"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to feed on the herbage of the neighbouring plain. These pits have to be dug in the rainy season, when the ground is soft; for during the dry months the earth becomes so hard as to resist the poor implement used by the natives in place of a spade. The pit is concealed with much care, and as months may pass without a hippopotamus straying into the trap, it may be imagined how strong an effort of perseverance and patience is required in capturing one of these ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... origin of which is in reality unknown, are, in the popular traditions, almost constantly attributed to the Danes. If the spade or the plough brings ancient arms and pieces of armour to light, it is rare that the labourer does not suppose them to have belonged to that people. But particularly if bones or joints of unusual size are found, they are at once concluded to be the remains of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of cedar. Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel. At the foot of a great pine he began to dig. As the work went on, he broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet. Leaning against a rock not far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the soft, good-smelling earth, enriched by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and the spade were everywhere visible, but the fields were for the most part not sown; the young peasants were under arms, the gardens and meadows were trodden down by soldiers, the houses and cottages plundered and destroyed, or burnt. Everything bore the trace of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... chillen; you know, he got a year' staht o' all de res', you know. Yes, seh. Dey got 'bout hund'ed fifty peop' yond' by Gran' Point', and sim like dey mos' all name Roussel. Sim dat way to me. An' ev'y las' one got a lil fahm so lil you can't plow her; got dig her up wid a spade. Yes, seh, same like you ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... cabbages for stock into the winter, is to place them in trenches a few inches below the surface, and there cover with from a foot to two feet of coarse hay or straw, the depth depending on the coldness of the locality. When the ground has been frozen too hard to open with a plough or spade, I have kept them until spring by piling them loosely, hay-stack shape, about four feet high, letting the frost strike through them, and afterwards covering with a couple of feet of eel-grass; straw or coarse hay would doubtless do ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... banks; but Rosalie had never found money in a bank though she had looked; yet banks—of all extraordinary places—were where men chose to put their money! Mysterious men! And Harold could find these banks and find this money though he never took a trowel or a spade and was always shiningly clean with a very high collar and very long cuffs. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... an arrangement will be found very cheap, when compared with a Bee-House or covered Apiary, and may be made both neat and highly ornamental. It may be constructed of wood by those who desire something still cheaper, and any one who can handle a spade, hammer, plane and saw, can make for himself a structure on which a hundred hives may stand, at less expense than would be necessary to build a covered Apiary for ten. As the ventilators of the hive open into this Protector, the bees are, in Summer, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... forbidden them to carry any instrument of iron, or at all to make use of any iron in any case whatsoever. And on account of this prohibition it was that the husbandmen, if they had occasion to sharpen any of their tools, whether it were the coulter or the spade, or any instrument of husbandry, they came to the Philistines to do it. Now as soon as the Philistines heard of this slaughter of their garrison, they were in a rage about it, and, looking on this contempt as a terrible affront offered ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... half the charm to my labor," he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not grub so energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical gardeners, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... all, to stand; Ridley, Bishop of London, whose firm, intelligent, clear-cut features are an index to his character—perhaps a shade too severe, yet as severe to himself as any other; Hugh Latimer, blunt, warm-hearted old man, who calls a spade a spade in the most uncompromising manner, and spares not vice, though it flaunt its satin robes in royal halls; William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the mean-spirited time-server who would cry long life to a dozen rival monarchs in as many minutes, so long as he thought it ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... notwithstanding the great crowd of pleasure seekers, took off their shoes and stockings, turned up their trousers, and made sand castles. "Look, nurse," bawled Burton to his wife, "see what Cammy and I have done!" "If you please, nursey," whined Cameron, "Dick's snatched away my spade." At that moment Lord Aberdeen, President of the Royal Geographical Society, and a party of grave antiquaries and geographers, mostly run to nose, spectacles, and forehead, arrived on the scene; with the result ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... discover in the man a fellow gardener; on his travels, he would go out of his way to visit nurseries and gather hints; and to the end of his life, after other occupations prevented him putting his own hand to the spade, he drew up a yearly programme for his gardener, in which all details were regulated. He had begun by this time to write. His paper on Darwin, which had the merit of convincing on one point the philosopher himself, had indeed been written ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... labor-saving machine, a cargo of wooden-ware, a shop full of 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... and sharp chisel, which, most probably, the carpenters had used in the construction of the house, and forgotten. We put it carefully by, in order that we might fasten it to a pole, and use it in the moment of our flight as a spear. We found, also, a spade in the court, which we hid, that it too might serve as a weapon. Besides this, the sailors, on the night when we made the attempt, were to arm themselves with some long poles, which had been ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... ("Pagan, I regret to say"); and the scene in which Mr. Pecksniff, after a stormy domestic scene within, goes as it were accidentally to the door to admit the rich kinsman he wishes to propitiate? "Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door, as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not quite certain." The visitor had thundered at the door while outcries of family strife had been rising in ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... a youth of not more than two score years, returns from his day's labour a while after I had arrived. And as he stands in the door, his pick-axe and spade on his shoulder, his sister runs to meet him, and whispers somewhat about the stranger. Sitting on the threshold, he takes off his spats of cloth and his clouted shoes, while she gets the pitcher of water. After having washed, he enters, salaams graciously, and squats on the floor. The mother ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... a South American fresh from the Republic of Moccador, with a spade designed to dig up a long-buried treasure could have robbed Mawkum of his habitual caution of always guarding plans and estimates from outsiders—a custom which was really one of the fundamental laws of the ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... quality will not entertain them, and 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 ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... growing redder, his fingers nervously feeling the buttons on his picturesque silk waistcoat. "There's conspiracy in Ireland, and you never truly know if the man that serves you at your table, or brings you your horse, or puts a spade into your ground, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... monument had become a sacred thing. To let it be so soon destroyed would be an evil augury and submission to a desecration. To tell Kenneth Thornton would kindle his resentment and provoke a dangerous quarrel. She herself must remedy the matter. So Dorothy Parish went for her spade, and late into the night she ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... I shall write to him. Perhaps you wouldn't mind giving over for a day or two." Grimes yielded at once, and took his spade and measurements away, although Mr. Puddleham fretted a good deal. Mr. Puddleham had been much elated by the prospect of his new Bethel, and had, it must be confessed, received into his mind an idea that it would be a good thing to quarrel with the Vicar under the auspices ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... stern Oppression, hand in hand With Pride, stalk'd proudly through the land; When weeping Justice was misled From her fair course, and Mercy dead: 120 Such were the men, in virtue strong, Who dared not see their country's wrong, Who left the mattock and the spade, And, in the robes of War array'd, In their rough arms, departing, took Their helpless babes, and with a look Stern and determined, swore to see Those babes no more, or see them free: Such were the men whom tyrant Pride Could never fasten to his side 130 By threats or bribes; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... consummation of the whole enterprise,—a truly dramatic climax. George Ripley went to New York to become literary editor of the Tribune, and was as distinguished there for the excellence of his reviews, and the elegance of his turnout in Central Park as he had been for the use of the spade ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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
... counted for much with Montcalm. De Levis, held back by the vacillating Vaudreuil, had not yet come from Montreal, and the swiftest of the Canadian paddlers was sent down Lake Ticonderoga in a canoe to hurry him on. Then the entire battalion of Berry went to work at once with spade and pick and ax to prepare a breastwork and abattis, stretching a line of defense in front of the fort, and ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... he drove the spade into the rich loam. "They do say," he added, apparently as an after-thought, "as Fred Elkin is mighty sweet on Doris, but her'll 'ave nowt ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... these emerged the twin brothers, Apocatequil and Piguerao. The former was the more powerful. By touching the corpse of his mother he brought her to life, he drove off and slew the Guachemines, and, directed by Ataguju, released the race of Indians from the soil by turning it up with a spade of gold. For this reason they adored him as their maker. He it was, they thought, who produced the thunder and the lightning by hurling stones with his sling; and the thunderbolts that fall, said they, are his children. Few villages ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... some great folks beyant, laid up with the chills an' not able to do a hand's turn for himself, barrin' eatin' an' drinkin' fair, when the victuals is ready. He can play a good knife an' fork, still, thanks be, an' it's hopin' he'll soon be playin' his shovel an' spade just as lively, but that's no more here nor yet there. There's miles betwixt this an' yon, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... was hard work for Margery's father! Every bit of that "scrambled" turf had to be broken up still more with a mattock and a spade, and then the pieces which were full of grass-roots had to be taken on a fork and shaken, till the earth fell out; then the grass was thrown to one side. That would not have had to be done if the land had been ploughed in the fall; the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... and become a nuisance unless watched. Hence such plants should be placed where they will not have their roots cut by tools used close to them. When they seem to be extending, their borders should be trimmed with a sharp spade pushed vertically full depth into the soil and all the earth beyond the clump thus restricted should be shaken out with a garden fork and the cut pieces of mint removed. Further, the forked-over ground should ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... castle—in a dilapidated, almost dangerous condition. Then he came to a great hedge of yew, very lofty, but very thin, like a fence of old wire that had caught cart-loads of withered rubbish in its meshes. Here he heard the sound of a spade, and by the accompanying sounds judged the implement was handled by an old man. He peeped through the hedge, and caught sight of him. Old he was—bent with years, but tough, wiry, and sound, and it seemed to Cosmo that the sighs and groans, or rather grunts, which he uttered, were more ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... grave was dug. The coffin, with the corpse in it, was placed on the ground, while the people alternately assisted in making a grave. One man, at a little distance, was busy cutting a long turf for it, with the crooked spade which is used in Sky; a very aukward instrument. The iron part of it is like a plough-coulter. It has a rude tree for a handle, in which a wooden pin is placed for the foot to press upon. A traveller might, without further inquiry, have set this down as the mode of burying ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... or another before he gets back," said Samson Dee, as he ceased digging, and rested one foot upon the top of his spade, watching his young master contemplatively as he went along the road for a short distance before leaping up the bank, and beginning to tramp among heath, brake, and furze, over ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... their "curtlaxes" (cutlasses) to dig the frozen ground to get at the Indians' corn, "having forgotten to bring spade or mattock." "Daggers" are mentioned as used in their celebrated duel by Dotey and Leister, servants of Stephen Hopkins. Bradford narrates that on one of their exploring tours on the Cape the length of guard duty performed at night by each "relief" was determined by the inches of slow-match burned ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... done, and used his tongue pretty freely; still he was a man who would speak the truth, and treated his men as well as he dared to do under the brutal regime ruling in Chatham. He speedily told me off to a barrow and spade, and I was fully enlisted as barrow-and-spade man to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... tanarius. Euphorbia eremophilla (caustic bush). Dodonaea viscosa (hop-bush). Passiflora foetida (stinking passion fruit). Ipomea pes caprae (goat-footed convolvulus). Ionidium suffruticosum, Form A. Ionidium suffruticosum, Form B (spade-flower). Blainvillea latifolia. Gnaphalium luteo-album (flannel-leaf or cud-weed). Vernonia cinerea (erect, fluffy-seeded weed). Remirea maritima (spiky sand-binder). Cyperus decompositus (giant sedge). ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... crew put off in three boats to round the island and wait for us, and Clyde and I took the fourth boat, and stowed the canvas bags, and went ashore, running up a little reedy inlet to the end. We buried them in the exact middle of a small triangle of three trees. Then we rowed out, and I threw the spade in the water, and when we rounded the island, taking a last look at the Hebe Maitland, she was dipping considerable, as could be seen from the hang of her lanterns. Clyde changed to another boat and put Sadler, Craney, Irish, Abe Dalrimple, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Well crossed to the Isisi, using the canoes of the Akasava headmen, and made a slow progress through territory which gave them no opportunity of exercising their hobby, since water lay less than a spade's ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... the nearest 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!' And he fell upon his knees before the President and kissed ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... day and a night one—a day and a night population—the clown and his tillage in the light, the smuggler and his trade in the dark; yet the same peasant frequently exhibiting a versatility for which John Bull seldom gets credit.—The man of the plough-tail and the spade, drudging and dull through one half of his being; the same man, after an hour or two of sleep, springing from his bed at midnight, handling the sail and helm, baffling his Majesty's cruisers at sea, and making a melee with the officers of the customs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... General Prevost courage, and towards evening he sent a note to count D'Estaing, bearing a positive refusal to capitulate. All energies were now bent towards taking the town by regular approaches. Ground was broken on the morning of September 23rd, and night and day the besiegers plied the spade, and so vigorously was the work prosecuted, that in the course of twelve days fifty-three cannon and fourteen mortars were mounted. During these days two sorties were made. The morning of September 24th, Major Colin Graham, with the light company of the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... ended, "the man who sweats over a spade or follows the tail of a plough is far nobler and higher in the Scheme of Things than any of your young 'bloods' driving his coach and four to Brighton to the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... a brawny fellow, advancing with a spade in his hand; "you get out of the way, and I'll soon have him up. Here goes, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... cutting-in spade, and as the fish hung still over the side, cut him open from neck to belly with a single movement. Another Chinaman stood by with a long-handled gaff, hooked out the purple-black liver, brought it over the side, and dropped it into one of the deck-tubs. The shark thrashed and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... meant in the history of Hebrew literature and culture can only approximately be gauged. One thing is certain: they all and one dealt the death-blow to the old Hebraic culture. When the excavator sinks his spade beneath the ground of a sleepy Palestinian village, he lays bare to view from under the overlaid strata, Roman and Greek and Jewish and Israelitish, the Canaanite foundation with its mighty walls and marvellous tunnels, its stelae and statuettes, its ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... breast Of half-tilled field; the flail is laid above The barn's brown wall; the shining sickles move Not from their keep; the woodman's axe is still; The golden sheaf doth not the feeder fill; The huntsman's horn is hung behind the door; The delver's spade stands idle on the floor; The horse and oxen run the open field, Set free to graze; the holloaing drivers wield No whip or goad, and all the swain is free; The laborer walks abroad, and turns to see, With favoring look, the toilings of his hand, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... of fact, I hadn't understood this. I had also overlooked the item that he was a gentleman, and even then did not recognize it. But I kept these trifles to myself; and as he was evidently trying to bury the hatchet, I got out my spade as well. And for the rest of that evening we were as civil to one another as a couple of smugglers with one ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... all was Pat Brady, who occupied a comfortable seat near the fire, drinking his tumbler of punch and smoking like a gentleman; Joe Reynolds was sitting on the widow's bed, with a spade in his hand; he had only just come in. They were all from Drumleesh, with one or two exceptions; the man without the coat was Jack Byrne, the brother of the man whom Captain Ussher had taken when the malt was ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... on Monday. I kept away all day, all the evening, and all the next day. Tuesday evening, just before dark, I took the path across the field. The two girls were at work making a flower-garden. "Pink and Blue" had a spade, and was actually spading up the ground. I caught it from her hand so quickly that she looked up almost frightened. Her face was flushed with exercise; but her blue eyes looked tired. How I reproached myself for not coming sooner! At dark, I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... arms, as we know, the family took the name of De Lys. The name, the arms, and the inscription over the doorway were a perpetual witness to the peasants of Champagne and Lorraine of the unity of interests established by King Louis between the spade and the sceptre. With the help of an inspired daughter of the people, King Charles had driven the English into the sea, and delivered the land. With the help of the people, King Louis had broken the power of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the eyes, you will see two tiny black specs; so we can hardly call the mole a blind animal; but as it lives for the most part underground its power of vision must be small. The fore feet do the work of the spade and potato-fork combined; its sense of smell is acute, and this, no doubt, aids the animal in the search of its food; the mole's sense of hearing is also very good. "Well, but, papa," exclaimed Jack, "a mole has got no ears, so how can it hear?" There is no outward appearance of ears, ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... said. He had neither axe nor saw, nor knife nor spade. How could he do it? He had nothing but his hands. He tried to pull it out by the roots, but in ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... those in the towns we had just visited. Some of them even wore hats, and straightway copied, or rather, tried to copy, those worn by the cable-ship contingent. They also rode bicycles, looking most incongruous awheel, the long, spade shaped train to their skirts tucked out of the way, their wide camisa sleeves standing out like stiff sails on either side, their demure and modest little kerchiefs swelling with the quick throbbing of their adventurous hearts. We were told ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... way physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer: While that 'hiatus maxime deflendus' To be fill'd up by spade or mattock's near, Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe, We tease mild Baillie, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... colorists were all pioneers: they explored the older communities as solicitously as they did the new, but they most of them came earliest in some field or other and found—or thought—it necessary to clear the top of the soil before they sank shaft or spade into it. Moreover, they accepted almost without challenge the current inhibitions of gentility, reticence, cheerfulness. They confined themselves to the emotions and the ideas and the language, for the most part, of the respectable; ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... emotion. He was religious, very religious indeed, this uncle of mine, and after the death of my aunt he became a Carthusian monk. As I write these lines, ill and aged as he is, and bent with pain, I know he is digging his own grave, weak with the weight of the spade, imploring God to take him, and thinking sometimes of me, of his little Bohemian. Ah, the dear, good man, it is to him that I owe all that is best in me. I love him devotedly and have the greatest respect for him. How many times in the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... industry. They were likewise acquainted with the use of manure, called vunalti in their language; but, from the great fertility of the soil, little attention was paid to that subject. They used a kind of spade or breast-plough of hard wood for turning the soil, which was pushed forwards by their breasts. At present the native Chilese use a very simple plough, called chetague, made of the branch of a tree crooked at one end, having a wooden share and a single handle by which it is guided. Whether ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... feared God, man, nor the minister; and all the learning he had was obtained from assiduous study of a grocer's window. But for one brief day he had things his own way in the town, or, speaking strictly, on the top of it. With a spade, a broom, and a pickaxe, which sat lightly on his broad shoulders (he was not even back-bent, and that showed him no respectable weaver), Henders delved his way to the nearest house, which formed one of a row, and addressed the inmates down the chimney. They had already been clearing ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... farm labourer being asked to plough and the allotment holder to dig almost knee-deep in mud. Although much paddy is ploughed with the aid of an ox, a cow or a pony,[73] most rice is the product of mattock or spade labour. There is no question about the severity of the labour of paddy cultivation. For a good crop it is necessary that the soil shall ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... said, "I have noticed this. Nearly all our little controversies begin in one way. Somebody says, 'I call a spade a spade and BONAR LAW (or LLOYD GEORGE) a lying, treacherous scoundrel.' I propose that we form ourselves into the Society for Not Calling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... the last words "Always your friend, William Magnus" aloud solemnly twice. Her thoughts ran in leaps and runs, hurdle-race-wise across the flat level of her brain. Martin. Old. Ill. Paris. Those walls out there and the road-man with a spade—little boy walking with him—chattering—it's going to be hot. The light across the lawn is almost blue and the beds are dry. His room. The looking-glass. Always tilts back when one tries to see one's hair. Meant ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... play of all kinds had an honoured place. We read of excursions for all kinds of purposes, of Indian games out of Fenimore Cooper, and of "Homeric battles." It was "part of Froebel's plan to have us work with spade and pick-axe," and every boy had his own piece of ground where he might do what he pleased. Ebers, being literary, constructed in his plot a bed of heather on which he lay and read or made verses. The boys built their own stage, painted their own scenery, and in winter once ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... made six rakes, and six hoes, and the two little hoes for the children; but he says he can't make a spade." ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... evil in life. It is not very pleasant, nor is it reassuring, but it is part of the artist, rooted deep in his Spanish soul along with the harsh irony and a cruel spirit of mockery. He refuses to follow the ideals of other men, and he paints a spade a spade; at least the orchestration, if brutal, is not lascivious. A cold, impartial eye observes and registers the corruption of cities small and great and the infinitely worse immoralities of the open country. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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
... syfe and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... 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
... who noted where the flat, spade headed little serpent fell. "Looks wonderfully like an asp, such as they have ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... minute," cried the old sailor, who was nearly as excited as the boys. "Get your spade ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... on a bold stroke, he was on the point of playing a spade, when a voice behind him said, "I ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... as a spade he scooped out a capful of coins—gold, American, English and French, which the Southerner had ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... nothing but Stephanotie Miller, and she doesn't know the style we live in at home. If she did, maybe she would open her eyes a little; but she doesn't, and that's flat; and I am vulgar, or supposed to be, just because I am frank and open, and I have no concealment about me. I call a spade a spade." ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... party ascended to the battery. There lay the spade and the sack of earth. The tool with which the work had been done was still in the mouth of the second cannon and, on pulling it out, the powder cartridge came with it. Then Leigh led them to the next gun, and a man who had a bayonet thrust it in, and soon brought some earth and stones to ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... instance of toil, hopefulness and patience. No matter the barrenness of the spot, no matter its isolation or the difficulty of approach, wherever root or seed will grow, there the French peasant owner plies hoe and spade, and gradually causes the wilderness ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Ordnance for the day, Their scaling Ladders rearing to the walls, Their battering Rammes against the gates they lay, Their brazen slings send in the wilde-fire balls, Baskets of twigs now carie stones and clay, And to th'assault who furiously not falls; The Spade and Pickax working are belowe, Which then vnfelt, yet gaue the ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... a stump when the troopers came. His foot is still resting on the spade, which is half driven home. He watches the troopers take the boy up to the house, and then, driving the spade to its full depth, he turns up another sod. The troopers reach the door of the homestead; but still he digs steadily, and does not seem to hear his wife's cry ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... bewildered 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, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... you of one that the cold calculating Professor Science has at last accepted, and that lives in your own back-yard. That is, the Cat's-eye Toad or Spadefoot. It is much like a common Toad, but a little smoother, the digging spade on its hind foot is bigger and its eye, its beautiful gold-stone eye, has the pupil up and down like that of a Cat, instead of level as in its cousin, the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... kind of a man had he been and what kind of life had he lived—black or white or red, robber or beggar or adventurer? Some of us were walking in the woods one day when we saw a bone sticking out of the ground. Luckily we had a spade, and we set to work digging. Not one moment was the tool idle. First one bone and then another came to light and among them a perfect horse's skull. We felt as though we had rescued Captain Kidd's treasure, and we went home draped ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... satisfied with rude stone tools, the African had invented or adopted the art of smelting iron. Consider for a moment what this invention has meant for the advance of the human race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw, drill, the spade, and the hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to be made of shell or hard wood, effective industrial work was not impossible, but difficult. A great progress was made when copper found in large nuggets was hammered out into tools and later on shaped by melting, ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... idea of God, as ordinary humanity conceives it. It is not in human nature to love a stream of tendency, or worship it, or ask boons of it; or to credit it with powers of design, volition, or creation. A prayer beginning "Stream" would sound as odd as Wordsworth's ode beginning "Spade."[57] ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... itself! The Queen of Hearts, you remember—and the Knave of—Spades, wasn't it? I wish it were diamonds instead: but maybe his spade will dig up a few sparklers in the end. I've got a splendid plan brewing. But that isn't what I want to talk about just now. In fact, I don't want to talk about it—yet! You're not going to admit that you see the results of my cleverness, or that ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the graves which had not been paid for for twenty years were, after the lapse of that time, again made use of, according to the rule and custom of the Church. It was thus no unusual thing to find coffins while a new grave was being dug, which fell to pieces under the spade. The bodies had been packed closely, and often several had been ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... talking at the gate, one of them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with the soil of graves. Their very aspect was delightful to me; and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick up some snatch of sexton gossip, some "talk fit for a charnel,"[35] something, in fine, worthy of that fastidious logician, that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all equity, let the organic character—bodiliness, so to speak—pass out beyond its limits and effect a lodgment in our temporary and extra- corporeal limbs. What, on the protoplasmic theory, the skin and bones are, that the hammer and spade are also; they differ in the degree of closeness and permanence with which they are associated with protoplasm, but both bones and hammers are alike non-living things which protoplasm uses for its own purposes and keeps ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... satisfied air, grateful and happy too. He put his cap straight, picked up his spade, and prepared without another word to go on digging for truffles where apparently none existed. He ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... is my task. I was thoughtlessly cruel. Neither can we remain here, only long enough to bury those bodies. It would be inhuman not to do that. Sam, there is an old spade leaning against the cabin wall—go over and ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... we meet with springs they will not matter much; we can exhaust them with our machines or divert them from their course. Here we have not to work at an artesian well, narrow and dark, where all the boring implements have to work in the dark. No; we can work under the open sky, with spade and pickaxe, and, by the help of blasting, our work ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... act of his long, eventful life did Davis evince such clearness of vision and quick decision, under trying conditions. Lee had failed in Western Virginia and McClellan had out-generaled him, the yellow journals had declared. They called Lee "Old Spade." So intense was the opposition to Lee that Davis had sent him to erect the coast defenses of South Carolina. The Governor of the State protested against the appointment of so incompetent a man to this important work. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... 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 they pitched right in, and did first-rate. Every ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... are all lost!' This was the wail for Sir George's ears, as the spade made it clear that the food-stuffs, with a trifling salvage, had been uprooted and scattered by the storm. It was almost the pronouncing of a sentence of death upon the party, having regard ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... with me than any of the Skull and Bones or Hasty Pudding men you know? Or foreign diplomats with spade beards?" ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... his spade, he drew his comrade into the labyrinth, for he had profited by Pecuchet's absence to ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Methought I walked about the mid of night Into a churchyard, where a goodly yew-tree Spread her large root in ground: under that yew, As I sat sadly leaning on a grave, Chequer'd with cross-sticks, there came stealing in Your duchess and my husband; one of them A pickaxe bore, th' other a rusty spade, And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... country through which the Spaniards had to pass could be laid under water. Believing it yet possible to enlist the ocean in his defence, Louis, having partially reduced his soldiers to obedience, ordered a strong detachment upon this important service. Seizing a spade, he commenced the work himself, and then returned to set his army in battle array. Two or three tide gates had been opened, two or three bridges had been demolished, when Alva, riding in advance of his army, appeared within a mile or two of Jemmingen. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... into the hole where he had put the ferret. "Ther's summat in the way," he declared at last. "Mos' likely a dead un. Gi' me the spade." ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are repelled, indeed, by its prosaic accompaniments, the dirt, the manure, the formality, the spade, the rake, and all that—love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. The long stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... the ground is fairly dry, and about one spade deep. Avoid treading it down as much ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... like a true daughter of the sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into ice, amid countenances rigid with respectability, sharpened by the lust of gain; without taste, without emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be the stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut ditch to turn the mill. Let me be the wild mountain brook, which foams and flashes over the rocks—what if they tear it?—it leaps them nevertheless, and goes laughing on its way. Let me go thus, for weal or woe! And ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... granadilla,[40] which have been set out along the arbor. It seems absolutely impossible to get anything sent up to us from Apia. Lists and notes go flying, but, except from Krause the butcher, with no results. It seems an odd thing that there should not be a spade or a rake for sale in a town where there would be no difficulty in finding the best quality of champagne, to say nothing of all the materials for mixed drinks. We have almost starved for want of provisions until yesterday, when Ben killed a couple of fowls, a large piece of meat came ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... had pleased God that his darling should come to die. I looked, too, very often upon Master Richard as he lay before me, upon his clean pallour, paler than I had ever seen it, and his slender fingers roughened by the spade, and his strong arm, and his smiling lips, and his closed eyes that looked within upon what I was not worthy to see, and I wondered often what it was that he was saying to our Lord and the blessed, ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... and thatched. Benj. Benton one pair of shoes, Willm. Adkin a waistcoat. Mary King's family four shirts, two pairs of shoes, three frocks, three petticoats, and three dabs (i.e. pinafores). A pair of breeches for George Skipworth; Willm. Skipworth to have a spade. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... unaffected, be honest in your speaking and writing. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual husbandry; let home be home, not a residence; a place a place, not a locality; and so of the rest. Where a short word will do, you always lose by using ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... hurried the man, and soon returned with a spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines of the hole, the poor digger redoubled his exertions. When ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... are shovels and then, there are shovels. Most gardeners know the difference between a spade and a shovel. They would not try to pick up and toss material with a spade designed only to work straight down and loosen soil. However, did you know that there are design differences in the shape of blade and angle of handle in shovels. The ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... on, a new thing opens to the view: a short week ago it seemed but a molehill: now it has risen to the height of a man, and hourly increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... bravado, but of daring skill. Perhaps the most wonderful regular feat of all was 'spading,' which meant slewing the boat close in, as the whale was about to sound, and cutting the tendons of its tremendous death-dealing tail by a slicing blow from the two-handed razor-edged 'spade.' Perhaps the most wonderful of all exceptional escapes was that of a boat which was towed by one whale right over the back of another. And perhaps the most exciting finish to any international race was the one in which the Yankee, who came up second, got 'first ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... burgesses, and established his camp on a neighboring hill, crowned by the old castle of Arques, where he put all his men and all the peasants that could be found busily to work digging like beavers, working night and day to fortify the camp. He set the example himself in the use of the spade. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... This harbour has somewhat the shape of a bent bow or the spade on a playing-card, the shaft of the arrow being the entrance in; the passage is very deep, but not more than 100 yards wide, and it goes in nearly S.W.; inside it is deep and quite secure, and protected from all winds. The lands westward rise at once to about 200 feet, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... nearer we saw a hollow, which looked as though it had been scooped out by some giant's spade. In it were built two or three cottages, and by the fact of there being some tumbled-down houses near, we came to the conclusion that at one time a little village must have ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... ruined I am!" cried St. Piran. "An' the Visitashun no further away than to-morra at tin a.m.!" He wrung his hands, then caught up a spade, and began digging ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... oak trees, which formerly surrounded the monastery, was cut down in the revolution. In the gateway of the outer court is a statue of Saint Bernard, which has been mutilated by the republicans: he is holding in one hand a church, and in the other a spade—the emblems of devotion and labour. This gateway leads into a court, which opens into a second enclosure, and around that are the granaries, stables, bakehouse, and other offices necessary to the abbey, which ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... he said to me, "There are in this room a spade, a sieve, and a leather bag; bring them out." I said to myself, God knows what labour he will make me undergo because he has made me eat of his bread; having no help for it, I took up those articles and brought them to him. He then ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... the little slope of sand and boulders and examined the cliff. It was virgin rock; never a tool mark was to be seen. Already the men were going, when the same strange instinct which had drawn him to the spot caused him to take a spade from one of them and begin to shovel away the sand from the face of the cliff—for here, for some unexplained reason, were no boulders or debris. Seeing their master, to whom they were attached, at work, they began to work too, and ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... secret of much moment, called them round him and said, "My sons, I am shortly about to die; I would have you know, therefore, that in my vineyard there lies a hidden treasure. Dig, and you will find it." As soon as their father was dead, the Sons took spade and fork and turned up the soil of the vineyard over and over again, in their search for the treasure which they supposed to lie buried there. They found none, however: but the vines, after ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... till noon; he trimming, lifting and placing the logs—and elephants have never swung teak more splendidly—while I, with our jointed camp spade, filled in the sand. The use of an axe could not possibly betray our position as Efaw Kotee had been betrayed, because the breeze continued from him to us, and also for the equally good reason that the bite of an axe in soggy palmetto does ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Down to the dust with Montfort's oriflamme. Nor the red tear nor the reflected tower Abides; but yet these eloquent grooves remain, Worn in the sandstone parapet hour by hour By labouring bargemen where they shifted ropes. E'en so shall man turn back from violent hopes To Adam's cheer, and toil with spade again. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Keller who calls Gotthelf "without exception the greatest epic genius that has lived in a long time, or perhaps will live for a long time to come," characterizes him thus as to his style: "With his strong, sharp spade he will dig out a large piece of soil, load it on his literary wheelbarrow, and to the accompaniment of strong language upset it before our feet; good garden soil, grass, flowers and weeds, manure and stones, precious gold coins and old shoes, fragments of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... was looking over the side during the early part of that day, I saw a very large shark come rolling up in this way close to Tom Lokins' legs. Tom made a cut at him with his blubber-spade, but the shark rolled off in time to escape the blow. And after all it would not have done him much damage, for it is not easy to frighten or take the life out of ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... way of it: The rector had ordered Niels to dig up a bit of soil in the garden. After a time when he went out himself to look at the work, he found Niels leaning on his spade eating nuts. He had not even begun to dig. The rector scolded him, but the fellow answered that he had not taken service as a gardener. He received a good box on the ear for that. At this he threw away his spade and swore valiantly at his master. The old rector lost ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... out the old ditch that surrounds our tent, to make it better able to carry off water in the next storm. Knudsen insisted on doing his share, then Corder took the spade from him for the next side. When Pickle, who was standing ready, said "You don't need to work," Corder asked plaintively, "Do I seem as old as that?" So he was allowed to do his ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade; while with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await the return of good weather ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... at Coloma on the 7th of March, and found the work at the mill going on as if no gold existed in the neighborhood. The next day he took a pan and spade, and washed some of the dirt in the bottom of the mill-race in places where Marshall had found his specimens, and, in a few hours, Humphrey declared that these mines were far richer than any in Georgia. He now made a rocker and went to work washing gold industriously, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... they lay, beneath the soil Of this lonely spot, that man of toil, And trench the strong hard mould with the spade, Where never before a grave was made; For he hewed the dark old woods away, And gave the virgin fields to the day; And the gourd and the bean, beside his door, Bloomed where their flowers ne'er opened before; And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye Bent low in the breath ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... stream was all once part of the hill on which you stand." I confess I was very much ashamed of myself when she said that. For that is the history of the whole mystery. Madam How is digging away with her soft spade, water. She has a harder spade, or rather plough, the strongest and most terrible of all ploughs; but that, I am glad to say, she has laid ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... intended fortification were some spots appropriated to superstitious practices; which the negroes no sooner perceived in danger of violation by the spade and pickaxe, than they ran to arms, and began to interrupt the work. The Portuguese persisted in their purpose, and there had soon been tumult and bloodshed, had not the admiral, who was at a distance to superintend the unlading the materials ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... approach accessible to cavalry, and as this was the force which would probably be used for a coup-de-main, if it were to be attempted at all, I set all hands to work to secure it. Wild as the night was, my men wielded the spade and mattock with good will; and we had completed a trench of some feet deep and wide, half across the road, when I caught the trampling of cavalry at a distance. My chagrin was irrepressible; the enemy would be upon us before we had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... "others can go to bed and dream themselves into whole mines of wealth; they have but to seize a spade in the morning, and turn up doubloons like potatoes; but thou must dream of hardship, and rise to poverty—must dig thy field from year's end to year's end, and—and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for the coarseness of his language upon Certain topics; but very little of this appears in his earlier poems, and what there is, was in accordance with the taste of the period, which never hesitated to call a spade a spade, due in part to the reaction from the Puritanism of the preceding age, and in part to the outspeaking frankness which disdained hypocrisy. It is shown in Dryden, Pope, Prior, of the last of whom ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... good opinion of my whist, though how I arrived at it I cannot explain. Henderson was my partner and he seemed to me to do the most odd things. For instance when I led a spade and he took the trick, instead of leading another spade he would begin some fresh suit, which made me wonder what in the world he was doing. And he did not seem to think his trumps half as valuable as I thought mine, but just led them ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... "creature" had just transferred the last potato to his own plate, stabbing it with his knife for that purpose) was a quaint representation of a mournful-looking couple, clad in singularly ill-fitting aprons of fig-leaves. The man was digging with a spade, while the woman sat at a spinning-wheel placed dangerously near the edge of the deep ditch which her husband had already dug. Round the edge ran an inscription, which, after some study, Hilda made out ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... caused his body to be dug up; when it was found in just the condition of the bodies of those who in the eastern countries of Europe are called vampires. They buried the corpse under the gallows; but neither the digging up nor the re-burying were of avail to banish the spectre. Again the spade and pick-axe were set to work, and the dead man being found considerably improved in condition since his last interment, was, with various horrible indignities, burnt to ashes, 'after which the spectrum was ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... house-breaking. In a shed at the back she found a broken spade which formed a sufficiently strong and sharp lever for her purpose. She pried open a shutter and climbed in. She found only such furniture as was necessary for a temporary abode. A small iron stove, a few utensils of tin, a huge sack which had been used for a straw bed, and a few articles ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... plate of iron which had become an oxyde, but before it was disturbed by the spade resembled a plate of cast iron. The mirrour answered the purpose very well for which it was intended. This skeleton had also been burned like the former, and lay on charcoal and a considerable quantity of wood ashes. A part of the mirrour ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... drooping in the sombre she-oak glade, And the breathless land is lying in a swoon, He leaves his work a moment, leaning lightly on his spade, And he hears the bell-bird chime the Austral noon. The parrakeets are silent in the gum-tree by the creek; The ferny grove is sunshine-steeped and still; But the dew will gem the myrtle in the twilight ere he seek His little lonely cabin ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... Nature, the unwritten poetry to which every open heart falls heir, we forget our earliest dependence on the great mother and the lessons she taught when men gathered about her knee in the childhood of the world. Not a spade turned the soil, not an axe felled a tree, not a path was made through the forest, that did not leave, in the man whose arm put forth the toil, some moral quality. In the obstacles which she placed in their pathway, in the difficulties ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... went on shore to get a few plants but, no principal chief being among the people, he was insulted, and a spade taken from him. A boat's grapnel was likewise stolen from the watering party. Tepa recovered the spade for us, but the crowd of natives was become so great, by the number of canoes that had arrived from different islands, that it was impossible to do anything where there was such ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... a spade a spade. When I mean The Times, I say The Times, and I condemn the old-fashioned twaddle of talking about "a morning contemporary." But to-day I depart from my rule and content myself with saying that I lately ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Hildyard's men supplemented the defences made by Lyttelton, and tightened their hold upon the hill. One futile night attack caused them for an instant to change the spade for the rifle. When in the morning it was found that the Boers had, as they naturally would, brought up their outlying guns, the tired soldiers did not regret their labours of the night. It was again demonstrated how innocuous a thing is a severe shell ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... threatened vengeance that he resumed his work; while his tormentor continued to goad him with a recollection of his past and present misery, and a prospect of fresh torture. The unfeeling wretch continued his banter until human nature could bear it no longer, and with the spade which he held in his hand, Dick clove the skull of his inordinate persecutor. He never attempted to escape from the fate which he knew awaited him; but permitted himself to be led quietly to that confinement which he was aware would only terminate with the close ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... on the choice of a trade; as it is a manual occupation, Emile's choice is no great matter, and his apprenticeship is more than half accomplished already, through the exercises which have hitherto occupied him. What would you have him do? He is ready for anything. He can handle the spade and hoe, he can use the lathe, hammer, plane, or file; he is already familiar with these tools which are common to many trades. He only needs to acquire sufficient skill in the use of any one of them to rival ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... reciprocating the feelings which had been evinced on the occasion of her own marriage. "It is no good mincing matters now-a-days," Mrs. Carbuncle would have said, had any friend pointed out to her that she was taking strong measures in the exaction of toll. "People have come to understand that a spade is a spade, and L10, L10," she would have said. Had Mrs. Hanbury Smith not noticed the application, there might, perhaps, have been an end of it, but she was silly enough to send over from Paris ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... The sturdy German, the lithe and gay-hearted Irishman, went shoulder to shoulder in defence of their adopted country. The man of money, the man of law, the merchant, the artist, and the artisan swelled the lines hastening to the scene of action, armed either with musket, pick, or spade. Added to these was seen Dickson's long and dusky brigade of colored men, cheerfully wending their way to labor on the fortifications, evidently holding it their especial right to put whatever impediments they could in the northward path of those whom they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed. But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade among the pebbles had caused the birdlike noise I ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... 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 |
