"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the grating and closed it in the twinkling of an eye. The engineer, who was reading a newspaper, heard the noise and looked up. Sievers struck him with the hammer and flew at one of the cleaners. Maclean rushed at the other with his spade. It was all over in a moment, and without any noise that the thudding of the donkey-engine did not drown. Maclean changed coats and caps with the insensible Russian engineer, while Sievers called the Saigon's men from below. ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mail. Bloodthirsty daggers, curved scimitars, spears, clumsy matchlocks, and long straight swords, whose hilt was an iron gauntlet, in which the warrior's fingers were laced as they grasped a handle placed at right angles to the blade, after the fashion of a spade. There were shields, too, and bows and arrows, and tulwars and kukris, any number of warlike implements from the East, while beside the statues, the West had to show some curious chairs, and a full-length portrait of an Englishman ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... noon before he reached the fringe of forest. A few paces farther and he found the spring and outcrop. To avert his partners' suspicions he had not brought his own implements, but had borrowed a pan, spade, and pick from a neighbor's claim before setting out. The spot was apparently in the same condition as when he left it, and with a beating heart he at once set to work, an easy task with his new implements. He nervously watched the water overflow the pan of dirt at its edges until, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... regular feat of all was 'spading,' which meant slewing the boat close in, as the whale was about to sound, and cutting the tendons of its tremendous death-dealing tail by a slicing blow from the two-handed razor-edged 'spade.' Perhaps the most wonderful of all exceptional escapes was that of a boat which was towed by one whale right over the back of another. And perhaps the most exciting finish to any international race ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... of the translator's work, combining text and commentary in a remarkable manner. Additions and changes are freely made; the simple sentences of the old record are greatly expanded; not only is a spade generally called a useful ligneous and ferruginous agricultural implement, but many things are said concerning the aforesaid spade which Moses or David or Isaiah ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... back, and into this it promptly retreats at the first sign of danger. It has a long, pointed snout and strong, sharp claws. It can dig a hole in the ground almost as fast as a man can dig with a pick and spade; so, when an enemy appears, it digs a hole and buries itself from sight. It is not a troublesome animal. It lives chiefly upon beetles, grubs and worms, which it hunts ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... clearer of land, from the verb riuten (reuten), corresponding to Low Ger. roden, and related to our royd, a clearing (Chapter XII). This word is apparently not connected with our root, though it means to root out, but ultimately belongs to a root ru which appears in Lat. rutrum, a spade, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... my country occupations, as far as my strength would permit, and conceived a real grief at not being able to manage our garden without help; for I could not take five or six strokes with the spade without being out of breath and overcome with perspiration; when I stooped the beating redoubled, and the blood flew with such violence to my head, that I was instantly obliged to stand upright. Being therefore confined to less fatiguing employments, I busied myself about the dove —house, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... conceives it. It is not in human nature to love a stream of tendency, or worship it, or ask boons of it; or to credit it with powers of design, volition, or creation. A prayer beginning "Stream" would sound as odd as Wordsworth's ode beginning "Spade."[57] ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the ground without altering their shape; how her strong arms with the sleeves rolled up, exerting the muscles, used the spade almost as if in anger, and how her deep dark eyes sometimes glanced at him. Though the delicate brows frowned, yet her eyes expressed pleasure and a knowledge of her ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... once more and wrinkled up his eyebrows. Farmer Brown's boy certainly had a gun over one shoulder and a spade over the other. Where could he be going down the Lone Little Path with a spade? Farmer Brown's garden certainly was not in that direction. Peter watched him out of sight and then he hurried down to the Green Meadows to tell Johnny Chuck what he had seen. My, how Peter's long legs did fly! ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... the wattle-blooms are drooping in the sombre she-oak glade, And the breathless land is lying in a swoon, He leaves his work a moment, leaning lightly on his spade, And he hears the bell-bird chime the Austral noon. The parrakeets are silent in the gum-tree by the creek; The ferny grove is sunshine-steeped and still; But the dew will gem the myrtle in the twilight ere he seek His little lonely ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... lives on its atmosphere, and when the atmosphere is good, it will grow everywhere, and when it is bad nowhere. If we smashed and buried every machine, every furnace, every factory in the world, and without any further change set ourselves to home industries, hand labour, spade husbandry, sheep-folding and pig minding, we should still do things in the same haste, and achieve nothing but dirtiness, inconvenience, bad air, and another gaunt and gawky reflection of our intellectual and moral disorder. ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... the way of furniture and bedding. Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr. Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited. In the meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed the idea that her neighbours must have been ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Bengal and elsewhere, and irrigation is never resorted to, from the heavy expense attending it), our principal aim is to preserve as much moisture in the fields as possible. They should receive, for this purpose, not less than eight ploughings, besides a thorough turning up with the spade, after the fourth ploughing, to clear the field from stubble, grass and weeds. It is absolutely indispensable to get all this done on our light soils, especially before the end of October, and have the land carefully harrowed down, so as to prevent ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... us— Left the battle line? Idling, straggling, wand'ring, Heedless of the sign? Hark! the trumpet calls thee! With us heart and hand Raise the Spade and Anchor! Strike for Sea ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... chief while the darkness endured—and as soon as the morning began to break, rose, took spade and pick and great knife, and went where Hector and Rob were watching ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Then, suddenly resolved, she stepped out of her own room, passed softly down the stair, out through the wide central hall, and so, having encountered no one, joined the ancient man on the lawn. It chanced he had been at labor directly in front of one of the barred lower windows. He now left his spade and stepped apart, essaying now ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... pickaxe alone, and it is known that Harding was an ingenious man. He had still a quantity of nitro-glycerine at his disposal, and he employed it usefully. By means of this explosive substance the rock was broken open at the very places chosen by the engineer. Then, with the pickaxe and spade, the windows and doors were properly shaped, the jagged edges were smoothed off, and a few days alter the beginning of the work, Granite House was abundantly lighted by the rising sun, whose rays penetrated into its most secret recesses. Following the plan proposed by Cyrus Harding, the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Toomey's misfortunes to be not only self-analytical, but honest. She had no hallucinations whatever regarding her own weaknesses and shortcomings. As she called a spade a spade, so she knew herself to be by instinct and early training a toady. Of the same type, in appearance and characteristics, in this trait, lay the main difference in the two women: while Mrs. Pantin with her better intelligence was intensely selfish, Mrs. Toomey's dominant trait was a ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... Mahogany Wheelbarro' an' a silver spade on a cart trail'd bi six donkeys, an' garded bi ten ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... with voices until they arrived at a choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his gardening or ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... motionless so long. She must be sleeping. He patted Belshazzar, whispered, "Watch, boy, watch for your life!" and then crossed to the dry-house. Beside it he found a big roll of coffee sacks that he used in collecting roots, and going to the barn, he took a spade and mattock. Then he climbed the hill to the oak; in the white moonlight laid off his measurements and began work. His heart was very tender as he lifted the earth, and threw it into the tops of the big ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... 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 ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... of positivists where realism was on the cards and romance in the discards; where muscle, biceps, and thumb-punching replaced technical mastery and delicate skill; where inspiration was physical, not intellectual; where writers called a spade a spade, and painters painted all sorts of similar bucolic instruments with candour and an inadequate knowledge of their art; where composers thumped their pianos the harder, the less their raucous inspiration responded, or maundered incapably ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... needful 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
... of men at work there," he said. "I can hear muffled sounds like digging, and once or twice a sharp click, as if a spade struck a stone. I am very much afraid they are throwing up a battery there. I was in hopes they would have begun in the open, because we could have commanded the approaches; but if they begin among the trees, they can come in and out without our seeing them, and bring up their guns by the road without ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... needn't 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 would be no corpse in that snow-covered grave. For was it not written in my inner consciousness that destiny had appointed me to the wild, free life of the north? So I was not surprised when Paul Larocque's spade struck sharply on a box. Indians sleep their last sleep in the skins of the chase. Nor was I in the least amazed when that same spade pried up the lid of cached provisions instead of a coffin. Then I had ocular proof of what I knew before, that Louis in word and conduct—but chiefly in conduct, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... to honour the holy interpreters of the Muses, that so thou mayest have a goodly fame, even when hidden in Hades, nor ever moan without renown by the chill water of Acheron, like one whose palms the spade has hardened, some landless man bewailing the poverty that ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... partly hidden from her sight by a palm-tree, but she was somewhat startled when it addressed her in these words: 'Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?' She thought it was the gardener; and, in fact, he had a spade in his hand, and a large hat (apparently made of the bark of trees) on his head. His dress was similar to that worn by the gardener described in the parable which Jesus had related to the holy women at Bethania a short time before his Passion. His body was not luminous, ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... 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 ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... front of Edward. But he had seen. He snatched up his spade from the porch, and knocked James out of the way with ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade, To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade. Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,— Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... crafty burghers, coquettes, gamblers, well-fed millionaires, cursed geese and serpents that make the cowardly vile world, and whom she would smite in the face with her indignant verse. "Thou crawlest and I soar." She chants the champions of the spade, hammer, pick, though they are ground and bowed with toil, disfigured within, with furrowed brows. She pants for war with outrage and with wrong; questions the abyss for its secret; hears moans and flying shudders; and sees phantoms ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... The way, following Bob's direction, led along the bank under the trees, turning a little before the Mong was reached. The house was soon found; standing alone, in an enclosed garden ground where no spade had been struck that season; and at the end of a farm road that ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough. All sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper. The greater part of the apples, and even of the onions, consumed in Great Britain, were, in the last century, imported ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... 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 ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... Dempsey, Timothy Sullivan, John Moylan, James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller, Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered—the last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road, the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Raya, Mr. Cook, Mr. Gilbert, and I visited a healthy potato field at an elevation of 14,500 feet, a record altitude for potatoes. When commencing to plough or spade a potato field on the high slopes near here, it is the custom of the Indians to mark it off into squares, by "furrows" about fifteen feet apart. The Quichuas commence their task soon after daybreak. Due to the absence of artificial lighting ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... years sped by, and as Bill grew old, It came into his head to go poking for gold; So away he went with a spade in his fist, To hunt for a nugget among the schist. One day as a gully he chanced to cross, He came on the bones of his poor old horse; The hobbles being jammed in a root below Had occasioned the death of poor ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... was uttered in reply; but the men around, after laying aside their upper garments, set to work to dig what appeared to be a wide trench. The leader himself threw off his mantle, took a spade, and laboured with energy, bringing the whole force of his powerful muscles to bear on his humble toil. All worked in profound silence, nor paused in their labour except now and then to listen, like men to whom ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... lost!' This was the wail for Sir George's ears, as the spade made it clear that the food-stuffs, with a trifling salvage, had been uprooted and scattered by the storm. It was almost the pronouncing of a sentence of death upon the party, having regard to the desert country which surrounded them, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... the floor of the house was broken up, and the stone paving was piled in corners, and a pick or two lay on them with a spade and crowbar. ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... 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 of sight! They looked earnestly ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... surface were laid bare. Hundreds of sprouting horse chestnuts, of sprouting acorns beneath the trees, thousands of grains of fallen wheat and barley, of beans, and other seeds of the farm were uncovered as if by a spade. ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... in the trees. The bark he pressed and dried, and when he had gathered a heavy load, carried it all the miles back to the village, to be sold for building. Then back to the hillside, with new sacks of food and implements; flour and pork, a cooking-pot, a spade—out and back along the way he had come, carrying loads all the time. A born carrier of loads, a lumbering barge of a man in the forest—oh, as if he loved his calling, tramping long roads and carrying heavy burdens; as if life without a load ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... he was. Again the voices spoke. A conversation was evidently going on in the garden outside between two people, a man and a woman. Vogt went to the window and looked out. Close to the wall of the house vegetables had been planted. A bearded man was digging the beds with a spade; the old woman was assisting him by breaking up the clods of earth ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 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, having a clear ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... before we're told, The melancholy news, that we grow old. Autumnal Lyce carries in her face Memento mori to each public place. O how your beating breast a mistress warms, Who looks through spectacles to see your charms! While rival undertakers hover round, And with his spade the sexton marks the ground, Intent not on her own, but others' doom, She plans new conquests, and defrauds the tomb. In vain the cock has summon'd sprites away, She walks at noon, and blasts the bloom of day. Gay rainbow silks her mellow charms infold, And nought of Lyce but herself is old. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... 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 soil, and laid bare the bag. Now, that is what often happens, for you have to remember ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... become of the New Englanders in this town? Well, they founded the University, named the streets, planted the elms and built the Capitol. Since then they've been snowed under by the Germans and the Norwegians, a lot of beer drinkers and fish eaters. Nobody calls a spade a spade, these days. They rant and spout socialism. The old blood's gone. The old, stern, puritanical crowd can't ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... On the latter gentleman's impassive face there appeared a slight flicker of triumph—a faint flicker, no more to be observed than the expression called there by the draft of little casino to a four-card spade flush. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... From the ploughtail and the spade; Ten years' service in the Devons Left him smart as ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hunter and forest life, and neither can displace the other without loss. We have all had our day-dreams, as well as more prophetic nocturnal vision; but as for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree. There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness. I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... 16th a thousand men armed with pick and spade stole out of the American camp. At dawn the startled British found that a redoubt had sprung up in the night on Breed's Hill (henceforward Bunker Hill) in Charlestown. Boston was endangered, and the rebels must be dislodged. About half-past two 2,500 British regulars ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... purpose, and the wonder is that each kind lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any of my fields, ragweed and pigweed spring up; if these are destroyed, harvest grass, or quack grass, or purslane appears. The spade or plow that turns these under is sure to turn up some other variety, as chickweed, sheep-sorrel, or goose-foot. The soil ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... have been worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade one little day on our property and so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on head, digging with a spade at the foot of a leafless tree. Other decorations are, a squirrel, a bear with hands, birds, and a beast's body with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... miserably disappointed, for, where high wages are given, hard work is required; those must also be disappointed who expect to live in style from off the produce of a small Canadian farm, and those whose imaginary dignity revolts from plough, and spade, and hoe, and those who invest borrowed capital in farming operations. The fields of the slothful in Canada bring forth thorns and thistles, as his fields brought them forth in England. Idleness is absolute ruin, and drunkenness carries with it worse evils ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Oriental use; the straight, square, uncompromising early Georgian leg; the carved lattice-work Chinese leg; the pseudo-Chinese leg; the fretwork leg, which was supposed to be in the best Gothic taste; the inelegant rococo leg with the curled or hoofed foot; and even occasionally the spade foot, which is supposed to be characteristic of the somewhat later style of Hepplewhite. His chair-backs were very various. His efforts in Gothic were sometimes highly successful; often they took ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Near it was a small plant, the stalk about the thickness of a crow's quill. It had apparently been broken off, and the root to which it had been attached had been consumed. Not far off, however, we saw several similar plants; and Igubo—who accompanied us with a spade—and the other blacks, who were not far off, were directed to dig. They had got down a little more than a foot, when a large tuber, twice the size of the ordinary turnip, was discovered; and the rind being removed, we found it to consist ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of glass and a spade of earthenware. The boy commenced the work, but at the first stroke his fragile pick and spade broke into a thousand fragments. For the second time he sat down helplessly. Time passed slowly, and as before at midday the damsel in white brought him ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... way physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer; While that "hiatus maxime deflendus" To be filled up by spade or mattock's near, Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe, We tease mild Baillie,[545] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... breakfasting with the Wizard, the witch, and the cats, the Prince was called into the garden and given a spade. ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... manner if not with my argument, they yielded to my importunity and allowed me to pass down. The stroke of the spade and the harsh voice of the man directing the work greeted my disquieted ears. With a bound I cleared the last half-dozen steps and, alighting on the cellar bottom, was soon able, in spite of the semi-darkness, to look about me and get ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... not the President enjoined silence. Popanilla was informed that the last Emigration-squadron was about to sail in a few minutes; and that, although the number was completed, his broad shoulders and powerful frame had gained him a place. He was presented with a spade, a blanket, and a hard biscuit, and in a quarter of an hour was ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... transaction resembles usury as closely as it does the theory of Pythagoras," he explained; and presently their laughter aroused the workmen, who looked up, leaning on spade and pick. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... was on his way to a ravine which lay back of the big chestnut-tree. He carried a spade, and began to dig where the grass was greenest, and slime was gathered upon the stones. At a depth of two feet he saw the hole fill with water, which speedily became clear, as he sat down to rest, and soon ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... mused, as his eyes swept the valley, "I'd head a right smart of ranch hands down here heeled with a spade an' a sexton's commission. These here late lamented dogies'll cost him somethin' in damages." From force of habit the man read the brands of the dead cattle as he rode slowly down the valley. "D bar C, that's old Dave Cromley's ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... January 1844), "I find I am writing the work . . . in precisely the same manner as The Bible in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account books, backs of letters, etc. In slovenliness of manuscript I almost rival Mahomet, who, it is said, wrote his Coran on mutton spade bones." "His [Borrow's] biography will be passing strange if he tells the WHOLE truth," Ford writes to a friend (27th February 1843). "He is now writing it by my advice. I go on . . . scribbling away, though with a palpitating ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... dinners. The policemen had urgent duties elsewhere. Only the Bible reader remained to see the grave partly filled in, and to try to persuade Bobby to go away with him. But the little dog resisted with such piteous struggles that the man put him down again. The grave digger leaned on his spade for ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... bold stroke, he was on the point of playing a spade, when a voice behind him said, "I should ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... but rose from his chair, stooped and kissed her on the forehead, and resolutely marched out to his garden. He worked that afternoon in a small patch which commanded a view of the ferry and also of the road leading up to Hall: and at half-past three, or a few minutes later, dropped his spade and strolled down to the edge of his property, a low ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... This first day's march constituted a very strong test of endurance in consequence of our comparative softness and lack of training, especially as, in addition to his heavy rifle, bayonet, ammunition, and spade, each soldier was burdened with a knapsack containing emergency provisions in the form of tinned meats, coffee extract, sugar, salt, rice, and biscuits, together with various tin cooking and eating utensils; furthermore a second pair of shoes, extra blouse, changes ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... 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; their long heads, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... wine, when they must needs depart: And reverence most the priests of sacred song: So, when hell hides you, shall your names live long; Not doomed to wail on Acheron's sunless sands, Like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands The spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan, Poor sire's poor ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... Generals in the war of 1913, namely, that "two months in the field are necessary in order to get at the full value of reserves." Our infantry is now accustomed to the rapid and thorough "organization" of the defensive. In August it neither liked nor had the habit of using the spade. Today those who see our trenches are astounded. They are veritable improvised fortresses, proof against the 77-millimeter gun and often against artillery of higher calibre. During the last five months not a single encounter can be cited in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard, had faintly and helplessly echoed that snicker, ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... allegorical design—Britannia seated and holding the scroll of confederation, with figures representing the four provinces grouped around her. Ontario holds the sheaf and sickle; Quebec, the paddle; Nova Scotia, the mining spade; and New Brunswick the forest axe. Britannia carries her trident and the lion crouches by her side. The following inscription runs round a raised border: "Juventas et Patrius Vigor Canada Instaurata ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... of those days! To be awakened by the valiant challenge of early-rising roosters; to hear the chuckle of dawn-light worm-hunting robins brought a return of boy-hood's exultation. Not only did my muscles harden to the spade and the hoe, my soul rejoiced in a new and delightful sense of establishment. I had returned to citizenship. I was a proprietor. The clock of the seasons had resumed ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 at one end, having a wooden share and a single ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... European camp, one mile north on west side of flat. At, or near this camp, traces of horses, camels, and whites were found. Hair, apparently belonging to Mr. Wills, Charles Gray, Yr. Burke, or King, was picked from the surface of a grave dug by a spade, and from the skull of a European buried by the natives. Other less important traces-such as a pannikin, oil can, saddle stuffing, &c., have been found. Beware of the natives, on whom we have had to fire. We do not intend to return to Adelaide, but proceed ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... willingly complied with our hero's first request; he gave him a spade, and he set him to work. Forester dug with all the energy of an enthusiast, and dined like a philosopher upon long kail; but long kail did not charm him so much the second day as it had done the first; and the third day it was yet less to his taste; besides, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... opinion of my whist, though how I arrived at it I cannot explain. Henderson was my partner and he seemed to me to do the most odd things. For instance when I led a spade and he took the trick, instead of leading another spade he would begin some fresh suit, which made me wonder what in the world he was doing. And he did not seem to think his trumps half as valuable as I thought mine, but just led them whenever he felt inclined. When Nina, Foster ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of cedar. Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel. At the foot of a great pine he began to dig. As the work went on, he broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet. Leaning against a rock not far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the soft, good-smelling earth, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... could bear and I flung myself from my mule and seizing a spade, fell violently to work, the tears of rage and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... nothing; but Matilda was very much pleased that after breakfast he took a spade and joined Mr. Richmond in his work. Matilda never forgot that day. The snow continued to fall; flickering irregularly through the pine leaves and leaving a goodly portion of its stores gathered on the branches and massing on the tufts of foliage. ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner
... in some sidelong way, put out her hand to each one, folding it like a little spade; and walked out under the escort ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... novelist explained, with such eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the Gold Bug. When money was the theme, Balzac's tongue was ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... night of January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires burned brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of voices and of the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up entrenchments. The fires died down towards morning and the British awoke to find the enemy camp deserted. Washington had carried his whole army by a roundabout route to the Princeton road and now stood between Cornwallis and his base. There was ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... cry from Westminster to Woolwich, and in spite of indefatigable spade-work on his part, it was well on in the third week in May before he so much as caught a glimpse of ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... good service. On the day it had been signed, Walter Colton, alcalde of Monterey, wrote thus of it in his diary: "It is thoroughly democratic; its basis, political and social equality, is the creed of the thousands who run the plow, wield the plane, the hammer, the trowel, the spade." Still it had its faults, the greatest of which was the power given the legislature over public moneys and lands, as well as the chance it allowed for ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... to the rank of Corporal, and might have aspired to the dignity of a Sergeant's Halbert, but that in a Mad Frolic one night I betook myself to the road as a Footpad, and robbed a Gentleman, coming from the King's Arms, Kensington, towards the Weigh House at Knightsbridge, of fourteen spade guineas, a gold watch, and a bottle-screw. And that being taken by the Hue and Cry, and had before Justice de Veil then sitting at the Sun Tavern in Bow Street, I should have been committed to Newgate, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... sod with a spade in the dewy morn. Listens kind of romantic, don't it! And you might like it first rate. Might agree with you. As for me, I've discovered that my system don't demand anything like that. Posi-tive-ly. I gave it a good try-out and ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... fourpence) a head, towards defraying the expense of sentinels. The whole were then allowed to go to the taboleiro. They arranged themselves around the circle, each person armed with a paddle to be used as a spade, and then all began simultaneously to dig on a signal being given—the roll of drums- -by order of the commandante. It was an animating sight to behold the wide circle of rival diggers throwing up clouds of sand in their energetic labours, and working gradually towards ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... said, 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 ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... mother! Wondering and frightened, the old woman thought at last that this little baby might be a son to her in her old age, and that he would grow up and in time to come be her comfort and support. So she carried home the baby to her hut, and next day she took a spade to the cave and dug a grave where she ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... Ratsey said; 'I have dug too often in this graveyard for any to wonder if they see me with a spade.' ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... was now on the ebb, and a current set strongly against the point of dike where the diggers were at work. This fact tended to make the results of their work the more immediately apparent, rendering mighty assistance to every stroke of the spade. At the same time, however, it told heavily in favor of the English, for, in order to counteract the special stream, the dike at this point was of great additional strength. Moreover, in the tidal rivers of that region the ebb and flow are so ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... cloth, after all, but having replaced it gently, he searched the wagon for a spade. It was found in the box fastened to the end of the wagon, and with the spade, in the gathering darkness, he dug a grave near the mountainside. Between the strokes of the blade he sent searching glances over the prairie and along the sloping ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... 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 be ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... an altogether unprecedented extension of historical knowledge. Early in the 'forties the Frenchman Botta, quickly followed by Sir Henry Layard, began making excavations on the site of ancient Nineveh, the name and fame of which were a tradition having scarcely more than mythical status. The spade of the discoverer soon showed that all the fabled glories of the ancient Assyrian capital were founded on realities, and evidence was afforded of a state of civilization and culture such as few men supposed to have existed on the earth before the Golden Age of Greece. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... sometimes given most excellent results, is to cut back spring set plants which have ripened some fruit but which are not completely exhausted, to mere stubs, and spade up the ground about them so as to cut most of the roots, water thoroughly and cover the ground with a mulch of straw. Most of the plants so treated will start a new and vigorous growth and ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... the place of the Canterville family pictures. He was simply but neatly clad in a long shroud, spotted with churchyard mould, had tied up his jaw with a strip of yellow linen, and carried a small lantern and a sexton's spade. In fact, he was dressed for the character of "Jonas the Graveless, or the Corpse-Snatcher of Chertsey Barn," one of his most remarkable impersonations, and one which the Cantervilles had every reason to remember, as it was the real origin ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... gentleman, steward to a person of large landed property in the county Tipperary, was shot near his own dwelling by cowardly assassins, who fired upon him from behind a hedge. Two brothers, in the same county, disputed about land; the younger clove the skull of the elder with the spade which he held in working. A poor emaciated man, in the same blood-stained county, while in a state of starvation pulled a turnip in a turnipfield, and was caught by the owner in the act of satisfying his hunger upon it; the inhuman wretch shot the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... other objects of interest. There were blankets and buffalo robes; there was a small canvas tent folded up; there were bags of provisions, and some cooking utensils; there was a spade and an axe; there were rifles—three of them—and a double-barrelled shot-gun; besides a fish-net, and many other articles, the necessary equipments ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Eastbourne will enable you to keep well," he returned, cheerfully. "Think of a month of sea breezes; does not your maternal heart swell at the idea of Dot in a big sun-bonnet, stumping over the beach with her spade and bucket? Why, you and Miss Williams will be as happy as the ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... day-hunting, Chinese ghost with a white jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's ruling passion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, between the mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After a time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling to pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials for making a high and very close fence round his patch, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... stirred to its yellowest depths. For there was in Boston an association known as the American Society for the Investigation of Ancient Beliefs, which was a rival of the Royal Society in its good work of laying bare with pick and spade the buried mysteries along the Nile. And this rivalry, which was strong between the societies and bitter between their presidents, became acute in the persons of their secretaries, both of whom were women. ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... the hour before dawn when Heng-cho appeared, bearing across his back a well-filled sack and carrying in his right hand a spade. His steps were turned towards the fig orchard of which Yan had spoken, so that he must pass Chou-hu's house, but before he reached it Tsae-che had glided out and with loosened hair and trailing robes she sped along the street. Presently there ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the desk was very eloquent: horny, scarred and knotted at every joint, with broken, twisted nails, and nearly closed, as though fitted to the handle of an axe or a spade. Ross was an educated man (he had a regular library of books at home), and perhaps that's why he suffered ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... was not amazed; but if he had not already become accustomed to affronts and ill-shapen visages, he might have been awed into silence. He merely paused, with his right foot on the shoulder of the spade share, and peered at the stranger. To the best of his knowledge, he had never seen him before. On a former time, however, he had chanced to see his own face in a mirror and, odd as it may seem, he now remarked to himself a striking ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... shoulders down and between your legs; or, with your heels together, swinging your hands down till the fingers touch the ground; or by the different exercises that either bend your back, or hold it stiff and erect. Swinging from a bar, rowing, digging with a spade, chopping or sawing wood, dancing, rope-skipping, ball-playing, hop-scotch, and wrestling, all develop these muscles finely and are good for both boys ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... and the smaller one for flesh. 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 of genuine old ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... grand monument stood o'er Lord John, To show where the great man was laid, But over John Lord was no mark and no stone, It was left as when left by the spade. But the time yet shall come when John Lord and Lord John Shall meet in the realms far away, When the riches and titles of earth are all gone, Then which will be greatest, friends, say? Then, though it seems strange, yet it's true what you've heard, And a lesson throughout ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... he is abbot, and we had to come back to Florence.' As I read in the 'Life of San Gualberto,' laid on the table for the edification of strangers, the brothers attain to sanctification, among other means, by cleaning out pigsties with their bare hands, without spade or shovel; but that is uncleanliness enough—they wouldn't touch the little finger of a woman. Angry I was, I do assure you. I should have liked to stay there, in spite of the bread. We should have been only a little thinner at the end. And the scenery—oh, how magnificent! How ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... 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 this ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... might be a hundred, but sound of teeth and coal-black of hair as a youth, his face and body scarred in nearly a score of places from bullet and machete wounds,—the sign manual writ indelibly on his war-worn frame by many a doughty enemy. We carried him to the bench crest, Crawford fetched a spade and we dug a grave and buried him with his weapons laid upon his breast, as his own people would have buried him, and then we fired across his grave the final salute he obviously so well ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... from his ancestors, or whether he make honourably great wealth and station for himself; whether he spend his life quietly and honestly in the country farm or in the village shop, or whether he simply earn his bread from week to week by plough and spade. Blessed is he, and blessed are his children after him. For he is a son of Abraham; and of him God hath said, as of Abraham, 'I know him that he will command his children and household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring on him the ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... of us plants, and the other waters, but Jack likes the watering-pot; And then when my turn comes to water he says it's too hot! We sometimes quarrel about the garden, and once Jack hit me with the spade; So we settled to divide it in two by a path up the middle, and that's made. We want some yellow sand now to make the walk pretty, but there's none about here, So we mean to get some in the old carpet-bag, if we go to the seaside ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he attempted to make a cut through the Isthmus [580]; and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the work, on a signal given by sound of trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade, and carried off a basket full of earth upon his shoulders. He made preparations for an expedition to the Pass of the Caspian mountains [581]; forming a new legion out of his late levies in Italy, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... as far as the fish will carry it, and is then passed in a small boat, which is towing at the stern. Two men jump into this, and pull in upon the line until the fish is brought in alongside; it is then killed with a whale-lance or a whale-spade, which is stuck ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... could walk with a stick, and was going back to school next half. I felt a very unreasonable vexation because they seemed quite cheerful. But as I was leaving the garden to go over the fields, Baby Cecil came running after me, with his wooden spade in one hand and a plant of chick weed in the other, crying: "Charlie, dear! Come and tell Baby Cecil a story." I kissed him, and tied his hat on, which had come ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... were startled by shrieks from the cottage— evidently the shrieks of little Marcella. 'Marcella has burnt herself, father,' said I, throwing down my spade. My father threw down his, and we both hastened to the cottage. Before we could gain the door, out darted a large white wolf, which fled with the utmost celerity. My father had no weapon; he rushed into the cottage, and there saw poor little ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... we came upon one man with a spade, and another man lying at his feet. He was digging a grave, and when we paused to note the operation, he touched ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... burial-places about town." "No wonder then," cries Partridge, "that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse grave-digger. I had a sexton, when I was clerk, that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had ever had one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than work, I believe."—Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull, he cried out, "Well! it is strange to see how fearless some men ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... upheavals meant in the history of Hebrew literature and culture can only approximately be gauged. One thing is certain: they all and one dealt the death-blow to the old Hebraic culture. When the excavator sinks his spade beneath the ground of a sleepy Palestinian village, he lays bare to view from under the overlaid strata, Roman and Greek and Jewish and Israelitish, the Canaanite foundation with its mighty walls and marvellous tunnels, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... 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 brief intervals ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... thee on the Calais quay, Unloading ships of plum-and-apple jam, Or beef, or, three times weekly, M. and V., And sometimes bacon (very rarely ham); Or, where St. Quentin towers above the plain, Have seen thee scan the awful scene and sigh, Pick up a spade, then put it down again And wipe a furtive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... rampart. The rampart itself was usually twelve feet high, armed with a line of strong and intricate palisades, and defended by a ditch of twelve feet in depth as well as in breadth. This important labor was performed by the hands of the legionaries themselves; to whom the use of the spade and the pickaxe was no less familiar than that of the sword or pilum. Active valor may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... along the embankments higher than the chimney tops of the houses along the shore! Watchmen are stationed along these embankments and when the ocean breaks a leak, they will ring the alarm bells and every body will arm himself with a spade or shovel and run to the sea-shore to battle with the water. Thus have these people defended their property against the encroachments of the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... shore I put up some wine, a large lump of wax, a saw, an axe, a spade, some rope, and all sorts of things that might be of use to us. I knew where the Turk's case of wine was, and I put that in the boat while the man was on shore. By one more trick I got all that I had need of. I said to the boy, "the Turk's ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... castle in a story-book. The village lay thinly scattered around the wide, grass-grown space; below was the high espaliered garden-wall, and within it, visible through the open doors, a gaunt figure, hook-nosed, like a wizard, at work with the spade, too busily to turn and look. Or was it that he did not hear at all the question repeated thrice:—Could one see His Reverence the Prior, at least in his convent church? "You see him" was the answer, as a face, all nerve, distressed ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the Gill"—had nothing to do with, and little to say to, any of the scatterling folk about them, across the blue distance of the moor. They ploughed no land, they kept no cattle, they scarcely put spade in the ground, except for about a fortnight in April, when they broke up a strip of alluvial soil new every season, and abutting on the brook; and there sowed or planted their vegetable crop, and left it to the clemency of heaven. Yet twice every year they were ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Germans. He dreamt of swift armoured 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 ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Aylward. "Out he will go on the roadside, honor and all, if he does not find ten nobles by next Epiphany. But if I could win a ransom or be at the storming of a rich city, then indeed the old man would be proud of me. 'Thy sword must help my spade, Samkin,' said he as he kissed me goodby. Ah! it would indeed be a happy day for him and for all if I could ride back with a saddle-bag full of gold pieces, and please God, I shall dip my hand in somebody's pocket before I see Crooksbury ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... slips over them without coming in contact with their crowns, and so they live on, and on, and spread by a multiplication of their roots until they often gain entire possession of the soil, in spots. When this happens, the best thing to do is to spade up the patch, and rake every weed-root out of it, and then reseed it. If this is done early in spring the newly-seeded place will not be noticeable ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... the room without more words, and the three tin horns fell to cutting for low spade to while away the time. They had been at it just as long as it would take a man to go down to the corral, saddle his pony, and bring the animal up in front of the building, when the outlaw reentered. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... as much as when they afforded the additional charm of novelty. A succession of walnut, apricot, mulberry, and apple trees shaded our path, which lay through extensive orchards, carpeted with beautiful turf. The vines clung to the sycamore trees; and where the spade had been at work, corn and artificial grasses grew in abundance. Our next halting place was Sarbagh, where we arrived on the 15th, after marching through a pleasant and fruitful valley, flanked by parallel belts of mountain ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... first thing, but the average ironmonger will show you an unwieldy weapon only meant to be used by navvies. Don't buy it. Get a small spade, about half-size—it is nice and light and doesn't tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm, and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife. After digging for half-an-hour or so, get her to rub your back with any of the backache cures. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... warped by the sun's immoderate heats, but to me she had become as it were a sign and symbol of freedom. She lay upon her starboard beam half full of sand, and it now became my object to turn her that I might come at this under side, wherefore I fell to work with mattock and spade to free her of the sand wherein (as I say) she lay half-buried. This done I hove and strained until the sweat poured from me yet found it impossible to move her, strive how I would. Hereupon, and after some ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... enterprise was impracticable; that Oswego should be strengthened, more vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as spring opened.[326] All thoughts of active operations were now suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving seven hundred men at Oswego, Shirley returned to Albany, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way, while passing a rapid in a whale-boat, to try the fitness of that species of craft ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... he repeated, musingly, "with the blade of an oar for a spade. It was a long job, but it's six foot down and the dead man it belonged ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the thought. He ought to have hid the rooster. He ought to have got a spade and buried him. He was full of regrets, not for what he had done, but for what he had not done. He would stay here till dark. He would stay here all night. He never would go home any more. He would hide in the woods, and he ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux |
