawdry rings set off the chimpanzee-like fingers; and, often enough, gloves invested the hands, whose horny, reticulated skin reminded me of the black fowl, or the scaly feet of African cranes pacing at ease over the burning sands. Each dandy had his badine upon whose nice conduct he prided himself; the toothpick was as omnipresent as the crutch, nor was the 'quizzing-glass' quite absent. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... pride. This project is nothing more nor less than the opening of a region of waste country which an all-wise Creator has permitted to slumber for ages, for no less purpose than to reserve it to the horny-handed son of toil of our glorious country. It will awaken to the clarion call of our wealth, our brains, and our genius." He then mentioned Corrigan and the Midland grant—another reservation of Providence, which a credulous and asinine Congress ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... described the wisdom of this provision, to enable the animal to clear its way in the snow in search of its food below it; but Dr. Rae was able entirely to overset this theory, by stating that the whole horny appendages of this deer are always shed before any snow makes its ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... murmured, smearing his dirty forehead with a horny hand in the effort of his task. Then he brightened. "Why, gener'ly speakin'," he went on, with sudden enthusiasm, "they ain't much better'n skippin' sheep. Y' see they want to but darsent. So—wal—they jest set me up to ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... way, but are hovering around her on all sides in a dangerous proximity. Like the poet, she looks not forward nor behind. If they are beyond reach, very well; if they are not, all the same; scratch, scratch, scratch in the soil goes her great, strong, horny claw, and up flies a cloud of dust, and away goes a poor unfortunate, whirling involuntary somersets through the air without the least warning. She is a living monument of the mischief that may be done by giving undue prominence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the hoarse stag, l. 321. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... with which she covered Gay's pink neck and arms. These things of beauty so wrought upon the child's excitable nature that she could hardly keep still long enough to have her hair curled; and Samantha, as the shining rings dropped off her horny forefinger, was wrestling with the Evil One, in the shape of a little box of jewelry that she had found with the clothing. She knew that the wish was a vicious one, and that such gewgaws were out of place on a little pauper just taken in for ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... now, my little horny one, you have fought a brave fight; your reward is coming. Because your soul has been made beautiful by your suffering, I will give you a body blazing with such beauty as shall make all stand in adoration when you pass." Then Mother Earth said, "Our little one shall ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... wash it well in several waters. Chop up the upper and under shells with a cleaver; put them with the fins into a large saucepan; cover them with boiling water; let stand ten minutes; drain and rub off the horny, scaly particles, with ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... didn't do anything else; and say, when I think of them days they seem like a mince-pie dream. We did our handsomest to make those Nutmeggers believe that they needed Rajah in their business, that he would be handy to have around the place. But they couldn't see it. We argued with about fifty horny-handed plow-pushers, showin' 'em how Rajah could pull more'n a string of oxen a block long, and could be let out for stump-digging in summer, or as a snow-plough in winter. We tried liverymen, storekeepers, summer cottagers; but the nearest ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... moments hesitation, the soldier brushed his horny hand across his eyes, and said to the orphans in a faltering voice, whilst he pointed to the old oak beside them: "I shall make you sad, my poor children: and yet what I'm going to tell you has something sacred in it. Well, eighteen years ago, on the eve of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with me in deriving variations from germinal selection will regard that process as an essential aid towards explaining the selection of distinctive courtship-characters, such as coloured spots, decorative feathers, horny outgrowths in birds and reptiles, combs, feather-tufts, and the like, since the beginnings of these would be presented with relative frequency in the struggle between the determinants within the germ-plasm. The process of transmission of decorative feathers to the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... who smelled of wine, had a bulbous nose and was so deaf that it took her several seconds to make him understand where she wanted to go. When finally he grasped the address, he tapped his most conspicuous feature with a horny finger, and, his engine having by this time stopped, descended with creaks and groans to crank it up. He was so long over the operation that she began to be alarmed. However, he was not drunk, only senile. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... own little white velvet-like hand, with the wedding ring on its fourth finger, into the middle of Venus's hard and horny palm, in the sweetest manner possible; reminding all around her that she was an old friend, and that she knew all the good qualities of every one who pressed forward to greet her, and to ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... him a piece of that national cheese of which the smell may almost be heard, each had lately received a thick, irregularly-shaped hunch of dark bread, and they had one pot of beer and one salt-cellar amongst them. They all had honest German faces, honest blue eyes, horny hands and round shoulders. Another table, in a far corner, was occupied by a poorly-dressed old woman in black, dusty and evidently tired. A covered basket stood on a chair at her elbow, she was eating an ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the conviction now strong upon me—"it may be that within that metallic shell is an organic body, something soft—animal, as there is within the horny carapace of the turtle, the nacreous valves of the oyster, the shells of the crustaceans—it may be that even their inner ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... with the innumerable perils of outlawed flags and preying navies; so that, with all his love of the sea, the mariner's true goal was home port and a cozy corner in the familiar inn. There, with a cup of gin or mulled wine at his elbow and the bowl of a Holland clay propped in a horny fist, he might listen tranquilly to the sobbing of the tempest in the gaping chimney. What if the night voiced its pains shrewdly, walls encompassed him; what if its frozen tears melted on the panes or smoked on the trampled threshold, glowing logs sent ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... layers that form the skin are the epidermis and the derma. The cells of the outer layer or epidermis are of two kinds. The superficial portion is formed by horny, flattened cells and the deeper by softer cells. This layer of the skin varies greatly in thickness in the different species. The derma is composed of some muscular fibres interwoven with the connective-tissue fibres. It contains the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... long-vanished comeliness shall on that day rest on faces that were here haggard with anxiety, and pinched with penury and years. There will be no more palsied hands, no more scattered grey hairs, no more dim and horny eyes, no more stiffened muscles and slow throbbing hearts. 'It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.' It is sown in decaying old age, it is raised in immortal youth. His servants shall stand in that day among 'the young-eyed cherubim,' and be like them for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky and watching a pileated woodpecker at work on a dead tulip-bough that seemed to afford a great number of dainty morsels of food. There were streaks of hard wood through the rotten, and whenever his great horny beak struck one of these it would sound as loud and clear as the blow of a carpenter's hammer. This fine bird is almost extinct now, having totally disappeared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... a common thing to see them playing together, the old sailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of his horny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure he was playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nut trees with cries of "Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!" He entered into all their amusements just as one of themselves. On high and rare occasions Emmeline would ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... spent the afternoon doctoring the poultry. To my surprise every hen and chicken I caught had "pip," a horny substance under the tongue and rather hard to get off. I operated on nearly thirty. The fowls are rather a trouble, from their habit of getting into all sorts of impossible places. The other day I found a hen on the pillow and her chickens on the ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... upon the upper mandible, and they are so placed in the shell that this point is in immediate contact with its inner surface; as soon as they are fully developed and begin to struggle to free themselves, the horny growth "pips" the shell. Their efforts then continue till their prison walls are completely sundered and the bird is free. This process is rendered the more easy by the fact that toward the last the shell becomes very rotten; the acids that are generated ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... through a swan's bone without applying her lips to the cup. She may eat no fresh meat or fish except the flesh of the porcupine. She may not undress, but sleeps with all her clothes on, even her mittens. In her socks she wears, next to the skin, the horny soles cut from the feet of a porcupine, in order that for the rest of her life her shoes may never wear out. Round her waist she wears a cord to which are tied the heads of femurs of a porcupine; because of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... looking turtle," Rose said. "See how high up it is." None of them had ever seen a wood tortoise before, and the box-like, horny shell was not like that of the little mud-turtles in Rainbow River or the snapping turtle Laddie had found at ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... nothing. Lots of dead ones stare in that silly way. It depends upon where they were hit. I was all through the Peninsula; that's how I know. [She covers the horny gaze of the man. Shouts and louder discharges are ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny hand; "I don't see why you should not be hung. It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After all, we don't wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating yourself from ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... South, Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. Where are the merry birds?—Away, away, On panting wings through the inclement skies, Lest owls should prey Undazzled at noonday, And tear with horny ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... men within the tree. And surely this thing did prove to be; for there came very quick, a great and ugly thing, that had an ugly way of putting down the feet, and did have seven feet to each side, which was very strange; and the back was as that it were horny, and the belly of the thing did seem to brush heavy upon the earth, and it grunted, as it went, and shook the earth with the weight of it; so that a monstrous noise came from it, upon so hasty a journey. And I did wot that it was not such a thing as did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... saltwater fishes come up into the rivers in order to lay their eggs where they can alone find the requisites for their development. Insects lay their eggs in the most varied kinds of situations,—in sand, on leaves, under the hides and horny substances of other animals; they often select the spot where the larva will be able most readily to find its future sustenance, as in autumn upon the trees that will open first in the coming spring, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... put a big, brown, horny hand on Aileen's arm. She had listened to his plea not unmoved—really more or less softened—because of the hopelessness of it. She could not give up Cowperwood. Her father just did not understand. He did not know what ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... trembled. There was a reason for that. The tall, slender man had gained the upper hand. He was stretched across the prone form of his antagonist, his slim, horny hands even now gliding toward the other's throat. And, right there, Johnny had decided to draw the line. He was not going to allow himself to witness the strangling of a man. That wasn't his idea of fighting. He would end the fight, even at the expense ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... are exceedingly vigorous and poetic; some to our taste not so much so. Note the epithets in "the lank wolf," "the wan raven," "bird greedy for slaughter," "the dewy-winged eagle," "dusky-coated," "crooked-beaked," "horny-beaked," "the maid, fair-cheeked," "curly-locked," "elf-bright." To the Anglo-Saxon poet, much that we call metaphorical was scarcely more than literal statement. As the object pictured itself to his responsive imagination, he expressed it with what was to him a direct realism. His lines are filled ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I can't allow you to do things like that. What on earth put it in your head? Work like that is only for horny hands." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... crocodile PRETENDED to be very dead, but every one knew that as soon as it grew dark, the crocodile came to life again, and padded noiselessly about the passage on its scaly paws seeking for its prey, with its great cruel jaws snapping, its fierce teeth gleaming, and its horny tail lashing savagely from side to side. It was also a matter of common knowledge that the favourite article of diet of crocodiles was a little boy with bare legs in a white suit. Even should one be fortunate enough to escape the crocodile's jaws, there were ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... with his nasal, twangy buzz! "Waiow! Wha-a-ar are ye?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive onslaught against the window-pane, which betokens his satisfied quest, is out again at the window with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his powerful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... married state, would set herself down by some shy, horny-fisted fellow, all nose and knuckles. She would draw him away from his consciousness of the Adam's apple in his throat (which he privately felt every one must be looking at) and give him a good ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... their own that all the larger flowers there have been developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like honey-collector. In most parrots the mouth is dry and the tongue horny; but in the lories it is moist and much more like the same organ in the humming-birds and sun-birds. The prevalence of very large and brilliantly coloured flowers in the Malayan region must be set down for the most part to the selective action of these aesthetic and colour-loving little ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth. He chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers, and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is no grave anywhere ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... on edge." Eve made answer, "As my teeth were set on edge, so may the teeth of all living beings be set on edge."[68] The first result was that Adam and Eve became naked. Before, their bodies had been overlaid with a horny skin, and enveloped with the cloud of glory. No sooner had they violated the command given them than the cloud of glory and the horny skin dropped from them, and they stood there in their nakedness, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... at least as fast as a race horse," decided the aviator after studying the swift evolutions of the scaly chargers. To his ears came the curious dry scrape and rattle of their horny claws on the stone ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... altar. They wrought out in this work of art their vision of the old-worn pilgrim way of life, with its vicissitude and care, the level of mortality to which all are brought at last by death, and the winged, fluttering hope of man. Always a journey with its horny staff and wallet, life is sometimes a battle needing a spear, but for him who walks uprightly by the plumb-line of rectitude, there is a true and ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of a movement in every cot. Eyes were all front, gazing in the direction of a golden-haired beauty, who blushed a deep pink when she realised how many pairs of eyes from the train were focussed on her. Soon horny hands were being kissed in her direction. Shyly, she sent a kiss or two back, and then retired to ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... the brook of Cherith stood, And saw the ravens with their horny beaks Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn; Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought: He saw the prophet also how he fled Into the desert, and how there he slept Under a juniper; then how awaked He found his supper on the coals prepared, And by the angel was bid rise and eat, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... form of all, Ascomyces, it is entirely absent. In the Phacidiacei, the structure is very similar to that of the Elvellacei, whilst the Hysteriacei, with greater affinities with the latter, still tend towards the Pyrenomycetes by the more horny nature of the receptacle, and the greater tendency of the hymenium to remain closed, at least when dry. In some species of Hysterium, the sporidia are remarkably fine. M. Duby[AA] has subjected this group to examination, ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.' That preposterous wish was quite as bad as, and was the root of, his absurd offer to bribe Peter. Bribe Peter, indeed! Some of Peter's successors would have been amenable to such considerations, but not the horny-handed fisherman who had once said, 'Silver ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... and purple and green, were playing about; the bluefish, who are not in the least afraid of the snakes, rolled lazily round and round the rock; in the recesses lurked unseen the great conger-eel, which dreads nothing but the thing of long and horny tentacles, the ourite or squid: round and round the rock darted the humourous tazaar, which bites the bathers in shallow waters all for fun and mischief, and with no desire at all to eat their flesh; and besides these a thousand ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... the head of desire he dwells on the desire of the male for the exclusive possession of the female; and "these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose," as the very thick, shield-like horny skin on the shoulders of the boar, and his tusks, the horns of the stag, the spurs of cocks and quails. "The final cause," he says, "of this contest among the males seems to be that the strongest and most active animal should propagate the species, which should thence become improved" ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... hero of the Nibelungenlied, the old German epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became covered with an invulnerable horny hide, only one small spot between his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into this spot the treacherous Hagen plunged ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... escape the vengeance of God: nearly every one of them came to a miserable end. Roquefort and Farges were attacked by strange and hitherto unknown diseases, recalling the plagues sent by God on the peoples whom He desired to punish in bygone ages. In the case of Farges, his skin dried up and became horny, causing him such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and then of the benevolence in the faded dark eyes; also his voice was gentle, like a caress. He rose to greet his visitors, and put out to Hal a trembling hand, which resembled the paw of some animal, horny and misshapen. He made a move to draw up a bench, and apologised for his unskillful house-keeping. It occurred to Hal that a man might be able to work in a coal-mine at sixty, and not be able to work in it ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Mother-Church and God! Such reproaches have the poor Nonjurants to endure, and worse; spoken in on them by frantic Patriots, who mount even on the carriage-steps; the very Guards hardly refraining. Pull up your carriage-blinds!—No! answers Patriotism, clapping its horny paw on the carriage blind, and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has limits: we are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long: a poor Nonjurant, of quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane; nay, finding solacement ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Groan-Maker, that brings victory. Were axe, Groan-Maker, and club, Watcher of the Fords, side by side, there are no thirty men in Zululand who could stand before them. I have said. Choose!' And the aged woman watched me cunningly through her horny eyes. ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed labor leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to for other leaders—to the seers ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... tail and two pairs of limbs, but, as you know, Snakes are destitute of limbs, and seem to move along by a motion from inside, so that they have been said to walk on their ribs. Serpents are covered with horny scales; Crocodiles and Tortoises have a ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... pig-like eyes and wrinkled faces, and the men were uncomfortably clad in Sunday garments, very stiff and uneasy in their awkward postures, with large whiskers and shaved chins and upper lips and a general air of horny-handed toil. Then there were one or two daguerreotypes, little full-length figures framed in gold paper. There was one of Mrs. Kemp's father and one of her mother, and there were several photographs of betrothed or newly-married couples, the lady sitting down ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... Sally cleaned the glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half stretched out her hand to Mary's face, but drew it in again suddenly, as if she was afraid of soiling Mary's delicate skin with her hard, horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and scraped away a little patch of mud that was on one of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... she said, taking the glass. "You see theer's a gert ship passin' down Channel, an'—an' my Joe's aboard 'er, an' they'm bound for furrin' paarts, an' I promised as I'd come to this here horny-winky [Footnote: Horny-winky—Lonely. Fit place for horny-winks.] plaace to get a last sight o' the vessel if I could." He made no answer, and, after a pause, she ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... feud seemed to exist between this man and the public. He acted as if the world in general, instead of any one in particular, had greatly wronged him. It might be a meek woman with a baby, or a bold, red-faced drover, a delicately-gloved or horny hand that reached him the change, but it was all the same. He knitted his brows, pursed up his mouth, and dealt with all in a quick, jerking way, as if he could not bear the sight of them, and wanted to be rid ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the watch-dog, for Caesar kens weel When the wild gipsy laddies are tryin' to steal; But he lies like a lamb, and licks wi' good will The hard, horny hand that brings grist ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... scarcely be called wings, and are not easy to find under the general plumage of the body. Its nostrils, strange to say, are at the tip of the beak. The toes are strong, and well adapted for digging, the hind one being a thick, horny spur. To add to the singularity of this creature, it has no tail whatever. The kirvi-kirvi conceals itself among the extensive beds of fern which abound in the middle island of New Zealand, and it makes a nest of fern for its eggs in ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... toilers, who their hour of ease Weave out to precious seconds as they lie Pillow'd on horny hands, to hear the breeze Through my great ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... south exposures. When a freshet coursed down the coulee, and the low spots on the prairie filled until they were broad ponds, around which the migrating wild-fowl alighted with joyous cries. Now eaves dripped musically; slushy wagon ruts ran like miniature Missouris, and were travelled by horny frogs; prairie-cocks made each dawning weirdly noisy, and far and near, where showed the welcome green, blue-eyed anemones sprang bravely and tossed their fuzzy heads in the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... made him a namesake of C. Quintius Atta. A close-up shows a very comic little being, encased in a prickly, chestnut-colored armor, which should make him fearless in a den of a hundred anteaters. The front view of his head is a bit mephistophelian, for it is drawn upward into two horny spines; but the side view recalls a little girl with her hair brushed very tightly up and ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... horny head with two cruel eyes and rows of saw-like teeth in its long jaws, sped through the waters. The hippopotamus turned savagely on the intruder and the two snapped savagely at each other for several minutes when the crocodile, mortally wounded to judge by the red swirl on ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the south, Johnnie headed north, first taking care to glance out into the area before he charged across it, blinded by its glare after the semidark of the Barber rooms. He was hatless. His hair and his fringe flew. His feet flew, too, as if the longshoreman were at their horny ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... youth stoutly asserts his conviction that, if provided with proper materials, he can produce a fair imitation of the work before him. Drawing-paper is given him, and a pencil is thrust into a hand that has grown so hard and horny with constant hewing of wood that it scarcely possesses sensitiveness sufficient to grasp and ply the slim little art-implement. The young fellow perseveres, however, and finally produces a ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Jews also used the term figuratively as the "circumcision of fruits" (Lev. xix. 23), and of the heart (Deut. x. 16), and the old law gives copious historical details of its origin and continuance. Abraham first amputated his horny "calotte" at aet. 99, and did the same for his son and household (Gen. xvii. 24-27). The rite caused a separation between Moses and his wife (Exod. iv. 25). It was suspended during the Desert Wanderings and was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the contradictory orders. The frigate seemed to leap at the object before her as at a prey; and dire was the crash that ensued. As we may suppose the wrathful lioness springs upon the buffalo, and, meeting more resistance from its horny bulk than she had suspected, recoils and makes another spring, so did the Eos strike, rebound, then strike again. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... an aged chief and councillor, an uncle of Huaracha, the dead King, came forward and stared at the envoys with his horny eyes. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... the only possible ingredient for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the thigh. Which is why you often see ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... wid a motherly grin: "I nuver liked babies wid dey dimples tucked in, But our little pet, wid its horny hide, Like its mammy's an' its daddy's, is de fam'ly pride." An' dey ain't by deyselves in dat, in dat— An' dey ain't by deyselves ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... The hard, horny carapace of a retreating crab scraped, in the dead silence, against the rock-bowlder on which the skua sat. He made no move at the sound, the suggestive sound; but his feathers were shut down quite tight, and he looked far smaller than usual. When birds ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... were naturally not content, so we sent back to the boat for our own sheet chart to try and get more satisfactory information. But when it lay on the table in this old shellback's cabin all he did was to put down on it a huge and horny thumb that was nearly large enough to cover the whole historic island, and "guess we ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of the tree on all sides, rather more than a yard long, beset on both sides with strong sharp prickles, like saw-teeth, but longer. It bears a fruit like a small cocoa-nut, the size of a chesnut, inclosed in a hard shell, streaked with threads on the outside, and containing a kernel of a hard horny substance, quite tasteless; yet they are eaten roasted. The tree is called tobell, and the fruit bell. For procuring the palmito wine, they cut off one of the branches within a span of the head, to which they fasten a gourd shell by the mouth, which in twenty-four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... glass Mrs. Johnson handed him, and poised it critically between a horny finger and thumb. "You'll be paying for this," he said to Mr. Polly. "Here's to you.... Don't you go treading on my hat, young woman. You brush your skirts against it and you take a shillin' off its value. It ain't the sort of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... horny-handed son of the soil. I'm a cattle-farmer; I'm a sheep-farmer; I don't know which. One day I'm the one, and the next day I'm the other." Lydia looked mystified, and Staniford continued: "I mean that I have no profession, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... poor that he got by it. 'Tis certain he told his own death to a day and hour; he died praying upon his knees, being of a very great age, April 1, 1634. He was nearly related to the learned Lord Nepier, Baron of M— in Scotland: I have forgot whether his brother. His knees were horny with frequent praying. He left his estate to Sir Richard Nepier, M.D. of the college of physicians, London, from whom Mr. Ashmole had the Doctor's picture, now ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... against thy horny breast, I hear the roar of sap mounting within thy veins; Tingling with buds, thy great hands open towards the west, To catch the sweetheart winds that bring ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... that Italian sausage you're so fond of, dear boy," he said politely, pointing to a heel of some grayish horny-looking compound. "Thanks; I'll pour out the coffee; there's a knack in these things; half the clearness of coffee depends on the way in which it's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... little he cared about the week's growth of beard that sat on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands that were horny and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred from the bite ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Tessibel returned home from an errand to Kennedys', she found Daddy Skinner on the bench at the side of the shanty, one horny hand clutching the bowl of a pipe in which the ashes were dead. It took but one sharp glance from the red-brown eyes for Tess to note that his face was white, almost grey; she saw, too, with a quiver of loving sympathy, that his lower lip hung away from his dark teeth as though ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails—a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson |
