"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... Naylor's ears that his newspaper soul was 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. Madame Gianclis, who served the ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... route was partly across country, to avoid layers of natural rock which in successive ridges made it impossible for the vans to keep the track. Several deep watercourses intervened, which required the spade and pickaxe, and it was quite dark when we were obliged to halt about a mile ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Marquis of Salinas was viceroy of Mexico; and the operations were commenced with great pomp, the viceroy assisting in person, mass being said on a portable altar, and fifteen hundred workmen assembled, while the marquis himself began the excavation by giving the first stroke with a spade. From 1607 to 1830, eight millions of dollars were expended, and yet this great work was not brought to a conclusion. However, the limits of the two lakes of Zumpango and San Cristobal, to the north of the valley, were thus greatly reduced, and the lake of Tezcuco, the most beautiful of all ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... it makes its first visit into the outside world, it is always accompanied by several chaperons. This parental love, if I may use the expression, is even extended to the unhatched eggs. If an ants' nest is disturbed by a stroke of a spade or hoe, the little inhabitants will at once begin to remove eggs, pupae, and young to a ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Nation were; Especially if those who are not known, For Cuckolds too the Title wou'd but own, And such as are not summon'd would appear, In those Accoutrements we ought to wear, Which are our Horns, a Pick Axe and a Spade, That Paths may for ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... 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, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... eyes upon the strange little procession making its way slowly through the untrodden snow, but did not attempt to approach or molest it. They reached at last the lonely spot where they were to leave the mortal remains of poor Matamore, and the stable-boy, who had accompanied them carrying a spade, set to work to dig the grave. Several carcasses of animals lay scattered about close at hand, partly hidden by the snow—among them two or three skeletons of horses, picked clean by birds of prey; their long heads, at the end of the slender vertebral columns, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... work—and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business, in the green fields, and the town— To plough, loom, anvil, spade—and oh! most sad, To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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
... 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 from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarser manufactories ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... his spade in the garden, and gazed with a smile at the lithe, active lad as he cantered easily away, looking as if he and the beautiful little highly ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... raging over the possession of a spade that had been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... House. "Sister," said the saint, "I love you well. This night, for the grace of God, keep lights burning at the convent windows from midnight to day-break, and let masses be said by the holy sisterhood." At sundown came the devil with pickaxe and spade, mattock: and shovel, and set to work in right good earnest to dig a dyke which should let the waters of the seas into the downs. "Fire and brim-stone!"—he exclaimed, as a sound of voices rose and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... pause in his labors and lean on his spade, while thoughts of the old days of wild adventure passed through his mind in rapid succession; and then the big man would shake his red head with a puzzled ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... call the village St. Gregoire. That is not its real name; because the one thing you must not do in war-time is to call a thing by its real name. To take a hackneyed example, you do not call a spade a spade: you refer to it, officially, as Shovels, General Service, One. This helps to deceive, and ultimately to surprise, the enemy; and as we all know by this time, surprise is the essence of successful warfare. On the same principle, ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... it is also as open and public. The traveller steps across the threshold, and lo! he too is master, for he only can be called proprietor of the house here who behaves with most propriety in it. The Landlord stands clear back in nature, to my imagination, with his axe and spade felling trees and raising potatoes with the vigor of a pioneer; with Promethean energy making nature yield her increase to supply the wants of so many; and he is not so exhausted, nor of so short a stride, but that he comes forward even to the highway to this wide hospitality ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... man's skin, When he is gone and cold. 15. How 'fraid are some of dead men's beds, And others of their bones; They neither care to see their heads, Nor yet to hear their groans. 16. Now all these things are but the shade And badges of his coat;[3] The glass that runs, the scythe and spade, Though weapons more remote: 17. Yet such as make poor mortals shrink And fear, when they are told, These things are signs that they must drink With death; O then how cold. 18. It strikes them to the heart! how do They study it to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... through the casement on the dusty brick floor. When we followed her into the back parlour, she opened the door into the little garden, the neat and gay appearance of which contrasted with the dirty and forlorn aspect of the cottage. A spade and a rake were lying on the grass-plot in front of it. Mr. Middleton inquired of the old woman how she managed to keep the garden in so good a state, and who she got to ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... going on Temple indicated the spot which he thought suitable, and, with a spade which he carried, had commenced excavating a hole sufficiently large for ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... of free-lances and adventurers. Abraham Yachiny, the illustrious preacher, an early believer, was inspired to have a tomb opened in the ancient "house of life." He asked the sceptical Rabbis to dig up the earth. They found it exceedingly hard to the spade, but, persevering, presently came upon an earthen pot and therein a parchment which ran thus: "I, Abraham, was shut up for forty years in a cave. I wondered that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then a voice replied to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... it will be like hunting for a needle in a haystack, but if I don't find him I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I tried to, and that I haven't spent any of his money. I'll keep it locked in my trunk until my arm gets so that I can handle a spade, and then I'll hide it in one of the flower beds. Now, how is everything about home? Has Kelsey shown his ugly face here since I went away, or have you heard anything from those 'secret enemies' that Wat Gifford spoke of? How ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... Evans From the ploughtail and the spade; Ten years' service in the Devons Left him smart ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sufficiently large premises to furnish all 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 ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... me, Dave," McCarthy admitted. "'Tis only that yer me host, or I'd be shockin' the ladies with yer nortorious disgraces. But I'll lave ye live this time, Dave. Come, spade the partin' ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the 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. ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... nearly forty years of age, to the throne of Rurik his father. And the same old story of bloodshed and barbarity went on. In those days a king was king in name only. He was really but the chief of a band of plunderers, who dug wealth from the world with the sword instead of the spade, threw it away in wild orgies, and then hounded him into leading them to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Hastily borrowing a spade from a comrade who was digging potatoes, he struck several of his gaolers down, and, dodging the shots of others who hurried to the scene, he climbed the prison wall ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... far from unworldly poet. True, she was the daughter of an earl, and he the son of a farmer; and those who called the land their own looked down upon those who tilled it! But a banker, or a brewer, or the son of a contractor who had wielded the spade, might marry an earl's daughter: why should not the son of a farmer—not to say one who, according to the lady's mother, himself belonged to an aristocracy? The farmer's son indeed was poor, and who would look at a poor banker, or a poor brewer, more than ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... when it means, as it often does, a mere prosaic recommendation of ordinary duties, a sort of Poor Richard's prudential [361] maxims, is a shallow and nearly useless thing. It is a kind of social and moral agriculture with the plough and the spade, but with little regard to the enrichment of the soil, or drainage from the depths or irrigation from the heights. The true, practical preaching is that which brings the celestial truths of our nature and our destiny, the powers of the world ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... spade, and without consulting the critic, dug up some coins in the island of Cyprus itself, and on the coins were stamped both the image and ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... 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 with ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... and among them is another lady's literary effort to make a garden. Judith it is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening toilets ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... snowflake can stop the traffic of a whole city! Hello there, Molly! Got my coat and mittens ready? Well, you don't look as if the storm had kept you awake much. Give the father a kiss, lass, to sort of sweeten his breakfast. Are the Jays awake? Hunt them up a spade or a shovel and set them digging their neighbors out. And, Mary wife, if I were you I'd keep a pot of coffee on the range all day. There's maybe a poor teamster or huckster passing who'll be the better for a warm cup of drink, and the coffee'll keep him ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... to dig a grave for myself here, Timofei; and lie down here forever between my parents. For this is the only spot which is left to me in the world. Fetch the spade!" ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... whose business it is to bring to light by pick and spade the relics of bygone ages, is often accused of devoting his energies to work which is of no material profit to mankind at the present day. Archaeology is an unapplied science, and, apart from its connection with what is called culture, the critic is inclined to judge ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... exception of his collar-bone. But the digging and shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars opened to the light; and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, all right or all wrong, had been turned up by pick or spade. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... yellow glint which has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found himself worth $3000 ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... found the warlike Caribs difficult to procure.[4] The supply of laborers was failing just at the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao, ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... that, after planning, sketching, and measuring, our chief took his axe into the wood and felled a tall pine, from which he proceeded to remove the branches and bark. Towards evening he took a spade, and dug a deep hole in the ground on the most prominent part of the lawn, in front of what was ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... village grocer: 'It is treasure hidden by them there sly old monks.' Mr. Wilder is a miser, and is known to lay up money. He is, I believe, the only man left in the North Country who can show you a hundred spade guineas." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... from his reverie by receiving a heavy blow on the shoulder and hearing a rough voice exclaim: "Now then, wake up; don't stand there dreaming all day. What are you thinking about? Here, catch hold of this spade and pickaxe; that's your share. Ha, ha! it's a good idea and an excellent joke to make you rascals carry the tools with which we are going to make you work when you reach the mines. That's it; now get ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... looked, there stood Kaeloikamalama with the digging spade called Kapahaelihonua, The Knife-that-cuts-the-earth, twenty fathoms its length, four men to span it. Thought the lizard, "A slaughterer this." There was Kaeloikamalama swinging the digging ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... knick-knacks, an age of inventions. Boys need not be kept back to the hand-craft of the knife. For in-doors there are the type case and printing press, the paint box, the tool box, the lathe; and for out doors, the trowel, the spade, the grafting knife. It matters not how many of the minor arts the youth acquires. The more the merrier. Let each one gain the most he can in all such ways; for arts like these bring no harm in their train; quite otherwise, they lure good fortune ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... and women too often; and with boys and girls, too, it is to be feared. At any rate, it was so with Mr Mason's gardener, at the time I speak of. He was peevish and fretful, and said some harsh things to Robert, because he accidentally destroyed a fine tulip with his spade. Robert cried, and said he did not mean to do it. Then the old man was sorry, but, probably feeling too proud to confess it, he was silent for a long time. By and by, however, he told Robert that his conscience troubled him on account of his ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... shock and disappoint him when he came to be familiar with it. Many of the ancient monuments had been destroyed; and many of the ancient sites, especially the Forum and the Palatine, were deserted wastes which had not yet yielded up their buried treasures of art to the pick and spade of the antiquarian. The ravages inflicted by the ferocious hordes of the Constable Bourbon in 1527 had not yet been obliterated by the restorations and repairs undertaken by Pope Paul III. The city had lost much ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... possible on Sunday—observing the same principle, no doubt, that induces a great many people to take a bath on Saturday night. Moreover, he changed the bedding in her stall on Saturdays, employing a pitchfork and a spade. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... was discussed in the real sense of the term, was that of ploughing the land instead of having it turned with the spade or hoe. I listened to this with great interest, for Jack and I had had some talk upon this subject, which began in his ardently expressed wish that massa would allow his land to be ploughed, and his despairing conclusion that he never would, ''cause horses more ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... leave, Mr Pamphlett picked up the spade guinea and considered it curiously. It had a beautifully sharp impression, and might have been minted yesterday. He thought it would go ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... been long in grass; tholluff bawn being used to signify grass land about to be brought into cultivation; and tholluff breagh, or red land, land which has been recently turned. To redden land is still used to express either to plough land, or, more generally, to turn land with the spade. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... if I might venture to offer an opinion with respect to the merit of the Chinese as agriculturists, I should not hesitate to say that, let as much ground be given to one of their peasants as he and his family can work with the spade, and he will turn that piece of ground to more advantage, and produce from it more sustenance for the use of man, than any European whatsoever would be able to do; but, let fifty or one hundred acres of the best land in China ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... crowding forward to look closer. Tom set down the lantern and picked up a broken spade. There was a cavity in the wall of this pocket-like passage. With a flourish Tom dug the broken blade of the spade into the ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... Riccabocca) was admiring the picture-book, and Riccabocca with austere gravity dandled the doll. Then Riccabocca assured her that she could be of great use to him in the garden; and Violante instantly put into movement her spade, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and grim and grey at the horrible noise I made, And held up its hands in a pious way when I call'd a spade a spade; But I cared no whit for the blame of it, and nothing at all for its praise, And the whole consign'd with a tranquil mind to a ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... time in conversation, however, for the digging up of two kegs from a gravelly beach with fingers instead of a spade was not a quick or easy thing to do; so Ruby found as he went down on his knees in that dark place and began ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... peasant to his garden brings Soft rills of water from the bubbling springs, And calls the floods from high, to bless his bowers, And feed with pregnant streams the plants and flowers: Soon as he clears whate'er their passage stay'd, And marks the future current with his spade, Swift o'er the rolling pebbles, down the hills, Louder and louder purl the falling rills; Before him scattering, they prevent his pains, And shine in mazy wanderings ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... morning-glories, and sweet peas; my cousin cultivated roses. One day—and we could scarcely have been more than six years old—we were digging merrily and talking. Suddenly there was some kind of difference; I taunted him, and, raising his spade, he struck me upon the leg. The blow was heavy for a boy, and the blood trickled from the wound. I burst into indignant tears, and limped toward the house. My cousin turned pale and said nothing, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... much greater degree of attention than we believe it has yet received, in that it shows to what a considerable extent waste lands may, without any very heavy expenditure of money, be brought into profitable cultivation, and at the same time, under a well-regulated system of spade husbandry, yield abundant employment to agricultural labourers and their families. The following is the substance of the document referred to:—His lordship, who has large estates in Dorsetshire, found ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... a wise child," said the field-mouse. "Under this hedge you will grow in peace. Neither scythe nor spade ever comes here. But you won't be seen, and you won't see the world like ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... word 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
... with a mattock, and tucked up with a spade; said of one that is dead and buried. You will go up a ladder to bed, i.e. you will be hanged. In many country places, persons hanged are made to mount up a ladder, which is afterwards turned round or taken away, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast, To continue and be employ'd there all my life, The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low water, The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher; I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear, Is the tide out? I Join the group of clam-diggers on the flats, I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young man; In winter I take my eel-basket and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Piccolissima does not now make a well of your thimble, nor a spade of your scissors," answered her brother; "she has become tiresome; she no longer frisks around me when I return home; she has no longer any droll fancies which once amused me so much; she is now a genuine doll; I really believe that this minikin ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... with a spade and a wheelbarrow, and led to a gaping hole beneath the barn. I explained that the rain had washed away the soil and made the hole, which must be filled up before ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... beneath every "foundation." Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this is a recluse's verdict: "There is something arbitrary in the fact that the PHILOSOPHER came to a stand here, took a retrospect, and looked around; that he HERE laid his spade aside and did not dig any deeper—there is also something suspicious in it." Every philosophy also CONCEALS a philosophy; every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE, every word ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against Fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... coming to destroy Shrewsbury by flood. 'And how far is it yet?' The giant asked in passing. 'I forget; But see these shoes I've worn out on the road And we're not there yet.' He emptied out his load Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade The earth for damming Severn, and thus made The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham's sages. But long before he could have been wise, ages Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong And ate ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... spirit of encouragement, the willingness with which he put his shoulder to the wheel everywhere that aid was needed, his boldness in defying those leagued against him, completely changed the aspect of Jamestown. The gentlemen who had refused to wield axe or spade or bricklayer's trowel because of their gentility were shamed ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... nowadays. He calls to Dering, the gardener, who is on a ladder, pruning. Dering, who comes to him, is a rough, capable young fellow with fingers that are already becoming stumpy because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in short, the clever ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... the ancient paths and reached the orchard on the slope; and as soon as Madame Bavoil caught sight of them she grounded arms, so to speak, setting her foot in gardener fashion on the spade she ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the edge of the horizon, looked about him, then launched a long yellow ray directly at the crack in the nursery shutter. The ray was sharp: it smote full on Archie's eyelids, as he lay asleep, surrounded by "Robinson Crusoe," two red apples, a piece of gingerbread, and a spade, all of which he had taken to bed with him. When he felt the prick of the sun-ray he opened his eyes wide. "Why, morning's come!" he said, and without more ado raised himself ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... coolies and Mongolian workmen were to be found wherever new buildings were going up as well as on all the railways. The yellow flood was threatening to destroy the very foundations of our domestic economy by forcing down all wage-values. The yellow immigrant who wrested spade and shovel, ax and saw, from the American workman, who pushed his way into the factory and the workshop and acted as a heartless strike breaker, was not only found in the Pacific States but had pushed his way across the Rockies into the very heart of the eastern section. And scarcely ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... heard calling, almost out of breath]. I wanted to catch you before you went down. [Enters.] There was nobody else at home to bring the spade, so I ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... than at home for 1s. 6d., will be 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 than at ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... the part of Miss Myrtle, she had her chance, and seized it bravely. When that typical British boarder, Mr. John Preston, M. P. (interpreted with great relish and vigour by Mr. HUBERT HARBEN), remarked, "I call a spade a spade," she replied, "And I suppose you would call a dinner-napkin a serviette"—one of the pleasantest remarks in a play where the good things said were ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... Dravots beard seemed to fill half the room and Carnehans shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table. Carnehan continued: The country isnt half worked out because they that governs it wont let you touch it. They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you cant lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government sayingLeave it alone and let us govern. Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isnt crowded and can come to his ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... the lawn and spade the flower beds next morning. It was well that he went early to his task, for at ten o'clock Ted ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... attempted to dig them out with a spade, but without any great success; for either we could not get to the bottom of the hole, which often terminated under a great stone; or else, in breaking up the ground, we inadvertently squeezed the poor insect to death. Out of one so bruised we took a multitude ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... a piece of ground which had been dug up to be newly turfed, and which I had chosen on that account, as the traces of my spade were less likely to attract attention. The men who laid down the grass must have thought me mad. I called to them continually to expedite their work, ran out and worked beside them, trod down the earth with my feet, and hurried them with ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... before the walls frequent divers toppling to the ground; and they moistened the parched earth with streams of blood. But the Arcadian, no Argive, the son of Atalanta, as some whirlwind falling on the gates, calls out for fire and a spade, as though he would dig up the city. But Periclymenus the son of the God of the Ocean stopped him in his raging, hurling at his head a stone, a wagon-load, a pinnacle[40] rent from the battlement; and dashed in pieces his head with its ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... landing. There was a small house on this landing, and behind it were some twelve negroes digging with spades. The leader of them was an old man sixty years of age. He raised himself to an upright position as we landed, and put his hands up to his eyes. Then he dropped his spade and sprang forward. 'Bress de Lord,' he said, 'dere is de great Messiah! I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He's bin in my heart fo' long yeahs, an' he's cum at las' to free his chillun from deir bondage! Glory, Hallelujah!' ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... to the delight of the adventurers, from the midst of the cocoanut grove that crowned the islet there flowed a tiny stream of clear water. This was indeed a godsend, as they did not know how long they might have to remain there. With a spade, which formed part of the dirigible's outfit—"I suppose they figured on shoveling out the treasure," laughed Harry—a small basin was soon dug out for the water to settle in and make a sort of small well, from which it could be dipped out for ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... reached the point of destination where the old powder magazine stood. On landing, they formed a large circle. The president of the C. & O. Company addressed President Adams in a brief speech and handed him a spade. After making the speech, he attempted to run the spade into the ground, but struck a root. He tried it again, when a wag in the crowd cried out he had come across a "hickory root," (allusion to Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory," and their ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... must speak of the one memorial which is usually looked at first, the famous picture of Old Scarlett, on the wall of the western transept. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle; at his feet is a skull. At the top of the picture are the arms of the cathedral. Beneath the portrait ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... then, Imagination! Portals Hiding the Future, ope your doorways! Earth, the blood-drenched, yields palms and olives. Sword that hath cleft on bone and muscle, Spear that hath drunk the hero's lifeblood, Furrow the soil, as spade and ploughshare. Blasts that alarm from blaring trumpets Laws of fair Peace anon shall herald: Heaven's shame, at last, its ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... becomes chyle, and is assimilated to the body of the animal. It is obvious that animal life controls mechanical laws. Thus, the friction of two inert substances wears one of them away—the soft yields to the hard; but, on the contrary, the hand of the labourer who wields the spade or the pickaxe becomes thicker ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... into the room. Rising from my bed, I looked out into the orchard. It was almost as bright as day. I could plainly see the tree of which I had been dreaming, and then a fantastic notion possessed me. Slipping on my clothes, I went out into one of the old barns and found a spade. Then I went to the tree where I had seen the girl weeping in my dream and dug down ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... a wider, better feeding area for growing roots, permits greater water storage, forwards growth of trees and brings them into bearing earlier than trees set in spade-dug holes. Write for FREE BOOKLET about how to blast tree holes with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... churchyards may be remarked here—the reluctance to bury on the north side of the church (though strangely enough this has been reversed at near-by Ferring). In many churchyards, where the ground is as extensive on the north side as on the others, the grave digger's spade has left it either quite untouched or the graves are few in number and mostly of ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... often, at the navel. The extremities are short, bowed, cold, and livid, covered with rolls of the infiltrated skin, rolls which cannot be smoothed out. Hands and feet are broad, pudgy, and floppy, the fingers stiff, square and spade-like, the toes spread apart, like a duck's, by the solid skin. Above the collar bones there are frequently great pads of fat which sometimes ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... dit Belisle be arraigned and convicted of having wilfully and feloniously killed the said Jean Favre by a pistol shot and several stabs with a knife, and of having similarly killed the said Marie-Anne Bastien, wife of the said Favre, with a spade and a knife, and of having stolen from them the money that was in their house; for punishment of which that he be condemned to have his arms, legs, thighs and backbone broken, he alive, on a scaffold, which shall be erected for that purpose in the market ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... poor men dare not do it; knowing that one who has been bred up in idleness and pleasure, and who was used to walk about with his sword and buckler, despising all the neighbourhood with an insolent scorn, as far below him, is not fit for the spade and mattock: nor will he serve a poor man for so small a hire, and in so low a diet as he can afford to give him.' To this he answered, 'This sort of men ought to be particularly cherished, for in them consists the force of the armies for which we have occasion; since their birth inspires them ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... kept him alive. But now all the work was done for a long time to come; every family had its great portraits, and would want him no more yet awhile; and Conrad saw, that if he could not turn his hand to something else, and in place of pencils and brushes, work with last, spade, needle, or quill, make shoes, coats, till the ground, or cast up accounts, he should shortly be hardly put to it to keep himself going. He had made and saved a pretty tolerable little purse during his short season of patronage, and determined to turn that to account in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... "It would have been all right if Harry would have lent a hand now and then," she said, "but he won't even clean his own boots, let alone any one else's; while as for bringing in a scuttle of coal, or going an errand, or putting a spade near the garden, he'd think himself disgraced for ever if he did either. Disgraced! He!" with a bitter laugh, and the meaning in her voice should have made her self-satisfied husband feel very small—if anything could ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to spade up my angle-worms and other pets, to see if they had withstood the severe winter. I found they had. They were unusually bright and cheerful. The potato bugs were a little sluggish at first, but as the spring opened and the ground warmed up ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... alarming, and ought to receive the fullest attention. What, then, can be done to save Europe from these impending dangers? The large number of "Peace Societies" which have been established in different countries have done excellent spade work. Their main object has been to insure that disputes among nations should be referred to arbitration, with a view to making more difficult their resorting to arms. The great success of these societies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... 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 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... we swept, and scrubbed, and dusted up the place, Then smoked out on the doorstep in the twi- light's tender grace. After which with spade and rake we sought our special garden plot, And we 'tended to the cabbage and the shrink- ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... and being uncertain what sort of people they might be, whether friends or foes, I thought it not safe to be seen. I got up into a very thick tree, from whence I might safely view them. The vessel came into a little creek, where ten slaves landed, carrying a spade and other instruments for digging up the ground. They went towards the middle of the island, where I saw them stop, and dig for a considerable time, after which I thought I perceived them lift up a trap door. They returned ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... it was the voice of her Lord, who tenderly expostulated with her for suffering the intercourse which had so closely bound them together to be broken and interrupted by so many occupations. She threw the spade on the ground, and sitting down, covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly. Was it never to end, this life of many cares? It seemed as though her soul, which was struggling to rise into the serene and quiet atmosphere of contemplation, was ever destined to ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... freckles bestowed by nature, and grime artificially acquired, Jimmy Anstice was a well-looking lad, and added a distinct note of human interest to the barren flats, as he stood, spade in hand, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the distance, and happily for ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... or bacon in some form unknown to her narrow experience), and lighted short pipes, and breached the brig upon the putrescent monster, and grappled to it, and then the skipper jumped on it, a basket slung to his back, and a rope fast under his shoulders in case of accident, and drove his spade ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... might be hidden beneath the tree, and that the dog had scented it, at last struck the old man. He ran back to the house, fetched his spade and began to dig the ground at that spot. What was his astonishment when, after digging for some time, he came upon a heap of old and valuable coins, and the deeper he dug the more gold coins did he find. So intent was the old man on his work that he never saw ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... hall. But they only leave a few dark freckles on the garden beds. Alas, yes! There is no light without its shadow, no joy without its sorrow tagging after. It isn't all marbles and play in the gladsome springtide. Bub has not only to spade up the garden—there is some sense in that—but he has to dig up the flower beds, and help his mother set out her ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... to do any task that is assigned to him, without complaint. It does not matter if he has never handled a spade in his life, he must dig if required to, and dig to the best of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... again ploughed and cleared with the rake. After waiting for some days, it should be ploughed for the fourth and last time, and made as clean and friable as possible. In small plantations this is to be done with the spade, but on large estates the roller must be used. This roller consists of a heavy piece of round wood, eight or ten feet long, to which a pole is fastened in the middle to have oxen harnessed to it. It is drawn slowly over the ploughed ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... coming in, whan he cam to the yett yonder, thinking to meet his man, paidling Jock—but Jock had sleepit in, and wasna there. Weel, to the wast corner ower yonder he gaed, and throwing his coat ower a headstane, and his hat on the tap o't, he dug away with his spade, casting out the mools, and the coffin handles, and the green banes and sic like, till he stoppit a wee to take breath.—What! are ye whistling to yoursell?" quoth Isaac to me, "and no hearing ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and then whistled, soft and low. There was no answer. He looked around him, trying to decide where he was and what to do. His eyes fell upon the two recently dug graves. Headboards stood at each of them. Both were covered. Near the mounds lay a spade. The earth clinging to it ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... 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 ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... has revealed what town-planning meant in a small town rebuilt in the Alexandrine period. No other even approximately complete example has been as yet uncovered on any other site. But spade-work at the neighbouring and more famous city of Miletus has uncovered similar street-planning there. In one quarter, the only one yet fully excavated, the streets crossed at right angles and enclosed regular blocks of dwelling-houses measuring 32 x 60 ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... to asking someone who knew how to explain them to me. So you see I understood so very little, that I actually thought that by getting up early and working hard it would be quite easy for me, with my little spade, to dig right down to the other side ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... were on, Ready took the axe and gun, and asked William if he thought he could carry a small spade on his shoulder, which they had brought on shore along with the shovels. William replied that he could; and the dogs, who appeared to know they were going, were all ready standing by them. Then, just as the sun rose, they turned into the cocoa-nut grove, and were soon out of sight ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... following. The rector, as an archaeologist, did a little excavation on his own on the flat place at the very top of the hill—a place in which there were what looked like rough foundations. He used to take with him a local labourer to do some of the spade-work. One day they dug up a Quern. The labourer asked what it was. The clergyman explained that it was a form of hand-mill used in the olden days for grinding corn. In reply he was met with one of the most amazing remarks ever made to an antiquarian. "Oh, a little hand- mill be it! Ah, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... lining settles, press it down with a spade next the box, and add more litter upon the top, which should be done every other day, observing that when you increase one lining to have the dung in readiness for the next; each lining not being calculated ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... vision of myself, spade in hand, testing this statement; but he allowed no time for such diversions of thought. The goodness of Chiswick and the importance of praising it were too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... It was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, "that inward sense of the soul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the understanding and the will are kept as it were in libera custodia to their objects of verum et bonum, it is free from all engagements—digs without spade, flies without wings, builds without charges, in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of omnipotency, creating and annihilating things in an instant—restless, ever working, never wearied." We may say, indeed, that men of his temperament ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and came out poor. With the homestead of the first settler my father seemed to have inherited all his unambitious and plodding character. His whole habit was quiet, domestic, and home-loving. He was content to cultivate his land with the spade, raising many kinds of fruits and vegetables for the family and for market, and working likewise in the fields and gardens of his neighbors; while in winter he employed himself in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... mustard and cress. One 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 this year. On Monday ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... society. We have managed to keep this society alive for fifteen years and, though I don't say it in any spirit of boasting, it has not been an easy thing to do. It has required a good deal of pretty hard spade work by the committee. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I suppose you didn't come here to listen to me and perhaps I have said enough about our difficulties and troubles. So without more ado (this is always a favourite phrase with chairmen) ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... 'I shouldn't call him "it," don't you know. It sort of rubs it in. Why not "him"? I suppose we had better bury him. Have you a spade anywhere handy?' ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... ax and spade, Bring me a winding-sheet; When I my grave have made, Let winds and tempests beat: Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay: True love ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... startling. I turned crimson with mortification. The professor was very decent about it; he called me by name at once. Then he looked at his spade. It was clear he considered me a nuisance and wished to go on with ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... was 2 in the cannoes, and 3 in the launch) marched for the towne of Quoquembo. 35 of our party as they wear Marching mett about 150 Spaniards, most on horseback; thay had not all gunns, some launces, other Spade's; more of our Party comeing upp, seeing the foloorne so much Ingaged, thay wounded one or 2 of their horses, with some of the Spaniards, which made them to retreat to a greate hill, about 5 mile from the towne. wee Entred the towne and kept possession of 4 dayes. wee askt ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... use of the hoe and spade shall be as much as possible adopted; and where the number of men who can be employed in agriculture is sufficient to raise food for the settlement with these implements, the use of the plough shall be given up; and no working cattle are to be employed ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... took pity on Mitri and gave way to his persuasion. He even lent a hand in lifting the dead horse into the cart. Mitri tore off the shoes from the forelegs and gave them to his wife. One was broken, but the other one was whole. While he was digging the grave with a spade which was very blunt, the knacker appeared and took off the skin; and the carcass was then thrown into the hole and covered up. Mitri felt tired, and went into Matrena's hut, where he drank half a bottle of vodka with Sanin to console himself. Then he went home, quarrelled with his wife, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... an' your own contree! Strike for your native lan'! Kip workin' away wit' de spade an' hoe, Den jump w'en you hear de bugle blow, For danger 's aroun', above, below, But de bugle will tell if ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... morrow the Germans saw a top hat come bobbing and bowing along the French trench and heard loud cries of "Vive le President!" Time after time they riddled that top hat with bullets, and still it went bobbing along until the French took it off the spade handle, threw it into the air and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... A spade! a rake! a hoe! A pickaxe, or a bill! A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, A flail, or what ye will— And here's a ready hand To ply the needful tool, And skill'd enough, by lessons ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... hand. "You ain't too young to die, even ef you is too ole to learn. Only I trust an' prays dat you won't be blamin' nobody but yo'se'f 'bout this time day after to-mor' evenin' w'en de sexton of Mount Zion Cullud Cemetery starts pattin' you in de face wid a spade." ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... had it not been accompanied by a note from the Count d'Artigas soliciting permission to visit the establishment. The personage in question hoped that the director would grant his request, and announced that he would present himself in the afternoon, accompanied by Captain Spade, commander ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... blame a bream because it is not a barbel, or a chub for not being a trout, yet the angler grumbles if he catches the humbler fish when aiming at the noble; we are all agreed that the gardener was not justified in "larning" with a spade the squalid batrachians to be toads; even musical comedies ought not to be criticized with spade strokes, although in connection with them it is a pity that a spade so rarely has been called by its proper name. Moreover, one may have an ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... lady!—'tis the chance of the poor and the unknown. Those that have friends are sought and found; but those that die without leaving traces of their origin fare as you see. The spade is useless among these rocks; and then it is better that the body should remain where it may be seen and claimed, than it should be put out of sight. The good fathers, and all of note, are taken down into the valleys, where there is earth ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... waters? Will you not hasten to take your share in the work, people of the Otomie, the work that knows no rest and no reward except the lash of the overseer and the curse of the Teule? Surely you will hasten, people of the mountains! Your hands are shaped to the spade and the trowel, not to the bow and the spear, and it will be sweeter to toil to do the will and swell the wealth of Malinche in the sun of the valley or the shadow of the mine, than to bide here free upon your hills where as yet no foe has set ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... anything but very inferior numbers badly armed become impossible in any frontal attack in the open. Thus all modern infantry operations must have more or less a siege character, as the only practicable means of approach is by digging your way forward. The spade has become almost as important a weapon ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... which we turn with our spade, and stamp with our shoes, covers millions upon millions of years. It is the ashes of the mountains, the leavings of untold generations of animal and vegetable life. It came out of the sea, it drifted from the heavens; it flowed ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... to Donald Farquharson, and take his assistance to the burying of him: That upon giving Donald Farquharson this information, Donald went along with him, and finding the bones as he informed Donald, and having then buried it with the help of a spade which he the deponent had alongst with him: And for putting what is above deponed upon out of doubt, Depones, that the above vision was the occasion of his going by himself to see the dead body, and which he did before he either ...
— Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald • Sir Walter Scott
... this Cornish town was overwhelmed by a terrible uprising of wind and sea. The waves broke angrily over the haunts of man's degradation, followed by driving sands that blotted them out for ever. But perhaps it may not be for ever. Some day the fickle sand may desert that which it once buried, or the spade may lay bare relics that shall prove the tradition's truth. The lost church of St. Piran has been found; it may be so with the lost Langarrow. Already many human remains have been found among the sand-heaps that extend intermittently from here to Perranporth, and traces of "kitchen-middens" ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... on each dark and gloomy night A form in phosphorescent white, A genuine hair-raising sight, Would wander through the town. And as it slowly roamed around, With a spade it dug each foot of ground; So the folks about Said there was no doubt 'Twas the ghost ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... and go at six? why, about this much, ma'am," said the gardener, marking off a piece of the border with his spade. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... our approach, and examining the protruding stumps, we soon saw enough to convince us that the boy was right, and that we were in the presence of a vessel, wrecked, or abandoned, Heaven only knows how many years ago. With our hands, with pint pots, with a spade we had brought with us—mindful of the difficulty we had experienced in finding a resting-place for poor Cato—with every utensil, in fact, that ingenuity could devise, we set to work clearing away the sand that had accumulated round ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... reality removed, although Gladys, if the truth were told, was not so bad, and she got some good advice from the answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria, for she had never felt the true living clutch of vice on her soul, even in imagination; she could not. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... upon a little table, and a ship's chronometer, and a compass.... There were charts in a tin tube upon the wall, and one that showed the Harbor and the channel to the sea hung between the middle windows. In the north corner, a harpoon, and two lances, and a boat spade leaned. Their blades were covered with wooden sheaths, painted gray. A fifteen-foot jawbone, cleaned and polished and with every curving tooth in place, hung upon the rear wall and gleamed like old and yellow ivory. The chair at the table was fashioned of whalebone; and on a bracket above the ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... workshops—ateliers—of prehistoric weapons near Sidi Mansur, which lies within half a mile of Gafsa, whence he has extracted—or rather retrieved, for the flints merely lie upon the ground—quantities of instruments of every shape; among them, some saws and a miniature spade. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in God's name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury for every plough and spade ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... hind, knight: I fed, till'd, did command: Goats, fields, my foes: with leaves, a spade, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... has two entirely different associations in our minds. Sometimes it calls up a wonderful literature enshrined in a 'dead language', and exquisite works of a vanished art recovered by the spade; at other times it is connected with the currant-trade returns quoted on the financial page of our newspapers or with the 'Balance of Power' discussed in their leading articles. Ancient and Modern Greece both mean much to us, but usually ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... 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 came to Yuen Yan's ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... whispered Jacob faintly, "and the martyrs prayed for those who tormented them—in this at least I may be like them. Father, I do forgive the young squire; and, father," said Jacob, as he opened his eyes after an interval of a few minutes' rest, "get your spade, and dig up the tree, and take it with my duty to the young squire. Don't wait till I'm dead, father; I should not feel parting with it then; but I love the tree, and I wish to give it to him now. And if you dig up a very large ball of earth with it, he can have it planted in his garden ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power
... I will make an honest woman of you, when all is done. Nay, none of your airs; no tricks upon travellers! I have you here as safe AS a horse in a pound; there is not a house nor a shed within a mile of us; and, if I miss the opportunity, call me spade. Faith, you are a delicate morsel, and there is no ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... proceeded to rake the gravel over and to examine it. His search was rewarded by the discovery of several stones, which he conveyed home with him, and which proved, after being cleaned, to be gems of the first water. Elated at this success, he returned to the spot next day with a spade, and succeeded in obtaining many other specimens, and in convincing himself that the deposit stretched up and down for a long distance on both sides of the torrent. Having satisfied himself upon this point, our compatriot made his way to Tobolsk, where he exhibited his prizes to several ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down into the breach, and sets to work. He is a small man, strongly resembling the Emperor of China in a third-rate provincial pantomime. His weapon is the spade. In civil life he would have shovelled the broken coal into a "hutch," and "hurled" it away to the shaft. That was why Private Hogg referred to him as a "drawer." In his military capacity he now removes the chalky soil from the trench with great dexterity, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... right one could discern the dim outlines of platoons moving up steadily and at equal distances like ourselves. One could just catch the distant noise of spade clinking on rifle. When I turned my gaze to the front of these troops, I saw yellow-red flashes licking upon the horizon, where our shells were finding their mark. Straight in front, whither we were bound, the ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... into the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck an instant chill upon the Arethusa's blood. Now see in how small a matter a hardship may consist: the floor was exceedingly uneven underfoot, with the very spade-marks, I suppose, of the labourers who dug the foundations of the barrack; and what with the poor twilight and the irregular surface, walking was impossible. The caged author resisted for a good while; but the chill of the place struck ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spontaneous expression of life which, coming simply and directly as an impulse, takes a decorative or applied form. All the beginnings of art grew up in this way. In primitive peoples it is the first expression of emotional life, which comes after the material need is satisfied. The savage makes his spade or fish spear from the necessity of physical preservation. Thus from the joy of living he applies to it his ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... the first wants of the settler; the log-cabin rises to supply the one; the axe, the plough, the spade, the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... as like another as the days themselves; and like nothing better than serving an apprenticeship to the double calling of grave-digger and game-keeper, for we found ample employment both for the spade ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... 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 off as ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... play. He was hard at work, filling up the pond he had dug in his garden, having tried experiments with it for several weeks, and found that it never held water but in a pouring rain. While he was occupied with his spade, his sisters and the little Rowlands were arranging their ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... paymaster was coming, which overshadowed all minor considerations, and Turner was to take twenty men and meet him midway over to McDowell, and could have taken fifty had volunteers been called for, and the garrison to a man would have offered to sally forth, "with mattock and with spade" to patch up the crazy road that twisted through Picacho Pass—anything to get the man and his money to Camp Almy, for "devil a cent of four months' pay had the garrison, and more than double that," said Sergeant Malloy, "is owin' me in I.O.U.'s that they wouldn't take for ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... up and watched him push the setting-peg in at one side of his ready earth, stride across, and push it in the other side, pulling the line taut and clear upon the clods intervening. Then with a sharp cutting noise the bright spade came towards her, cutting a grip into the new, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... opinion was, Mr. Pitt alone could give vigour and solidity to any administration in the present state of affairs. Under him, his grace said, he was "willing to serve in any capacity, not merely as a general officer, but as a pioneer: under him he would take up a spade or a mattock." Such was the situation in which the ministers found themselves at the close of this session, which was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
