"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hearth, between the shovel and tongs; it is there that it perpetuates itself, and if it still exists, it is to the family that we owe it. I love pretty nearly all the philanthropists and saviours of mankind; but I only believe in those ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with pure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth in a pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up with a little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then large silver bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile. In one place in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few days before seen rough bullion on the ground in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... part of the 18th century, to which these entries refer. But it was “skilled” labour, and, moreover, hard work, as anyone will understand who remembers the instrument used on the moor forty years ago. It was a large, flat, and broad kind of shovel at the end of a long pole with transverse handle a foot long, which was placed against the workman’s waist or pit of his stomach, and he thus thrust the tool forward through the turf with the whole weight and force of his body. Those ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... The picture of the tree was to show where it was hidden and the object at its base is intended as a shovel to tell that I would have to dig for the treasure, but," and his face fell, "how are we to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... everything save their live-stock and a rough cart heaped with household furniture; journeying with women and children, goods and chattels, towards the nearest block-house or fort, there to deposit all except powder-horn, flint, and rifle, and join the district regiment now laboring with pick and shovel on the works ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... the bottom of a cupboard, and Mr Crowl, seizing the shovel, threw on half the stock: which Noggs very deliberately took off again, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... says—'it's Agnes I love and I'll be married to her or I won't be married to e'er of 'em.' All the time Edith sat quiet, dumb as a shovel, never a word, crying a bit; but they do say the young one went on like ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... further colored by a strange procession which now met us as we went up from the narrow beach, having first made fast our boat. A lean Mexican priest, with an enormous shovel hat and particularly shabby cassock, came toward us, followed by a motley crowd of Mexicans, prominent among whom was a pompous old man clad in a seedy Mexican uniform and wearing a trailing rapier at his side. The rest of the procession was brought up with a crowd of shy women, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... about a quarter of an hour, anxiously listening for the rumbling of the expected wheels, I heard in the distance a strange kind of noise, resembling that of a fire-shovel, a pair of tongs, a poker, and an iron hoop tied loosely together with a string, and drawn over the pavement! "What in the world is that?" said I. "It is the chaise," was the answer. The vehicle was quickly at the door. In we ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... stopped and began to plan how he could secure the light and the shovel from the man. After a time he walked up to the man and asked, "Why are you throwing up the snow and hiding the light ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... had he reasoned with his friend, Tom Brixton, about the sin of gambling, and urged him to be content with the result of each day's digging for gold, but his words had no effect. Young Brixton had resolved to make a fortune rapidly. He laboured each day with pick and shovel with the energy of a hero and the dogged perseverance of a navvy, and each night he went to Lantry's store to increase his gains by gambling. As a matter of course his "luck," as he called it, varied. Sometimes he returned to the tent which he shared with his friend Westly, depressed, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... hung above the tree tops on the western boundary of the enclosure, and its wan spectral lustre lit up the churchyard, showing Regina the tall form of Hannah, who carried a spade or short shovel on her shoulder, and had just passed through the gate, leaving it open. Following as rapidly as she dared, in the direction of the iron railing, the child was only a few yards in the rear, when the old woman stopped suddenly, then ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... as with a hair-spring. The flat, pointed face was turned upon me, so that I could see a patch of white upon the throat. Evidently the snake had just sloughed an old skin, for the sunlight gleamed iridescent on the shining jet scales. It was not a large head; it lacked the shovel-nose and the heavy, horrid jaws of the rattle-snake. But it was clean-cut, with power in every line of jaw and neck; with power and speed and certainty in the pose, so easy, ready, and erect. There was no fear in the creature's eye, something rather of aggressiveness, and of such ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... does not exist, but there is not a little about Stratford that calls for sixpences more readily than it can justify the receipt of them. All that New Place can offer of true Shakespearian interest is some venerable timbers, a shovel board, from the old Falcon Inn that rose close by soon after Shakespeare's death and still stands in receipt of custom, a circular table inlaid with wood from the mulberry tree that the poet is said to have planted, and a stone mullion from his ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... surrounded with a cluster of bank-notes. These were formerly no more to me than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting out, and scraping up with my little tin shovel, (at which I was the most expert in the banking-house,) now scald my hands. When I go to sign my name, I set down that of another person, or write my own in a counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to shovel snow. The areas were full. The sidewalks all along were being cleared, and it made a curious white wall in the street. Mr. Underhill insisted that the boys should level theirs. Some wagons tried to get through and made an odd, muffled sound. Then there was the joyful ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Dusk fell, and still the banners came drooping and fluttering, the band played the Funeral March, and the huge assemblage chanted. In the leafless branches of the trees above the grave the wreaths were hung, like strange, multi-coloured blossoms. Two hundred men began to shovel in the dirt. It rained dully down upon the coffins with a thudding sound, audible beneath ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... no truble ter go whar dey wan'. Menny lef' but menny stay wid der ole marsters. I stay wid my marster tell he d'ed. I den kum an' lib wid mah daddy on Lebanon Road. Atter dat I libed on Gallatin Road an' den I kum ter Nashville, an' wuk wid pic' and shovel on streets, sewers an' udder jobs. I heered dem sez dat de slaves wud git lan', hoss, money er sumpin' but I neber heerd ob nobody gittin nuthin'. Dere wuz not slave 'raisings ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... treasure was located but three feet below the surface, in sandy soil, I brought only one shovel, while the boys watched me, one holding the lantern, and both casting furtive glances around to guard against eavesdroppers. It would be useless to deny my excitement. My heart at times throbbed painfully, and more than once I was on the point of ceasing ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... you'll pardon," said Mr. Gubb politely, "but my name is P. Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger, and I'm looking up a case. Might I trouble you for the loan of a spade or shovel?" ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... by the powerful muscles of the arm; the palm of the foot or hand is directed outwards or backwards, the lower edge being trenchant, with scarcely perceptible fingers armed with long, flat nails, strong and sharp, with which to tear up the ground and shovel the earth aside. The hind feet are small and weak in comparison, with slender claws. The head tapers to a point, the long snout being provided with a little bone which assists it in rooting, and the cervical muscles are very strong. The eyes are microscopical, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... ter work first thing on this road," said the man triumphantly to Ella as he stood, shovel in hand, at the door. "The parson's right behind, an' there's a lot more behind him. Gorry! I was afraid I wouldn't git here in time, but the fun'ral ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... against the grain. To sit down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps almost a gentleman, and then lead up to the subject and take his money from him, seemed to the Duke's mind essentially low. He could have understood knocking a man over the head with a fire shovel and taking his ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... streets. He was a friend of Mr. Blue, and the janitor gave him the hat. This is the way Mr. White looked in it: [Draw the face under the hat, A; this completes Fig. 101.] Mr. White had a little cart and a big shovel and an old broom, and he worked all day sweeping up and carting off the old paper, the stubs of cigars and everything else which, if allowed to accumulate, would soon make the streets look disgraceful and the ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... indeed, we were at our wits' end, but circumstances once more came to our aid. For we may just as well confess it: we had forgotten to bring out a tool which is a commonplace necessity on a Polar expedition — namely, a snow-shovel. A well-equipped expedition, as ours was to a certain extent, ought to have at least twelve strong, thick iron spades. We had none. We had two remnants, but they did not help us very far. Fortunately, however, we had a very good, solid iron plate ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... was not to be caught quite so easily. Instead of opening his great jaws and swallowing the bait, hook and all, at a gulp, as was expected, he stopped dead in his rush, and began to poke the bait about suspiciously with the point of his shovel-shaped nose; and finally, with a contemptuous whisk of his tail, left it, and resumed his former position ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... into the fire. [3:11]I indeed baptize you with water to a change of mind; but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not fit to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire; [3:12]whose winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor, and gather his wheat into the storehouse; but the chaff he will burn with ...
— The New Testament • Various
... were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous—men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... interest in the African race and a deep sympathy with them. As a youth he had chosen for a companion a slave boy of his own age, to whom he became greatly attached. This slave, badly clad and poorly fed, beaten with iron shovel or anything that came first to hand, young Brown grew to regard as his equal if not his superior. And it was the contrast between their respective conditions that first led Brown to "swear eternal war with slavery." In later years John Brown, Junior, tells us ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... thornbacks, old-wives with prominent brows, fishes like pikes, gar-fish, cavallios like mackerel, swordfishes, having snouts a yard long, toothed on each side like a saw, sharks, dogfish, sharkers, resembling sharks, but having a broad flat snout like a shovel, shoe-makers, having pendents at each side of their mouths like barbels, and which grunt like hogs, with many others. We once caught in an hour 6000 fishes like bleaks. Of birds, there are pelicans ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... know not how many other philosophers, have been made to learn by a current story how to bear coals—literally. A learned man, it is said, being asked by a little girl for a live coal, offered to bring her a fire shovel. 'It is not necessary,' replied the child, and having laid cold ashes on her palm, she placed a glowing ember on them and bore it away safely. 'With all my wisdom,' said the sage, 'I should never have thought of that!' The jest is of mediaeval ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he found Doret and the trader in conversation with a man he had not met before, a ragged nondescript whose overalls were blue and faded and patched, particularly on the front of the legs above the knees, where a shovel-handle wears hardest; whose coat was of yellow mackinaw, the sleeves worn thin below the elbows, where they had rubbed against his legs in his work. As the soldier entered, the man turned on him a small, shrewd, weather-beaten face with one eye, while he ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... two were united by a love like that of his partner for Tennessee. And long after the Second Garrote had become but a memory, the two octogenarians lived on in their little cabin, Chaffee seeking with primitive pick, shovel, and pan the more and more elusive gold, and Chamberlain contributing to the common purse by cultivating a small "ranch," the best crop of which was the campers who came to chat of bygone days with "the ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... is no laughing matter,' sighed she. 'He means to eat you, and there is only one way in which I can help you. You must heat an iron shovel red hot, and hold it out to him instead ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... remains a gold-producing colony, albeit the days of the solitary adventurer working in the wash-dirt of his claim with pick, shovel, and cradle are pretty nearly over. The nomadic digger who called no man master is a steady-going wage-earner now. Coal-mines and quartz-reefs are the mainstays of Westland. Company management, trade unions, conciliation cases, and laws against ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Krantz brought out of the tent the only shovel in their possession, and they, one by one, buried their dollars many feet deep in the yielding sand. When they had all secured their wealth, he brought them one of the axes, and the cocoa-nut trees fell, and they were restored to new life and vigour. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shovel and dig here!" he ordered Juan. But the Mexican had fallen into a deep slumber from which it took not a little effort to awaken him. When he was finally roused and made to understand what was required of him, he set to work ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... gilded cuffs. He was biting his white mustache, and wiping off, with his left hand, the dust which the passing balls threw up from the ground they plowed near him. They also saw, amid this terrible fire, which filled the air with its hissing whistle, officers handling the shovel, soldiers rolling barrows, and vast fascines, rising by being either carried or dragged by from ten to twenty men, cover the front of the trench, reopened to the center by this extraordinary effort ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... really good underwriter should know the hazards of all the ordinary risks in the world, and be able to tell you offhand what is the danger point in a brewery, a playing-card factory, a paper mill, a public school, a shovel works, a Catholic church, a chemical laboratory—every sort and kind of risk. Of course he has surveys, made by inspectors, to help him, showing details the map fails to show, such as the location of your piano, and where ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... night of toil, wanders up through the docks with his shovel across his shoulder; he is black, weary, and athirst; he is going home. And as he walks along, the city begins to stir; a shade is raised here and there; flags are flung from the windows. It is the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the corner of a shovel between the lid and the coffin, and giving it a sudden wrench, he loosened it ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... for a moment to rub his nose, and as he did so he saw Butterwick looking at him. A thought seemed to strike Smith. He dashed away a couple of tears; and stepping over a heap of loose earth as they began to shovel it in, he grasped Butterwick by the hand. Butterwick gave him ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... you going to do, Andy? Take off your coat, roll up your sleeves, and grab a pick and shovel?" ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... than I, who take these institutions as I find them, and wait for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy them? A college tutor, or a nobleman's toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor under-graduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys and blacklegs and ballet-girls, and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... low down on the horizon, he hurried along the cloister to a room back of the church, which had been deserted and left to itself for many years, and was now almost in ruins. Going into one corner, Father Zalvidea, by the light of his lantern, found a small pick and shovel which, that afternoon, he had left there for this very purpose, and set to work to dig a hole in which to bury his treasure. Although the ground was hard, it required only a few minutes, after the cement floor was broken through, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... rushes, as the case may be; others lug in poles of various lengths from where their comrades are cutting them by means of their panga. A panga, parenthetically, is the safari man's substitute for axe, shovel, pick, knife, sickle, lawn-mower, hammer, gatling gun, world's library of classics, higher mathematics, grand opera, and toothpicks. It looks rather like a machete with a very broad end and a slight ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... books. Religion burrows. It barely so much as looks at heaven. Why should a civilised man—a man who has a pocket in civilisation—a man who can burrow—look at heaven? It is the glimmering boundary line where burrowing leaves off. Time enough. In the meantime the shovel. Let the stars wheel. Do men look at stars ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Uncle Peter around to a discussion of sleight-of-hand, and two minutes later the Wonder Worker was dragging the coal shovel and the vinegar cruet out of the Mayor's inside pockets, to the intense mystification and delight of the ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... too. I knew what it meant to get any of that acid on you, or on any of the things about you. I used to work in the chemical plant where they made the stuff—that was after I left the circus. Well, it can't do any harm now," he said as he got a shovel and covered with clean earth the bits of broken glass and the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry. And he took with him the snow-shovel Jaroth had brought along to use in clearing the drifts away if they chanced ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... girls, from Minty—Jack Carter's buxom sweetheart—to Little Sis, the baby, were long abed. The hands of the wooden clock on the high mantel-shelf pointed to half-past twelve. "Well, pa," Sissy said, good-humoredly, reaching out for the shovel and beginning to cover up the fire, "you've cavorted pretty late this time! What's the matter?" she added, suspiciously; "you ack ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... next room, ordered the maid-servant to place a large cask full of water close to a very deep pit that was dug in the garden. The men-servants also carried, each of them, a cask to the spot; and when all was done, they were ordered each to take a shovel, and stand round the pit. The merchant then returned to the Devil, who seeing that not more than about an inch of candle remained, said, laughing, 'Now get yourself ready, it will soon be burnt out.' 'That I see, and am content; but I shall hold you to your ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... bearing so won the heart of the old admiral that he exclaimed, "I shall live to see you have a flag-ship of your own." The prediction was fulfilled when the cabin-boy, having become Admiral Cloudesley Shovel, was ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on with their work the next day, and built the causey up high enough with stones. They then levelled them off, and began to wheel on the gravel. Jonas made each of them a little shovel out of a shingle; and, as the gravel was lying loose under a high bank, they could shovel it up easily, and fill their wheelbarrows. The third day they covered the stones entirely with gravel, and smoothed it all over ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... the poor man, placed himself between him and the savage, to prevent the mischief. The fellow, being enraged the more at this, struck at the Spaniard with his hatchet, and swore he would serve him as he intended to serve the savage; which the Spaniard perceiving, avoided the blow, and with a shovel, which he had in his hand (for they were all working in the field about their corn land), knocked the brute down. Another of the Englishmen, running up at the same time to help his comrade, knocked the Spaniard down; and then two Spaniards more ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... back, as at B; then, opening them again, cut the whole {132} into the form C; and then, pulling up the corners c d, stitch them together with a loose thread so that the points c and d shall be within half an inch of each other; and you will have a kind of triangular scoop, or shovel, with a stem, by which you can sufficiently ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... so long out of college but the idea of this irregular supper, when he had once formed it, began to have its fascination. He took up the broad fire-shovel, and, by the time the boy had shuffled to and from the pantry beyond the dining-room, Bartley had cleaned the shovel with a piece of newspaper and was already heating it by the embers which he had raked ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles—well, somebody has to do it, hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush—and you complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was necessary, but after all, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... your own place," said the other, pleasure coming to his cheek. "You've got your own shovel and pick ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of old men. Native dogs. Females carrying children. Weapons. Spear. Woomera. Boomerang. Its probable origin. Shield or Hieleman. Skill in approaching the kangaroo. Modes of cooking. Opossum. Singeing. Vegetable food. The shovel. General observations. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Cellar' is, of course, uncomfortable," he writes; "it would be no travellers' room if it were not. It is the right-hand parlour, into which an aspiring kitchen fire-place appears to have walked, accompanied by a rebellious poker, tongs and shovel. It is divided into boxes for the solitary confinement of travellers, and is furnished with a clock, a looking-glass, and a live waiter, which latter article is kept in a small kennel for washing glasses in a ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... upon his back made him look up, and he had barely time to spring away before a greater portion of the roof of Smith's Pocket, loosened by the displacement of its supports in his search, fell heavily to the ground. But in the fall a long-handled shovel which had been hidden somewhere in the crevices of the rock above came rattling down with it, and, seizing this as a trophy, Aristides emerged from Smith's Pocket, at a rate of speed which seemed singularly disproportionate with his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... looked ruther sad as we looked on them ruins buried so deep by the shovel of time. But I sez to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... most in stock. We used to keep our coal in the bottom part of the cupboard, and when any was wanted we had to climb over the bed, fill a shovelful, and then crawl back. It was an exciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed. We would hold our breath, fix our eyes upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for the last move. The next instant we, and the coals, and the shovel, and the bed would ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... length would need to be seventy or eighty feet. Only one man could work in it at a time, and this he had to do while crawling forward with his face downward, and with such tools as pocket-knives, small hatchets, sharp pieces of wood, and a broken fire-shovel. After the opening had made some progress two men could work in it, one digging, the other carrying back the earth, for which work ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... didn't. She told me, dear soul, upon no account to venture into the cold with my bad throat. She would turn out the beast herself, single-handed. We arranged that she was to take hold of my fingers, and retain them, until she reached the fireplace, where she would find a shovel or other offensive weapon fit for the occasion. During the progress of this expedition, however, so terrible a caterwauling broke forth, as it seemed, from the immediate neighbourhood of the fender, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... peal, from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from all eyes but those that look down into the abyss of the grave. The sacristan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and stones. The priest's voice is heard once more,—earth to earth,— and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the coffin; ashes to ashes—and again the killing sound is heard; dust to dust— and the farewell volley announces that the grave, the coffin, the face are ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... frivolity! You shall at least say I kept my word about the trees to-day." And they started at once for the scene of action, Minturn obtaining on the way a shovel ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... read—INFANTRY MUST NOT HALT HERE, and then a lance-corporal with a good nose for shovels looks through the more likely hiding-places. The search is rendered pleasant as well as interesting by the fact that all the Brigade has been trodden into a morass by months of shovel-hunting. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... brought that along, thinking I might get a shot at a rabbit or a prairie hen. But we shall need an axe and a shovel." ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... through? Well, shovel out, then. We've got to hurry or the elephant will have closed down his ears. Hey there, Montparnasse! See ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... is still-born; a Medici never survives his swaddling-clothes. Into the tiny graves are huddled a million destinies. The sexton's shovel smothers up a Renaissance; soon the daisies will blow above History. Those eyebrows are lifted, that lip curls, and two fair homes go down in sorrow. This man misses a train, to travel with Fortune in the one that follows. A horse is beaten on the post, and the frantic clerk who has ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... box dat de dead man was a-lying in. Jest as he did dat, a light jumped out'n dat grave right in front of us and all over Wade's shovel. Our two dogs tuck and run and holler and stick dey tails betwix dey legs like somebody a-whipping dem. Dem dogs never stopped running and howling 'till dey reached home, me and Wade right behind dem. Wade had dat 'possum in his ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Army Stevedores, lusty and virile and strong. We are given the hardest work of the war, and the hours are long. We handle the heavy boxes and shovel the dirty coal; While soldiers and sailors work in the light, we burrow below like a mole. But somebody has to do this work or the soldiers could not fight! And whatever work is given a man is good if he does it right. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... be a heap of empty oat sacks, while he overhauled the load. It included three coils of rope of a hundred feet each, a keg of railroad spikes, two dozen picket-pins, two heavy hammers, a pick and shovel, and a crowbar. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... benevolence with which Mrs. Jameson did this was inimitable. People actually did not know whether to be furious or amused at this liberty taken with their property. They saw with wonder Mrs. Jameson, with old Jonas following laden with vines and shovel, also the girls and Cobb, who had been pressed, however unwillingly, into service, tagging behind trailing with woodbine and clematis; they stood by and saw their house-banks dug up and the vines set, and in most cases said never a word. If they did expostulate, ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fleet of transports, with masts and yard-arms outlined in the refulgent light. Robert expected to see a cannon flash upon the Scarborough, the nearest battleship; but the sentinel pacing the deck heard no sound of delving pick or shovel. Walden piloted the carts to the top of the hill, and placed the casks in such position that they could be set rolling down the steep at a moment's notice. The soldiers chuckled at the thought of the commotion they would make in the ranks of the redcoats, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... who, in waiting to see if their neighbours struck the lead, beguiled the time with euchre and "lambskinnet," played moodily, their mouths glued to their pipe-stems; they were tail-on-end to fling down the cards for pick and shovel. The great majority, ant-like in their indefatigable busyness, neither turned a head nor looked up: backs were bent, eyes fixed, in a hard scrutiny of cradle or tin-dish: it was the earth that held them, the familiar, homely earth, whose common fate it is to be trodden heedlessly ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... last when I saw his face grow saintlier and saintlier? I am an excellent sailor myself, but he is not, and when I see him there, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, like a sleeping St. Joseph in a shovel hat, with a basin beside him, can I expect to be saved from snapping him by such a formula ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... of hearing to warn us of approaching dangers. Hence it happens, that if any sound strikes us, which we cannot immediately account for, our fears are instantly alarmed. Thus in great debility of body, the loud clapping of a door, or the fall of a fire-shovel, produces alarm, and sometimes even convulsions; the same occurs from unexpected sights, and in the dark from unexpected objects ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and everybody made room for the steam sand shovel on its way to dump the sand hills into the bay. It was called the "steam paddy" to distinguish it from the "hand paddy"—out of Cork or Dublin. It rumbled by on its track, very much like juggernaut in its calm indifference as to how many it ran over. Sherwood's horses ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... was a kind of informal armistice. In one section the hour of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to "private business," and certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the snipers on both sides. On many occasions working parties toiled with pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually forbore to interfere with one another. The Bedfords and the South Staffords ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... us," he said. "Here's yours. And on that table there you'll find purses laid out, and a little gold shovel to fill them with. I've filled mine. Whenever our funds are running low, you see, we've only to come down ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... two friends, with a pick-axe, a hoe, and a shovel, directed their way towards the palace. They approached the cellar by a small door, and then began to dig in the ground at the foot of the cellar wall. After a few hours of steady work, they succeeded in making an excavation leading ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... on the scene the "swampers" and cross-cut men, swarming over the prostrate tree like ants over a piece of sugar. Some of them cut off limbs; others, with axes and crowbars, began to pry away great slabs of bark; still others, with much precaution of shovel, wedge and axe against jamming, commenced the slow and laborious undertaking ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... beginning of the world, what a subject of satisfaction and astonishment for us to see the two armies back again at the point from which they started, and the assailants reduced in self-defence to have recourse to the shovel and the axe!" ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... well as spend-thrifts, drunkards, roysterers, and gamesters, but so far as the records showed there had never been a coward. That old fellow De Ruyter, whose portrait hung at Moorlands and who might have been his father, so great was the resemblance, had, so to speak, held a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other in the days when he helped drown out his own and his neighbors' estates to keep the haughty don from gobbling up his country. One had but to look into Harry's face to be convinced that he too would have followed in his footsteps ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was doing a little bit which called for him to shovel a supposedly lost and frozen person out of a snow bank. Of course a "dummy" was put under the snow, and the real person, (in this case Mr. Bunn,) acted up to the time of the snow burial. Then a clever substitution was made and the film was exposed ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... consequence in this connection, is that of the amount of educational privilege which a mission should furnish to its people. President Stanley Hall has recently maintained that, even in this country, many are educated who should not be. They should, he says, be left to the hoe and shovel. He claims that not a few are, through education, spoiled for usefulness in the lowest sphere of manual labour for which they were by nature designed; while they are also disqualified for the highest sphere ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... witness returned home— A Captain of the 14th, one of the prisoners witnesses was also sworn in Court: He testified that in Cornhill he saw a mob collected at the pass (Boylstons alley) leading to Murrays barracks—the people were pelting the Soldiers he thot had a fire-shovel—as soon as they knew him, he prevailed on them to go to the bottom of the pass, and with some difficulty he got down—This witness, it seems, must have been later than the others; and Mr. Belknap, perhaps gives as early an account ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... barked at them angrily and the spiteful crack of the rifles could be heard now and then above the din of the cannonade. Two hundred yards from the enemy's positions they flung themselves down upon the ground and began digging furiously. Every man had a shovel in his equipment and he ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... had visited it; but now it was swarming with life, and was reduced to the dull dead level of an ordinary diggers' camp. The tall forest trees had been cut down, and only their blackened stumps were left; the dainty ferns and grasses and creepers had all disappeared before the pick and shovel, and rough windlasses, whips, and heaps of yellow earth marked the claims, while along the banks of the creek, now a mere muddy trickle, stood the implements of the diggers' craft, cradle and tub, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... mind to more activity. I then set myself to inspect the apartments. In the largest there was a fire place, and a fire; but neither shovel, tongs nor poker; except a small stick as a substitute for a poker, with which I certainly could not knock a man down. The furniture consisted of a chair, a table, a broken looking-glass, and an ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... ball, patted and flattened it into a biscuit, and dropped it into the oven he had set aside on the hot coals. Swiftly he shaped eight or ten other biscuits and dropped them as the first. Then he put the heavy iron lid on the pot, and with a rude shovel, improvised from a flattened tin can, he shoveled red coals out of the fire, and covered the lid with them. His next move was to pare and slice potatoes, placing these aside in a pan. A small black coffee-pot half full of water, was set ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... ever existed in this world. The doctor was himself no mean adept, and Nicholas profited greatly by his discourse, as in the garb of poor pilgrims they wended their way to Paris, convinced of their power to turn every old shovel in that capital into pure gold. But, unfortunately, when they reached Orleans, the doctor was taken dangerously ill. Nicholas watched by his bedside, and acted the double part of a physician and nurse to him; but he died after a few days, lamenting with his last breath that he ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... diviner alchemy wanted, and there is room for a bolder and a more patient spirit of investigation, amid the drudgery and bustle of common life, than was ever yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets—or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, nor turn up the foundations ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... thirdly, if any appreciable amount of acetylene is present in the air, no operation should be performed upon any portion of an acetylene plant which involves such processes as scraping or chipping with the aid of a steel tool or shovel. If, for example, the iron or stoneware sludge-pipe is choked, or the interior of the dismantled generator is blocked, and attempts are made to remove the obstruction with a hard steel tool, a spark is very likely to be formed which, granting the existence ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... again raised the copper cover from the brasier, and, picking up the shovel, she buried the live charcoal deep with ashes, and taking two bits of incense of Cambodia fragrant wood, she threw them over them. She then re-covered the brasier, and repairing to the back of the screen, she gave the lamp a thorough trimming ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the sea and do not even mix salt with their food, nor do they know anything about ships, and oars that are as the wings of a ship. I will give you this certain token which cannot escape your notice. A wayfarer will meet you and will say it must be a winnowing shovel that you have got upon your shoulder; on this you must fix the oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to Neptune. {90} Then go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... nimbler trot, as if the shovel over his shoulder stimulated him by reviving old associations, Mr Boffin ascended the 'serpentining walk', up the Mound which he had described to Silas Wegg on the occasion of their beginning to decline and fall. On striking into it he turned his lantern off. The ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... adventure. There was the young calf, mutual property of himself and a cousin of like age, which was fitted out with a boy-made harness and trained to work, eventually getting out of hand in a corn field and dragging the single-shovel cultivator wildly across and along rows of tender growing grain. Later the calf was restored to favor when it was triumphantly attached to a boy-made sorghum mill, which actually worked, and pressed out the sweet juice ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Wilton, and was astonished at the heaps of rubbish. The house is grand, and the place glorious; but I should shovel three parts of the marbles and pictures into the river. Adieu, my lord ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... un-affected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 'drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth,—if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... contents of the boats had been made up into rough packs, both crews attacked the trail-making. It was mid-morning before pick-ax, shovel and crowbar had opened up a way which Jonas claimed was fit only for kangaroos or elephants. Rough as it was, when Milton declared it fit for their purposes, the rest without protest heaved the packs to ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... difference,'' Mr. Taylor goes on to say, "exists in all the trades and branches of labor investigated, from pick- and-shovel men all the way up the scale to machinists and other skilled workmen. The multiplied output was not the product of a spurt or a period of overexertion; it was simply what a good man could keep up for a long term of years without injury to his ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... serve, sore, sorely. Sang, song. Sark, shirt, chemise. Saul, soul. Saunt, saint. Saut, salt. Scantlins, scarcely. Scoured, ran. Screed, rip, rent. Sede, seed. Semescope, jacket. Sets, patterns. Seventeen-hunder, very fine (linen). Shachled, feeble, shapeless. Shaw, show. Shiel, shelter. Shool, shovel. Shoon, shoes. Shouther, shoulder. Sic, such. Siller, silver, money. Sin', since. Skeigh, skittish. Skellum, good-for-nothing. Skelp, run quickly. Skiffing, moving along lightly. Skirl, squeal, scream. Skriech, screech. Slaes, sloes. Slap, gap ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... what he'd qualify for, nor suspect he'd have to shovel eighty million tons of coal and ashes before his handicap would be lowered enough to earn him a set of golf clubs or that the free lunch and drinks were chunks of brimstone, the sulphurous air and Styx River water which is always just below boiling ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... friendly conversation. I come back and find you both armed—both violently agitated—and M. D'Effernay, at least, speaking incoherently. What do you mean by 'proving it?'—to what do you allude?" At this moment, before any answer could be made, a man came out of the house with a pick-ax and shovel on his shoulder, and advancing toward the rector, said respectfully, "I am quite ready, sir, if you have the key ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... times. Nearly walloped the life out of me to stop me going away, and now I come back he throws a confounded shovel at my head to keep me out. It ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... far journey, carrying with thee an oar of thy vessel, until thou comest to a people that dwell far from the sea, and know naught of ships or the mariner's art. And there shalt meet thee by the way a man who shall say that thou bearest a winnowing shovel[3] on thy shoulder; and this shall be a sign unto thee, whereby thou shalt know that thou hast reached the end of thy journey. Then plant thy oar in the ground, and offer sacrifice to Poseidon. This ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... winter comes in,— Och hone! widow machree,— To be poking the fire all alone is a sin, Och hone! widow machree. Sure the shovel and tongs To each other belongs, And the kettle sings songs Full of family glee; While alone with your cup Like a hermit you sup, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to go up-stairs for something, and on her return she found that Ruth, during her absence, had set fire to a large linen rag, which she held on a shovel and was carrying about the bedroom, as if to purify it from every atom of negro atmosphere which might remain. Polly was quick-witted, and instantly comprehending the truth, she struck the shovel from the hands of Ruth, exclaiming, "You spalpeen, is it ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... occurrence are quite recent and well authenticated, as we shall presently see. An anonymous but well-informed writer describes, as if it were by no means an unusual ceremony, that just referred to; and Kennedy gives the same in the shape of a legend. It seems to consist in taking a clean shovel and seating the changeling on its broad iron blade, and thus conveying the creature to the manure heap. The assistants would then join hands and circle about the heap thrice while the fairy-man chanted an incantation in the Irish language. At ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... shovel, swept seven or eight ants from his sleeve, and killed another that was prowling round his ear, then looked perpendicularly into the earth as usual, waiting for Enoch to say more. "Well, why shouldn't she?" said the keeper ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... considerably diluted, if applied in a liquid form, are good disinfectants, and carbolic powder—a pink powder with a smell resembling tar, and sold at about 2d. per lb.—is both useful and effective. The air of a bedroom may be pleasantly sweetened by throwing some ground coffee on a fire shovel ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous |
