"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from a mere hole,' replied Mr. Mortimer: 'from that dirty little patch of water by the side of yonder hedge—do you see? It is very shallow, and is therefore soon encrusted: but even before it was cut by the pickaxe, it would not have been smooth enough to have slidden upon, and now you see it is all in pieces, and you might as well try to slide on a heap ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... and rowling smoak; the rest entire Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic Ore, The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when bands Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm'd Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field, Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... were busy inside; great rolls of paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; an upholsterer's wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at work together, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... died comparatively so young, sufficiently accounts for the paucity of his poems. He had found a vein of rich and virgin gold; he had thrown out one mass of ore, and was, as it were, resting on his pickaxe ere recommencing his labour, when he was smitten down by a workman who never rests nor slumbers. Still let us thankfully accept what he has produced; the more as it is so distinctively original, so free from any serious alloy, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to you, above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... and there was reason to apprehend serious mischief would occur; one of them hit the Porter with his spade, and several others were prepared to follow his example; while a second, who seem'd a little more blood-thirsty than the rest, raised his pickaxe in a menacing attitude; upon perceiving which, Dashall jump'd ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... as the dead form looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, too, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chariot, and King Pluto seemed greatly pleased to find himself once more in his own kingdom. He drew Proserpina's attention to the rich veins of gold that were to be seen among the rocks, and pointed to several places where one stroke of a pickaxe would loosen a bushel of diamonds. All along the road, indeed, there were sparkling gems, which would have been of inestimable value above ground, but which here were reckoned of the meaner sort and hardly worth ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... now than formerly, new discoveries not equaling the exhausted placers. They are principally on the Asiatic slope, in the vicinity of Kamenskoi. The Emperor Alexander First visited the mines of the Ural in 1824, and personally wielded the shovel and pickaxe nearly two hours. A nugget weighing twenty-four pounds and some ounces was afterward found about two feet ibelow the point where His Majesty 'knocked off' work. A monument now marks the spot, and contains the tools handled ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... answered the youth.—"Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... blowing hard," said he; "the harder the better. I want to see this island knocked into bergs. Every sea is as good as a pickaxe. Hark! there are those crackling noises I used to hear before I fell into a stupor. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... long been with them before a day was appointed for the celebration of one of their religious, or rather superstitious, rites. This was the consecration of the holy pickaxe, the implement always used by these men for burying those whom they have slain. A fakir, versed in all the learning of the Thugs, was seated, when the auspicious day arrived, with his face turned to the west, and placed the pickaxe in a brass ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... degradation. M. Bonaparte treats the people of France like a conquered country. He effaces the republican inscriptions; he cut down the trees of liberty, and makes firewood of them. There was on Place Bourgogne a statue of the Republic; he puts the pickaxe to it; there was on our coinage a figure of the Republic, crowned with ears of corn; M. Bonaparte replaces it by the profile of M. Bonaparte. He has his bust crowned and harangued in the market-places, just ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... carpenters, standen on tiptoe and peepen in at the chancel winders. There was Dairyman Dodman waiten in his new spring-cart to see 'em come out—whip in hand—that 'a was. Then up comes two master tailors. Then there was Christopher Runt wi' his pickaxe and shovel. There was wimmen-folk and there was men-folk traypsen up and down church'ard till they wore a path wi' traypsen so—letten the squallen children slip down through their arms and nearly skinnen o' em. And these were all over and above the gentry and Sunday-clothes folk inside. Well, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now, you know it. I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Do you know how I spent that night? I will tell you; I stole a pickaxe from a mason's shed, and, all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin; I wrenched the lid, I saw her again—again. Decay had not touched her. She was always ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were as good as a mask. Oh, Mother of Mercy! there came across my way a funeral procession! There, now you know it; I can tell you no more. She had died, perhaps of love, more likely of shame. Can you guess how I spent that night?—I stole a pickaxe from a mason's shed, and all alone and unseen, under the frosty heavens, I dug the fresh mould from the grave; I lifted the coffin, I wrenched the lid, I saw her again—again! Decay had not touched her. She was always pale in life! I could have sworn she lived! ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... if you were escaping in good earnest. The wall between the two towers is, to my knowledge, at one place not over two feet thick; and on the other side, where there are nothing but bare grounds and the old ramparts, they never put a sentinel. I will get you a crowbar and a pickaxe, and you make ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... ship landing two companies is to be prepared to land with the small-arm men six Pioneers—2 with a saw and axe each, 2 with a pickaxe and spade each, 2 with a small crowbar and sledge-hammer, or such intrenching or other tools as the nature of the expedition may require; the tools to be slung on the men's backs; smaller ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... of January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires burned brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of voices and of the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up entrenchments. The fires died down towards morning and the British awoke to find the enemy camp deserted. Washington had carried his whole army by a roundabout route to the Princeton ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... could get a few out one at a time on moonlight nights, and fill up the blooming holes again, we shouldn't want any blasted machinery for our gold mine, except a pickaxe and a shovel." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... first glimpse of the expected treasure. But when he had dug up the ground, what did he find? Why, nothing but a parcel of old bones, which smelt so badly that he could not stay there a moment longer. And his heart was filled with rage against the dog who had played him this trick, and he seized a pickaxe and killed it on the spot, before he knew what he was doing. When he remembered that he would have to go with his story to the old man and his wife he was rather frightened, but there was nothing to be gained by putting it off, so he ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... curious, and, keeping out of sight, followed astern, along the narrow country roads which led to nowhere special. He saw them pull up before the great tumble-down Talayot which stands opposite the big stone altar, and watched them produce lantern, shovel, and pickaxe, and begin to dig; after which, feeling that his interest had evaporated (so he said), or, more probably, being oppressed with sleepiness, he returned to Alayor, and soon had his head ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... The workmen were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this—little more than the removal of a few stones—the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the box was found ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... in and driven a pickaxe into each of the boilers," cried Joe. "They'll blow up together. Shall ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... called into service for this—no one could clear a road through a rough tract of land better than he. He was busy preparing for the spring examinations, and very anxious to be victor; but books were laid aside without a murmur, and he shouldered his pickaxe and shovel, and in company with two or three other big boys set cheerfully and heartily to work. It seemed strange that his last work on earth should be preparing this road to the cemetery along which his own body would be carried before those of the Bishop and ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... roughly piled up, stood a cross of coral that extended its long arms that one might have thought were made of petrified blood. Upon a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced; and at some feet from the cross he began to dig a hole with a pickaxe that he took from his belt. I understood all! This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong object the body of the man who had died in the night! The Captain and his men had come to bury their ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... unshaved beard, a scowling eye, and a red face; his dress consisted of a blue woollen shirt, coarse blue trousers grimed in mud, and a low-crowned black hat; on his shoulder he carried a spade and pickaxe. As he walked along he was joined by others of an equally unprepossessing appearance, and found many more already assembled at the scene of their labours—the ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... working at this very spot a couple of hours before. I took a pick and raked away the clods of earth with it, in the hope of finding the coin; but all in vain. At last in sheer annoyance I struck the sharp end of the pickaxe down into the soil, which was of a very hard nature. To my astonishment it sunk in right ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... sacrifice a multitude of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route propitious to the disciples of the goddess, and it was credited with other powers equally marvellous. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... faileth not To fetch home wood for night, and eke for fire sought, That we our roots and things seeth might if any home were brought. The rest the wood doth seeke, eke euery bush and tree For berries and such baggage like, which should seeme meate to bee. Our fingers serue in steed, both of pickaxe and spade, To dig and pull vp euery weed, that grew within the shade. Eke diged for rootes the ground, and searcht on euery brier For berries, which if we had found, then streight way to the fire: Where we rost some of those, the rest seeth in a pot, And of this banket nought we lose, nor fragment ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... ventured no further remonstrance; he took off his jacket, and struck his pickaxe into the hard, dry soil near the point where the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... island then. But I am telling you nothing but the truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out with a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy for you to go and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strong in numbers, but stronger still in our fidelity to our vows. When once we have sworn on the sacred pickaxe, it is impossible ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... came with a pickaxe and a spade, gave me the spade, kept the pickaxe, pointed to the adjacent vacant lots, and ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... after the full moon, when everybody else was asleep, Hans crept quietly out of the house with a pickaxe, wrenched out the stone with much difficulty, and actually found the hole with the money, just as the dwarf had described it to him. Next Sunday he divided the third part among the poor of the parish, and gave notice to the parson ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... the Pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, although it was not finished in the fifteenth century. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... as he was walking in his garden just after sunset, it threatened him so effectually that in the morning he went to a magistrate and revealed the whole thing. The place was examined; the body and the pickaxe found; and a warrant was granted against Walker and Sharp. They were, however, admitted to bail; but in August, 1681, their trial came on before Judge Davenport at Durham. Meanwhile the whole circumstances were known ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... think antelopes could possibly get at water for several months together, as every drop of water in the country is guarded by the Somali. We were now in "the land of honey," and the Somali nomads constantly came to me to borrow my English pickaxe for digging it out of the ground; for the bees of this country, instead of settling in the boughs of trees, as they do in England, work holes in the ground like wasps, or take advantage more generally of chinks or fissures in the rocks ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... how, when Nero wished to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, blood spurted up in front of those who first touched the earth, groans and cries were heard, and a number of ghosts appeared. Not till Nero took a pickaxe and began to work himself, to encourage the men, was ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... the adoption of a system of irrigation. The villagers were at first most obstinate in their opposition to his plans; but he persevered, laid out a canal, and succeeded at last in enlisting a body of workmen, whom he led out, pickaxe in hand, himself taking a foremost part in the work; and at last the waters were let into the canal amidst joy and triumph. At Violens he helped to build and finish the chapel, himself doing mason-work, smith-work, and carpenter-work ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... straightway Whereas the finger's shadow lay, And with his knife about the place A little circle did he trace; Then home he turned with throbbing head, And forthright gat him to his bed, And slept until the night was late And few men stirred from gate to gate. So when at midnight he did wake, Pickaxe and shovel did he take, And, going to that now silent square, He found the mark his knife made there, And quietly with many a stroke The pavement of the place he broke: And so, the stones being set apart, He 'gan to dig with beating heart, And from the hole in haste he cast The marl and gravel; ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... "Yes; pickaxe, mattocks, and a crowbar; a lantern, and so forth," said the doctor. "You see I am at home in this; the fact is, I have had more than one affair of this kind on my hands before now, and whilst a student I have had more than one ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... feet she passed to and fro, pausing now and then to gravely watch the operations of some stalwart fellow hewing out a timber with his adze, driving home a bolt with his heavy maul, or digging into the stubborn rock with his pickaxe, and not infrequently asking questions which the puzzled seamen strove in ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... quite clearly underneath the ground below him the dull shock of a pickaxe. The noise came almost from beneath his feet; so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. The strokes fell with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the sound changed in character. The muffled ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Timbuctoo, and that at Seville; it is about 200 feet high, perfectly square, and a person may ride up to the top on horseback, having a gradual ascent, and seven chambers one above the other: the cement with which it is made is so hardened that no pickaxe can destroy it. It was represented to the sultan Muhamed that the apartments in this tower were the haunts of vice and immorality, and the sultan ordered the floor or terras, by which visitors ascend, to be broken; it was found, however, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... other men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... yonder like hoodie-craws in a mist; but d'yo think ye'll help them wi' skirling that gate like an auld skart before a flaw o' weather?Steenie, lad, bring up the mastOd, I'se hae them up as we used to bouse up the kegs o' gin and brandy lang syneGet up the pickaxe, make a step for the mastmake the chair fast with the rattlinhaul ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... other they raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... but in the small distant bush-towns, as they are called, the rougher elements must predominate Our hero, though he had worn moleskin trousers and jersey shirts, and had worked down a pit twelve hours a-day with a pickaxe, had never reconciled himself to female roughnesses. He had condescended to do so occasionally,—telling himself that it was his destiny to pass his life among such surroundings; but his imagination had ever been at work with him, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... him that they might have disposed of some of the unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two. But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe, and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the lean-to and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... infantry. Sergt. Pengelly of the 112th Battery, who was in command of a 15-pounder in an anti-tank position, having had his gun destroyed in the preliminary bombardment, fought for two days with the infantry, in command of a platoon, and did great execution himself with a pickaxe. A forward gun of the 110th Battery was fought until all its ammunition was expended, and the breech-block was then removed with the enemy almost on the top of the gun. For over seven hours the main battery fired on the enemy at ranges from 1,200 to 600 yards, ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... Kitwater. "Bring the pickaxe, Hayle, and we'll soon see what is underneath this precious stone. We may be at the heart of the mystery ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... men to get their breakfast from Nancy: none but himself should do the last offices for Ruadh! With skilful hand he separated and laid aside the head—in sacrifice to the living God. Then the hard earth rang with mighty blows of the pickaxe. The labour was severe, and long ere the grave was deep enough, Hector and Rob had returned; but the chief would not get out of it to give them any share in the work. When he laid hold of the body, they did not ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Argentine after all attempts to obtain his extradition had failed, gave an example of the same kind of courage. Another detective, in a case where the body of a murdered man had been hidden, did not hesitate to arrest the murderer on the flimsy charge of "being in unlawful possession of a pickaxe" to prevent flight while he continued his search. In each case these men deliberately adopted risks to attain their ends which nothing but ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... turnkey, and took the keys by force; but, finding his followers unruly, was wise enough to submit. He was sent with three others to the 'New Jail.' The prisoners in the King's Bench hereupon rose, and attacked the wall with a pickaxe. Soldiers were called in, and the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... third place, came some tools—an auger, a gimlet, a handsaw, an assortment of nails and brads, a spade, a shovel, a pickaxe, a hatchet, an adze, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... and could not shoot their game, whatever it was; but each of them had a biliong. This was the implement Achang had bought in Sarawak. It looked something like a pickaxe with only one arm, the end of which was fashioned like a mortising chisel, and was ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... personal debt of 10,000 pounds. Quarrels occurred between soldiers and sailors, and in these the New Englanders soon proved by no means the cowards which complacent superiority in England considered them; rather, as an enlightened Briton said, "If they had pickaxe and spade they would dig a way to Hell itself ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... going to die. There's too much for me to do in the world! I'll be a great engineer. I'll make her proud. I vowed it when we looked out over the waves and I wanted to take her in my arms. See here!" and suddenly seizing a pickaxe from the ground beside him, he swung it around his head and sent it whizzing past Pilchard's ear, out through the opening of the shanty. "I've got my muscle and I've got my brain and I'll keep my life. I deserve to live. I deserve it as payment ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... previous verses the Apostle is beginning to prepare for closing his letter, but is carried away into the long digression of which our text forms the beginning. The last words of the former verse open a thought of which his mind is always full. It is as when an excavator strikes his pickaxe unwittingly into a hidden reservoir and the blow is followed by a rush of water, which carries away workmen and tools. Paul has struck into the very deepest thoughts which he has of the Gospel and out they pour. That one antithesis, 'the loss ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... came home that evening frightfully drunk, came near setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring rain, thanks ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... near to Gortnaclough, he came upon one of those gangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earning their pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. In some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... supposes (to use his own expression) "that the salutary truths which he inculcates are making their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which Falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor Truth has had a hard work of it, with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of an ice-chisel with a handle some five feet in length, a small pickaxe, an iron-pointed spear barbed only on one side, with a long straight shaft, and a light pole about a dozen feet in length, quite ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... superb masonry will often pass like a common panorama; and on this grey and silver morning the ruined towers of the cathedral stood about me somewhat vaguely like grey clouds. But down in a hollow where the local antiquaries are making a fruitful excavation, a magnificent old ruffian with a pickaxe (whom I believe to have been St. Joseph of Arimathea) showed me a fragment of the old vaulted roof which he had found in the earth; and on the whitish grey stone there was just a faint brush of gold. There seemed a piercing and swordlike pathos, an unexpected ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... space must also be allowed than is usual for an ordinary crop. A good open position is imperative, and where the soil is sufficiently deep, trenching is desirable. Shallow soil ought to be thoroughly dug down to the last inch, and it will be an advantage to break up the subsoil by pickaxe and fork. Cover the subsoil with a thick layer of rotten manure before restoring the top soil. For light land farmyard manure is excellent, but stable manure is preferable for stiff cold soil. The usual time for trenching is October or November, leaving the surface rough ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... march back to his own abode. The giant had done this for many years, and the coast of Cornwall was greatly hurt by his thefts, when Jack boldly resolved to destroy him. He therefore took a horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, and a dark lantern, and, early in a long winter's evening, he swam to the Mount. There he fell to work at once, and before morning he had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and almost as many broad. He ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... toiling, seeking, toiling, by hot sun and cold moon, with pickaxe and with spade; and as he toiled there came a bright Spirit, and looked him ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... could want with post-chaises at that hour, they demurred, but the money quickly persuaded them. They told me also that a gentleman had changed horses there about half an hour before and gone towards the Lizard, after borrowing a pickaxe and spade. Half an hour: should ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this understanding, Staines and Falcon were equipped with rifles, pickaxe, shovels, waterproofs, and full saddle-bags, and started, with many shakings of the hand, and many tears from Phoebe, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... and easily into the groove of last term's routine, filling our old quarters and several additional houses. Some building operations needed for the winter's sojourn have been mentioned by anticipation. Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of "Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and making all right. At his instance, the proprietor ran out an extended culvert into the sea beyond low-water mark, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epic poets ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... know just what to do—but then I thought. I scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... celebrated character, who buried within the walls of the cathedral, Catherine of Arragon, who died at Kimbolton Castle, in 1536; and Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed at Fotheringhay Castle fifty-one years afterwards. The accompanying engraving is a representation of the old sexton, with his spade, pickaxe, ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... complexion, giving tokens of weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent; perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid dark tints ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... at this miner. The hole is narrow and deep; at the bottom of it is a dark tunnel two feet broad, between two and three feet high, and twenty-five feet long. At the farther extremity of it crouches a man with a pickaxe in his hands, and a candle beside him. It is a very awkward position in which to work, and the result is that this man pants and blows and sighs, and sometimes laughs quietly to himself at the comicality of his attitudes, while the perspiration pours over his ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... barrows, and carrying it off to the wide fields; where it is left exposed to the sun, and, during three months, to the rain. Having been thus subjected to a natural decomposition, it is the more readily brought by the pickaxe into smaller fragments before being sent to the mills, where it is crushed, pulverized, and finally washed to get at the stones. Nowhere in the world does the hidden wealth of the soil and the element of chance in its discovery strike one so forcibly as here, where you are shown a piece ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... over he went into the next field, and once again the mare started as Dandy Jim sprang into the gig with one bound and quickly struggled into the empty sack. He was only just in time. A parting clatter of pickaxe and thud of spade, a swing of the lantern, that sent a yellow light athwart some grey old headstones, rough voices and hasty steps, and two men appeared, pushed their implements into the back of the gig, released the mare from her nose-bag, clambered in, one on either side of the upright sack, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... force-generation, in the case of the will-power, we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely related force, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... the proper means of applying heat to his compound. An oven he forthwith determined to build. Having obtained the use of a corner of a factory yard, his aged father, two of his brothers, his little son, and himself sallied forth, with pickaxe and shovels, to begin the work: and when they had done all that unskilled labor could effect towards it, he induced a mason to complete it, and paid him in bricklayers' aprons made of aqua-fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a tantalizing failure. The ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Germans are almost on top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... a minute more," said the smith, examining a pickaxe, which he was getting up to that delicate point of heat which is requisite ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... ground with a pan of water in his hand. Every now and again he would listen attentively, with his ear in the dust, and, rising, place the pan on the spot. At last he has it. Like the beating of a pulse, the still water in the pan vibrates in harmony with the stroke of the pickaxe far underneath, and the old miner rises exultant.' A counter-mine was hurriedly made, and through a tiny opening it was seen that barrels of gunpowder and pitch and piles of faggots were heaped beneath the west gate. Fortunately, this gate ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... processions had vanished from sight. Somewhere in a grave close at hand a digger, whom they could not see, was wielding his pickaxe ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... destinies, and from elaborating and making more glorious than ever its own already very glorious history. As well might the brainless and heartless conspirators against human progress and human liberty endeavor to arrest the rotation of a planet by the stroke of a pickaxe. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the 7th a strange, murmurous clangor arose from the British camp, and was borne on the moist air to the lines of their slumbering foes. The blows of pickaxe and spade as the ground was thrown up into batteries by gangs of workmen, the rumble of the artillery as it was placed in position, the measured tread of the battalions as they shifted their places or marched off under Thornton,—all these and the thousand other sounds ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... was very little, Lady Ker went to bed. But Randal and Jean slipped out into the moonlight. They took a sack with them, and Randal carried a pickaxe and a spade. They walked quickly to the three great stones, and waited for a while to hear if all was quiet. Then Jean threw a white cloak round her, and stole about the edges of the camp and the wood. She knew that if any ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will, making the vault re-echo with his blows. This operation, while it had the effect of thinning the audience still further ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 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
... host, it is God's will that you should build this convent; therefore prepare yourself for the work." "Oh, how shall I be able to do that," answered Cotolai, "I who am so poor, and who live by my daily labor?" "Take courage," said Francis, "take a pickaxe, and go to the spring which is close by; make a hole a little in front of it, and you will find a treasure which will enable you to execute the order of Heaven." Cotolai, relying on the Saint's ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... Judge Parks until the old miner drew rein in front of a great mass of shattered, ragged, dirty looking quartz rock. In front of this a deep hole had been dug by somebody, and near it were traces of old camp-fires, bones of deer and buffalo, some rusty tin cans, and a worn-out pickaxe. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... horrible! The storm drove the snow and rain into the face of the solitary man and whipped the black hair around his temples; but he paid no attention to this—he dug into the hard, rocky soil with pickaxe and spade. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... his friends. She engaged to meet him at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold covered with a clean napkin. He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he was soon to receive. Of course he met no Gipsy; she had fled another ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... before the opportunity for his escape occurred. For a month he had been hewing stone in Portland, black despair at his heart. Then, like lightning, he saw his chance and took it. The warders were off guard for a moment. Hastily lifting his pickaxe— ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... the child slipped twenty—-five feet deeper. At seven o'clock we were down to where he was again, though we could no longer bear him. We dug a little below, bored a bole, and the father slipped through a pickaxe handle, and fainted away as he felt the little one slide down again but rest on the handle. We tore off the boards, took the baby out, and drew him and his father to the surface. There were two doctors waiting for them, and ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... intended fortification were some spots appropriated to superstitious practices; which the negroes no sooner perceived in danger of violation by the spade and pickaxe, than they ran to arms, and began to interrupt the work. The Portuguese persisted in their purpose, and there had soon been tumult and bloodshed, had not the admiral, who was at a distance to superintend the unlading the materials for the edifice, been informed of the danger. He ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... 'handkerchief,' always employed for throttling victims, was really a loin-cloth or turban, in which a loop was made with a slip-knot. The Thugs called it their sikka or 'ensign,' but it was not held sacred like the pickaxe. When the leader of the gang cleared his throat violently it was a sign to prepare for action, and he afterwards gave the jhirni or signal for the murder, by saying either 'Tamakhu kha lo,' 'Begin chewing tobacco'; 'Bhanja ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... does not follow any vein, but cuts across all the strata, and keeps a straight line, till it turns westward, and then in another straight line; and the floors, sides, and roof are all made quite regular and even with a pickaxe or a hammer. There does not appear to have been at any time any other habitation than the shepherd's house, and another cottage a little lower down the stream, in the neighbourhood. The discovery of this cavern recalled to the recollection of myself, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... in this middle age between the Pachydermata and the Cetaceae. Each ramus of the under jaw, which in the larger specimens are fully four feet in length, bore at the symphysis a great bent tusk turned downwards, which appears to have been employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which measured about three feet across,—a breadth, sufficient, surely, to satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,—was provided with muscles of enormous strength, arranged ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... wings and back of speckled umber and mottled white breast, with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Sawyer to examine the tools and implements in the mill workshop and he found a pickaxe, one point of which had been subjected to rather rough treatment. I naturally connected that pickaxe with the ledge of rock that had been found in ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... saw the figure of Elisha Braggs suddenly revealed in the moonlight as he crossed the path behind the chapel. He was closely followed by two peons, whom she recognized as his servants at the Mission, and they each carried a pickaxe. From their manner it was evident that they had no suspicion of her presence in the chapel. But they had stopped and were listening. Her heart beat quickly; with a sudden instinct she ran and bolted the door. But it was evidently another intruder they were ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... When the pickaxe was brought, he gave a single blow with it; the stones gaped apart, and betrayed a wide ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... half-breed children and a valuable pig. This is the third time John has played some scurvy trick, and it is about time the Superintendent discharged him. There is entirely too much of this practical joking amongst the boys, and it will lead to trouble yet.—Nugget Hill "Pickaxe of Freedom." ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... men living in Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... now was how to secure this immense treasure without it being known. Instead of working regularly in his grounds in the day-time, he now stole from his bed at night, and with spade and pickaxe, went to work to rip up and dig about his paternal acres, from one end to the other. In a little time the whole garden, which had presented such a goodly and regular appearance, with its phalanx of cabbages, like a vegetable army in battle array, was ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... carrying millstones then came along, inquired into her trouble, and expressed their compassion by giving her a millstone, which they rolled into her back yard. While they were doing this a Man went by carrying hoes and a pickaxe, and he stopped and asked her why she was crying so hard. She told him her grief, and he said he would gladly help her if he could, but he was only a well digger and could do nothing for her except to dig a well. She pointed out a place ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... entire party proceeded in the direction of the gully, or cleft, upon their arrival at which preparations were at once made for a possible sojourn of a few days; and while those preparations were being made, Earle and Dick, carrying a pickaxe and shovel, as well as their rifles, started to climb the cleft, bent upon examining the spot where the emeralds had been found, and, if possible, settling the question as to whether or not a ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... world was his oyster, and that oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who love their wives and children, and go to their parish church on Sundays. He ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the old foundations rock; One scorns at him of old who gazed unshod; One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock Shall move the seat ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... him the history of this Yankee enterprise, which had filled two capacious purses, and substituted the harpoon for the pruning-knife, the whale-ship for the olive-orchard, in the very stronghold of the emblem of peace; and now the collier with his pickaxe has driven them both from the field. But the Petit Hotel Montmorenci did not wait for the change. Its broad court was never enlivened by gas. Its tables and mantels were decked to the last hour with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various |
