"Mattock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Asters are wanted for a flower show make the ground as wet as mud. Then lift each plant with a spade or mattock slowly and skillfully. The roots, dirt and all, will come up in a solid mass. Pot at once, before any of the earth is shaken off. They will not wither in the least if kept out of direct sunshine for a few days. If enormous ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... thereof Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob From mortal kind. And what is left to till, Even that the force of nature would o'errun With brambles, did not human force oppose,— Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave The soil in twain by pressing ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... seemed accomplished. A large, covered basket was partially loaded with the contents—heavy as lead—and, between them, they bore it out into the storm and darkness again, and I heard the sound of the spade and mattock at ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and his pigs; a shepherd, his flock and dog; lastly, cabbages belonging to an old woman who cuts him in two with her mattock just as he tries to eat her. Out of him jump unhurt every thing and every one he has swallowed. In a story from the south of Siberia (Gubernatis' Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 140) the hero vanquishes a demon, who tells him that in his stomach he will find a silver ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... a storm; to his Father, as an infant in the dark. For guilt, he had a Saviour, and he thought of him in penitence; for trouble, a Guardian, and he looked to him in peace; and as for toil, back-breaking toil, there was another Master whom he served with spade, and mattock, and a thankful heart, while he only seemed to be working for the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... desire to dig a canal across the isthmus of the Peloponnesus, and he did begin the task. Men shrank from it, however, because, when the first workers touched the earth, blood spouted from it, groans and bellowings were heard, and many phantoms appeared. Nero himself thereupon grasped a mattock and by throwing up some of the soil fairly compelled the rest to imitate him. For this work he sent for a large number of men from ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... suggestions. Now and then we catch a glimpse of a grim old man, who lays down a scythe and hour-glass in the corner while he shifts the scenes. There, too, in the dim background, a weird shape is ever delving. Sometimes he leans upon his mattock, and gazes, as a coach whirls by, bearing the newly married on their wedding jaunt, or glances carelessly at a babe brought home from christening. Suddenly (for the scene grows larger and larger as we look) a bony hand snatches back a performer in the midst of his part, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... through the whin-bush, Straightest down the ridge his furrows sped; Early on the mountain ranged his reapers, Above his mattock late ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... obtrusive proportions stood in the centre of the peaceful vegetation, like a newly raised altar to an unknown deity. The only suggestion of martial surveillance was an Indian soldier, whose musket, reposing on the ground near Mrs. Markham, he had exchanged for the rude mattock with which he was ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... line to mark the trench, and stretch it on the sward!" The trench is marked, the tools are brought, we utter not a word, But stack our guns, then fall to work with mattock and with spade, A thousand men with sinewy arms, and not a sound is made; So still were we, the stars beneath, that scarce a whisper fell; We heard the red-coat's musket click, and ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the so-called religious zeal of the Puritans, Ethelmar's heart was disturbed, as is recorded by a writer of the period, who says that "when the steps of the altar were levelling with the rest of the ground one of the workmen accidentally struck his mattock on this stone and broke it; underneath which was an urn wherein the heart of this Ethelmar was, being enclosed in a golden cup, which thing ... being conveyed to the ears of the committee-men they took the cup for their own use, and ordered him to bury the heart ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... Hence, the scrub that covered it was not of large growth, while the soil is exceptionally loose and rich, consisting of black mould largely intermixed with shells. This space we cleared and fenced in. Then we went to work with spade and pickaxe and mattock. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... corners, and not one had been left without its walling-in, and only one was then intact, some, I fancied, having been broken open by their own builders at the spur of suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact I broke into with a mattock—it was only a thin cake of plaster, but air-tight—and in a space not seven feet long behind it I found the very ill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and tugger at his feet, and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, and a great heap ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... been retracing accurately and in detail a small scene of the previous morning, at the moment quite without significance for him. Limping back from his cliff-patch with a basket of potatoes in one hand and with the other using the shaft of his mattock (or "visgy" in Polpier language) for a walking-staff, as he passed the watch-house he had been vaguely surprised to find coastguardsman Varco on the look-out there with his ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... it. He had a field of corn, and a little garden full of truck; over his fireplace hung a 32-20 repeating rifle, and in one corner were a number of steel traps, copper and brass wire for snares, and a home-made mattock with which a rabbit could be extricated from a burrow, or a skunk-skin from ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... of his arch enemy, the huntsman. The thick breath of the hounds make hot the air within his hole. The sound of their voices is close upon his ears. His breast is nearly bursting with the violence of that effort which at last has brought him to his retreat. And then pickaxe and mattock are plied above his head, and nearer and more near to him press his foes,—his double foes, human and canine,—till at last a huge hand grasps him, and he is dragged forth among his enemies. Almost as soon as his eyes have seen the ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... The mattock, the coffin, and the melancholy grave admonish us of our mortality, and that, sooner or later, these frail bodies must moulder in their ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... his back upon the dry grass. He was everywhere, day after day—in the trenches, on the towers, teaching the bowmen their business, crying 'Mort de Dieu!' when a mangonel did its work, and some flung rock made the wall to fly; he crouched under the tortoise-screens with the miners, took a mattock himself as indifferently as an arbalest or a cross-bow. He could do everything, and have (if not a word) a cheerful grin for every man who did his duty. As it was evident that he knew what such duty should be, and could have done it better himself, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... story, who, as I said, had plodded across the field a hundred times, was doing it for the hundred and first, or perhaps was at work there with his mattock or his homely plough. And, perchance, some stroke of the spade, or push of the coulter, went a little deeper than usual, and there flashed the gold, or some shower of rain came on, and washed away a little of the superincumbent ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the great American naval depot on Lake Ontario, and hastened back with a strong body of re-enforcements. The gallant Colonel Vincent, commandant at Fort George, bated not a jot of heart or hope,—although he was able to muster only some 1,400 troops. Yet these, with spade and mattock, toiled day after day to strengthen its ramparts and ravelins, and to throw up new earthworks and batteries. One fatal want, however, was felt. The stock of ammunition was low, and as Chauncey, with his fleet, had the mastery of the lake, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... a few plants are dug up, set in a pail with thin mud at the bottom and carried to the place of planting. The most economical method of planting is for one man to make the holes with a mattock. These holes are made about a foot in diameter, by scraping off the sod with the mattock and then digging a little hole in the dirt underneath. A second man follows with a pail of plants and sets a single plant ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... Chi-mo, witnessing the outrage from the city-walls, wept passionately and were all impatient to go out and fight, their fury being increased tenfold. T'ien Tan knew then that his soldiers were ready for any enterprise. But instead of a sword, he himself too a mattock in his hands, and ordered others to be distributed amongst his best warriors, while the ranks were filled up with their wives and concubines. He then served out all the remaining rations and bade his men eat their fill. The regular soldiers were told to keep out of sight, and the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... for the gratification of that conceit or covetousness which seeks to obtain, from mere grandiloquence, reputations and rewards to which it is not entitled. Being a gardener, I like to call a spade as spelt; and if any one terms it an horticultural implement, or a mattock, I do not expect him to dig much. I have used the monosyllable "shop," and I will not recall it, though a thousand pairs of gleaming scissors were pointed at my breast, and I was told by an angry army of apprentices to ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... watches, buckles, snuff-boxes, and the like. Lord! thought I, that this island were of good honest mother earth instead of ice, that we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not save the ship, and make a princely mine of its grave, ready for the mattock should ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... always a bad time of year for fires in foothill California—between the rains, the heat of the year, everything crisp and brown and brittle. This threatened the whole valley and water shed. The Gateses turned out, and all their neighbours, with hoe, mattock, axe, and sacking, trying to beat, cut, or scrape a "break" wide enough to check the flames. It was cruel work. The sun blazed overhead and the earth underfoot. The air quivered as from a furnace. Men ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the folks, to whom he visits paid, Was neighbour Peter, one who used the spade; A villager that God, in lieu of lands, Had furnished only with a pair of hands, To dig and delve, and by the mattock gain Enough his wife and children to maintain. Still youthful charms you in his spouse might trace; The weather injured solely had her face, But not the features which were perfect yet: Some wish perhaps more blooming belles to get; The rustick truly me ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... the town. There were those who had seen him thus employed (that form seeming still to carry something of real sun-gold upon it) peering into the darkness, while his tears fell sometimes among the grim relics his mattock had disturbed. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... bench, and gasped, apparently unable to speak; he looked to Vanderhoek, and pointed to an instrument in the shape of a mattock—shaking his hand, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various |
