"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on their backs, with pick and shovel, drill and pan. Others rode, leading their burden-bearing burros or mules. Wagon after wagon creaked along, laden to the full ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... divil a lie I'll tell your honor. A tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on the shoulder of him, and a big torch in his fist—though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn't there at all—and 'Barney,' ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle quill; He went bareheaded, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... had been worked to a point. He took it into the living hut and sat down at the desk to examine it with a magnifying glass. Bits of soil embedded in the sharp end—that had been used as a pick. The paddle end had been used as a shovel, beheader and shell-cracker. Little Fuzzy had known exactly what he wanted when he'd started making that thing, he'd kept on until it was as perfect as possible, and had stopped short of spoiling it ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... The snow shovel was made of three flat pieces of wood sewed together with leather thongs. It had an edge of horn ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... country mansions; there is one in Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end, to hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath's ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny. In the Chapter House in Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I. tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which were made at this time. As the Chapter ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... she again raised the copper cover from the brasier, and, picking up the shovel, she buried the live charcoal deep with ashes, and taking two bits of incense of Cambodia fragrant wood, she threw them over them. She then re-covered the brasier, and repairing to the back of the screen, she gave the lamp a thorough trimming ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... carried on with such ardor, as to leave no chance for such a result, especially as we learned that the teamsters had had no breakfast, that they had been three days coming 28 miles; had been obliged to shovel their way through great drifts, a few rods at a time, and had reached us thoroughly worn out and exhausted. Then came the preparation of that wonderful breakfast. No need that a priest should burn frankincense and myrrh, sending up our orisons in the smoke thereof. The odor of that ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... find any sharp enough—stones I mean," Betty went on, "we might use them as a sort of shovel and try to dig our way out. Of course," she added, as the girls began to grope eagerly among the dirt and debris at their feet for stones sharp enough to answer the purpose, "the mouth of the cave may be choked up too solidly ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl it into the flaming mouths before them. There is a tumult of noise—the brazen clang of the furnace ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... simple. The picture of the tree was to show where it was hidden and the object at its base is intended as a shovel to tell that I would have to dig for the treasure, but," and his face fell, "how are we ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... returned. One inquired suspiciously why we took the name of his master. My reply was, that it was taken in order to identify them,—an explanation with which he was more satisfied than I was myself. Several were without shoes, and said that they could not drive the shovel into the earth. They were told to use the picks. The rest of the forenoon being occupied in registering their names and ages, and the names of their masters, they were dismissed to come together on the ringing of the bell, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in their growth, you see too, in myriads—shovel-nosed and bare-legged urchins of hideously eccentric manners, carrying around big bottles of sbiteen (a kind of mead), which they are continually pouring out into glasses, to appease the chronic thirst with which the public seem ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... which he was overflowing. Gershom he found a ready and active assistant; for, by this time, the whiskey was well out of him; and he toiled with the greater willingness, as he felt that the palisades would add to the security of his wife and sister. Neither did Parson Amen disdain to use the pick and shovel; for, while the missionary had the fullest reliance in the fact that the red men of that region were the descendants of the children of Israel, he regarded them as a portion of the chosen people who were living ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards all over town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted, long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads, and with feet ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Snake. But why these two had bought the last shovels and the only pick in all the supplies at old Fort Hall no man could tell. Crazy, of course; for who could pause to work on the trail with pick or shovel, with winter coming on ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... both," "located" a claim. The flowers were kept fresh by a little stream of waste water from the ditch that girded the brow of the hill above. Here he set a sluice-box and put his three little miners at work with pick, pan and shovel. There he left them and limped back to his own place ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... so! "Not large enough for two?" (Looks at the box.) Damn me if I don't think it large enough for a dozen, unless they took snuff with a shovel! (Aside.) Who in the name of all that's magnanimous can this old three-cornered cocked-hatted ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... at her—the loud, coarse Josh Craig outburst. "You're stark mad on the subject of class distinctions, aren't you?" said he. "You'll learn some day to look on that sort of thing as you would on an attempt to shovel highways and set up sign-posts in the open sea. Your kind of people are like the children that build forts out of sand at the seashore. Along comes a wave and washes it all away....You'd be willing for me to abandon my career and become a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... said, he had Jewish blood in his veins, he was the best Jew that I have heard of since Joshua's time. If you were in sight of his beaky nose and bold, black eyes, you were not likely to miss much of what was going on. Still, a siege is always a poor sort of a pick-and-shovel business, and there were better prospects with my hussars in front of the English. Every mile that passed, my heart grew lighter and lighter, until I found myself shouting and singing like a young ensign fresh from St Cyr, just to think ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Abstract principle must always give way to concrete fact. The men who fight for principle are few. The fight is to live, to earn, to continue to exist. Men who had never hoped to earn a hundred dollars a month; men who had for a score of years wielded pick and shovel for two dollars a day or less, saw, with eyes that could hardly believe, thirty dollars a week. It was wealth! It was that thirty dollars that gripped them now, not the other things. Appreciation of them would come later, but ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... on the scene the "swampers" and cross-cut men, swarming over the prostrate tree like ants over a piece of sugar. Some of them cut off limbs; others, with axes and crowbars, began to pry away great slabs of bark; still others, with much precaution of shovel, wedge and axe against jamming, commenced the slow and laborious undertaking of sawing ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... forever; and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the rest ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument has very often given me great offense; instead of the brave, rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, drest in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... a pair of gold-scales, but I'll be back by supper, then we'll clean up between shifts. She'd ought to give us a thousand ounces, the way that ground prospects." He loped down the gulch, while his partner returned to the pit, the flashing shovel blades, and the rumbling undertone of the big workings that so fascinated him. It was perhaps four o'clock when he was aroused from his labors by a shout from the bunk-tent, where a group of horsemen ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... shovel, T, arranged to fit in a socket, V, and bar, S, in combination with standards, G G, and cross-bar, I, as and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... years old, he went into the kitchen, where the servants used to let him do as he pleased for fear of his dreadful temper; for they called him "Mamma's pet lion." He had not been long there before he upset the table, knocked down the shovel and tongs, and broke several plates. Not satisfied with this, he collected all the tin things in the middle of the floor, and began battering them with the tongs. The cook, not being very well pleased with this destruction, undertook to lead him out ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... objections to accepting his liberality (supposing me to entertain them) by assuring me his conduct is founded on a sage selfishness. This is diverting enough. I suppose the Commissioners of, Police will next send me a letter of condolence, begging my acceptance of a broom, a shovel, and a scavenger's greatcoat, and assuring me that they had appointed me to all the emoluments of a well-frequented crossing. It would be doing more than they have done of late for the cleanliness of the streets, which, witness my shoes, are in a piteous pickle. I thanked the selfish sage with due ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... lousy rascal, to intrench upon the game of gentlemen! He might have passed his time at nine-pins, or shovel-board; that had been fit sport for such as he: Justice, have ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... little boy again occupying the anxious position of auditor, Uncle Remus took the shovel and "put de noses er de chunks tergedder," as he expressed it, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... suggestion, they went out and made a search for some rude instrument wherewith to dig a grave. They found a broken shovel and a dull adze-like implement. The grave prepared, and dusk having come, Bob was struck with the idea that they had best bury ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... wages of my work: I will work cheerfully with no wages, sooner than with a ten years' gangrene or Chancery lawsuit in my heart. He of the horse-hair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes forward professing that he will save my soul. O ye eternities, of him in this place be absolute silence! But he of the red coat, I say, is a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he gets orders, draw out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... my wound in the chest and the fragment came out through my back. I thought my last day had come. I dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, than Mack got it through the face. He was able to go back, but I was simply helpless, as my legs refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench. No sooner had I done this than Fritz started to bombard. One shell fell in the hole in which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction. Then another came and landed just above my head, but it failed to go off. Had it gone off ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... right-hand road; then for a moment we caught sight of her; another bend and she was hidden again. Several times we caught glimpses, and then lost them. We scarcely seemed to gain ground upon them at all. An old road-mender was standing near a heap of stones, his shovel dropped and his hands raised. As we came near he made a sign to speak. Blantyre drew the rein a little. "To the common, to the common, sir; she has turned off there." I knew this common very well; it was for the most part very uneven ground, covered with heather and dark-green furze bushes, ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... Cook two minutes. Set in cold water, and beat until cool; then add the flavor, and pour into a dish. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add the remaining sugar, and heap on the custard. Dredge with sugar. Brown with a salamander or hot shovel. ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... baronial library after the household were in bed. The little people are represented in every attitude of frolic enjoyment. Some escalade the great armchair, and look down from its top as from a domestic Mont Blanc; some climb about the bellows; some scale the shaft of the shovel; while some, forming in magic ring, dance festively on the yet glowing hearth. Tiny troops promenade the writing-table. One perches himself quaintly on the top of the inkstand, and holds colloquy with another who ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... streets they come; down huddled stairways; Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways; From freezing rooms as bare as rock. The curtains are closed across deserted windows. Earth streams out of the shovel; the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... have a tutor called Mr. Parados?" he asked. And again the others looked at him and at each other. "Parrot-nose for short," Dickie hastened to add; "and did you ever shovel snow on to his head and then ride away in a carriage drawn ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... life, in transportation, in manufacturing, machinery has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor. The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... discontent, made an excursion to Portsmouth, where he dined with the admiral on board the ship Elizabeth, declared his intention of making him an earl in consideration of his good conduct and services, conferred the honour of knighthood on the captains Ashby and Shovel, and bestowed a donation of ten shillings on every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Frank went out. Jim and Sorry, the two unpicturesque cowboys of whom Lorraine had complained to the cat, had already departed with pick and shovel to their unromantic task of digging post holes. Each carried a most unattractive lunch tied in a flour sack behind the cantle of his saddle. Lorraine had done her conscientious best, but with lumpy, sourdough bread, cold bacon and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing downstairs ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... 5: A hen-pecked husband's lament: he woos and marries the termagant within three days—then follows trouble. She "mashes his mouth with a shovel," bundles up her "duds", and ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... annuities, there had been a crush at the Exchequer to subscribe it. England was sending a squadron to the East Indies, and a squadron to the West of Spain under Admiral Leake, without mentioning the reserve of four hundred sail, under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel. England had lately annexed Scotland. It was the interval between Hochstadt and Ramillies, and the first of these victories was foretelling the second. England, in its cast of the net at Hochstadt, had made prisoners ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press, And were more or less successful in their ventures — mostly less. Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt, And the local sinners chuckle over ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... laughed in that light-hearted way of his, "I would go into the heart of China on a treasure hunt, for the mere fun of it. Enthusiasm? Nothing would gratify me more than to strike a shovel into the spot where this treasure, this pot of gold, is supposed to lie. It will be great sport; nothing like it. I was merely supposing. I have never heard of, or come into contact with, a man who has found a hidden treasure. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... mound of stone? It looks like the great brick oven that used to be in our old kitchen, where, when I was a little girl, I saw the fine large loaves of bread and the pies and puddings pushed carefully in with a long, flat shovel, or drawn out with the same when the heat ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... ter work first thing on this road," said the man triumphantly to Ella as he stood, shovel in hand, at the door. "The parson's right behind, an' there's a lot more behind him. Gorry! I was afraid I wouldn't git here in time, but the fun'ral ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... a moment and then observed, "You don't look like any tramps we ever had here before. They always shovel in their food with their knives, but you use your fork. You can work, too. Why don't you get a job somewhere and earn some money instead of loafing around ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... few who have not heard of the Irishman who was hired by a Yarmouth maltster to help in loading a ship. As the vessel was about to sail, the Irishman cried out from the quay, "Captain, I lost your shovel overboard, but I cut a big notch on the rail-fence, round the stern, just where it went down, so you will find it when you come back."—A similar story is told of an Indian simpleton. He was sailing in a ship when ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... made; the Oil being the Blubber, or oily Flesh, or Fat of that Fish boil'd. These differ not only in Colour, some being pied, others not, but very much in shape, one being call'd a Bottle-Nosed Whale, the other a Shovel-Nose, which is as different as a Salmon from a Sturgeon. These Fish seldom come ashoar with their Tongues in their Heads, the Thrasher (which is the Whale's mortal Enemy, wheresoever he meets him) eating that out of his Head, as soon as he and the Sword-Fish have kill'd him. For when the Whale-catchers ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... after each victory. In Muskegon he sent the driver of a grocery wagon to the hospital with a shoulder-bite requiring cauterization and four stitches. In Manistee he broke the small bones in the leg of a baker's large boy. In Cadillac a boarding-stable hostler struck him with an iron shovel. Blue Blazes kicked the hostler quite accurately and very suddenly through ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... to be almost dazzling, and, peering into the darkness, I first dimly, but afterwards gradually, almost with full distinctness, beheld the form of a man engaged in digging what appeared to be a rude hole close under the wall. Some implements, probably a shovel and pickaxe, lay beside him, and to these he every now and then applied himself as the nature of the ground required. He pursued his task rapidly, and with as little noise ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the expedition. On the 28th of July the Archduke Charles embarked with Lord Peterborough on board the Ranelagh, and an hour later the fleet put to sea. Off Tangiers they were joined by the squadron under Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and a few days later they reached the Bay ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... seventies when old Peaceful Hart woke to a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, instinctively began preparing for the winter of his life. Where he had lately ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... easily; light a few sticks in the fire, and put them in; when it burns well, turn the wood about, and occasionally add more till it is all in; when it is burnt to coals, stir them about well with a long-handled shovel made ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... hill. The German machine-guns barked at them angrily and the spiteful crack of the rifles could be heard now and then above the din of the cannonade. Two hundred yards from the enemy's positions they flung themselves down upon the ground and began digging furiously. Every man had a shovel in his equipment and he made ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... he jumped out and in a minute took command of the situation. He said, "If we had taken a waggon over the desert, we'd know how to fix up this in a shake." He sent his chauffeur back to the nearest village for some boards and a shovel, and then dug out to firm ground and got the boards under, all so neatly and quickly, and no one thought of disobeying him! And we were soon all packed into the car again none the worse. Then he said he also found he was obliged to go back and would show ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... centre of a box scrub with native huts within 150 to 200 yards of them. On further examination we found the dung of camels and horse or horses, evidently tied up a long time ago. Between that and the grave we found another grave, evidently dug with a spade or shovel, and a lot of human hair of two colours, that had become decomposed, on the skin of the skull, and fallen off in flakes—some of which I have also taken. I fancy they must all have been murdered here; dug out the new-formed grave with a stick (the only instrument ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... preservation by the Omnipotent Herbalist? Land and water were then distinguishable,—but as yet there was no terrestrial animal, nothing organic but radiata and molluscs, holly-footed and head-footed, and other aquatic monstrosities, mailed, plated, and buckler-headed, casting the shovel-nosed shark of the present Cosmos entirely into the shade, in point of horned, toothed, and serrated horrors. These amorphous creatures glided about in the seas, and vast sea-worms, or centipedal asps, the parents ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... s'pose he'd be back by 'nother spring; but who'd we get ter shovel us out this winter, seein' as there ain't more 'n three men in the whole village? Aunt Hitty says twenty-year engagements 's goin' out o' fashion in the big cities, 'n' I'm glad if they be. They'd 'a' never come in, I told her, if there'd ever been an extry man in these parts, but ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to work with a large wooden shovel, "work like niggers. If there's any life left in the horse, it'll soon be smothered out ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... opening the large, round hole in the sidewalk, climbed back on his wagon to shovel off his load. And just then Carlo, the dog belonging to Dorothy, ran barking out of the side entrance of the house where he lived. Carlo always became excited when coal was being put in the ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... Miss Tarbell, "he made long extracts, with his turkey-buzzard pen and brier-root ink. When he had no paper he would write on a board, and thus preserve his selections until he secured a copybook. The wooden fire shovel was his usual slate, and on its back he ciphered with a charred stick, shaving it off when it had become too grimy for use. The logs and boards in his vicinity he covered with his figures and quotations. By night he read and worked as long as there was light, ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... snow to shovel," admitted Sewell. He rose disconsolately. "Well, there's nothing for it, I suppose, but to put him down at the Christian Union, and explain his checkered career to everybody who ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... drink with it. Has the plague taken away your appetite, vinegar will renew it. Is your throat ulcerated, use vinegar as a gargle. Are you disturbed with phlegmatic humours, vinegar will remove them. Is your brain laden with vapours, throw vinegar on a hot shovel, and inhale its fumes, and you will obtain instantaneous relief. Have you the headache, wet a napkin in vinegar, and apply it to your temples, and the pain will cease. In short, there is no ailment that vinegar will not cure. It is ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thinking I might get a shot at a rabbit or a prairie hen. But we shall need an axe and a shovel." ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them." He spent long evenings doing sums on the fire-shovel. Iron fire-shovels were a rarity among pioneers. Instead they used a broad, thin clapboard with one end narrowed to a handle, arranging with this the piles of coals upon the hearth, over which they set their "skillet" and "oven" ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... plaits. The milk and treacle are like rock, the eggs have to be kept on the coolest part of the stove to keep them fluid. Two calves in the shed were frozen to death. Half our floor is deep in snow, and it is so cold that we cannot open the door to shovel it out. The snow began again at eight this morning, very fine and hard. It blows in through the chinks and dusts this letter while I write. Mr. Kavan keeps my ink bottle close to the fire, and hands it to me every time that I need to dip my pen. We have a huge ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... spectacles with enormous glasses. But the old lady's face was pinched, sharp and sallow, wearing a niggardly and avaricious expression, and forming an odd contrast to the splendor of her attire, as did likewise the implement which she held in her hand. It was a sort of iron shovel (by housewives termed a "slice"), such as is used in clearing the oven, and with this, selecting a spot between a walnut-tree and the fountain, the good dame made an earnest attempt to dig. The tender sods, however, possessed a strange impenetrability. They resisted ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shovel from under the thwart, Brace, my lad," he said. "I say, sure there are none of ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... running from the garden, see her look of terror as she caught sight of the circling thing upon the floor, and then the look of desperation as the mother instinct rose superior and she dashed into the room, seized the great iron shovel that stood before the fireplace, and began dealing reckless blows at the hissing serpent. A big black-snake is not a pleasant customer, but neither—for a black-snake—is a frenzied mother with an iron fire shovel in her hand, and this ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... his feet. Mr. Saunders sprang up, also, and reached for the coal shovel, evidently expecting trouble. But if he feared a physical assault, his fear was groundless. Captain Eri merely took ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... John Day River we found a ferry boat kept and owned by a couple of thrifty traders, who had set themselves down to make their fortunes quickly and without the aid of the pick and shovel. But their covetousness was their ruin. The sum of $6 was demanded for a horseman and $4 for a pack horse. Our party argued with them, but to no purpose. They would take nothing less. After parleying for some ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... fell well into line with the abilities of my little band, for often, armed with pick and shovel, they had set out to discover fossils ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... birchen twigs, bound together with a small cord, was generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen, and was as much a part of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung in the fireplace or the shovel and tongs. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Sandy replied. "Hiyu skookum me." He leaned on his shovel for a moment, stretching his young, sinewy body, grinning at the Indian. The latter dismounted, and, stooping down, touched ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... and so into a valley. Here gun-pits were in the process of construction. Guns were unhooked and man-handled into their positions, and the teams sent back to the wagon-lines. All day we worked, both officers and men, with pick and shovel. Towards evening we had completed the gun-platforms and made a beginning on the overhead cover. We had had no time to prepare sleeping-quarters, so spread our sleeping-bags and blankets in the caved-in trenches. About seven o'clock, as we were resting, the evening "hate" ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... surface having taken place and rendered the country barren, while he talked eagerly of how interesting it would have been to encamp at such spots, gather together a score of the fellaheen with shovel and basket, and explore. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... sat mournfully in his tub, and watched the work in silence, resting his nose on the side, and blinking his eyes at every fresh shovel-full of earth. The sun shone out warmly, and the laborers felt the perspiration on their heated faces. Gem was the first to drop her shovel. "Oh, Tom!" she said, wiping her forehead, "my ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glasses. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... take their naps on the roads, probably from their being drier than the other portions of the soil. It is impossible to say how many cows have been cut into atoms by the trains in America, but the frequent accidents arising from these causes has occasioned the Americans to invent a sort of shovel, attached to the front of the locomotive, which takes up a cow, tossing her off right or left. At every fifteen miles of the rail-roads there are refreshment rooms; the cars stop, all the doors are thrown open, and out rush the passengers like boys out of school, and crowd round the tables to ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke or a few ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... a solemn agreement with Budge, who was usually recognized as the head of this fraternal partnership. Budge contracted, for himself and brother, to make no attempts to enter my room; to refrain from fighting; to raise loose dirt only with a shovel, and to convey it to its destination by means other than their own hats and aprons; to pick no flowers; to open no water-faucets; to refer all disagreements to the cook, as arbitrator, and to build no houses of the ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... cosy tea, as teas in the Den always were. Daddy wumbled a number of things in his beard to which no one need reply unless they felt like it. The usual sentences were not heard to-day: 'Monkey, what a mouthful! You must not shovel in your food like that!' or, 'Don't gurgle your tea down; swallow it quietly, like a little lady'; or, 'How often have you been told not to drink with your mouth full; this is not the servants' hall, remember!' There were no signs of contretemps ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... shriek arose, and everybody made room for the steam sand shovel on its way to dump the sand hills into the bay. It was called the "steam paddy" to distinguish it from the "hand paddy"—out of Cork or Dublin. It rumbled by on its track, very much like juggernaut in its calm indifference ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Gus dropped his shovel and came from the creekside where he had begun to dig alongside of the stakes for the foundation. He was visibly and, for him, strangely excited as he walked ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... 23, 1914, passed peacefully for the British soldiers, still working on their trenches. But distant boom of guns from the east continued to vibrate to them at intervals. Of its portend they knew nothing. Doubtless as they plied the shovel they again speculated over it, wondering and possibly regretting a chance of their having been deprived of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... men spent a wild, wet, sleepless night trying to salvage their scanty personal belongings and their stock of supplies. When the river retreated it left the hut floor covered with slimy black mud which the two men had to shovel out. This was a back- breaking task occupying the better part ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... distant from Sizeran. Some men were engaged in winnowing corn in a yard hard by the dwelling; and the system they employed to separate the husks from the grain probably dates from before the flood, for, throwing the corn high up into the air with a shovel, they let the wind blow away the husks, and the grain descended on to a carpet set to catch it in the fall. It was then considered to be sufficiently winnowed, and fit to be sent to the mill. The farm-house was fairly clean, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... spade, pick and shovel, an ax, a hatchet, two large pails, a barn lantern, a can of kerosene, a dozen candles, a cocoa box filled with matches, a pair of scissors, needles, buttons, pins and safety pins, a spool of white and another of black cotton, fishing tackle, ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... this have been likely to last when I saw his face grow saintlier and saintlier? I am an excellent sailor myself, but he is not, and when I see him there, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, like a sleeping St. Joseph in a shovel hat, with a basin beside him, can I expect to be saved from snapping him by such a formula as ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... about an average quality of the land. On the 12th of the 9th month, (September,) I sowed seven bushels of wheat on this part of the ground and plowed the manure and wheat in together with the double shovel plow—very soon after the balance was sowed with 270 pounds of good African guano per acre, for which I paid $40 per ton, and plowed this in with the wheat, immediately after sowing, in the same manner as the other. During the succeeding winter and spring, the appearance ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... seeing the troops arrive in disorder, thought it was the enemy. Then the corps of incendiaries got to work. They had broad belts with the words "Gott mit uns," and their equipment consisted of a hatchet, a syringe, a small shovel, and a revolver. Fires blazed up in the direction of the Law Courts, St. Martin's Barracks, and later in the Place de la Station. Meanwhile an incessant fusillade was kept up on the windows of the houses. In their efforts to escape ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a job with a pick and shovel," said McGivney, and Peter sorrowfully took his departure. He had only a few dollars in his pocket, and these did not last very long, and he had got down to his last nickel, and was confronting the wolf of starvation again, when McGivney came to his lodging house ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... high road from Larnaca to Lefkosia, which we should intersect about half-way between the two termini. Instead of this, after travelling for a couple of miles along a good hardened track, we arrived at a series of trenches which effectually stopped all progress. Each van had a pickaxe and shovel, therefore we all set to work in rapid relief of each other to level the obstructions, and by this hard exercise the thermometer appeared to rise quickly from the low temperature of the morning. The oxen were good, and by dint ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... pokes away at the fire, and the fire blazes up and blazes up, but very soon there's nothing left to blaze with. The fire'll be out directly, so I says to our Mary, you look after the fire, so our Mary goes to the heap and fetches a shovel of coal, and claps it on the top of the hot cinders, and she won't let our Esther poke it no more, so it burns steady and bright, and throws out a good heat, and lasts a long time. Now, when you take your drop of beer, you're just poking the fire, you're not ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... rates was brought about by a number of inventions which greatly lowered the cost of both the construction and the operation of railways. Through the introduction of the steam shovel, of the wheel-scraper, of improved rock-drills, and of other labor-saving machines, as well as by a general improvement in the methods of grading, the cost of grading has been reduced from 25 to 50 per ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... golden sovereigns into a pair of scales with a brass shovel as coolly as if he were a grocer's boy scooping out raw sugar. Having weighed the glittering pile, he threw them carelessly out of the scale into the brass shovel, and shot them at Mrs Gaff, who suddenly thrust her ample bosom against ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... until a proper acetylene burner has been screwed into the aperture; thirdly, if any appreciable amount of acetylene is present in the air, no operation should be performed upon any portion of an acetylene plant which involves such processes as scraping or chipping with the aid of a steel tool or shovel. If, for example, the iron or stoneware sludge-pipe is choked, or the interior of the dismantled generator is blocked, and attempts are made to remove the obstruction with a hard steel tool, a spark is very likely to be formed which, granting ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... through, and the amalgam is retained. The amalgam is then heated, to drive off the mercury. This may be done either in an open pan or in a close retort. In the former, the quicksilver is lost; in the latter, it is saved. The pan is generally preferred. Often a shovel or plate of iron is used. Three pounds of amalgam, from which the liquid metal has been carefully pressed out, will yield one pound of gold. The gold remaining after the quicksilver has been driven off by heat from ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell
... shovel struck something hard, something which was so much heavier than ordinary stone, and that had a peculiar ring ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... his irons were struck off, thanks to the instant entreaties of his compatriots: he was then given a broom and shovel and set to clear rubbish and filth off the roof of a large unfinished building. On one side was a convict of the lowest order, with whom he worked—on the other, the soldier who mounted guard over them. To avoid the indignity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... said Jane Cleveland, when he brought the shovel to the door. "It took Hannah twice as long, and she didn't ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... History offers the beaten and indolent a sugary acid in the indication of the spites and the pranks, the whims and the tastes, at the springs of main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive nourishment. But those who labour in the field to shovel the clods of earth to History, would be wiser of their fellows for a minor dose of it. Mr. Howell Edwards consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the necessity, that the earl should instantly keep his promise to appear among the men and stop the fermentation, as in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the appliances, besides pick and shovel, are puddling tub, tin dish, and cradle; the latter, a man handy with tools can easily ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... a citizen, "asked me the other evening to go and call on some friends of his who had lost the head of the family the day previous. He had been an honest old man, a laborer with a pick and shovel. While we were with the family an old man entered who had worked by his side for years. Expressing his sorrow at the loss of his friend, and glancing about the room, he observed a large floral anchor. Scrutinizing it closely, he turned to the widow and in ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... miners may be pick-cum-shovel-cum-ballot implements, and no more, still, among miners there must be two or three living individuals. The same among the masters. The majority are suction-tubes for Bradburys. But is this Sodom of Industrialism there are surely ten men, all told. My poor ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... not Mr. Whitmore (as I was fearfully expecting), but a figure unknown to me; an old shovel-hatted man leaning on a stick and buttoned to the chin in a black Inverness cape. I felt his eyes peering at me ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Alice Deringham was quite aware that this might be the last time she would look upon her companion, but she had bidden farewell to men of his kind before. They had worn their nation's khaki, and Alton wore deerskin and jean, with the shovel girded about him in place of the sword; but she knew there was in him the same spirit that animated them, and that it was a silent spirit made most ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... rough: by sack, by scoop, or by coffee can. You can keep the ingredients separated and mix fertilizer by the bucketful as needed or you can dump the contents of half a dozen assorted sacks out on a concrete sidewalk or driveway and blend them with a shovel and then store the mixture in garbage cans or even in the original sacks the ingredients came ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... family in a new and clean house with bed, bedding, clothing, table, chairs, dishes, candles, a little cooking-stove with a blazing fire, all the common quota of cooking utensils, and meat, meal, and groceries; a plow, rake, axe, hoe, shovel, spade, hammer, and nails. We ask few questions. They ask none. The whistle of the "Troop" is as welcome to their ears as the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... cost of screening only when both the sand and the coarser material are saved. Tests made in the pit will enable the contractor to estimate how many cubic yards of gravel must be shoveled to get a cubic yard of sand or pebbles. An energetic man will shovel about 25 cu. yds. of gravel against a screen per 10-hour day and keep the screened material cleared away, providing ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... middle of the sofa, too, so that he could not lie on it comfortably. The room was chilly though the fire was hot, and how grandmamma did poke it! Fred thought she did nothing else the whole afternoon; and there was a certain concluding shovel that she gave to the cinders, that very nearly put him in a passion. Nothing would make him comfortable till Henrietta came in, and it seemed very long before he heard the paddock gate, and the horses' feet upon the gravel. Then he grew very much provoked because his sister ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Shovel's monument is thus mentioned by Addison in The Spectator, No. 26:—'It has very often given me great offence; instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... without them; and as the scouts are called the eyes, so might the engineers, both regular and volunteer, be termed the hands and feet, of an advancing force. The host sweeps on, and the workers are left with pickaxe and shovel, rifles close at hand, to work at their laborious task loyally and patiently, while deeds of courage and daring are being done and applauded not many miles away from them. This particular Rhenoster bridge was destroyed and rebuilt no less than three times up to the ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... Mademoiselle!" said Raymonde reflectively. "If it had been Gibbie, now, it would have been no surprise to me. Don't cry, you little silly! You look like a weeping cherub on a monument! Shovel your clothes back again into your drawers, and put a tidy top layer. ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... trees, hollowed longitudinally. On either side is nailed a palo de balzas, viz., a beam of a very porous kind of wood. One Indian sits forward, another more backward, each having a short wooden shovel-shaped oar, with which they strike the water right and left, and thus scull the boat onward. The passengers must crouch or kneel down in the middle, and dare not stir, for the least irregularity in the motion would upset the boat. We landed safely, and amused ourselves by ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... must confess to a piece of stupidity on my part. I had so often been told that a rat's tail looked like a red worm and spoiled the creature's pretty looks, that I selected one of the younger generation and cut off the much criticised caudal appendage with a red-hot shovel. The little rat bore the operation very well, grew apace, and became an imposing fellow with mustaches. But though he was the lighter for the loss of his tail, he was much less agile than his comrades; he was very careful about trying gymnastics ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... inspiration, when Lola's golden eyes were upon me; but now—well, I shall have to persuade myself that it is funny, if I am to carry it out. It is very much like wagering that one will tweak by the nose the first gentleman in gaiters and shovel-hat one meets in Piccadilly. This by some is considered the quintessence of comedy. I foresee a revision of my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... dismembered fragments of flawless blanched bodies, the inclined plane of the wide skylight, bore an impalpable white dust of dried clay. In a corner, enclosed in low boards, a stooped individual with wood-soled shoes and a shovel was working a mass of clay over which at intervals he sprinkled water, and at intervals halted to make pliable lumps of a uniform size which he added to a pile wrapped in damp cloths. There were a number ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer |
