"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you wouldn't get it," Cain was saying. "Born with a silver shovel in your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even want you to write a book! But me—my father wasn't a ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... so on. Wherever you find German, replace it with French, leaving the English parts undisturbed. When you come to the long conversation in the second act, turn to any pamphlet of your French Meisterschaft, and shovel in as much French talk on any subject as will fill up the gaps left by the expunged German. Example—page 423, French Meisterschaft: On dirait qu'il va faire chaud. J'ai chaud. J'ai extremement chaud. Ah! qu'il fait chaud! Il fait une chaleur ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... making my eyes water. Behind me the silent, heated engines stood up, stark and ominous like some emblem of my destiny watching me. The white faces of the gauges over the starting handles stared blankly. From the stokehold came the occasional clink of a shovel or the hollow clang of a fire-door flung to. And I worked. I fought with the greasy brass and the broken, worn-out tools. I made wasters and started again. The sweat poured off me, and I drank thirstily the ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... clansmen? Do you think Highlandmen who have lived on the mountains are going to dig coal? Do you imagine that these men, who, until a generation or two ago, never handled anything but a claymore, and who even now scorn to do aught but stalk deer or spear salmon, will take a shovel and a pickaxe and labor as coal-miners? There is not a Crawford among them who would do it. I would despise him ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the summit of the bluff was by a narrow path that had been found by Kate in one of the many clefts riven in the side of the black-faced cliff, and her father's mates had so improved it with pick and shovel that Aulain ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle quill; He went bareheaded, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... shovel up soft soap from a cellar floor with a knitting-needle?" inquired the politician. "That's how it's been in this case. Every man I talked with was slippery. I know slippery times when I see 'em. I've been afraid, ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... distant. The screams of Mary drew him forth, he leaped into the hall, drove out the intruders, and shut the door with a crash, but with no further damage to the foe than the snipping off part of Major Snow's tails, which Mary swept up into a dust shovel and deposited in the coal-hole, or ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... singlestick is it?" George replied gleefully, as he made a successful grab at another stick a couple of yards away. It was the handle of a shovel; there were several broken tools lying ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... worse they did than that; And what vexed him most of all Was a figure in shovel hat, Drawn in charcoal on the wall; With words that go Sprawling below, "This ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... delicacy and propriety in the pulpiness of his fat white chin, a bland bagginess in his unwhiskered cheeks, a reverent roughness about his eyebrows and a fullness in his lower eyelids, which raised him far higher, physiognomically speaking, in the social scale, than my old prison acquaintance. Put a shovel-hat on Gentleman Jones, and the effect would only have been eccentric; put the same covering on the head of Doctor Dulcifer, and the effect would ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... burning flames, protected them with her body, fearing that her grandmother would throw them back again into the fire. She regarded the two women scornfully; she did not even trouble herself about the fire in the fireplace, which fortunately went out of itself, while Martine extinguished with the shovel the burning soot and the last flames of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... of shovel, T, arranged to fit in a socket, V, and bar, S, in combination with standards, G G, and cross-bar, I, as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... with the cool energy that characterized him. Out of a piece of board he fashioned a kind of shovel with his knife. Bits of broken timbering lay at the foot of the shaft. These he dragged into the tunnel for fuel to feed a small fire which he built to give light for the work. All through the night and till noon the following day he dug among the fallen rocks and dirt, cleaning this debris ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... his words came faintly. The deck was shrouded in gloom, and the vague outlines of the pilot-house, only a dozen feet away, was the length of our vision aft. A soft, purling sound came from over the side where the waves lapped against the steel hull. A shovel grated stridently now and then in the fire room, and occasionally a block rattled or a halliard flapped against the foremast overhead. The surroundings and the strange, weird "feel" of ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Geoffrey stuck in the shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for Enoch to say more. "Well, why shouldn't she?" said the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... Chief Ranger Wade and D.A. Spencer who saw a muskrat, no doubt a wanderer, on the Knife Edge Road on a cold winter night. These men, both reliable observers, stopped and saw the muskrat at a distance of two feet, where it took shelter under a power shovel parked beside the road. Reports of dens seen along the Mancos River are available for ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... re-assuming command in the field, and, as already stated, my only military engineer reported unfavorably. Besides this, the troops with me, officers and men, needed discipline and drill more than they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe. Reinforcements were arriving almost daily, composed of troops that had been hastily thrown together into companies and regiments—fragments of incomplete organizations, the men and officers strangers to each ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... insect, cricket, grasshopper, wing, stick, stone, flower, meadow, pasture, grove, worm, bug, cow, eagle, hawk, wren, plough, shovel. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... thing's off my hands and there's nothing to blow up but a pile of dirt, I'm going through the camp with an arsenal on me, and I'll splash blood over the ugly place till it looks like a Chicago beef-cannery. It would save transportation expenses, too. When the last shovel's dumped and the Police gone home to supper I'm going to boil over and roast a dozen ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... strange, awkward, swinging rhythm. They use the shovels to throw open the furnace doors. Then from these fiery round holes in the black a flood of terrific light and heat pours full upon the men who are outlined in silhouette in the crouching, inhuman attitudes of chained gorillas. The men shovel with a rhythmic motion, swinging as on a pivot from the coal which lies in heaps on the floor behind to hurl it into the flaming mouths before them. There is a tumult of noise—the brazen clang of the furnace doors as they are flung open or slammed shut, the grating, teeth-gritting ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... appreciable amount of acetylene is present in the air, no operation should be performed upon any portion of an acetylene plant which involves such processes as scraping or chipping with the aid of a steel tool or shovel. If, for example, the iron or stoneware sludge-pipe is choked, or the interior of the dismantled generator is blocked, and attempts are made to remove the obstruction with a hard steel tool, a spark is very likely ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... good-wife was about putting her bread in the fire, and Gustavus was standing by the hearth in his peasant's dress, warming himself. The men who entered inquired for the fugitive, but before answering the woman raised her bread shovel and struck Gustavus hastily ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... as we looked on them ruins buried so deep by the shovel of time. But I sez to him ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... hesitation now in saying that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over. No capital is required to obtain this gold, as the laboring man wants nothing but his pick and shovel and tin pan, with which to dig and wash the gravel; and many frequently pick gold out of the crevices of rocks with their butcher knives in pieces from ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... is just a little stronger with some individuals than the code of Sinai, and many a man who would not scruple to put his fingers in your pocket, would forego peas rather than use his knife as a shovel." ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... started to dig the hole his sister Sue had been playing in the yard with her dolls. But, somehow or other, Bunny forgot all about Sue now. He was taking the dirt out of the hole with his sand shovel when his mother came to the ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... known—ah, if he had only known!—how easily he might repay that debt, and heal the deeper wound in Christie's heart. As it was, she could only say, "You are too kind," and begin to shovel tea into the pot, as Kitty came in, as rosy and fresh as the daisies she ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... still coming on as they steamed northward between the moving ice and the perpendicular cliffs of the great headland on their right. But the fires were humming and roaring away below, the rattle of stoking implements and shovel was heard on the iron stoke-hole floor; and as the engine worked and panted away, and the propeller shaft made the after part of the vessel thrill, there were divers hissings and snorts which told that there would soon be plenty of steam for the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... drifts, and left us alone. Cuffed and mauled by the storm, I made a circuit of the stack, and stumbled over the tumbling-rod of the threshing-machine, which was still standing where it had been used. Leaning against the wheel was a shovel, carried for use in setting the separator. This I took with me, with some notion of building a snow-house for us; for I somehow felt that if there was any hope for us, it lay in the shelter of that straw. As I passed ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... wind, and the line of fire was not more than a mile long. By clearing the ground, brushing the needles aside for a foot or so on the lee side of the fire, most of it burned itself out and the rest he could stamp to extinction. Here and there he used his fire shovel and threw a little earth where the blaze ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... put in. Both Mrs. Peterkin and Elizabeth Eliza would need new dresses for this occasion. The little boys' hoops went in; so did their india-rubber boots, in case it should not rain when they started. They each had a hoe and shovel, and some ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... Hellyer marched us all in before him, still holding on to me until he had reached the top of the refectory, where, ordering me to stand up in front of his armchair, he proceeded as usual to poke the fire and then shovel on coals. ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the men were frozen when they should have dismounted. What milksops the Marlboroughs and Turennes, the Blakes and the Van Tromps appear now, who whipped into winter quarters and into port, the moment their noses looked blue. Sir Cloudesley Shovel said that an admiral would deserve to be broke, who kept great ships out after the end of September, and to be shot if after October. There is Hawke in the bay weathering this winter, after conquering in a storm. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... above the tree tops on the western boundary of the enclosure, and its wan spectral lustre lit up the churchyard, showing Regina the tall form of Hannah, who carried a spade or short shovel on her shoulder, and had just passed through the gate, leaving it open. Following as rapidly as she dared, in the direction of the iron railing, the child was only a few yards in the rear, when the old woman ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the letter, and a moment later Beatrice came in. She started at the sight of the stranger, who made some apology for the intrusion. The man looked old and respectable and harmless, so that the girl smiled at him. But she did not smile when the shovel hat was removed, together with the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... "There are things we say when we are raging mad at a person, and there are things we say when we think them the dirt under our feet. You kept him down with your dirt-shovel, and you called ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... gins, nets, dogs, prongs, brickbats, every species of missile, all the artillery of vulgar destruction, are brought against its devoted head. Unless my memory serves me wrong, one of these creatures caught in a trap not long since was hammered to death with a shovel ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the concentrates from our last clean-up, and now the silver ball of amalgam sizzled and fried on the shovel over the little chip-fire, while we smoked in the sun before the cabin. Removed from the salivating fumes of the quicksilver, we watched the yellow tint grow and ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... for his tutor—a doctor in divinity; Birnie for his valet. The task of maintenance fell on Gawtrey, who hit off his character to a hair; larded his grave jokes with university scraps of Latin; looked big and well-fed; wore knee-breeches and a shovel hat; and played whist with the skill of a veteran vicar. By his science in that game he made, at first, enough; at least, to defray their weekly expenses. But, by degrees, the good people at Tours, who, under pretence of health, were there for economy, grew shy of so excellent a player; ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... really don't, Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there was a great [snow] storm. The drifts were higher than the [fence]. When it cleared off, [Jack] put on [his cap] and reefer, [mittens] and rubber boots, and went out. [Jimmy Crow] went with him. First, Jack took [shovel] and [broom] and made a wide clean path to the [gate]. This was "working for Mama." Jack likes to work for Papa and Mama. Then [friends] came to play with him, and they had a fine frolic. They rolled big [snowballs], and built a [snowman]. They ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster
... simple. The picture of the tree was to show where it was hidden and the object at its base is intended as a shovel to tell that I would have to dig for the treasure, but," and his face fell, "how are we to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... shovel-boards] By this term, I believe, are meant brass castors, such as are shoveled on a board, with king Edward's face stamped ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... "Military Law" to "Protection when at Rest." This last subject will require revision after the present campaign, it being the writer's opinion that soldiers never rest—not when there is a foot of Allied soil unturned by a shovel, at any rate. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... may be given with a shovel or cotton-plow, or with the cultivator, again running twice in the row. The hoes need not follow at this plowing, but may wait until the fourth plowing, done usually toward the middle or last of July, or about the time the vines are a foot in diameter, and are sending down their peduncles, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... came—a brown mass of naked humanity—down the steep cliff path to attend to us, whom they evidently regarded as an Imperial interest. Things did not look restful, nor these Fans personally pleasant. Every man among them— no women showed—was armed with a gun, and they loosened their shovel-shaped knives in their sheaths as they came, evidently regarding a fight quite as imminent as we did. They drew up about twenty paces from us in silence. Pagan and Gray Shirt, who had joined him, held out their unembarrassed hands, and shouted ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... its long string of vestibuled sleepers; after the air-hose had been connected and examined; after the engineer had swung out of his cab, filled his cups, and swung in again; after the fireman and his helper had disposed of their slice-bar and shovel and given the tender a final sprinkle, and after the conductor had walked leisurely forward, compared time with the engineer, and cried, "All Abo-o-o-ard!" then, as your coach moved slowly ahead, you might notice, under the receding catalpas, the little girl waving a parasol ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Presently he took his handkerchief from his eyes for a moment to rub his nose, and as he did so he saw Butterwick looking at him. A thought seemed to strike Smith. He dashed away a couple of tears; and stepping over a heap of loose earth as they began to shovel it in, he grasped Butterwick by the hand. Butterwick gave him ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... ruin the poor of Ireland would be to educate them, sir. Look at the poor scholars, as they call themselves; and what are they? a parcel of young vagabonds in rags, with a book under their arm instead of a spade or a shovel, sir. And what comes of this? that they grow up the worst-disposed, and the most troublesome seditious rascals in the community. I allow none of them about New-town-Hardcastle—none— banished them all. Useless vagrants—hornets, vipers, sir: and show me a quieter, better-managed set of people ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... is only loaded about half full, and short lengths and bundles of laths and shingles in her; fur they is likely to get to shifting and bumping. Baled hay is purty good sometimes. Myself, not being like these bums that is too proud to work, I have often helped the fireman shovel coal and paid fur my ride that-a-way. But an empty, fur gineral purposes, will do about ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... dig into those mounds, but the voice was that of his majordomo, whom he had for a month obeyed implicitly. He got the shovel and he dug. And since it seemed too bad to make him do all the work, Jack and Dade each took their turn in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... of moonlight that fell upon something evil that wriggled across the white and black slabs of marble from beneath the door curtain. The moonlight glistened the bronze skin of the silent, crawling thing that was a huge snake, or a giant centipede; it was even like a square-snouted, shovel-headed mugger that had crept up out of the slimy river that circled sluggishly the eastern ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... draughtsman,—to serve as a companion piece for the Greenwich Pensioner by the same artist. The man had served against us in the Revolutionary War, and participated in the "affair" of Bunker Hill. The shovel hats, the long chins and retreating mouths of these aged men at Greenwich, are wonderfully hit off by Cruikshank, with a mere flourish of the pen. I have a scene in a watch-house, with half a score of heads, thoroughly Irish, drunk or sleepy, and as many more of these shovel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... she should shovel him off on other people as wants their night's rest. It's takin' advantage—that's what ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... amazement. Then he laughed as he reverted to his father's efforts at correct pronunciation, and continued his story. Suddenly he was startled by seeing his mother snatch a stump of a fire-shovel from the hearth and brandish ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... by the well-known experiments with shovelling carried on in the interest of industry, where the shovelling of coal and of pig iron demanded a careful investigation into the best conditions for using the shovel. It was found that it is an unreasonable waste of energy to use the same size and form of tool for lifting the heavy and the light material. With the same size of shovel the iron will make such a heavy load that the energies are exhausted, and the coal will give ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... pond, not more than a dozen yards across, by the side of which stood a builder's handcart. The little two-wheeled vehicle had evidently been used to convey the appliances which were deposited on the ground near it, and which consisted of a large tub—now filled with water—a shovel, a rake, a sieve, and a portable pump, the latter being fitted with a long delivery hose. There were three men besides the constable, one of whom was working the handle of the pump, while another was glancing at a paper that the constable had just delivered ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... by all who know him that the average British soldier has a deep-rooted and emphatic objection to "fatigues," all trench-digging and pick-and-shovel work being included under that title. This applies to the New Armies as well as the Old, and when one remembers the safety conferred by a good deep trench and the fact that few men are anxious to be killed sooner than is strictly necessary, the objection is regrettable and very surprising. Still ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... with which his memory is regarded by one set of people. By another, the neighbouring clergy, who remember him riding, in his old age, down the hill on which his house stood, upon his strong white horse—his bearing proud and dignified, his shovel hat bent over and shadowing his keen eagle eyes—going to his Sunday duty like a faithful soldier that dies in harness—who can appreciate his loyalty to conscience, his sacrifices to duty, and his stand by his ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... neighbourhood of Clapham Junction. It is so everywhere, after all. I have never been actually to Southfields, but I suppose a scheme of lemons and olives represent their austral instincts. I have never visited Parson's Green, or seen either the Green or the Parson, but surely the pale-green shovel-hats I have designed must be more or less in the spirit. I must work in the dark and let my instincts guide me. The great love I bear to my people will certainly save me from distressing their noble spirit or ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Steven P. Hendricks!" rolled out Charley in conclusion. "That this citizen of Texas, jus'ly and rightjus'ly called the Lone Star State, has never yet experienced the feeling of bein' daunted by face of man. No, su'! By God, su'!" He held the shovel aloft like a sword. "Let 'em come as they will, male and female after their kind, from a ninety poun' Jew peddler to Sittin' Bull himself, and from a pigeon-toed Digger-Injun squaw to a fo'-hundred-weight Dutch lady, I turn my ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... was no sign of preparation on the embankment. For the moment the rifles of the track force were laid aside, and every man was plying pick or shovel. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... in the notes for all these escapes. After some twenty adventures Furwitz is beaten off, and Umfallo tries his powers. Here the misadventures do not involve so much folly on the hero's part— though, to be sure, he ventures into a lion's den unarmed, and has to beat off the inmates with a shovel. But the other adventures are more rational. He catches a jester—of admirably foolish expression- -putting a match to a powder-magazine; he is wonderfully preserved in mountain avalanches and hurricanes; reins up his horse on the verge of an abyss; falls through ice in Holland and shows nothing ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dwelling long on the bringing home of our effects and the getting to rights. We were back soon after ten, and found that Winnie and Bobsey, having exhausted the resources of the house, had been permitted to start at the front door, and, with an old fire-shovel and a piece of board, had well-nigh completed a path to the well, piling up the snow as they advanced, so that their overshoes ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... to the value of a cloak pin: the former was engaged in sweeping up the dust, which, from the clouds that surrounded us, would not appear to have been disturbed for six months before at least. I had nearly broken my shins, on my first entrance, over the fire-shovel and bucket, and I was now in more danger of being choked with filth. "Who inhabited this delightful place before, Mark?" "A mad wag, but a generous gentleman, Sir, take notice, one Charles Rattle, Esq., who was expelled college for smuggling, take notice: the proctor, with the town marshal ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... life, especially in men. It is often hereditary, and is said to occur in those who are liable to gout and to arthritis deformans. While it is met with in the working-classes and attributed to the pressure of some hard object on the palm of the hand—such as a hammer or shovel or whip—its greater frequency in those who do no manual work, and the fact that it is very often bilateral, indicate that the constitutional factor is the more important in ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... enlivening all by his encouragement and cheerfulness. He was a martinet on one question, and that was cleanliness, and its kindred virtue, orderliness. He was never above working with mop, broom and duster indoors, and shovel and rake in the garden; and this trait added much to the appearance of things as well as to the comfort of all concerned in the use of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... took from a little basket a piece of grayish ice as large as my fist. "When I found it was so cold down there, sir," she said, "I thought I would dig a little myself and see what made it so; and I took a fire-shovel and hatchet, and, when I had scraped away some of the gravel, I came to something hard and chopped off this piece of it, which is real ice, sir, or I know nothing about it. Perhaps there used to be an ice-house there, and you might get some of it if you dug, though why anybody ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... last trip I was hearin' the chief say: 'Dan,' says he, 'it's not long now you'll be swingin' the shovel. I'll be makin' you ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ol' shovel. But it won't do no good to bury of 'em. Gran'dad he counts ev'ry piece ev'ry day. He counts ev'ry thing, from the grains of salt to the chickens. Say, once I tried to play a trick on him. I'd got so hungry fer meat I jes' couldn't stand it, so one day I killed ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... two rooms, the farther of which was evidently a bedroom. There was a large fireplace at one end of the main room. At one side of it was a primitive dresser, with such utensils and china as the place afforded; on the other were some miner's implements and a shovel. There was a small table and beside it were placed two chairs. There was a rocker by the one window, and a pot of geraniums on the sill; forming a kind of window seat was a long seaman's chest. At the other end of the room there was a desk covered with green oilcloth, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... The shovel-nosed shark. In aiming at food, if it really enters his mouth which is below the long and projecting snout, he must seem ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... and out-spoken remarks is set forth by Mark Twain himself: 'When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the tranquil and unsuspecting agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a person when the mood ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... long chain; and when we hoed corn we'd hoe the chain's length, then the one next the block had it to tote the length of the chain, and so on till we did our day's work. Since we've been here we've seen nine of our masters chained to that same block and made to shovel sand on that fortification yonder. There were forty of us that belonged to our plantation standing ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... are likely to be affected. Has labour reached its maximum efficiency? It has been shown by the application of what is called "scientific management," that the output of labour can be increased to a remarkable extent. For instance, instead of shovelling 16 tons a day, a man can shovel 59 tons; a man loading pig-iron increased his total load per day from 12-1/2 to 47-1/2 tons; the day's tale of bricks laid has been raised from 1000 to 2700. The list could be extended to cover operatives working at machines. In the ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... be remarked that "the lad Tom" had that very day "come back with the Minister." The Fiend then offered terms. "Give me a spade and shovel, and depart from the house for seven days, and I will make a grave, and lie down in it, and trouble you no more." Hereon Campbell, with Scottish caution, declined to give the Devil the value of a straw. The visitors then ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... marched through the camp, he was set to work with a shovel, cleaning up the grounds. It was a sorry day to Philip. He wished he had never been born. He was despised alike by officers and soldiers. The officers made him do their dirty work, while the soldiers, knowing that he had not courage enough to resent an insult, made him the ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... "no frivolity! You shall at least say I kept my word about the trees to-day." And they started at once for the scene of action, Minturn obtaining on the way a shovel from ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... it occurred to me that I might add to my money. I bought a second-hand shovel and went out to shovel snow. It is not so bad, I said, you are out of doors, and also you can think ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... "Knockabout googleums—h-yah! Scoop shovel snout and a stern ugly as a battle-ship's, and the Lord knows there was overhang and to spare to tail her out decent. Cut out the yellow and the red and the whole lot of gold decorations and she's as homely as ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... saw that the Raven had been very busy. He had built a fresh fire with a heap of glowing embers from the old one; the billy had served him as an improvised shovel. Over this fire he had erected a cage of bent sticks, and the blankets were stretched on the framework and drying in style; the steam was rising from ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... we reached the tool-shed, strange noises arrested our steps; looking in, we perceived Harold, alone, rapt, absorbed, immersed in the special game of the moment. He was squatting in an old pig-trough that had been brought in to be tinkered; and as he rhapsodised, anon he waved a shovel over his head, anon dug it into the ground with the action of those who would urge Canadian canoes. Edward ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... witness could guess that the shell was sinking at a pace only a fraction slower than the burrowers were using to free it. Intrigued by that, Shann went back to the waterline, secured one of the lengths he had been trying to weave into his failures, and returned to use it as a makeshift shovel. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the mind the breathing is momentarily suspended. A person never breathes from the base of the lung unless his mind is engrossed. Hard exercise demands deep breathing and is therefore helpful in producing good mental reactions. It is said that the great preacher De Witt Talmage used to shovel gravel from one side of his cellar to the other as a preliminary to his fine elocutional efforts. It is this obvious connection between respiration and mental processes which is at the base of the system of psycho-physical culture known ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... previously having been a calf; you acquire taste and sense gradually, and in acquiring them you pass through stages in which you have very little of either. It is a poor burden for the memory, to collect and shovel into it the silly sayings and doings in youth of people who have become great and eminent. I read with much disgust a biography of Mr. Disraeli which recorded, no doubt accurately, all the sore points in that statesman's history. I remember with great approval ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... was a treasure-house, it was quickly discovered that Olaf Nelson had failed to make the down-Yukon trip to file upon his property. Men cast hungry eyes upon the ownerless claim, where they knew a thousand-thousand dollars waited but shovel and sluice- box. Yet they dared not touch it; for there was a law which permitted sixty days to lapse between the staking and the filing, during which time a claim was immune. The whole country knew of Olaf Nelson's disappearance, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... were aroused when I asked for skulls. "Lots over there," they said, pointing to an enclosed thicket, their burying-ground. Only very rarely a man would bring me a skull, at the end of a long stick. Once I started on the quest myself, armed with a shovel and spade; as my servants were too much afraid of the dead to help, I had to dig for myself. A man loafed near by, attracted by the excited chatter of some old women. He told me sadly that I was digging up his papa, although it was a woman; then he began ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... performed prodigies of skill and valor. The "poor-'us" lad evidently gained, and his patron did not conceal a wide smile of satisfaction; the rival looked up, saw it, was stung with generous rage, threw himself with fury upon his shovel, and in three enormous plunges laid bare his own side of the post, before "poor-'us" had come within a foot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... behind of all. He was a little man, all muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam shovel. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... back, Anne, dearie! But did you ever see such drifts? You can't see the Moore place at all unless you go upstairs. Leslie'll be so glad you're back. She's almost buried alive over there. Fortunately Dick can shovel snow, and thinks it's great fun. Susan sent me word to tell you she would be on hand tomorrow. Where are ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Don't cry any more," said Mrs. Bunker. "I'll soon have you out. Get a shovel, and help me dig Rose loose," she called ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... at Wilton, and was astonished at the heaps of rubbish. The house is grand, and the place glorious; but I should shovel three parts of the marbles and pictures into the river. Adieu, my lord ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... up a hoe and a shovel, and then was marched along the water ditch toward the back ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... the 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 ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... long in the wick,—comparative darkness involves the sage assembly,—and first one, then another, drops off into a placid and harmonious repose. Then what dreams float before the eyes of their imagination! Blue silk pelisses jostling shovel hats, church spires dancing in most admired disorder, fat incumbents falling down in a fit, neat clerical-looking gigs standing at vicarage doors, and these all incongruously commingled with white veils, lawn sleeves, roast beef, pulpit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... on with their work the next day, and built the causey up high enough with stones. They then levelled them off, and began to wheel on the gravel. Jonas made each of them a little shovel out of a shingle; and, as the gravel was lying loose under a high bank, they could shovel it up easily, and fill their wheelbarrows. The third day they covered the stones entirely with gravel, and smoothed it all over with a rake ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... already begun his macaroni and must pause to shovel the outlying strings of it into his mouth. But the haste with which he did so was sufficient guaranty for his eagerness to reply as soon as it was humanly possible to ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... he's a soft-shell on that subject. Accordin' to his idea, anybody who overhears any details of this pirate treasure tale of his is liable to grab a dirt shovel and rush right off down there to begin diggin' Florida up by the roots. He loses sleep worryin' as to whether someone else won't get there first. It would be tough if Auntie should take you ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... began to make some preparations as if for departure, bundling up the various articles which each had appropriated. Still, however, there remained something to be done. Two of them, after some rummaging, which not a little alarmed Brown, produced a mattock and shovel, another took a pickaxe from behind the straw on which the dead body was extended. With these implements two of them left the hut, and the remaining three, two of whom were the seamen, very strong men, still remained ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... shop, which was open. It was an ignoble lair, a little room with tables and wooden benches, a zinc counter, cheap bar fixtures, and blue-stained wooden pitchers; in the ceiling a U-shaped gas bracket. Two pick-and-shovel labourers were playing cards. They turned around and laughed. The proprietor took the excessively short-stemmed pipe from his mouth and spat into the sawdust. He seemed not at all surprised to see this fashionably ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... brooms! shovels, shovels!' they cried. They rushed into the greenhouse: they took whatever they could find; and one boy, who saw me standing idle, pushed me toward the door, crying, 'Here, lazy-bones! take a shovel, take a broom! Get to work, and help us!'—'Help you do what?' said I. 'To make the fort and roll snow-balls,' he replied. 'Not I; it is too cold,' I answered. Then the boys laughed at me. My faith! to-day I think they were right. ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... sensible thing for a man to do who has found a good pocket is to buy himself into business and keep away from the hills. The logical thing is to set out looking for another one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking twenty years. His working outfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he kept cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When he came to a watercourse he would pan out the gravel of its bed for "colors," and under the glass determine if they had come from far or near, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... useful, but seldom, if ever, to be found in small kitchens, is a salamander; but when you wish to brown the top of a dish, and putting it in the oven would not do, or the oven is not quick enough to serve, an iron shovel, made nearly red, and a few red cinders in it, is a very good salamander. It must be held over the article that requires browning near enough to color it, yet not ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... strife, both were surprised to observe that a grave was dug close by the foot of the rock with great neatness and regularity, the green turf being laid down upon the one side, and the earth thrown out in a heap upon the other. A mattock and shovel lay by the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... wooden tamper can crush them on the barn floor, and the material should be passed through a sand-screen. The material of largest bulk should be spread on the floor, and the other materials should be put on in layers. Three careful turnings with a shovel will secure good mixing. Scales should be used to secure accuracy in desired amounts of ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... then I have had my run of it. But I always supposed adventure was the finding of treasures, on land and on sea; of filibustering; of fighting with sabers and pistols, and all that rigmarole. I can't quite lift my imagination up to the height of calling my six months' shovel-engineering on The Galle an adventure. It was brutal hard work; and many times I wanted to jump over. The Lascars often got out of trouble ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... Rooms, London, in 1829, Mons. Chabert, the Fire-King, exhibited his powers of resisting poisons, and withstanding extreme heat. He swallowed forty grains of phosphorus, sipped oil at 333 degrees with impunity, and rubbed a red-hot fire-shovel over his tongue, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... you'll pardon," said Mr. Gubb politely, "but my name is P. Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger, and I'm looking up a case. Might I trouble you for the loan of a spade or shovel?" ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... working in the house, downstairs. I hear sounds of moved furniture, of a broom, and the recurring knock of the shovel on the bucket into which she empties the dust she has collected. That society is badly arranged which forces nearly all women to be servants. Marie, who is as good as I am, will have spent her life in cleaning, in stooping amid dust and hot fumes, over head and ears ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... resided, for some seven years previous to the witchcraft delusion, within the limits of Salem, near the Beverly line. His wife Bridget was a singular character, not easily described. She kept a house of refreshment for travellers, and a shovel-board for the entertainment of her guests, and generally seems to have countenanced amusements and gayeties to an extent that exposed her to some scandal. She is described as wearing "a black cap ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... however, that your words will come true of my appearing in shovel hat, &c., at Heath's Court some fine day. It is very improbable that I shall ever see the northern hemisphere, unless I see it in the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the fire. It had been of turf; and though the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that she had made of Eustacia, she held it in the heat, and ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... men is finely described in holy writ by the path of an arrow, which is immediately closed up and lost. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... mud of these holes, lifting the shell out of the mud with their toes. There is a small cichoraceous plant with a yellow flower named tao by the natives, which grows in the grassy places near the river, and on its root the children chiefly subsist. As soon almost as they can walk a little wooden shovel is put into their hands, and they learn thus early to pick about the ground for those roots and a few others, or to dig out the larvae of ant-hills. The gins never carry a child in arms as our females do, but always in a skin on the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... a woman,' said Knight, as they hurried back, 'and I think we two are enough to extricate her. Do you know of a shovel?' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... that connected with a sink, where it was caught and used over again forever; and if that were not enough, there was a trap in the pipe, where all the scraps of meat and odds and ends of refuse were caught, and every few days it was the old man's task to clean these out, and shovel their contents into one of the trucks with the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the churchyard, where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise became so uproarious that ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... hired men was soon arranged on the table, and Mary sat down to preside while her mother was going on with her baking,—introducing various loaves of white and brown bread into the capacious oven by means of a long iron shovel, and discoursing at intervals with Solomon, with regard to the different farming operations which he had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the means of saving, I found myself for a time his guest on the Scilly Islands. There we could divert our minds from our different occupations, conjuring up visions of heroes like Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who lost his life here, and of the scenes of daring and of death that these beautiful isles out in the Atlantic have witnessed. Nor did we need Charles Kingsley to paint for us again the visit of Angus Lee and Salvation Yeo, for Sir Frederick, as his book, "The Cradle of ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... coffee, on a shovel of hot coals, or burn sugar on the shovel. This is an old-fashioned ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... his antiquity, his features are really quite handsome. But his nose—his nose," says Mr. Potts, "is especially fine. That's a joke: do you see it? Fine! Why, it is sharper than an awl. 'Score two on the shovel for that, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... settled on his seamed countenance; he took off his coat and hung it on a peg in the door. Outside, by an ash-pit, he found a bucket and half-buried shovel. A minute after the kitchen was filled with grey clouds as he shoveled the ashes into the bucket for removal. He worked vigorously, and the pile soon disappeared; the wood and coal followed, carried out to where a bin was built against the house. Then he raked ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous—men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric caprices of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... occasional bark, and when Shady came to the last fringe of trees along the ridge she saw a man standing at the den. The hound was chained to a single tree some thirty yards away and she knew there was naught to fear from him. The man started excavating with a light miner's pick and a short-handled shovel which he unslung from his back. In half an hour he had opened one tunnel till he could peer into the den hole. Then he unwound a strange instrument from about his waist, a wolfer's "feeler", three strands of wire twisted into a pliable cable ten feet long, ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... each now and then she pokes away at the fire, and the fire blazes up and blazes up, but very soon there's nothing left to blaze with. The fire'll be out directly, so I says to our Mary, you look after the fire, so our Mary goes to the heap and fetches a shovel of coal, and claps it on the top of the hot cinders, and she won't let our Esther poke it no more, so it burns steady and bright, and throws out a good heat, and lasts a long time. Now, when you take your drop of beer, you're just poking the fire, you're not putting any coal ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boy that drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got back to the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put in the horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the deck, cutting bands. I was sitting against ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... children are so far inferior to those made for adults as to render them unsatisfactory and expensive by comparison. It is therefore better to get light weight pieces in the smaller standard sizes and cut down long wooden handles for greater convenience. The one exception to be noted is the boy's shovel supplied by the Peter Henderson company. This is in every respect as strong and well made as the regulation sizes and a complete series to the same scale and of the same standard would meet a decided need in children's equipment where light ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... knew what it meant to get any of that acid on you, or on any of the things about you. I used to work in the chemical plant where they made the stuff—that was after I left the circus. Well, it can't do any harm now," he said as he got a shovel and covered with clean earth the bits of broken glass and the still fuming ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... officers showed us what was wanted, and each man put in his pick or shovel to mark the line. This is the procedure: each pick or shovel about 2 yards apart, and each man delves on that spot till he is 6 feet down. If it were not done like this, then (when it became too dark to ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... hall or apartment where the Academy meets, every thing bears allusion to the name and device: the seats are in the form of a baker's basket; their backs like a shovel for moving of corn; the cushions of grey satin in form of sacks, or wallets; and the branches, where the lights are placed, likewise resemble sacks. This Academy is now united with two others, viz. the Fiorentina, and the Apatisti, under the name of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... could get a few out one at a time on moonlight nights, and fill up the blooming holes again, we shouldn't want any blasted machinery for our gold mine, except a pickaxe and a shovel." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... diviner alchemy wanted, and there is room for a bolder and a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets—or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, nor turn up the foundations ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... freight rates was brought about by a number of inventions which greatly lowered the cost of both the construction and the operation of railways. Through the introduction of the steam shovel, of the wheel-scraper, of improved rock-drills, and of other labor-saving machines, as well as by a general improvement in the methods of grading, the cost of grading has been reduced from 25 to 50 per cent., and railroad bridges are now ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... gun-pits were in the process of construction. Guns were unhooked and man-handled into their positions, and the teams sent back to the wagon-lines. All day we worked, both officers and men, with pick and shovel. Towards evening we had completed the gun-platforms and made a beginning on the overhead cover. We had had no time to prepare sleeping-quarters, so spread our sleeping-bags and blankets in the caved-in trenches. About seven o'clock, as we were ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... mystery, listened with un-affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,—if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... would be better than to work manure into the soil, which should be done at the beginning of the rainy season. As your soil is so shallow it will be well for you to stand along the side of the plant much of the time with a bucket of water in one hand and a shovel of manure ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... fancy was further colored by a strange procession which now met us as we went up from the narrow beach, having first made fast our boat. A lean Mexican priest, with an enormous shovel hat and particularly shabby cassock, came toward us, followed by a motley crowd of Mexicans, prominent among whom was a pompous old man clad in a seedy Mexican uniform and wearing a trailing rapier at his side. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... east, visiting an old prospector in his lonely cabin in the hills, commented: "And yet you seem so cheerful and happy." "Yes," replied the one of the pick and shovel. "I spent a week in Boston once, and no matter what happens to me now, it seems ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... in an underworld,' said Gudrun. 'The colliers bring it above-ground with them, shovel it up. Ursula, it's marvellous, it's really marvellous—it's really wonderful, another world. The people are all ghouls, and everything is ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica of the real world, a replica, a ghoul, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... cobbled streets they come; down huddled stairways; Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways; From freezing rooms as bare as rock. The curtains are closed across deserted windows. Earth streams out of the shovel; the ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... let me in again?" I said. "If you promise not to touch me." She looked so pale that I fetched brandy, but put the street-door key in my pocket as I went. "If she don't let me in," I thought, "she shan't have the key,—and what will she tell her sister about that?" It was a key almost as big as a shovel; she never noticed that I had taken it away. She thought by her dodge that she had got rid of me, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Shovel-Boards, broad shillings of Edward III. Taylor, the water-poet, tells us "they were used for the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Railroad will never be like the U.P. (Union Pacific) I worked there, and I know what it was; it was bully, I can tell you. A chap lay in his bunk all day and got two dollars and a half for doing it; ay, and bit the boss on the head with his shovel if the boss gave him any d—— chat. No, sirree, the North Pacific will ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... incoming trip he had lashed the Doctor's boy to his triumphant mast, and only three days before he had settled a row in the stokehole by putting hot ashes down the back of a drunken trimmer, and changing his attitude from menace with a steel shovel to supplication ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... see the Devil, With his little spade and shovel, Digging 'taties by the dozen With his ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... answer, but she turned away and took a long-handled shovel and poked her pies into the hot oven, and then Hatty heard her draw ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... order to join the Squadron under Sir Cloudsley Shovel: Meeting with which at the appointed Station off Tangier, the Men of War and Transports thus united, made the best of their Way for Gibraltar. There we stay'd no longer than to take aboard two Regiments out of that Garrison, in lieu of two out of our Fleet. Here we found the ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... and the two men standing at Grant's head were crushed like worms. The roof of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out. He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the moon, low down on the horizon, he hurried along the cloister to a room back of the church, which had been deserted and left to itself for many years, and was now almost in ruins. Going into one corner, Father Zalvidea, by the light of his lantern, found a small pick and shovel which, that afternoon, he had left there for this very purpose, and set to work to dig a hole in which to bury his treasure. Although the ground was hard, it required only a few minutes, after the cement floor was broken through, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... Culebra Cut, where effort was chiefly concentrated, was 815,270 cubic yards. In April this was increased to 879,527 cubic yards. There was a considerable decrease in the output for May and June owing partly to the advent of the rainy season and partly to temporary trouble with the steam shovel men over the question of wages. This trouble was settled satisfactorily to all parties and in July the total excavation advanced materially and in August the grand total from all points in the canal prism by steam shovels and dredges exceeded all previous United States records, reaching 1,274,404 ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... chores were done, I went alone to the grain barn in the back lot of the Senator's farm with flail and measure and broom and fork and shovel and sacks and my luncheon, in a push cart, with all of which ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... pride, standing there, of how because of trouble made by the Germans at the "line" a mile away the cattle business had run down and down until the farm didn't pay; how he and "the boy" unaided, working patiently year by year with spade and shovel, had dug down the nine acres of dry upland, moved the wall into the bottoms and turned the brook, making green meadow of the sandy barren, and saving the farm. The toil of twenty years had broken the old man's body, but his spirit was undaunted as ever. There ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... in up to the elbow. I ast him once: 'Babe,' I says, 'how big are you anyhow?' 'Big?' he says surprised. 'I ain't big. I'm the runt of the family. Pa was thirty-two inches between the eyes, and they fed him with a shovel.'" ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart |
