"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he shelled corn by drawing the ears across a spade resting on a wash tub, and we children built houses of the cobs, while mother sewed carpet rags or knit our mittens. Quilting bees of an afternoon were still recognized social functions and the spread quilt on its frame made a gorgeous tent under which my brother and I camped ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... they used 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 ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... how we's always meetin' up, don't it now? Likewise it's always to m' benefit, too. Only this time I've got me somethin' to trade. You keep on goin' down this trail, compadre, an' maybe you'll wind up with a spade pattin' you down nice ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... two or three hours a day under the direction of a gardener, getting regular certificates of labor performed, which they presented to their father, who always paid them as he would have paid any laborer for the same amount and quality of work—never more, never less. Each boy had his own hoe and spade, which not a Princeling among them all considered it infra-dig. to use. The two eldest boys, Albert Edward and Alfred, also constructed under their father's directions a small fortress perfect in all its details. All the work on this military structure, even to the making ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Mahogany Wheelbarro' an' a silver spade on a cart trail'd bi six donkeys, an' garded bi ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Henri missed his spade one morning, and hunted for it until he was out of patience. It was nowhere to be seen. Half an hour later, coming back to the house, he found it hanging in its usual place, where he had looked for it a dozen times at least. ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... these rings, which we copy, Fig. 182. It is entirely composed of mortuary emblems, on a ground of black enamel. Fig. 183 is an English memorial ring set with stones; on the circlet is engraved an elongated skeleton, with crossbones above the skull, and a spade and pick-axe at the feet; the ground is black enamel. It has been converted into a memorial by its original purchaser, who caused to be engraved withinside the hoop, "C.R., Jan. 30, 1649, Martyr." It is now in the Londesborough collection, from whence we obtain Fig. 184, a very good specimen ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the site of an ancient habitation. Nor can the ground be cultivated near the ancient towns, because it causes fever; and thus it is that, as I have already stated, the present places of the same name are often miles distant from the former locality. No sooner does the plough or the spade turn up an ancient site than those who work there are attacked with illness. And thus the cities of the old world, and their houses and habitations, are deserted and lost in the forest. If the hunters, about to pitch their ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... to the cornfield with his neighbor. He looked carefully over every hill, and with a spade and hoe he was able to put back into place the few stalks that had been knocked ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... some mischief 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 the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... more, he discovered, to his great joy, the bottom of the foundation. Again he plied the spade, and, by almost superhuman exertions, he succeeded in excavating a hole under the stones, which, below the surface of the ground, were not laid in mortar. After loosening all the small stones around a larger one, he found that ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... the bins and barrels gets low and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden are remembered. With spade and axe we go out and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the inner dressing of straw is laid bare. It is not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it there last fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious. Then, as day after ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... spears, clumsy matchlocks, and long straight swords, whose hilt was an iron gauntlet, in which the warrior's fingers were laced as they grasped a handle placed at right angles to the blade, after the fashion of a spade. There were shields, too, and bows and arrows, and tulwars and kukris, any number of warlike implements from the East, while beside the statues, the West had to show some curious chairs, and a full-length portrait of an Englishman in the prime of life—a handsome, bold-faced ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... sexton came; How my heart yearn'd to name my Hannah's name! White was his hair, for full of days was he, And walk'd o'er tombstones, like their history. With well feign'd carelessness I rais'd a spade, Left near a grave, which seem'd but newly made, And ask'd who slept below? "You knew him well," The old man answer'd, "Sir, his name was Bell. He had a sister—she, alas! is gone, Body and soul. Sir! for she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... 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 reburying 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 ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... 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 iron' by ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... 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 for twenty minutes or more dug on ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... door. Bridget opened it, and asked what he would have: he said a pot of cider. There was something in the manner of the man which satisfied her that he had come with mischievous intent. She ordered him off, seized a spade that happened to be near, drove him out of her porch, and chased him from her premises. When he and the boy got back, they bore marks of the bad luck of the adventure. Such things had perhaps happened before, and it was found that whoever provoked ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... splendid freezing as truly most pleasing To those who the Sugar-Bush love; This morn's indications' need no explanations, As the day will abundantly prove! Then haste, comrade, and bring your spade; To clear away the snow, That our wood-fire may soon acquire A ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... reproduce appeared in "Harper's Weekly," September 17th, 1864, and shows General McClellan, with his little spade in hand, being subjected to the scrutiny of the President—the man who gave McClellan, when the latter was Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces, every opportunity in the world to distinguish himself. There is a smile on the face of "Honest Abe," ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... remarked this worthy, as he stuck his spade down in the heaped-up earth and leaned upon it,—"it's a black day, forbye the summer sun! I never thort I'd a' thrown the mouls on the last Jocelyn. For last he is, an' there'll ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the hippopotami are known to pass in leaving the water 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 ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... went down to the cellar, and the mason was ordered to dig out the pit till it was five and a half feet deep. While the man worked, Derues sat beside the chest and read. When it was half done, the mason stopped for breath, and leaning on his spade, inquired why he wanted a trench of such a depth. Derues, who had probably foreseen the question, answered at once, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... whom I had seen on the night of my arrival, and who dwelt at the far end of the enclosure, about half a mile away, in a rude out-house; but it was plain to me that of these two, it was Felipe who did most; and though I would sometimes see him throw down his spade and go to sleep among the very plants he had been digging, his constancy and energy were admirable in themselves, and still more so since I was well assured they were foreign to his disposition, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would go out to her neighbours and try to borrow all that was wanted in the way of furniture and bedding. Then we returned to Mr. Brownjohn's to buy bread, bacon, and groceries, and he in turn sent us to Mr. Marling for vegetables. Mr. Marling heard us, and soberly taking up a spade and other implements led us out to his garden and dug us a mess of potatoes while we waited. In the meantime good Mrs. Flowerdew had not been idle, and we formed the idea that her neighbours must have been her debtors for ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... misdeed had been committed against nature, considering not neither having regard to themselves, whom full license to do that which they will availeth not to sate, nor yet to the much potency of idlesse and thought-taking.[151] On like wise there are but too many who believe that spade and mattock and coarse victuals and hard living do altogether purge away carnal appetites from the tillers of the earth and render them exceeding dull of wit and judgment. But how much all who believe thus are deluded, I purpose, since the queen hath commanded it to me, to make plain to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and right, forming a capital T with the cross-piece running roughly along the line of trench and parapet. Here there was need of the utmost deliberation and caution. A pick could not be used, and even a spade had to be handled gently, in case the sounds of working should reach the Germans overhead. In some places the Subaltern could actually hear the movements and footsteps of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... and hissed French airs when played. Merchants of New York and other seaports worked voluntarily on the neglected coast-defences. A song was put to the air of True Hearts of Oak in order to "cheer those unused to spade and barrow, who might tire of working on ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... her little teeth, which served For pickaxe and for spade, She gnawed right through the gothic door, ...
— The Mouse and the Christmas Cake • Anonymous
... America, but it must not be forgotten that the civilisation which the new-comers have enriched by virtue of their new found freedom from home conservatism has not been of their making; they may have added thereto but they did not beget it; the spade-work, which is the hardest part, had been done before ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... the German trenches by surprise, remain long enough to make the most of the resulting confusion, and then to return to his own trenches without trying to hold and organize the enemy's position and thus draw upon his head while busy with the spade a murderous volume of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... by a devil, is absorbed by a nobleman, and turns unheeding from a poor suppliant. But Death, with glass and spade, is ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... that; I cannot stoop to try it— To take the spade in hand, and ply it. The narrow being suits me ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... tresillo without any ill-effects, or fatigue. Of all the institutions created for men, the most solid and respectable is that of tresillo. It may well be compared to the immutable laws of nature, so unchangeable is its stability. It was as true to Moro that a spade is worth more than a club, as that falling bodies represent a movement uniformly accelerated. And there, in the dark corner of the room, the celebrated Manin was sleeping in the same armchair, with his short ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... he resigned himself, and lay down at the bottom of the tub, into which unsteady boat Bryda, armed with her own small spade, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... place there. Had architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... have been so ready. Have you told the sexton to get a new spade? But you may let him in. And leave him alone ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and spake an elder mon, That held the Spade its Ace— "God save the lad! Whence comes the licht "That wimples ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... were an artist with a shovel," suggested Darry insinuatingly. "Suppose you get out the spade and see what sort of perch bait you can turn up ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... I looked around, and behind me found a heavy spade the gardener had at one time or another used for digging post holes. It was a strong and sharp implement, and I took it up with a good deal ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... young girls, sitting, with arms encircled, in low dresses, on the seashore before a grey and angry sea, and Uncle Mathew as a small, shiny-faced boy in tight short blue trousers, carrying a bucket and spade, and a smug, pious expression. The room was lit with gas that sizzled and hissed in a protesting undertone; there was a big black cat near the fire, and this watched Maggie with green ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... something about our misuse of words (as compared with the habit of 'calling a spade a spade' in the writings of the old chroniclers), about our unnecessary complications, and the number of words required to express an idea in these days; and suggest another curious consideration, as to how such prolixity affects our thoughts and ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... he came towards her, as if to embrace her, when we both shrieked aloud, and turned to fly; and Matthew Standfast, coming suddenly between us with a spade uplifted in his hand, bade the miserable man keep his distance, and asked what he wanted. On which Lacy ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... 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 good fortune ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the Scarecrow stood perfectly still beside the bean pole—thinking. Then he got a spade from the shed and began clearing away the cornstalks and dried leaves from around the base of the pole. It was slow work, for his fingers were clumsy, but he persevered. Then a wonderful idea ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... steadfastly upon his face. The country through which the car was now passing was of a strange, convulsive character. It was torn alike by nature and by man. Storms and winds had battered at the clayey soil, spade and shovel had upturned it. It was honey-combed and upheaved. There were roughly shelving hills overhung with coarse dry grass like an old man's beard, there were ragged chasms and gulfs, and all in raw reds and toneless ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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
... boy had toiled all day With heavy spade and hoe; His mistress met him on the way, And bade him quickly go And bring her home some sticks of wood, For she would bake and brew; When he returned, she'd give him food; For she had much to do. And then she charged him not to stay, Nor loiter long upon ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... another minute," cried the old sailor, who was nearly as excited as the boys. "Get your spade an' we'll start ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, A quest of river grapes, a mocking thrush, A wild rose or rock-loving columbine, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... men were 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your president has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had letters about that child, in England, from the dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the far west. Many a sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer's sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of interest in that little tale, or some comfort ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Her ready sympathy brought her near; but while the dog lay there, mangled and bloody, he could think of nothing else. It was Elodie who suggested immediate and decent burial. Why should he not go to the hotel for a workman and a spade? ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to—themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance—even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... chair, sat Julien, smoking a pipe and occasionally spitting on the ground as he watched the growth of the colored certificate of his nobility. Soon old Simon on his way to the kitchen garden stopped, with his spade on his shoulder, to look at the painting, and the news of Bataille's arrival having reached the two farms the farmers' wives came hurrying up also. Standing on either side of the baroness, they went into ecstasies over the drawing and kept repeating: ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the court-yard, a large 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 used in drying ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... 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 and pitchfork ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... march with the box under his arm and the spade over his shoulder, but Flora insisted upon the wheelbarrow, and as Flora was the marshal, the wheelbarrow was brought out to head the procession. Flora and Dinah followed as chief mourners, while Amy and ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May
... dying, had a vision. He saw a grating in the floor, close by his bed, and through it the torments of the lost. Two souls he remembered specially; one 'like a singed hog,' the other 'all over black like a charcoal spade.' He looked in fear, and heard a voice cry, 'Behold your sins.' He prayed; promised, if he recovered, to try and do better: and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... post!" and there halted on our houses and halls Death from their rifle-bullets, and death from their cannon- balls; Death in our innermost chamber, and death at our slight barricade; Death while we stood with the musket, and death while we stooped to the spade; Death to the dying, and wounds to the wounded, for often there fell, Striking the hospital wall, crashing thro' it, their shot and their shell; Death—for their spies were among us, their marksmen were told of our best, So that the brute bullet broke thro' the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... our 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. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... (a process which the animal taught them by the same use of his claws); the shell of a river mussel as a scraper to finish wooden tools. "These people were hunters without dogs, fishers without hooks, and tillers without plow or spade. They show how much development life was capable of in the time before metals."[170] The palometa is a fish which weighs two or three pounds. It has fourteen teeth in each jaw so sharp that the Abipones shear sheep with the jaw.[171] Such cases might be pursued into great ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... not reached the end of the path, however, when the father began to change his attitude; he stood up, dropped his "dibbler," scraped his foot on his spade, and, grumbling to himself, went after her. She did not see or hear him till he ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... long the grass waved softly in the courtyard below—the grass that was so soon to wither, uprooted by the spade; and all night long the Gadfly lay alone in the ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... from the head of the slope you catch sight, between the apple trees, of a number of white stones glimmering; but your eyes rest rather on the figure of a girl who has just left the enclosure, and is mounting the slope with a spade on her shoulder. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hand, and asks the touch of taste. Here also grateful mixture of well-matched And sorted hues (each giving each relief, And by contrasted beauty shining more) Is needful. Strength may wield the ponderous spade, May turn the clod, and wheel the compost home, But elegance, chief grace the garden shows And most attractive, is the fair result Of thought, the creature of a polished mind. Without it, all is Gothic as the scene To which the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... was through I waited a little, and then I took up a spade to help him; but he reached out and took it quietly, and seeing that he wanted to be alone I left him. He meant to do for Elsket all the last sacred ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... easily overflowed; but when Hermon tried to give expression to his fervent gratitude in words, Erasistratus interrupted him, exclaiming, as he grasped his comrade's hand, "It honours the general in his purple robe, when he uses the spade in the work ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I began digging 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 stint. Lucy placidly ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the staff move in his hand, and three times it beat upon the ground. He knew in an instant what this indicated; accordingly he drew forth his dagger, made marks on the surrounding trees, and then slipped back into the castle. Then he procured a spade, and ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... object. Fruit, grain, pulse, herbs, flax, and other vegetable products, receiving assiduous attention, will afford ample manual occupation, and chaste supplies for the bodily needs. It is intended to adorn the pastures with orchards, and to supersede the labor of cattle by the spade ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the flatteries with which you plastered me and sprinkle you with your villainy." With these words he threw the water into his guests' faces, and then he pelted them with the dishes. Having thus ended the banquet, he went into an outhouse, seized a spade, and quitted Athens ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... [Within.] Call up my Men, the Coachman, Groom, and Butler, the Footmen, Cook, and Gardiner; bid 'em all rise and arm, with long Staff, Spade and Pitchfork, and sally out upon ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... down the baby 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, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... 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
... new allotments without doubt add very greatly to our food supply, give hosts of our town population healthy work in the open air, and revive in them that "earth instinct" which was in danger of being utterly lost. The spade is a grand corrective of nerve strain, and the more town and factory workers take up allotment gardens, the better for each individual, and for ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... are not aware, ma'am," he began again, and ceasing his labor stood up leaning on the spade, which was nearly as high as himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of his men, whilst I walked about the edge of the bank. From a distant part of the moor, the bray of a jackass came faint upon the sleepy wind. "Yer tho', Jone," said one of the men, resting upon his spade; "another cally-weighver gone!" " Ay," replied Jone, "th' owd lad's deawn't his cut. He'll want no more tickets, yon mon!" The country folk of Lancashire say that a weaver dies every time a jackass brays. Jackson came up from the cutting, and we walked back to where the greatest number ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... Part of a Herald, it will be for a Trumpet; if you sound an Alarm, a Horn; if you dig, a Spade; if you reap, a Sickle; if you go to Sea, an Anchor; in the Kitchen it will serve for a Flesh-hook; and ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... papa, And with rake, hoe, and spade, Directly began his employ; And soon such a neat Little garden was made, That he panted with ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the back of the castle, and there is a beautiful garden filled with corn and beans and peas and lettuce and potatoes and beets and onions and turnips and carrots and parsnips and tomatoes and cabbages. He takes his magic spade and it leads him to the cabbages. He digs and digs, and in a moment the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... among them in this manner: to every man I gave a digging spade, a shovel, and a rake, as having no harrows or ploughs; and to every separate place a pickax, a crow, a broad ax, and a saw, with a store for a general supply, should any be broken or worn out. I left them also nails, staples, hinges, hammers, chisels, knives, scissors, and all ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... of a white man" [of which he was clearly an amateur]: they then proceeded to another creek about forty or fifty yards farther up, STILL LED BY THE NATIVES, when one of them struck the rod into some marshy ground and called out that "there was something there:" a spade was immediately found, and the place dug, when the first thing that presented itself was the left hand of a man lying on his side, which witness, from a long acquaintance with him, immediately declared to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... exclaimed he, "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 yet raise ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... that "two months in the field are necessary in order to get at the full value of reserves." Our infantry is now accustomed to the rapid and thorough "organization" of the defensive. In August it neither liked nor had the habit of using the spade. Today those who see our trenches are astounded. They are veritable improvised fortresses, proof against the 77-millimeter gun and often against artillery of higher calibre. During the last five months not a single encounter can be cited ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was no mark to show— No dint of spade, or mattock-loosened sod,— Only the hard bare ground, untilled and trackless. Whoe'er he was, the doer left no trace. And, when the scout of our first daylight watch Showed us the thing, we marvelled in dismay. The Prince was out of sight; not in a grave, But a thin dust was ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... said with a grin. Fortunately the professor did not hear him; but the boys could hardly keep from laughing outright as they set to work with the spade. A few minutes of brisk digging set the professor at liberty and he was able to stand upright and triumphantly exhibit a small black rock which looked in no way remarkable, but which, it ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... after the girls with whom they could have a free and easy time—no company manners, no chaperons, no prudish affectations about kisses and things. No fear of shocking if they wanted to let go—the strain must have been awful. You know what men are. They like to call a spade a spade and be damned to it. Our sort didn't have a chance. They couldn't compete. So, we made up our minds to compete in the only way possible. We leave off our corsets at dances so they can get a new thrill out of us, then sit out in an automobile and drink and have little petting parties ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... thought of as the surest helper under a difficulty, as a monitor who is encouraging rather than severe. Mr. Cleves has the wonderful art of preaching sermons which the wheelwright and the blacksmith can understand; not because he talks condescending twaddle, but because he can call a spade a spade, and knows how to disencumber ideas of their wordy frippery. Look at him more attentively, and you will see that his face is a very interesting one —that there is a great deal of humour and feeling playing in his grey eyes, and ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... us— Left the battle line? Idling, straggling, wand'ring, Heedless of the sign? Hark! the trumpet calls thee! With us heart and hand Raise the Spade and Anchor! Strike ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... in their shields they weave, And shape the casque, and in the mould prepare The brazen breastplate and the silver greave. Scorned lie the spade, the sickle and the share, Their fathers' falchions to the forge they bear. Now peals the clarion; through the host hath spread The watch-word. Helmets from the walls they tear, And yoke the steeds. In triple gold arrayed, Each grasps the burnished ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of past times might be expected—viz. researches beneath the surface of the earth, and researches among older works and manuscripts. By the former he meant the careful and systematised examinations in which the spade and pickaxe are so important, and have done such service in late years, and from which Sir James expected much more; and by the latter the exploring and turning to account the many stores of written records ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... intentions matters did not always pan out straight, for considerations of strength, of comparative excellence, of dangerous and of safe localities, of moral, of comfortable or uncomfortable trenches, of spade-work and of a dozen other things, had to be fitted together like ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... the centre of which was a square or two of glass that commanded a view of the whole warehouse. "Is Mr. Jorrocks in?" inquired the Yorkshireman of a porter, who was busy digging currants with a wooden spade. "Yes, sir, you'll find him in the counting-house," was the answer; but on looking in, though his hat and gloves were there, no Jorrocks was visible. At the farther end of the warehouse a man in his shirt-sleeves, with ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... the many-coloured flowers on the surface of the grave move like a fluttering garment. She sank, and the figure threw his dark cloak round her. It became night—the night of death. She sank deeper than the sexton's spade could reach. The churchyard lay like a roof ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... river, master," River Andrew said to Sep, who was awaiting Miriam in the village street, and he walked on, without further comment, spade on shoulder, toward the church-yard, where he spent a portion of ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... 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 into your place, and look sharp; we shall be on the march in a few minutes. I hope ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... baked the ground and the strange child had suspended his labor, but heaps of earth beneath the bushes showed that he had continued his work as long as his rude spade was adequate to a disturbance of the soil. The boy looked up as the gate latch clicked, and stood surveying Lyman with his feet far apart and his hands in his pockets. Lyman spoke to him, and bringing a nail out of his pocket he held it out to the visitor as an offering ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... as being calculated to decide the great question, and all the principal geologists were on the spot several hours before operations commenced, for the purpose of inspecting the surface of the ground before it was disturbed by the spade and pickaxe of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sat up. Conners held out the spade. The rounded end was sheared cleanly off. Micheals swung himself off the couch and slipped his feet ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... the big black looked at me, threw back his head, and laughed, and laughed again, as he drove the spade deeply into the rich loamy soil; and when the bread and bacon came he laughed, and bit with those great white teeth of his, and munched and chewed like the lying-down oxen, and dug and dug, till my father ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... Waverley," said Aylward. "Out he will go on the roadside, honor and all, if he does not find ten nobles by next Epiphany. But if I could win a ransom or be at the storming of a rich city, then indeed the old man would be proud of me. 'Thy sword must help my spade, Samkin,' said he as he kissed me goodby. Ah! it would indeed be a happy day for him and for all if I could ride back with a saddle-bag full of gold pieces, and please God, I shall dip my hand in somebody's pocket before I ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... night—and he was a-comin' through the big woods—and they was a storm—and Wright he clumb a tree to git out of the rain, and while he was up there here come along a man with a dead woman—and a pickax, and a spade. And he drug the dead woman under the same tree where Mr. Wright was—so ever' time it 'ud lightnin', w'y, Wright he could look down and see him a-diggin' a grave there to bury the woman in. So Wright, he kep' ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... in his way). Well, Mum, we 'ave 'ad the 'andle of his spade, and the brim of his garden 'at, but they wore out last year and 'ad to be thrown away—things won't last for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... 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 considered their own peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... were no railroads, telegraphs or telephones. Letter postage to New York from Boston was twenty-five cents. None of the modern agricultural machinery then existed, not even good modern plows. Crops were planted by hand and cultivated with the hoe and spade. Vegetables were dug with the hoe, and hay and grain cut with the sickle or scythe. There were no ice-houses. The use of ice for keeping provisions or ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... by the sight of the enemy in our front preparing for attack, the men eagerly relieved each other in handling the spades. As soon as a man working showed the least sign of fatigue, a comrade would snatch the spade out of his hands and ply it with desperate energy. Yet in spite of our utmost exertions when the attack came we had only succeeded in throwing up a slight embankment, which was high enough to give good protection against musket balls to the man squatting down in the ditch ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... could boast of a temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint aside more heartily at each return of spring, indulged in mighty gambols, delighted in offering herself at all seasons ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... bits of hard wood, an owzkerry[1] and the boat-hook. They also brought away some stout rope, and a knife which had helped to end the career of many an aspiring fish. They were not without hope of finding a spade lying "handy" somewhere in the vicinity of the house; so that, on the whole, the young marauders were not so badly off for the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... provided the required implement, conducted his visitor a little before sunset to the spot, just outside the village, and left him there armed with his rifle, a revolver, and a long knife or kriss, besides the spade. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... he could do was to get buried out of the way, because I knew that most of them work by the rules of contrary; but it was all to no purpose. By this time all his relations had collected round the door. His father had a kind of wooden spade to dig the grave with, his mother a new suit of tapa [bark-cloth], his sister some vermilion and a whale's tooth, as an introduction to the great god of Rage-Rage. He arose, took up his bed and walked, not for life, but for death, his father, mother, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... see how admirably they are tilled, and how much they get off them. They are always working in them in their spare hours; and when a man wants a mug of beer, instead of going off to the village and the public-house, he puts down his spade or his hoe, comes to the club- house and gets it, and goes back to his work. When he has done work, he likes to have his beer at the club, still, and to sit and look at his ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... pernicious habit of calling a spade a spade! It is unfortunate that they should hunger a little, but what will you? They must learn to be provident, to work harder and drink less. With such people experience is the only taskmaster possible. It ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... hints as to snakes and snake bites may not be out of place here. To distinguish the only venomous snake found in the British Isles is an easy matter, if you have the opportunity of examination. In the first place, the viper appears to have a more spade-like and flatter head than the common snake, and has a black cross from near the neck running up to the centre of the head, where it terminates in a black, oval-shaped spot. But the greatest distinction, perhaps, is that a decided pattern runs down the centre of the back, appearing ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... non-celibate clergy, and an intermingled aristocracy? Your endeavours, my good young man, will lessen like those of the man who employed a spade to uproot a rock. It wants blasting. Your married clergy and merchandized aristocracy are coils: they are the ivy about your social tree: you would resemble Laocoon in the throes, if one could imagine you anything of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... much of a person to have bad dreams or nightmares or things like that. But ever since that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have a nightmare, it takes the shape of that roll being called. Every word was like a spade grating and gritting in damp gravel when a grave is dug. It sounded ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... (I poked my stick as directed.) "That's his tooth you've got now; but I won't swear to it, as things had got a bit mixed, no doubt, afore they put him in. Wait a bit, though. What's under that big lump at the end o' my spade?" (He reached out his spade and touched a clod; I turned it over and revealed the thing it hid: he examined it carefully.) "You see, you can generally tell after a bit o' practice what belongs to what. Putting two and two together—what with them bones coming ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... listening; he had fallen into a brown study, turning the piece of metal in his skilful, wonted, knotty fingers, with their spade tips. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... glen, I may not see them for weeks. Last year the school was practically deserted for a month. A pleasant outlook, with the March examinations staring me in the face, and an inspector fresh from Oxford. I wonder what he would say if he saw me to-day digging myself out of the school-house with the spade I now keep for the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... of all ages. At Keilhau 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 a week they acted ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... out, "Oh, I quite forgot! Of course, the shed door is shut! Father has put his tools there, his spade and rake. ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... 'forties the Frenchman Botta, quickly followed by Sir Henry Layard, began making excavations on the site of ancient Nineveh, the name and fame of which were a tradition having scarcely more than mythical status. The spade of the discoverer soon showed that all the fabled glories of the ancient Assyrian capital were founded on realities, and evidence was afforded of a state of civilization and culture such as few men supposed to have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... spanking the fertilizer down hard with the back of his spade. He sloped it up some four inches along ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... fix on this sandy valley as the Surrey which Bettesworth knew best. Than the Memoirs, I think, no more discerning study of an old labourer's fight to keep on his own legs, out of the workhouse, earning his own money with his spade and hoe, belongs to any ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Man Leaning on a Spade, "I belong to the Gravediggers' National Extortion Society, and we have decided to limit the production of graves and get more money for the reduced output. We have a corner in graves and propose to work ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... by experience, that preparatory labour is indispensable, in order to render present labour productive." The good Mathurin was not content with making these reflections. He resolved to work by the day, and to save something from his wages to buy a spade and a sack of corn; without which things, he must give up his fine agricultural projects. He acted so well, was so active and steady, that he soon saw himself in possession of the wished-for sack of corn. "I shall take it to the ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... bewildered family in a new and clean house with bed, bedding, clothing, table, chairs, dishes, candles, a little cooking-stove with a blazing fire, all the common quota of cooking utensils, and meat, meal, and groceries; a plow, rake, axe, hoe, shovel, spade, hammer, and nails. We ask few questions. They ask none. The whistle of the "Troop" is as welcome to their ears as the ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton |
