"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire perhaps by rubbing two dry sticks together till they ignite with the friction; and so he keeps himself alive for a few days; but how little progress does he make! But let him by any means have a little to begin with in the shape of implements and materials; give him an axe or a spade, a jack-knife, or only a fragment of an iron hoop, give him a gill of seed wheat, or a single potato, or no more than a grain of maize, for planting; and how soon will his condition be changed! He has begun to be, even in this ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... spade somewhere from one of the wagons, and, little as she was, she was trying to bury her own dead. She was so busy that she didn't see them ride up, and William Plummer, their leader—he was a young man then—actually shed tears, so ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... means, as it often does, a mere prosaic recommendation of ordinary duties, a sort of Poor Richard's prudential [361] maxims, is a shallow and nearly useless thing. It is a kind of social and moral agriculture with the plough and the spade, but with little regard to the enrichment of the soil, or drainage from the depths or irrigation from the heights. The true, practical preaching is that which brings the celestial truths of our nature and our destiny, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... green tunics, wearing small, green, round-crowned, narrow-brimmed hunting hats and green boots up to just below their knees. Each carried a heavy shafted hunting spear, tipped with a huge triangular gleaming head, pointed like a needle, edged like a razor, broad as a spade ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Wang, and after many adventures was caught by Jan Teng between two mountains, which he pressed together, leaving only Yin Chiao's head exposed above the summits. The general Wu Chi promptly cut it off with a spade. Chiang Tz[u)]-ya subsequently ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... finish his breakfast and get to the spot. Theory of Wilder, the village grocer: 'It is treasure hidden by them there sly old monks.' Mr. Wilder is a miser, and is known to lay up money. He is, I believe, the only man left in the North Country who can show you a hundred spade guineas." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hand for the protection of the yet remaining tribes beyond the Mississippi; and the child may already be born, who will live to behold that vast wilderness thickly dotted over with Indian communities, with towns, villages, farms and manufacturing hamlets. They may live to see the hoe and the spade take the place of the bow and the tomahawk; the lion and the lamb feeding together; the sword beaten into a plowshare, and the spear into ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... truly most pleasing To those who the Sugar-Bush love; This morn's indications' need no explanations, As the day will abundantly prove! Then haste, comrade, and bring your spade; To clear away the snow, That our wood-fire may soon acquire ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... strange little procession making its way slowly through the untrodden snow, but did not attempt to approach or molest it. They reached at last the lonely spot where they were to leave the mortal remains of poor Matamore, and the stable-boy, who had accompanied them carrying a spade, set to work to dig the grave. Several carcasses of animals lay scattered about close at hand, partly hidden by the snow—among them two or three skeletons of horses, picked clean by birds of prey; ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... hardly say that the speakers are foul-mouthed as the Anglo-African of S'a Leone and the "English" Coast; they borrow the vilest words from foreign tongues; a spade is called a spade with a witness, and feminine relatives are ever the subject of abuse; a practice which, beginning in Europe with the Slav race, extends more or less throughout the Old World. I specify the Old World, because ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... sirs take you to your tooles, You Cosens shall goe sound the Ocean: And cast your nets, haply you may find her in the Sea, Yet ther's as little iustice as at Land: No Publius and Sempronius, you must doe it, 'Tis you must dig with Mattocke, and with Spade, And pierce the inmost Center of the earth: Then when you come to Plutoes Region, I pray you deliuer him this petition, Tell him it is for iustice, and for aide, And that it comes from old Andronicus, Shaken with sorrowes in vngratefull Rome. Ah Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable, What time ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... we must speak of the one memorial which is usually looked at first, the famous picture of Old Scarlett, on the wall of the western transept. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle; at his feet is a skull. At the top of the picture are the arms of the cathedral. Beneath the portrait are ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... The large boiler should render it necessary to be used not more than once in four days or a week. The food should be stirred for two hours, then transferred to flat coolers, until sufficiently gelatinous to be cut with a kind of spade. By the admixture of some portion of soups it may be brought to any thickness requisite. The flesh to be mixed with it should be cut very small, that the greedy hounds may not be able to obtain more than their share. Four bushels and a half ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... among them is another lady's literary effort to make a garden. Judith it is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... the first of a series of genuine love letters preserved for many years by Haydn. His answers to them seem to have been lost, though the whimsical spade of time that has recently brought to light the works of Bacchylides, after two thousand years and more of oblivion, may with equal speed unsod Haydn's letters to this interesting personage. May we be there ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... beginning, in the course of a few seasons, he had a great quantity of grain, both for food and for sowing. But this meant every year much hard work, for he had no plow nor harrow, and all the ground had to be dug with a clumsy spade, made from a very hard, heavy wood that ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... eight feet over all, and weighing about ten pounds; three lances of the finest steel, with wooden handles, in all about eight feet long; a keg of drinking water and one of biscuits; a bucket and piggin for bailing, a small spade, knives, axes, and a shoulder bomb-gun. It can be understood easily that six men, maneuvering in so crowded a boat, with a huge whale flouncing about within a few feet, a line whizzing down the center, to be caught in which meant instant death, and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... works, and another twenty minutes to get into anything like clear country. At length, on the edge of a steep depression that widened and shallowed as it neared the valley, I got a fair look up the slope. So far I had met nothing to account for the lights—nothing at all, in fact, but the broken spade-handles, old boots, empty meat-cans, and other refuse of the miners' camps; but every now and then I would catch a glimpse of the hillside high overhead: and always those lights were flashing there, though in varying numbers. Now, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which all went away; the children were shut out of the churchyard; the old clergyman disappeared to the vestry; a young florid man, with pale hair, tightened his leather belt, turned up his sleeves, watched a grand pair of biceps roll up as he crooked his elbows, then, taking a spade, set to work upon the wet mound he had dug from the earth the day before to clear those few square feet of space below. As he worked, he whistled, for his occupation held no more significance to him than an alternative employment: the breaking of stones ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... detective, but you don't know motor trucks," replied Eustice, grinning at her, for he had taken a fancy to the odd child who had screamed to him not to mash the spider he had fished out of his lemonade cup. "All good motor trucks take a spade with them, under the seat, to use in case they are stuck ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... caught the spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... of natural history, would you like to discover whether the sacred fire flows in your veins? Imagine yourselves returning from such an expedition. You are carrying on your shoulder the peasant's heavy spade; your loins are stiff with the laborious digging which you have just finished in a crouching position; the heat of an August afternoon has set your brain simmering; your eyelids are tired by the itch of an inflammation resulting from the overpowering ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Booth suggests that the land along the Railway lines might well be utilised for the purpose of spade husbandry. There seems no reason why these extensive strips of often fertile soil should be left to go to waste, conveniently situated as they are on borders of the main arteries of commerce and ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... baby in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the distance, and happily for a few minutes there ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... north of that city, remains a remarkably solid and extensive monument of their ingenious industry. They were likewise acquainted with the use of manure, called vunalti in their language; but, from the great fertility of the soil, little attention was paid to that subject. They used a kind of spade or breast-plough of hard wood for turning the soil, which was pushed forwards by their breasts. At present the native Chilese use a very simple plough, called chetague, made of the branch of a tree crooked ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... signs of grace, rather than to limit myself to the top and write critically about work which will endure with or without criticism. If American critics would devote their attention for ten years to this spade work, they might not win so much honor, but we should find the atmosphere clearer at the end of that period for the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sober man would have been. He had over-balanced himself, and—and that was the whole story. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict in accordance with the facts, and the Captain's body was put to bed with the sexton's spade. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... frenzies will a rabble seize 55 In lax luxurious days, like these; THE PEOPLE'S MAJESTY, forsooth, Must fix our rights, define our truth; Weavers{7} become our Lords of Trade, And every clown throw by his spade, 60 T' instruct our ministers of state, And foreign commerce regulate: Ev'n bony Scotland with her dirk, Nay, her starv'd presbyterian kirk{8}, With ignorant effrontery prays 65 Britain to dim the western rays, ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... skin, When he is gone and cold. 15. How 'fraid are some of dead men's beds, And others of their bones; They neither care to see their heads, Nor yet to hear their groans. 16. Now all these things are but the shade And badges of his coat;[3] The glass that runs, the scythe and spade, Though weapons more remote: 17. Yet such as make poor mortals shrink And fear, when they are told, These things are signs that they must drink With death; O then how cold. 18. It strikes them to the heart! how do They study it to shun! Indeed who can bear up, and who Can from these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... France. In this connection much praise was accorded to the King as one of the chief factors in its evolution. Mr. W. R. Cremer, M.P., the well-known Radical, made the following comment in the Daily News as to this victory for Arbitration: "It has been the privilege and joy of others to do the spade work in this beneficent movement, but to King Edward the opportunity was, at the psychological moment, presented to complete the work of thirty years. How well and how nobly His Majesty performed his part the history of the past nine months clearly shows. Indeed, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... thou say'st:[10] And the more pity that great folks should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even christian.[11] Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: they hold up ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... a piece of distinguishable dust remained of them; personages whom tradition told about; and here, mixed up with successive crops of native-born Americans, had been ministers, captains, matrons, virgins good and evil, tough and tender, turned up and battened down by the sexton's spade, over and over again; until every blade of grass had its relations with the human brotherhood of the old town. A hundred and fifty years was sufficient to do this; and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first hole was dug among the difficult roots of the forest trees, and ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lemonade, It's made in de shade, It's stirred wid a spade. Come buy my c[o]l' ice lemonade. It's made in de shade An' s[o]l' in de sun. Ef you hain't got no money, You cain't git none. One glass fer a nickel, An' two fer a dime, Ef you hain't got de chink, You cain't git mine. Come right dis way, Fer it sh[o]' will ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... bite my enemies." "In smoothing the rough hillocks I smooth my temper. In a short time I can hear the bobolinks sing and see the blessed deluge of light and color that rolls around me." Somewhere he has said that the writer should not dig, and yet again and again we find him resorting to hoe or spade to help him sleep, as well as to smooth his temper: "Yesterday afternoon, I stirred the earth about my shrubs and trees and quarrelled with the pipergrass, and now I have slept, and no longer am morose nor feel twitchings in the muscles of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... most alarming, and ought to receive the fullest attention. What, then, can be done to save Europe from these impending dangers? The large number of "Peace Societies" which have been established in different countries have done excellent spade work. Their main object has been to insure that disputes among nations should be referred to arbitration, with a view to making more difficult their resorting to arms. The great success of these societies demonstrates plainly that there is a strong tendency among the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the dead are, And never a cry she made When there came, more sad than the keening, The ring of a digging spade. ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... the restored tranquillity that he showed his true capacity. He employed the natives as labourers in making roads, useful both for war and peace. They found wages better than warfare. As navvies, they were paid half a crown a day, and were reported to do more work as spade-men than an equal number of soldiers would. At no time did the Maoris seem to make such material progress as during the twelve peaceful ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... chisel, which, most probably, the carpenters had used in the construction of the house, and forgotten. We put it carefully by, in order that we might fasten it to a pole, and use it in the moment of our flight as a spear. We found, also, a spade in the court, which we hid, that it too might serve as a weapon. Besides this, the sailors, on the night when we made the attempt, were to arm themselves with some long poles, which had been used in ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... ladies to hear as his. The wind was a thoroughly wintry one from the north-east, and had been blowing all night, so that the waves were shouldering the rocks with huge assault. Now Fergus's sermon, which he meant to use as a spade for the casting of the first turf of the first parallel in the siege of the pulpit of the North parish, was upon the vanity of human ambition, his text being the grand verse—And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... morrow the Germans saw a top hat come bobbing and bowing along the French trench and heard loud cries of "Vive le President!" Time after time they riddled that top hat with bullets, and still it went bobbing along until the French took it off the spade handle, threw it into the ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... light on rusty money that once belonged to the Romans. Fragments of plates from which they ate, of goblets from which they drank, and of pavement on which they trod, are discovered among the earth that is broken by the plough, or the dust that is crumbled by the gardener's spade. Wells that the Romans sunk, still yield water; roads that the Romans made, form part of our highways. In some old battle-fields, British spear-heads and Roman armour have been found, mingled together in decay, as they ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... border of the curving bay except a few boys far off on the gleaming sands whence the tide had just receded: they were digging for sand eels—lovely little silvery fishes—which, as every now and then the spade turned one or two up, they threw into a tin pail for bait. But on the summit of the long sandhill, the lonely figure of a man was walking to and fro in the level light of the rosy west; and as Malcolm climbed the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... would escape from his adventure with any portion of his self-possession. Truly, this fair-seeming and wonderful civilisation was like the floor of a charnel-house or a field of battle; anywhere one drove a spade beneath its surface, he uncovered horrors, sights for the eyes and stenches for the nostrils that caused ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... face beamed with joyous understanding. Here was a fellow-soul, "funny" like herself, Beryl described her; Beryl, for whom black was always and invariably black, and a spade a spade. ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... minute above his spade. The cool breezes were grateful to his heated brow. The after-sunset glow seemed like the benediction of the Infinite on the closing act of the day. He saw the hurried and unfeeling dumping of bodies into the holes awaiting them. Then his heart grew big with something ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... with an emphatic nod. "I called Jason to bring a spade; but I could scarcely wait, and I found myself clawing like—like one of the dogs, my dear. Jason came and we had that box up and I opened it. And what do you ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... waited till the grave was filled and the turf laid down, a trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... straight and lofty, and appeared as if they had never been obliged to art in their progress to maturity; the streams of water were winding and irregular, and not odiously drawn into a right line by the spade of the ditcher. The soil had never submitted to the ploughshare, and the air that circulated through this domain of nature was replete with that balmy fragrance, which was breathed into the lungs of the long-lived ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... rage, Jim Chowder said; and as Jan Steenbock came up to help him, he aimed a blow at him with a spade which he clutched hold of from one of the hands, almost splitting Jan's head open, for the thick felt hat he wore ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade Are simply "adapted" from other men's lore; That—plainly to speak of a "spade" as a "spade"— You've "stolen" your grouping from three or from four; That (however the writer the truth may deplore), 'Twas Gainsborough painted your "Little Boy Blue"; Smile only serenely—though cut to the core— For the man ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... light over there. Now they will soon be here. They will know where I had to come, and they will have a spade." He seemed to be fainting in ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... aeroplanes swooping down upon the flying airship, and sending it reeling earthward, the men screaming. He imagined a shattered Zeppelin staggering earthward in the fields behind the Dower House, and how he would himself run out with a spade and smite the Germans down. "Quarter indeed! Kamerad! Take that, you ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Mr Button was a person who called a spade a spade, had no more conventions than a walrus, and looked after his two charges just as a nursemaid might look after her charges, or a walrus after ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the last, as the gardener in the Pleasance leaned one day on his spade, he saw among the roses a small round hillock of earth, such as he had never seen before, and upon it something which shone. It was her ring! It was the very jewel she had worn the day she vanished out ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... found that cauliflowers ready for use in October may be kept in perfection over winter. For this purpose they are lifted carefully with the spade, keeping a ball of earth attached to the roots. Some of the large outside leaves are removed, and any points of leaves that immediately overhang the flower are cut off. They are then placed either in pots ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... life all winter since the capture of his harem, and of this old Turkeytrack was fully aware. The old cook's chum had a nice little brown mare which he judged would serve his ends, and taking a pair of the strongest hobbles, a spade, a spare lasso, and a stout post he mounted the mare and rode away to the ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... learning the value of time, which is the first lesson in telephony. Our reapers and mowers now go to seventy-five nations. Our street cars run in all great cities. Morocco is importing our dollar watches; Korea is learning the waste of allowing nine men to dig with one spade. And all ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... on the beach at Nome, saw in the sands thrown up that alluring yellow glint which has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found himself worth $3000 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... declared that they had seen a ghastly resemblance of the murderess, robed in her winding-sheet, with the black mark of the rope round her swollen neck, standing on stormy nights upon her husband's grave, and digging there with a spade in hideous imitation of the actions of the men who had disinterred the corpse for medical examination. This was fearful enough—nobody dared go near the place after nightfall. But soon, another circumstance was talked of, in connexion with the poisoner, which affected ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... details to the genealogical trees which she already knew by heart. Beside her, astride a chair, sat Julien, smoking a pipe and occasionally spitting on the ground as he watched the growth of the colored certificate of his nobility. Soon old Simon on his way to the kitchen garden stopped, with his spade on his shoulder, to look at the painting, and the news of Bataille's arrival having reached the two farms the farmers' wives came hurrying up also. Standing on either side of the baroness, they went into ecstasies over the drawing and kept repeating: "He ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... be more careful about your language. It's not necessary to call a spade a spade, and you can surely find a less objectionable expression to explain the relationship between the persons.... Don't you ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... wait another minute," cried the old sailor, who was nearly as excited as the boys. "Get your spade an' we'll start ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... there. Had architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B. Hobson. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade; while with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await the return of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Redbreast Sat upon a tree, Up went the Pussy-Cat, And down went he; Down came Pussy-Cat, Away Robin ran, Says little Robin Redbreast— Catch me if you can. Little Robin Redbreast jumped upon a spade, Pussy-Cat jumped after him, and then he was afraid. Little Robin chirped and sung, and what did pussy say? Pussy-Cat said Mew, mew mew,—and Robin ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... ententes, all found in him a tireless exponent, a fluent and entertaining, though perhaps not very convincing, advocate. With the real motive power behind these various causes he was not very closely identified; to the spade-workers who carried on the actual labours of each particular movement he bore the relation of a trowel-worker, delving superficially at the surface, but able to devote a proportionately far greater amount of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... surprised to see that one of them got upon the back of the other, and both proceeded to move slowly on the ground towards a place of retreat; upon further examination he found that the one on the back of the other had received a severe contusion from his spade, and was rendered unable to get away, without the assistance ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... long the grass waved softly in the courtyard below—the grass that was so soon to wither, uprooted by the spade; and all night long the Gadfly lay alone in ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... its then rough character, partly from poverty of appliances. For the hardest jobs neighbors would join hands, fighting nature as they had to fight the Indians, unitedly. Farming tools, if of iron or steel, as axe, mattock, spade, and the iron nose for the digger or the plough, the village blacksmith usually fashioned, as he did the bake-pan, griddle, crane, and pothooks, for indoor use. Tables, chairs, cradles, bedsteads, and those straight-backed "settles" of which a few may yet be seen, were either home-made ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... search was renewed among the mortar and rags. We first found a part of the scalp, with the long hair firm on it; which, on being cleaned, is neither black nor fair, but a darkish dusk, the most common of any other colour. Soon afterwards we found the skull, but it was not complete. A spade had damaged it, and one of the temple quarters was wanting. I am no phrenologist, not knowing one organ from another, but I thought the skull of that wretched man no study. If it was particular for anything, it was for a smooth, almost ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... between one man and another,—between one animal and another,—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us; if we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But, being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in proportion to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... deeper to make ready for storm and siege. Or ever the Diet had met, many hands had already been at work on these buildings; and in these days every man soul in Nuremberg, from the boys even to the grey-haired men, wielded the spade or the trowel. Every serving-man in every household, whether artisan or patrician—and ours with the rest—was bound to toil at digging, and our fine young masters found themselves compelled to work in sun or rain, or to order the others; and it hurt them no more than it did the Magister, whose ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... favorite was an oak tree, nearly twenty years of age and already sturdy, which stood in the centre of the lawn, where he had planted it with Marianne, who had held the slender sapling in position while he plied his spade on the day when they had founded their domain of Chantebled. And near this oak, which thus belonged to their robust family, there was a basin of living water, fed by the captured springs of the plateau—water whose crystalline song made the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... strange ship sails away, leaving a bewildered 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
... reveals a trait in his character which persisted all through life. He was the soul of candor. He called a spade a spade. And ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... wild fowl, are always close at hand, and if the surface water in some of these has alkali, excellent water can always be had in others, and by the simple process of digging for it a short distance beneath the sod with a spade, the soil being so devoid of stones that it is not even necessary to use a pick. No wonder that under these circumstances we hear no croaking. Croakers are very rare animals throughout Canada. It was remarked with surprise, by an Englishman accustomed to British ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... bewildered nowadays. He calls to Dering, the gardener, who is on a ladder, pruning. Dering, who comes to him, is a rough, capable young fellow with fingers that are already becoming stumpy because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... inner office behind the dispensary opened, and an energetic, spade-bearded man stepped forth, rubbing ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... conversation had been going on Temple indicated the spot which he thought suitable, and, with a spade which he carried, had commenced excavating a hole sufficiently large ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... fact that now I tell. A Miller there had dwelt for many a day; As any peacock he was proud and gay. He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot, Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot. A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade, Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant blade. A jolly dagger bare he in his pouch: There was no man, for peril, durst him touch. A Sheffield clasp-knife lay within his hose. Round was his face, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... in his spade, and with a turn or two brought up the little rose bush he had chosen for her purpose; and holding the ball of earth, in his hand, shewed her the part of the plant he spoke of, just above ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... of the ice had been slightly softened, so that this last work did not entail much labour for pick-axe or spade. The course ran obliquely round the west side of the berg, so that the incline should not be too great at any point. With cables properly fixed, the launch, it seemed, might be effected without any mishap. I rather feared lest ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... the men went out to the barn. The horses were hitched to the wagon, which still contained the tent and fittings. Young Hiram threw an ax and a spade among the canvas folds, mounted to his place, and drove up the lane leading to the forest, followed by Yates and Renmark on foot, leaving the farmer in his barnyard with a cheery good-by, which he did not see fit ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... must n't be ungrateful. Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves,—the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of publishers. After all, it is likely that the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you can,—but the moon will still lead the tides, and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... spade work Kung Su had done in preparing hypno-recordings, Griffin had a working knowledge of the Rational People's language eleven days later when he sat down to drink herb infused hot water with Joe and other Old Ones in the ...
— Blessed Are the Meek • G.C. Edmondson
... Palace, existed is the Arkite dove, and in the bulrushes that grew round the cradle of Moses! Our railway tunnels are wonderful works of science, but the mole tunnelled with its foot, and the pholas with one end of its shell, before our navvies handled pick or spade upon the heights of the iron roads: worms were prior to gimlets, ant-lions were the first funnel makers, a beaver showed men how to make the milldams, and the pendulous nests of certain birds swung gently in the air before the keen wit of even ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ground, a similar canister, more than half full of sugar, lay on its side, so that its contents were still good, the lids of both canisters having been carried off. The whole stock of tobacco lay scattered about the ground and destroyed by the late rains. A spade, a steel-yard, and a hammer were left; although iron had been so desirable that one of the iron pins of the cart was carried away. The two hair trunks belonging to Mr. Finch and which contained his clothes, papers, etc. remained on the heap, uninjured and unopened, while the truly ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... little granddaughter and her nurse, I went down to Bournemouth, one of the most charming watering places in England. We had rooms in the Cliff House with windows opening on the balcony, where we had a grand view of the bay and could hear the waves dashing on the shore. While Nora, with her spade and pail, played all day in the sands, digging trenches and filling them with water, I sat on the balcony reading "Diana of the Crossways," and Bjornson's last novel, "In God's Way," both deeply interesting. As all the characters in the latter come to a sad end, I could not see the significance ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and qualms, I bore and buried ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the people who came to stay this spring. He thought it would amuse them to look for the treasure. And it was promised—if there had not been the fire!—that when we came home from our trip we would give a party to dig under the pines. Each one was to have a spade; and it would be allowed to dig down some feet, but not enough to hurt the pines. The gardeners were to decide on that. Larry thought it would be fun. But I am not sure if Mistaire Caspian would not have persuaded him to forget ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... single peasant in my village so blind as to be unaware of the total absence of Cigales in winter; and every tiller of the soil, every gardener, is familiar with the first phase of the insect, the larva, which his spade is perpetually discovering when he banks up the olives at the approach of the cold weather, and he knows, having seen it a thousand times by the edge of the country paths, how in summer this larva issues from the earth from a little round well of its own making; how it climbs a twig or a ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the way. I thought I would meet you at the deepo to surprise you. But I had to bank my house; I wuzn't goin' to leave it to no underlin' and have my stuff freeze. But when I hern that Josiah wuz comin' I jest dropped my spade—I had jest got done—ketched up my book and threw my things into my grip, my trunk wuz all packed, and here I am, safe and sound, though the cars broke down once and we wuz belated. We have just traipsed along a day or two behind you all the way from Chicago, I not ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... labyrinth might be in your hands to-day. The more I hear and the more I think, the more firmly am I convinced that the truth we are out to find can only be discovered by a deal of hard digging in past times. There is a lot of spade work demanded and you, or I, may have to return to England to do it—unless we can get the information without the labour. But I've no reason to count on ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... sheds, leaning in all directions. A mob of sheep was penned in a yard outside one of the sheds; and in the garden an old woman, white-haired and wrinkled, with a very short dress showing a lot of dirty stocking and slipshod elastic-sided boot, was bending over a spade, digging potatoes. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... into my hiding place, when the door of the cottage swung open, and the man who had introduced himself to me as the surgeon of Gaster Fell came out, bareheaded, with a spade in his hands. In front of the door there was a small cultivated patch containing potatoes, peas and other forms of green stuff, and here he proceeded to busy himself, trimming, weeding and arranging, singing ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before he had deposited all the ingots within the precincts of the amphitheater. Then from the hollow of an ancient, lightning-blasted tree he produced the very spade with which he had uncovered the chest of Professor Archimedes Q. Porter which he had once, apelike, buried in this selfsame spot. With this he dug a long trench, into which he laid the fortune that his blacks had carried from ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... workmen, at this juncture, and threw in their way an adequate tool with which to accomplish this part of their work. Some one had discovered lying in the yard through which we passed on our way to breakfast, an old rusty spade with a broken handle. It was at once determined that the said spade must be secured. Accordingly men were detailed and instructed in their proper parts, and at the first opportunity the spade was transferred to the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... broken, rich, brown soil observable not far away marked Sullenbode's grave. He had interred her by the light of the moon, with a long, flat stone for a spade. A little lower down, the white steam of a hot spring was curling about in the twilight. From where he sat he was unable to see the pool into which the spring ultimately flowed, but it was in that pool that he had last ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... coroner was bending over, examining something on the ground. When I reached him he grabbed me by the sleeve and pointed to two barely discernible tracks paralleling each other for almost a hundred yards. Between them ran a shallow, jagged rut, where the spade of an aeroplane had dug up ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... the tomb, and vanished for a few minutes. When he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the light of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst he read the inscription. He hung his lantern on the lowest bough of the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower-roots of several ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and not of any other and less morally objectionable species. Jedburgh justice oL that sort rather savours of the method pursued by the famous countryman who was found cutting a harmless amphibian into a hundred pieces with his murderous spade, and saying spitefully as he did so, at every particularly savage cut: 'I'll larn ye to be a twoad, I will; I'll larn ye to ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... that wild and singular funeral rite. March cast his eyes below, and through the transparent medium of the clear water, which was almost as pure as air, he saw what Hetty was accustomed to call "mother's grave." It was a low, straggling mound of earth, fashioned by no spade, out of a corner of which gleamed a bit of the white cloth that formed the shroud of the dead. The body had been lowered to the bottom, and Hutter brought earth from the shore and let it fall upon it, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the end of the path, however, when the father began to change his attitude; he stood up, dropped his "dibbler," scraped his foot on his spade, and, grumbling to himself, went after her. She did not see or hear him ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... while the exalted offender can find means to baffle the law, new capital punishments must be devised, new snares of death must be spread for the wretched mechanic, who is famished into guilt. These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employments pre-occupied; and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly And roll back down the mound beside the hole. I thought, Who is that man? I didn't know you. And I crept down the stairs and up the stairs To look again, and still your spade kept lifting. Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice Out in the kitchen, and I don't know why, But I went near to see with my own eyes. You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby's ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... Finlayson set forth accompanied by Mrs O'Neil, for her cottage. Shane was watching for them. The widow sent him for a spade, and some minutes were employed in digging, before the promised box was discovered, so deeply down in the earth had she ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, without making any man ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the Land of Mo, one of which flows milk of a very rich quality. Some of the islands in Milk River are made of excellent cheese, and the people are welcome to spade up this cheese whenever they wish to eat it. In the little pools near the bank, where the current does not flow swiftly, delicious cream rises to the top of the milk, and instead of water-lilies great strawberry leaves grow upon the surface, and the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... Prepimpin, at once a link and a barrier between them, lying at their feet. Her ready sympathy brought her near; but while the dog lay there, mangled and bloody, he could think of nothing else. It was Elodie who suggested immediate and decent burial. Why should he not go to the hotel for a workman and a spade? ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... anchor there; and being uncertain what sort of people they might be, whether friends or foes, I thought it not safe to be seen. I got up into a very thick tree, from whence I might safely view them. The vessel came into a little creek, where ten slaves landed, carrying a spade and other instruments for digging up the ground. They went towards the middle of the island, where I saw them stop, and dig for a considerable time, after which I thought I perceived them lift up a trap ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... Santos looked of uncanny stature in the low yellow light, from my pillow close to the earth. Harris turned away at my glance; he carried a spade, and began digging near the boxes without more ado, by the light of a second lantern set on one of them: his back was to me from this time on. Santos shrugged a shoulder towards the captain as he opened a campstool, drew up his trousers, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... of animals from so small a column is really serious, and everyone is looking blue over his deficiencies. I am deficient of a spade and two nose-bags. But then I am to the good by one lame dog, who, in return for slight services rendered on the road, refuses to allow any but my own lawful servants to approach the encampment. We did eighteen miles to-day, and encamped at Greefdal in the evening. ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... the frame, spanking the fertilizer down hard with the back of his spade. He sloped it up some four inches ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... off these 'ere works," said the foreman; "take it 'ome and bury it in the back-yard. Anybody'll be glad to lend you a spade." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and spake an elder mon, That held the Spade its Ace— "God save the lad! Whence comes the licht "That wimples ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... how work was obtained, and, even more considerable, the doing of the work. The amateur, as Frank pointed out later, began too vigorously and became exhausted; the professional set out with the same deliberation with which he ended. One must not run at one's spade, or hoe, or whatever it was; one must exercise a wearisome self-control ... survey the work to be done, turn slowly, spit on one's hands, and after a pause begin, remembering that the same activity must show itself, if the work ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... cook's room on one side, with a narrow passageway on the other, into a small room in the front end of the car. This car was sixty feet in length and would make you think you were in a palace hotel on wheels. Hank Small, who had hands as big as a garden spade, was the engineer, with engine No. 96, which was always expected to pull the pay car. Then there was a man by the name of Olmsby who was one of the check clerks, young and very fine looking. Then there was ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... share of such making, in the present case, was of the humblest it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing—namely, writing from Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward sweep of stately prose in narrative ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of the canal was dug on a slant, for greater ease in removing the material. Here the two beavers toiled side by side, working independently. With their teeth they cut the tough sod as cleanly as a digger's spade could do it. With their fore paws they scraped up the soil—which was soft and easily worked—into sticky lumps, which they could hug under their chins and carry up the slope to be dumped upon the grass at the side. Every minute one or the other would stop, lift his brown ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... older ones shook their heads and wondered what old Colonel Selden Phelps would say if he could say anything. And the spirit of progress and improvement reached even to the grounds. Zenas Third toiled with spade and pruning-knife and bundles of shrubs and plants came from Boston and were set out with lavish prodigality. In the matter of alterations to the house Eve was consulted on every possible occasion, while garden improvements ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and fatuous spinster, but this time, in the part of Miss Myrtle, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical British boarder, Mr. John Preston, M. P. (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a serviette"—one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were many ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... after flax, and were to be given to the cows as they did in Flanders; that is, wash them clean, put them in a trough where they were to be stamped together with a spitter or small spade; and the turnips were to be followed by clover. All these, says Weston, were already grown in England, but 'there is as much difference between what groweth here and there as is between the same thing which ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... by the discovery of several stones, which he conveyed home with him, and which proved, after being cleaned, to be gems of the first water. Elated at this success, he returned to the spot next day with a spade, and succeeded in obtaining many other specimens, and in convincing himself that the deposit stretched up and down for a long distance on both sides of the torrent. Having satisfied himself upon this point, our compatriot made his way to Tobolsk, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Messalina!" he said. "Oh, the trollop! the wanton! Oh, holy Gregory! Yet I must be quiet—quiet as a sucking lamb, that I may strike afterward as a roaring lion. Is this your innocence, Mistress Ursula, that cannot endure the spoken name of a spade? Oh, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... her for it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There's no family pride about me, there's no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that's what he ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens* |
