"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men supplemented the defences made by Lyttelton, and tightened their hold upon the hill. One futile night attack caused them for an instant to change the spade for the rifle. When in the morning it was found that the Boers had, as they naturally would, brought up their outlying guns, the tired soldiers did not regret their labours of the night. It was again demonstrated how innocuous a thing is a severe shell fire, if the position be ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fallen; and I was thus not only perilously exposed myself, but enabled to command some part of the garden walks and (under an evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the cottage. For long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and visiting her flowers—herself as fair. There was a friend; here, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity—the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Geo. Day. Woodland was being cleared for an orchard, flint foundations were encountered, and the site was then explored by Mr. Jas. Kirk, Mr. S. Priest, and others of the Dartford Antiquarian Society, to whom I am indebted for information: the Society will in due course issue a full Report. The spade (fig. 13) revealed a rectangular walled enclosure of 53 x 104 feet. The entrance was at the east end; the dwelling-rooms (including a sunk bath, 7 feet square, lined with plaster) were, so far as traced, in the west and south-west portion; much of the walled space may have been ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... of the mountain-side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... believe it at first, but when he saw Bob show 'is missus 'ow to pat the path down with the back o' the spade and hold the nails for 'er while she nailed a climbing nasturtium to the fence, he went off and fetched Bill Chambers and one or two others, and they all leaned over the fence breathing their 'ardest and a-saying of all the nasty things to Bob ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... I like your spirit. I will not baulk you. Give me a spade; I will try what I can do to expedite the work." And my revered father, as soon as the spade had been handed to him, began digging away with right goodwill, filling the baskets, which were carried up to the embankment. He soon became ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... seized a spade that stood near by, removed a few shovels full of earth and disclosed a large white stone slab, in the centre of which was an iron ring which enabled ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... slope of sand and boulders and examined the cliff. It was virgin rock; never a tool mark was to be seen. Already the men were going, when the same strange instinct which had drawn him to the spot caused him to take a spade from one of them and begin to shovel away the sand from the face of the cliff—for here, for some unexplained reason, were no boulders or debris. Seeing their master, to whom they were attached, at work, they began ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... the cutting-in spade, and as the fish hung still over the side, cut him open from neck to belly with a single movement. Another Chinaman stood by with a long-handled gaff, hooked out the purple-black liver, brought it over the side, and dropped it into one of the deck-tubs. The shark thrashed and writhed, ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... reverie by receiving a heavy blow on the shoulder and hearing a rough voice exclaim: "Now then, wake up; don't stand there dreaming all day. What are you thinking about? Here, catch hold of this spade and pickaxe; that's your share. Ha, ha! it's a good idea and an excellent joke to make you rascals carry the tools with which we are going to make you work when you reach the mines. That's it; now get into your place, and look ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... was then determined on. Gridley marked out the lines for the fortifications; the men stacked their guns; threw off their packs; seized their trenching tools, and set to work with great spirit; but so much time had been wasted in discussion, that it was midnight before they struck the first spade into the ground. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... apology, will surely hover over all those graves in the Wilderness where lay the bones of so many gallant gentlemen; men who had also from their youth known and upheld such a social stratification, who had the courage to call a spade a spade ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... whenever the sun shone on the figure, the shadow of the finger was discernible on the ground at a little distance from the statue. Having marked the spot, he waited until midnight, and then began to dig. At last his spade struck upon something hard. It was a trap-door, below which a flight of marble steps descended into a spacious hall, where many men were sitting in solemn silence amid piles of gold and diamonds and long ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... this till noon; he trimming, lifting and placing the logs—and elephants have never swung teak more splendidly—while I, with our jointed camp spade, filled in the sand. The use of an axe could not possibly betray our position as Efaw Kotee had been betrayed, because the breeze continued from him to us, and also for the equally good reason that the bite of an axe in soggy ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... to Dexter showed itself as the woman's devotion had shown itself—in the man's rough way. He threw down his spade ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... about the room for some other article. Having found it, he emerged from the inner door, crossed the brewhouse, and went into the yard. Directly he stepped out she could see his outline by the light of the clouded and weakly moon. The sack was slung at his back, and in his hand he carried a spade. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... I stopped on a march by a threshing-floor where they were measuring grain. When the shares had been divided, the one who had cultivated the land received a single tumolo (less than a half bushel). The peasant, leaning on his spade, looked at his share as if stunned. His wife and their five children were standing by. From the painful toil of a year this was what was left to him with which to feed his family. The tears ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... make an honest woman of you, when all is done. Nay, none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as safe AS a horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a mile of us; and, if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you are a delicate morsel, and there is ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Humphrey. "I will go to-morrow, with Billy and the cart, and take a spade and pick-axe with me. It may be a fool's errand, but still they say, and one would credit, for the honour of human nature, that the words of a dying man are those of truth. We had better go back now, for I ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... the widow, thoughtfully, "is to get rid of the body. I'll bury him in the garden, I think. There's a very good bit of ground behind those potatoes. You'll find the spade in the tool-house." ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... testes. Associated Words: castrate, castration, testicular, emasculate, alter, geld, spade, eunuch, varicocele, scrotum, orchitis, suspensory, orchotomy, sarcocele, hydrocele, parorchis, orchialgia, orchic, spermatic, semen, monorchism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... comes the ancient and honorable spade, which, for small garden plots, borders, beds, etc., must still be relied upon for the initial operation in gardening—breaking up the soil. There are several types, but any will answer the purpose. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself out of the school-house with the spade I now keep for the purpose ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming-birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond Mine the walnut slopes beyond, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... by various turnpike acts, has widened the upper part and filled up the lower, yet they were all visible in the days of our fathers, and are traceable even in ours. Some of these, no doubt, were formed by the spade, to soften the fatigue of climbing the hill, but many were owing to the pure efforts of time, the horse, and the showers. As inland trade was small, prior to the fifteenth century, the use of the wagon, that great destroyer of the road, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... without feet adapted for climbing live in trees; so also do monkeys with and without flexible tails, squirrels, sloths, pumas, &c. Mole-crickets dig with a well-pronounced spade upon their fore-feet, while the burying-beetle does the same thing though it has no special apparatus whatever. The mole conveys its winter provender in pockets, an inch wide, long and half an inch wide within its cheeks; ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... thrown over the top of the trench, when suddenly a head appeared, only to be immediately withdrawn. One of our snipers had evidently been watching, too. A rifle cracked and I saw a cloud of dust arise where the bullet clipped the top of the parapet. The German waved his spade defiantly in the air and continued digging; but he remained ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... whereas that some of those who bear this auld and honourable name may take scorn that it ariseth from the tilling of the ground, quhilk men account a slavish occupation, yet we ought to honour the pleugh and spade, seeing we all derive our being from our father Adam, whose lot it became to cultivate the earth, in respect of ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Primus, he wouldn't stick in a spade, unless they'd pay him aforehand. Ye see, Primus was up to 'em; he knowed about Gidger, and there wa'n't none on 'em that was particular good pay; and so they all jest hed to rake and scrape, and pay him down the twenty dollars among 'em; and they 'greed for the ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... from any on the mainland. There are very few canoes about here, and those are of miserable construction, and only fitted for the purpose they turn them to—catching fish close to the shore. The paddle the fishermen use is a sort of mongrel between a spade and a shovel. The fact of there being no boats of any size here, must be attributed to the want of material for constructing them. On the route from Kaze there are no trees of any girth, save the calabash, the wood of which is too ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not used to that; I cannot stoop to try it— To take the spade in hand, and ply it. The narrow being suits ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... spade into the ground; and, with that affected reverence which characterizes all persons employed in a ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the water at so great a depth bothered them. But, as we know, the diving suits were reinforced with plates of steel, and so strong that little more than an extra weight of water was noticed. They soon became used to it. Each one carried a spade, while the professor, Andy and the boys each had, slung about their necks by straps, one ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... real excitement of the day was when the workmen had departed, and Mr. Ranny came out with his machine laden with priceless treasures from the ten-cent store, or later when Quin Graham dashed up the lane with anything from a garden-spade to a bird-house in his hands, and with an enthusiasm and energy in his soul that communicated themselves to all concerned. Then everybody would talk at once, and everybody insist upon showing everybody else what had been ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... discussed in the real sense of the term, was that of ploughing the land instead of having it turned with the spade or hoe. I listened to this with great interest, for Jack and I had had some talk upon this subject, which began in his ardently expressed wish that massa would allow his land to be ploughed, and his despairing conclusion that he never would, ''cause horses more ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... will go and live by the sea. We have plenty to think about. I feel as if I could never stop thinking, as if I had to dig away a mountain of thought with a spade. Alice, we will go round ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... will try it by hand: two of us can dig a great deal at odd times, and we shall have a better crop with the spade than with the plow. We have now so much manure that ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... accommodation for 300 children (from their earliest days up to 15 or 10 years old), together with a sufficiently large piece of ground in the neighbourhood of Bristol, for building the premises upon and the remainder for cultivation by the spade, would cost at least Ten Thousand Pounds. I was not discouraged by this, but trusted in the ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... is more tiring than spade work. But I'll guarantee that the man who does eight hours' brain work is not much more tired than the man who does eight ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... the required implement, conducted his visitor a little before sunset to the spot, just outside the village, and left him there armed with his rifle, a revolver, and a long knife or kriss, besides the spade. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... park-wall interposed; but a little way down was a stile affording access to the road, and by this we approached the iron gate of the churchyard. I saw the church door open; the sexton was replacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which he had just been digging a grave in the churchyard, in their little repository under the stone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to commemorate ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... few hurried preparations, they stole forth with bright, expectant faces, bearing a broken spade and a rusty implement that had done many a day's service when Raff was a hale ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... waters of the canal and thrown a dyke across it, led his entire force up to the glacis of the fortifications, dug some trenches, and brought up a line of battering-rams. He would soon have effected a breach, but the Egyptians understood how to use the spade as well as the lance, and while the outer wall was crumbling, they improvised behind it a second wall, crowned with wooden turrets. Nectanebo, who had come up with thirty thousand native, five thousand Greek troops, and half the Libyan contingent, observed the vicissitudes of the siege ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... amber in, wherefore I sent the maid to him in the afternoon. Meanwhile we ourselves went up the Streckelberg, where I cut a young fir-tree with my pocket knife, which I had saved from the enemy, and shaped it like a spade, so that I might be better able to dig deep therewith. First, however, we looked about us well on the mountain, and seeing nobody, my daughter walked on to the place, which she straightway found again. Great God! what a mass of amber, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... light Of middle night So cold and white, Worn Sorrow sits by the moaning wave; Beside her are laid Her mattock and spade, For she hath half delved her own deep grave. Alone she is there: The white clouds drizzle: her hair falls loose; Her shoulders are bare; Her tears are mixed with ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Perizadah bade a gardener-lad accompany her and fared to the sire within the pleasure-gardens whereof the Speaking-Bird had told her. Here the boy dug a hole both deep and wide when suddenly his spade struck upon somewhat hard, and he removed with his hands the earth and discovered to view a golden casket well nigh one foot square. Hereupon the young gardener showed it to the Princess who explained, "I brought thee with me for this very reason. Take heed and see that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... any one who needed the explanation. The story is this:—The laird riding past a high steep bank, stopped opposite a hole in it, and said, "Hairy, I saw a brock gang in there." "Did ye?" said Hairy; "wull ye hand my horse, sir?" "Certainly," said the laird, and away rushed Hairy for a spade. After digging for half-an-hour, he came back, quite done, to the laird, who had regarded him musingly. "I canna find him, sir," said Hairy. "'Deed," said the laird, very coolly, "I wad ha' wondered if ye had, for it's ten years sin' I saw him ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... Admiral sent a boat to the island Amiga to bring the rhubarb. It returned at vespers with a bundle of it. They did not bring more because they had no spade to dig it up with; it was taken to be shown to the Sovereigns. The king of that land said that he had sent many canoes for gold. The canoe returned that had been sent for tidings of the Pinta, without having found her. The sailor ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... garden. She told me she could hardly wait to begin on it," and Josephine waved her hand at a distant figure with a spade in its hand. The spade was promptly cast aside and the worker came running around the house to meet the arriving car. "Isn't she looking splendidly?" Sally's friend murmured in her brother's ear, as the figure came near enough for ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... no choice. Do you want to lie rotting in the debtor's jail and beat hemp till you are bailed by the last trumpet? Would you toil with pick-axe and spade for a morsel of dry bread? or earn a pitiful alms by singing doleful ditties under people's windows? Or will you be sworn at the drumhead—and then comes the question, whether anybody would trust ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Argimenes, sitting upon the ground, bowed, ragged, and dirty, gnawing a bone. He has uncouth hair and a dishevelled beard. A battered spade lies near him. Two or three slaves sit at back of stage eating raw cabbage-leaves. The tear-song, the chaunt of the low-born, rises at intervals, monotonous and mournful, coming from ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... to him] To men like yourself one must speak plainly, and if you don't want to hear what I have to say, you need not listen. I always call a spade a spade; the truth is, you want her to die so that the way may be cleared for your other schemes. Be it so; but can't you wait? If, instead of crushing the life out of your wife by your heartless egoism, you let her ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... implements and weapons, the improvisation of clothing and shelter, the almost instinctive impulse to 'play with fire' which repels other animals. Style and finish may vary, and do vary widely from one province of culture to another; but in their last mechanical analysis, a spade is a spade all the world over, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... only a few days old, the work of offense and defense was already far advanced. The planters were pouring into Charleston, bringing their slaves with them, and white and black labored together at the earthworks. Rich men, who had never soiled their hands with toil before now, wielded pick and spade by the side of their black slaves. And it was rumored that Toutant Beauregard, a great engineer officer, now commander at the West Point Military Academy, would speedily resign, and come south to take command of the ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... just coming in when he came to the yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock—but Jock had sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't, he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take breath.—What! are ye whistling to yoursell?" quoth Isaac to me, "and no hearing ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... in mind that I wanted many things notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, ink was one; as also a spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to live in luxury; and if British policy prevents their countrymen from paying them, it is to the British Parliament they should look for redress, and not to our Executive. When they shall awaken to the fact that "cheap labor" with the spade, the plough, and the loom, brings with it necessarily "cheap labor" with the pen, they will become opponents, and cease to be advocates of the system under which they suffer. All that, in the mean time, we can say to them is, that we protect our own authors by giving them a monopoly of our ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... too like Elizabeth Stanton would be tied down with babies and household cares, Susan saw a bleak lonely road ahead for the woman's rights movement. She did so want her best speakers and most valuable workers to remain single until the spade work for woman's rights was done. Almost in a panic at the prospect of being left to carry on the Saratoga convention alone, Susan wrote Lucy irritable letters instead of praising her for drawing up a marriage contract and keeping her own name. Later, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... a much greater degree of attention than we believe it has yet received, in that it shows to what a considerable extent waste lands may, without any very heavy expenditure of money, be brought into profitable cultivation, and at the same time, under a well-regulated system of spade husbandry, yield abundant employment to agricultural labourers and their families. The following is the substance of the document referred to:—His lordship, who has large estates in Dorsetshire, found that a tract of land, called Shepherd's Corner, about 200 acres in extent, was wholly unproductive, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads where an Earthman had ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... Many in every class, who are at ease in their circumstances, and would fain have things remain as they are, look with dislike on a state of things so new, and wish that the 'diggings' in California, and the gold region of Australia, had never been disturbed by spade or pickaxe. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... dew off, my fingers went into the quick-silver—the horizon glass was gone, and also the piece of canvass I had put on the ground to lie down upon whilst observing so low an altitude as that of Vega. Searching a little more I missed a spade, a parcel of horse shoes, an axe, a tin dish, some ropes, a grubbing hoe, and several smaller things which had been left outside the tent, as not being likely to take ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... India in which so small a portion of the surface is unfit for tillage. The moisture rises to the surface just as it is required; and a tolerable crop is got by a poor man who cannot afford to keep a plough, and merely burns down the grass and digs the surface with his spade, or pickaxe, before he sows the seed. Generally, however, the tillage, in the portion cultivated, is very good. The surface is ploughed and cross-ploughed from six to twenty, or even thirty, times in the season; and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... walls of the cathedral, Catherine of Arragon, who died at Kimbolton Castle, in 1536; and Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed at Fotheringhay Castle fifty-one years afterwards. The accompanying engraving is a representation of the old sexton, with his spade, pickaxe, and ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... half-made grave. "My destiny," thought Ravenswood, "seems to lead me to scenes of fate and of death; but these are childish thoughts, and they shall not master me. I will not again suffer my imagination to beguile my senses." The old man rested on his spade as the Master approached him, as if to receive his commands; and as he did not immediately speak, the sexton opened the discourse ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... numerous small shallow lakelets, they came to a watercourse whereon they found signs of a grave, and they picked up a battered pint-pot. Next morning, feeling sure that the ground had been disturbed with a spade, they opened what proved to be a grave, and in it found the body of a European, the skull marked, so McKinlay states, with two sabre cuts. He noted down the description of the body, the locality, and its surroundings; and in view of these particulars, ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the implements which the old Romans used, admire their well-turned arches, and see the paint and plaster upon the walls of their apartments. The "Old Wall," so long a sphinx by the roadside, suggesting enigmas to passers-by, has found an interpreter in revelations which the spade and pickaxe have made within its shadow. From the time when its walls first fell down, it has furnished plunder to the country round. The old monks, finding it easier to take down its stones than to quarry now ones, built their churches with its spoil, whilst the "old wall" left ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... its own spade, and took it in turns to carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because "Baa" was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea "Panther," which seems silly when you read it, but when you say it it sounds ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and seeing no one near him, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... the vacillating Vaudreuil, had not yet come from Montreal, and the swiftest of the Canadian paddlers was sent down Lake Ticonderoga in a canoe to hurry him on. Then the entire battalion of Berry went to work at once with spade and pick and ax to prepare a breastwork and abattis, stretching a line of defense in front of the fort, and ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it on that account. You should not blame a bream because it is not a barbel, or a chub for not being a trout, yet the angler grumbles if he catches the humbler fish when aiming at the noble; we are all agreed that the gardener was not justified in "larning" with a spade the squalid batrachians to be toads; even musical comedies ought not to be criticized with spade strokes, although in connection with them it is a pity that a spade so rarely has been called by its proper name. Moreover, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... that circumscribe the Bed of Death have other emblems carved upon them too; there is a double frieze of oak above the pillars, and on it appears the skull and crossbones, the spade and mattock, the fragments of pitiful anatomy that marked the ghastly trade of sexton in the sixteenth century. In the covered galleries, as they were originally, the richer burgesses were buried, though ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and see it. It is probably some idle vagabond that is playing a trick on her," growled Samuel Quirk. "Here," he cried to the labourer, "take the spade, and let me see ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... to assert that the water-vole is never injurious to man. Civilisation disturbs for a time the balance of Nature, and when man ploughs or digs the ground which had previously been untouched by plough or spade, and sows the seeds of herbs and cereals in land which has previously produced nothing but wild plants, he must expect that the animals to whom the soil had been hitherto left will fail to understand that they can no more consider themselves as the owners, and will in consequence ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... both her and Turkey, the cow should not have a mouthful without leave of my father. Elsie was as usual busy with her knitting. And now I caught sight of Turkey, running from a neighbouring cottage with a spade over his shoulder. Elsie had been minding the ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that pit; ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... which he was clearly an amateur]: they then proceeded to another creek about forty or fifty yards farther up, STILL LED BY THE NATIVES, when one of them struck the rod into some marshy ground and called out that "there was something there:" a spade was immediately found, and the place dug, when the first thing that presented itself was the left hand of a man lying on his side, which witness, from a long acquaintance with him, immediately declared to be the hand ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... means free from danger, even in that resplendent dawn of intelligence; for Christianity was still the enemy of beauty, save in the Vatican, and the ignorant priest of the remote village where the spade of the peasant had revealed the sleeping marble was certain to declare the beautiful image an evil spirit, and have it broken up forthwith and ground for mortar, unless some influential scholar, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... retorted Warburton, the lion in him rising. "The builders—the directors—the owners of the U. P. R. are right here in this car. Do you understand that? Do you demand that I call a spade a spade?" ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the form of unbelief to which, on the principle of calling a spade a spade, I have taken the liberty of giving the name of Scientific Atheism, manifests itself now-a-days rather by ignoration than by formal denial of God. This, however, is not a new feature in any atheism really worthy of being ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... was under the clear blue night-heaven, with the keen frosty air blowing on his warm cheek, busy with a wheelbarrow and a spade, slicing and shovelling in the snow. He was building a hut of it, after the fashion of the Esquimaux hut, with a very thick circular wall, which began to lean towards its own centre as soon as it began to rise. This hut he had pitched ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... lapped. Hamar, in the meanwhile went to a box at the foot of the bed and produced a sack. Then he slipped on his boots and coat, and opening the door of a cupboard near the head of the bed fetched out a small spade. ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... malignantly, and drove in his spade. "It will never be much bigger than a stinging nettle," thought he, "for the roots of the oak have sucked every atom of heart out of this." His black ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of free-lances and adventurers. Abraham Yachiny, the illustrious preacher, an early believer, was inspired to have a tomb opened in the ancient "house of life." He asked the sceptical Rabbis to dig up the earth. They found it exceedingly hard to the spade, but, persevering, presently came upon an earthen pot and therein a parchment which ran thus: "I, Abraham, was shut up for forty years in a cave. I wondered that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then a voice replied to me: 'A son shall be born in the year of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of myself, spade in hand, testing this statement; but he allowed no time for such diversions of thought. The goodness of Chiswick and the importance of praising it were too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... brother came of age, it was found that the guardians had so wasted their goods, that their inheritance lay desolate. The brother was in despair, but young Richard comforted him, bade him trust in God, and himself laying aside the studies he delighted in, look up the spade and axe, and worked unceasingly till the affairs of the homestead were in a flourishing state. Then, when prosperity dawned on the elder brother, the younger obtained his wish, and went to study at Oxford, where he was so poor that he and two other scholars had but one gown between them, lived ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 was a lull in ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... to wear away, and our good folk were apt to think that even a gentleman ought to work or pay other men for doing it, and many farmers were grown weary of manners without discourse to them, and all cried out to one another how unfair it was that owning such a fertile valley young men would not spade or plough by reason of noble lineage—then the young Doones growing up took things they ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... for which a spade or shovel is used, was of clay. This was succeeded by a strata almost as hard as iron—technically called 'burnt-stuff'—which robbed the pick of its points nearly as soon as the blacksmith had steeled them at a charge of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the earth nor cared for the enjoyments which industry procures. The women, although otherwise treated with affection, and even delicacy of respect, discharged all the absolutely necessary domestic labour. The men, excepting some reluctant use of an ill formed plough, or more frequently a spade, grudgingly gone through, as a task infinitely beneath them, took no other employment than the charge of the herds of black cattle, in which their wealth consisted. At all other times they hunted, fished, or marauded, during ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... o'clock and go at six? why, about this much, ma'am," said the gardener, marking off a piece of the border with his spade. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... loved a maid, But they were sure to part, sir; Nor never lacked a paltry spade But that he ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... a friend's at stake, I can't hum and haw," said Madeleine, who could never keep her temper with Dove for long. "I call a spade a spade, and rejoice to do it. What I ask you to tell me is, whether I've been correctly informed or not. Have you, too, heard Louise Dufrayer's name coupled with that of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the Surrey which Bettesworth knew best. Than the Memoirs, I think, no more discerning study of an old labourer's fight to keep on his own legs, out of the workhouse, earning his own money with his spade and hoe, belongs to ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... then, there are shovels. Most gardeners know the difference between a spade and a shovel. They would not try to pick up and toss material with a spade designed only to work straight down and loosen soil. However, did you know that there are design differences in the shape of blade and angle of handle in shovels. The normal "combination" shovel ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... the auld high road- Yet the Deil hae General Wade For learnin's the shauchle instead o' the step Wi' the weary wark o' his spade, Till the Jew an' the Sassenach lord it noo Owre the hills whaur ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... towards the town. And on the bottom step of the Green Stairs, his arm around Captain Kidd, the boy sat watching them, looking from one to the other as long as they were in sight. The heart of him was pounding deliciously to the music of such phrases as, "Fathoms deep, lonely beach, spade and pickaxe, skull and crossbones, bags of golden doubloons and chests of ducats ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the first wants of the settler; the log-cabin rises to supply the one; the axe, the plough, the spade, the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... forest; a hundred years earlier it produced three times the quantity of grain; two-thirds of its mills are gone; not a vestige of its vineyards remains; "grapes have given way to the heath." Thus abandoned by the spade and the plow, a vast portion of the soil ceases to feed man, while the rest, poorly cultivated, scarcely provides ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... He produced a rod, SUCH a trout-rod! A long bamboo with a piece of string tied to it! To fish for trout with a worm was contrary to every tradition in which I had been reared, but adaptability is a great thing, so with two turns of a spade I got enough worms for the afternoon, and started off. The Foret d'Aiguebelle is not a forest in our acceptation of the term, but an endless series of little bare rocky hills, dotted with pines, and fragrant with tufts of wild lavender, thyme and rosemary. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... on, "is like the young man who wisely thought he'd grow his own garden-stuff. This young man had been digging for about an hour when his spade turned up a quarter. Ten minutes later he found another quarter. Then he found a dime. Then he found a ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... surface car, tram car, trolley car; box car, box wagon; horse car [U.S.]; bullet train, shinkansen [Jap.], cannonball, the Wabash cannonball, lightning express; luggage van; mail, mail car, mail van. shovel, spool, spatula, ladle, hod, hoe; spade, spaddle[obs3], loy[obs3]; spud; pitchfork; post hole digger. [powered construction vehicles] tractor, steamshovel, backhoe, fork lift, earth mover, dump truck, bulldozer, grader, caterpillar, trench digger, steamroller; pile driver; crane, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
