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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 said, about the rifle shots coming from his direction.

At many a Long Island home I might see on Sundays, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with butter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be desired unless it be some information as to the cost of production.

'We ain't much on book-learning, this side the river, Mr. Blake. We're plain blunt men, that ain't ashamed of manual labour horny-handed sons of toil, in short. But we're proud to meet a cultivated gentleman like yourself, all the same, and can appreciate him when met. Blake laughed rather lamely, and responded, 'I perceive that you are a humorist.

Of Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman it behoves every ignoramus to speak with respect. Horny-handed sons of toil, they are worthy of their wage. Carlyle has somewhere struck a distinction between the historical artist and the historical artizan. The bishop and the professor are historical artizans; artists they are not and the great historian is a great artist. England boasts two such artists.

If I had to be wan iv thim horny-handed sons iv toil, th' men that have made our counthry what it is an' creates th' wealth iv th' wurruld if I had to be wan iv thim pillars iv th' constitution, which thank Gawd I haven't, 'tis sthrikin' I'd be all th' time durin' th' heated term.

I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As before, they spoke little.

Men merely vary in the choice of words. One says "Oh, dear me!" Another "Oh, Fudge!" another "Oh, Pshaw!" and so on down to the common, vulgar, horny-handed sonofagun who blurts out "Damn it all!" or worse and the judge finally got to the limit. One writes this with glad, cheerful hopefulness for the entire human race because it's a fine thing to be natural and human, after all.

In a word, while the boom lasted, it was a little gold-mine to me. Thomas Blake was as obviously the man for me here as Sidney Price had been in the case of my Society dialogues. The public would find something infinitely piquant in the thought that its most sentimental ditties were given to it by the horny-handed steerer of a canal barge. He would be greeted as the modern Burns.

"I came over from Havre yesterday. I was busy with some English folk about a mine, or I would have tried to see you last evening." "And you will stay " She paused. "Ten days at most." "Ah!" she said. "That's horrid! You will miss so many pleasant things! A Bernhardt first night for one." "I'm a horny-handed son of toil, beautiful cousin," he answered, "and I have come on business only."

Some of these had seen service in the regular navy, and they were visibly horny-handed sons of toil. One Irishman, whose brogue was painful, looked with something very like contempt on the Naval Reserve sailors. "Uncle Sam is a queer bird," several of us overheard him remark to a mate. "He do be making a picnic av this war wid his pleasure boats an' his crew av pretty b'yes.