"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dig up the beds and get rid of the weeds, and then perhaps for this summer only we might take refuge in geraniums and begonias. Just for one summer, till something else will grow." She sighed, and set to work with her spade, giving it a push into the ground with her foot in professional style, and pausing to gasp and straighten her back between every second or third attempt. Astonishing what hard work it was, and how hot one got all of a sudden! ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... curl-papers. She was the belle of Royal Street in her spare time, and womanly triumphs dogged even her working hours. She was sixteen years old, and devoted her youth and beauty to buttonholes. In the East End, where a spade is a spade, a buttonhole is a buttonhole, and not a primrose or a pansy. There are two kinds of buttonhole—the coarse for slop goods and the fine for gentlemanly wear. Becky concentrated herself on superior buttonholes, which are worked with fine twist. She stitched them in her father's workshop, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... old Roman Farmhouse, of that innocent and unsophisticated day, when the Consulars of the Republic were tillers of the soil, and when heroes returned, from the almost immortal triumph, to the management of the spade and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... another minute," cried the old sailor, who was nearly as excited as the boys. "Get your spade an' we'll ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of glass and a spade of earthenware. The boy commenced the work, but at the first stroke his fragile pick and spade broke into a thousand fragments. For the second time he sat down helplessly. Time passed slowly, and as before at midday the damsel in white ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... known the answer ever since I first turned the soil of this farm. The man who thinks about things knows there's nothing to life. It's all a grinding chase for the day when someone will pat my cheek with a spade." ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the body, Mateo returned to the house for a spade with which to bury his son. He had gone but a few steps when he met Giuseppa, who, alarmed by the shot, was ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... I met with of its having been previously visited by man was the English chickweed; and this I traced to a mound that marked the grave of a British sailor, and that was covered with the plant, doubtless the offspring of seed that had adhered to the spade or mattock with which ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... came back next night with a crust in one hand and a stick in the other, but the perambulator had gone, and he never saw another one. I have promised to tell you also about his paddle. It was a child's spade which he had found near St. Govor's Well, and he thought it ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... face of this inhospitable old man, and endeavouring to find out the cause of the sullen discontent which was visible in his eye, he called to a slave who was working in the corn-field at a little distance, and ordered him to bring his spade with him. The Dooty then told him to dig a hole in the ground, pointing to a spot at no great distance. The slave with his spade began to dig in the earth, and the Dooty, who appeared to be a man of very fretful disposition, kept muttering to himself until the pit was almost finished, when he ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... We struck for the road and fetched the first men that come along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you never see such an excitement. You couldn't make anything out of the face, but you didn't need to. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a hiding-place for him at the castle. There was a room on the ground floor, the key of which was kept by Grizel, and under this they dug a big hole with their bare hands, fearing that the sound of a spade, if used, would be heard. Night after night, when all but they two were asleep, they scratched out the earth, and placed it on a sheet spread on the floor. Then, when their night's work was done, they silently opened the window and emptied the ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... truthfully I did not know the difference between a club and a spade and had no curiosity to learn. At this, when he found he had been wasting time on me, I expected him to show some sign of annoyance, even of irritation, but his disappointment struck far deeper. As though I had hurt him physically, he shut his eyes, and when again he opened them I saw ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... will flog his boy for telling a lie, because it is customary to do so. He will also flog him for not telling a lie if the boy tells inconvenient or disrespectful truths, because it is customary to do so. He will give the same boy a present on his birthday, and buy him a spade and bucket at the seaside, because it is customary to do so, being all the time neither particularly mendacious, nor particularly cruel, nor particularly generous, but simply incapable of ethical ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... end of the hand her attention is apt to wander, and owing to her abstraction play comes to a dead halt. When a hint is offered that we are waiting for her, with prompt and business-like alacrity but regardless of the rigorous formula, "Place your cards, please," she will say, "Who led a spade?" there being at the time a club, a heart, and a diamond on the table. Then, being the only one who has a card of the leader's suit left, she revokes but is not found out. When she leads out of turn, as happens on an average four or five times every rubber, if I am ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... all torn up. It had never been opened since the battles of 1914. The Germans had lived there and everything was in an awful condition. One wonders how they endured themselves. The Military detailed two men for two days to spade up and carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... possession of the land. It is a strange sight to see vessels sail along the embankments higher than the chimney tops of the houses along the shore! Watchmen are stationed along these embankments and when the ocean breaks a leak, they will ring the alarm bells and every body will arm himself with a spade or shovel and run to the sea-shore to battle with the water. Thus have these people defended their property against the encroachments of the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... hack down the trees and, after burning the branches and trunk, planted their corn among the stumps and in the course of time took out the roots. In cultivating the soil they used an implement of very hard wood, shaped like a spade, and their method of raising corn, as described by Champlain, was exactly the same as that of our farmers today. The corn fields at the old Medoctic Fort were cultivated by the Indians many years ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... be nice," said some one soothingly. "The garden is large enough for you both to work in. Rad, you begin at the lower end and spade toward the middle. Koku, you begin at the upper end and work down. Whoever gets to the middle ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... hatchet, or a hoe, was a useful and invaluable acquisition. He observed with what facility the strangers supplied their wants, which were many in comparison with his, by means of the various implements they used. The woods fell before the axe, the earth opened before the hoe or the spade; and the knife was useful on numberless occasions. He admired the skill of white men in making those implements of ease and profit, and voluntarily offered them his deer skins, the only riches he had which could procure them. The love of ease was as natural ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... underground dwarfs; for I am going to tell you of one that the cold calculating Professor Science has at last accepted, and that lives in your own back-yard. That is, the Cat's-eye Toad or Spadefoot. It is much like a common Toad, but a little smoother, the digging spade on its hind foot is bigger and its eye, its beautiful gold-stone eye, has the pupil up and down like that of a Cat, instead of level as in its cousin, the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... went down to the cellar, and the mason was ordered to dig out the pit till it was five and a half feet deep. While the man worked, Derues sat beside the chest and read. When it was half done, the mason stopped for breath, and leaning on his spade, inquired why he wanted a trench of such a depth. Derues, who had probably foreseen the question, answered at once, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... could bear and I flung myself from my mule and seizing a spade, fell violently to work, the tears of rage and ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... Daur (700 square miles) drained by the Tochi. In 1894 the Dauris sought refuge from Darwesh Khel inroads by asking for British administration. In the eyes of the Darwesh Khel they are a race of clodhoppers. Their sole virtue consists in patient spade industry in the stiff rich soil of their valley, their vices are gross, and their fanaticism is extreme. The political agent's headquarters are at Miram Shah. South Waziristan is the home of the troublesome Mahsuds, who can muster 11,000 ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... shrunken and warped by the sun's immoderate heats, but to me she had become as it were a sign and symbol of freedom. She lay upon her starboard beam half full of sand, and it now became my object to turn her that I might come at this under side, wherefore I fell to work with mattock and spade to free her of the sand wherein (as I say) she lay half-buried. This done I hove and strained until the sweat poured from me yet found it impossible to move her, strive how I would. Hereupon, and after some painful ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Besides, don't let us deceive ourselves, the war of the dictionaries is only a disguised rivalry of cities, colleges, and especially of publishers. After all, the language will shape itself by larger forces than phonography and dictionary-making. You may spade up the ocean as much as you like, and harrow it afterwards, if you can,—but the moon will still lead the tides, and the winds will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... a spade that stood near by, removed a few shovels full of earth and disclosed a large white stone slab, in the centre of which was an iron ring which enabled him ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... go for him with spade or fork, At which, so it appears, There rang throughout the crowded ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... burrowing habits, has no doubt given rise to the mistaken name. The "ground" part of the title is from the fact that it is a burrowing animal,—indeed, one of the best "terriers" in the world. It can make its way under ground faster than the spade can follow it, and faster than any badger. In size, habits, and the form of many parts of its body, it bears a striking resemblance to its South American cousin the "tamanoir" (Myrmecophaga jubata), which of late years has become so famous as almost to usurp the ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... might be hidden beneath the tree, and that the dog had scented it, at last struck the old man. He ran back to the house, fetched his spade and began to dig the ground at that spot. What was his astonishment when, after digging for some time, he came upon a heap of old and valuable coins, and the deeper he dug the more gold coins did he find. So intent was the old man on his work that he never saw the cross ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... more vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as spring opened.[326] All thoughts of active operations were now suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving seven hundred men at Oswego, Shirley returned to Albany, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way, while passing a rapid in a whale-boat, to try the fitness of that species of craft for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him,—while Pansie, as apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden-gate was ajar; and a puff of wind ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... carried forth the corpse, and chanting hymns of the Christian tradition, Antony grew sad, because he had no spade, wherewith to dig the ground; and thinking over many plans in his mind, said, "If I go back to the monastery, it is a three days' journey. If I stay here, I shall be of no more use. I will die, then, as it is fit; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the friction; and so he keeps himself alive for a few days; but how little progress does he make! But let him by any means have a little to begin with in the shape of implements and materials; give him an axe or a spade, a jack-knife, or only a fragment of an iron hoop, give him a gill of seed wheat, or a single potato, or no more than a grain of maize, for planting; and how soon will his condition be changed! He has begun to be, even in this small way, a capitalist; and his labor, drawing something from the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... ruth Seized on the people: they would have again Their good Grand-duke and leave Guerazzi, though He took that tax from Florence. "Much in vain He takes it from the market-carts, we trow, While urgent that no market-men remain, But all march off and leave the spade and plough, To die among the Lombards. Was it thus The dear paternal Duke did? Live the Duke!" At which the joy-bells multitudinous, Swept by an opposite wind, as loudly shook. Call back the mild archbishop to his house, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... consequence, as these gentlemen descend to tell us how we are to separate the "spiritual" gold which faintly streaks the huge mass of impure ore of fable, legend, and mysticism. Each man, it seems has his own particular spade and mattock in his "spiritual faculty"; so off with you to the diggings in these spiritual mines of Ophir. You will say, Why not stay at home, and be content at once, with the advocates of the absolute sufficiency of the internal ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... with the supernatural generally. A familiar example of this is the name of Elfbolts given by the country people in this and other lands to these old-world objects, whenever turned up by the harrow or the spade. Now the traditional preference on the part of supernatural beings for stone instruments is only one side of the thought which would, as its reverse side, show a distinct abhorrence by the same mythical personages ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Belisarius, a characteristic persistent and perhaps ineradicable in the Teutonic mind from the days of Tacitus to our own time. The Romans had always asserted, and those nations to-day who are of their tradition still assert, that the spade is the indispensable weapon of the soldier. But the barbarians and those nations to-day who are of their tradition, while they have not been so foolish as to refuse the spade altogether, have always fortified reluctantly. You ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... of all was 'spading,' which meant slewing the boat close in, as the whale was about to sound, and cutting the tendons of its tremendous death-dealing tail by a slicing blow from the two-handed razor-edged 'spade.' Perhaps the most wonderful of all exceptional escapes was that of a boat which was towed by one whale right over the back of another. And perhaps the most exciting finish to any international race was ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... eyes to find the city I was seeking evanished away indeed. But nearer at hand a child was playing upon the beach, whose spade among the pebbles had caused the birdlike ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... immediately beneath the superficial mud of the shore. Layers of leaves, too, are mixed up with the clay in other parts, and the bark of some of the trees is in perfect preservation. The condition of the wood is very curious. It is like very hard cheese, so that you can readily cut slices with a spade, and yet where more of the trunk has been preserved some parts are very hard. The trees are, I fancy, Beech and Oak. Could you identify slices if I were to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... little time I was made obedient to the word in that particular likewise. For I took my spade and went and broke the ground upon George Hill in Surrey, thereby declaring Freedom to the Creation, and that the Earth must be set free from entanglement of Lords and Land Lords, and that it shall become a Common Treasury to all, as it was first ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... men supplemented the defences made by Lyttelton, and tightened their hold upon the hill. One futile night attack caused them for an instant to change the spade for the rifle. When in the morning it was found that the Boers had, as they naturally would, brought up their outlying guns, the tired soldiers did not regret their labours of the night. It was again demonstrated ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... speak of the one memorial which is usually looked at first, the famous picture of Old Scarlett, on the wall of the western transept. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle; at his feet is a skull. At the top of the picture are the arms of the cathedral. Beneath the portrait are ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Browne and I went downwards, and from appearances had great hopes that at a particular spot we should succeed by digging, more especially as on scraping away a little of the surface gravel with our hands, there were sufficient indications to induce us to set Morgan to work with a spade, who in less than an hour dug a hole from which we were enabled to supply both our own wants and those of our animals; and as there was good grass in the creek, we tethered them out in comfort. This discovery was the more fortunate, as Flood returned ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... methods of teaching are capable of improvement, and that more use of these natural interests may with advantage be made in class time as well? Not that work of any kind can be all pleasure or always outwardly interesting; there is plenty of hard spade-work needed in any study seriously followed, in class or out. But if in education keenness is the first essential and personality the final aim, interest and freedom must have a larger place than is usually ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... twenty years were, after the lapse of that time, again made use of, according to the rule and custom of the Church. It was thus no unusual thing to find coffins while a new grave was being dug, which fell to pieces under the spade. The bodies had been packed closely, and often several had been placed ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... Japan. I only say that the particular usages to which I refer are not necessarily a proof of moral tendency. A realistic baldness prevails that makes no effort to conceal even that which is in its nature unpleasant and unaesthetic. A spade is called a spade without the slightest hesitation. Of course specific illustrations of such a point as this are out of place. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... going back to school next half. I felt a very unreasonable vexation because they seemed quite cheerful. But as I was leaving the garden to go over the fields, Baby Cecil came running after me, with his wooden spade in one hand and a plant of chick weed in the other, crying: "Charlie, dear! Come and tell Baby Cecil a story." I kissed him, and tied his hat on, which had ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... don't know how I care for you, or you couldn't talk to me like that. Many's the time I left the spade in the ground, and went across the bogs and the rushes, to think of you. You come between me and the work I'd be doing. Ay, and if Heaven opened out before me, you would come between me ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things: There is no armour against fate: Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade. ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Evans From the ploughtail and the spade; Ten years' service in the Devons Left him ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my black spade I dig the earth where all shall lie. 'Tis I will be the Black Hag of the Pack, and you shall strip them and I will dig their graves. Be it known to you ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Monro (afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Dumbarton's regiment) and I were walking in a place called Ullapool, in Loch Broom, on a little plain at the foot of a rugged hill. There was a servant walking with a spade in the walk before us; his back was to us, and his face to the hill. Before we came to him he let the spade fall, and looked toward the hill. He took notice of us as we passed near by him, which made me look at him, and perceiving him to stare a little strangely ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... remarked, stopping before Shelton, and looking down, as if at last aware of him, "to those who talk of being justified through Art. I call a spade a spade." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that pit; ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... to pay for the rolling plant and the rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some weeks could show them a rather long embankment. Then we got tired of spade work, and the enterprise languished. Finally the works came to a standstill, and I believe we spent the shareholders' money on something else, for assuredly they never saw it again. After beginning so hopefully in the art of getting up bubble companies, it is ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... who ordered that the old men and the weaklings should take this work in hand. They did it willingly enough, but had they refused the troops on guard would have forced them. It was ruled that every man physically capable of handling a spade or a pick should dig for an hour. When the first shallow graves were ready the men, under the direction of the troops, lowered the bodies several in a grave, and a strange ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... stood Kaeloikamalama with the digging spade called Kapahaelihonua, The Knife-that-cuts-the-earth, twenty fathoms its length, four men to span it. Thought the lizard, "A slaughterer this." There was Kaeloikamalama swinging the digging spade in ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... there stood a flour-mill; And this is a known fact that now I tell. A Miller there had dwelt for many a day; As any peacock he was proud and gay. He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot, Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot. A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade, Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant blade. A jolly dagger bare he in his pouch: There was no man, for peril, durst him touch. A Sheffield clasp-knife lay within his hose. Round was his face, and broad and ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the dead dog, ma'am, and bathed it, and borrowed the garden spade from me. Then he took it somewheres back in the ravine and buried it. I gave him the tool-box off the old roadster, to put what was left ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... poems. Butler ridiculed the Puritans and upheld the Royalists, while Trumbull discharged his venomed shafts at the adherents of the king. In M'Fingal, a Tory bent on destroying a liberty pole drew his sword on a Whig, who had no arms except a spade. The Whig, however, employed his weapon with such good ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... who has gardening tools Should learn by heart these gardening rules: He who owns a gardening spade Should be able to dig the depth of its blade; He who owns a gardening rake Should know what to leave and what to take; He who owns a gardening hoe Must be sure how he means his strokes to go; But he who owns a gardening fork May make it do all the other tools' ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on shore to get a few plants but, no principal chief being among the people, he was insulted, and a spade taken from him. A boat's grapnel was likewise stolen from the watering party. Tepa recovered the spade for us, but the crowd of natives was become so great, by the number of canoes that had arrived from different islands, that ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Lambquin belonged to the Odeon, where she used to take the part of the duennas. She was plain and had a common face, but she was very talented. She talked loud and was very plain-spoken. She called a spade a spade, and liked frankness and no under meaning to things. At times she was a trifle embarrassing with the crudeness of her words and her remarks, but she was kind, active, alert, and devoted. My various friends who were on service at the fortifications ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... do to leave the body so, among the rocks and brambles. He recollected that only fifty yards back they had passed a spade and pick, lying, with some other tools, by the side of the path, near that bit of old wall which was being removed. Like a man doing things in a dream, without thought or trouble, only waiting and listening for a moment before he disturbed ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of a few seasons, he had a great quantity of grain, both for food and for sowing. But this meant every year much hard work, for he had no plow nor harrow, and all the ground had to be dug with a clumsy spade, made from a very hard, heavy wood ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... great extent, but to the delight of the adventurers, from the midst of the cocoanut grove that crowned the islet there flowed a tiny stream of clear water. This was indeed a godsend, as they did not know how long they might have to remain there. With a spade, which formed part of the dirigible's outfit—"I suppose they figured on shoveling out the treasure," laughed Harry—a small basin was soon dug out for the water to settle in and make a sort of small well, from which it could be dipped out for ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the base of the hill to begin to descend it, he saw in the clouded moonlight a deserted railroad tool-house by the track. In front of it lay a broken, rusty spade. He shouldered this and proceeded up the mountain. It was a long walk, and he had to stop more than once to rest, but he got to the top at last. There was a little clearing in the woods here, where some one had camped. The ruins of a ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... destination. An express was instantly dispatched to Albany to recall the Governor. He hurried back to the capitol, much chagrined by the thought that he had lost three weeks. Every able-bodied man was immediately summoned to work at the city defences, "with spade, shovel and wheelbarrow." This working party was divided into three classes, one of which was to labor every day. A permanent guard was organized. The brewers were forbidden to malt any more grain, that it ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... 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, and other ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... all, and weighing about ten pounds; three lances of the finest steel, with wooden handles, in all about eight feet long; a keg of drinking water and one of biscuits; a bucket and piggin for bailing, a small spade, knives, axes, and a shoulder bomb-gun. It can be understood easily that six men, maneuvering in so crowded a boat, with a huge whale flouncing about within a few feet, a line whizzing down the center, to be caught in which meant instant death, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... there in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads where an Earthman had ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... a light, almost jaunty, tread. From the balcony I watched them out of sight. By-and-by, however, I spied a figure returning alone by the towpath; and, concealing myself, heard young Romeo in the courtyard carelessly demanding of the ostler the loan of a spade. From behind my curtain I watched him as again he made his way up the shore with the implement tucked under his arm. I waited in a terrible suspense. Each minute seemed an hour. A thunderstorm happening to break over the river at this juncture ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the mill, and, hastening to the cellar, began to probe in the soft, unfrozen earth. Presently his spade struck something, and he dug and dug until he had uncovered the top of a canvas bag,—the sort that sailors call a "round stern-chest." It took all his strength to lug it out, and as he did so a seam burst, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... in Sydney: flour, tea, sugar, rice, tobacco, warm clothing, and boots. Throughout all the towns nothing was saleable but provisions and diggers' tools and clothing. Every man who could handle a pick or spade was off, or preparing to be off, for the gold-fields. The roads were crowded with travellers, carriages, gigs, drays, carts, and wheelbarrows; mixed up in one confused assemblage might be seen magistrates, lawyers, physicians, clerks, tradesmen, ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... less a prey to the naughtiness of Pen, who used her as a weapon for her own enjoyment. Pen was quite determined to enjoy herself at the seaside. She would have her bucket and spade and make castles in the sand as long as ever she liked, and she would play with other children, and would make acquaintance with them. She insisted also on going very often to the shops to buy caramels or chocolates. In short, she was ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade Are simply "adapted" from other men's lore; That—plainly to speak of a "spade" as a "spade"— You've "stolen" your grouping from three or from four; That (however the writer the truth may deplore), 'Twas Gainsborough painted your "Little Boy Blue"; Smile only serenely—though cut to the core— For the man who plants ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the bodies. I thought of laying them on the curb-stone in different passages; but I was afraid the police might not see that they were waits, in which case I might be put to inconvenience. So I took a spade and dug two (or three) large holes in the quadrangle of the inn. Then I carried the bodies to the place in my rug, one at a time, shoved them in, and covered them up. A close observer might have noticed in that part of the quadrangle, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, to most minds, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... declared that he was ready to die in his capital like a bird in its nest. Every soul in the city burned with patriotism, and nobles, burghers, and laborers alike manned the walls, while even women could be seen wielding spade and axe in the repair of the neglected defences. When the siege began the citizens made several successful sallies against their foes and hope arose ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... remainder of the long day, streaming and drenched with perspiration, which the cold wind dried upon him, he wrought at a grave for her with spade and pick. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... easier to bear than that to which, even to the eyes of the casual visitor, Count Tolstoy daily subjected himself, for his study in the basement of the conventional dwelling, with its short shelf of battered books and its scythe and spade leaning against the wall, had many times lent itself to that ridicule which is the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... with a certain vicious energy, forcing the spade into the black crumbling loam with a movement full of vigor and malice. His straight black brows were knitted till they formed one dark line over his deep-set eyes. His beard was not yet old enough to hide ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... designed by Captain Percy Scott at this time came in for a great share of attention. The feature of the invention is a spade which holds the gun in position, while the recoil is absorbed by the compression of oil and springs. Great strain is thus placed on the spade, and consequently its success depends largely on the character of the soil and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... bread on other people's floors. And why? Because the Vulture's profligate son couldn't succeed in ruinin' one of my daughters; and because her brother 'Tom tould him that if ever he catched him comin' about the place again, or annoyin' his sisther, he'd split him with a spade. Afther that, they were both very friendly—father and son—and when I brought my half-year's rent—'never mind now,' said they, 'bring it home, Andy; maybe you may want it for something else that 'ud be useful to you. Buy a couple o' cows—or keep it till next rent ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... and had directed a space left for that purpose. Now the marble was removed, and the coffins of Jane and Enoch Grey rested side by side. The voice of the minister ceased, and only little Stanley's sobs broke that mournful silence which always ensues while spade or trowel does its sad work. Then the sculptured slab was replaced, and brother and sister were left to that blessed repose which is granted only to the faithful when "He ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires burned brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of voices and of the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up entrenchments. The fires died down towards morning and the British awoke to find the enemy camp deserted. Washington had carried his whole army by a roundabout route to the Princeton road and now stood between Cornwallis and his base. There ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... little girl's balance. "Go boldly back to the house; don't be afraid of any one; don't speak to any one unless it happens to be Mrs. Haddo. Be sure you are polite to her, for she is a lady. Go up to the Vivian attic and bring down the clumps of heather, and the little spade we brought with us in the very bottom of the ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... part of the scalp, with the long hair firm on it; which, on being cleaned, is neither black nor fair, but a darkish dusk, the most common of any other colour. Soon afterwards we found the skull, but it was not complete. A spade had damaged it, and one of the temple quarters was wanting. I am no phrenologist, not knowing one organ from another, but I thought the skull of that wretched man no study. If it was particular for anything, it was for a smooth, almost perfect rotundity, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... up and spake an elder mon, That held the Spade its Ace— "God save the lad! Whence comes the licht ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... opinion counted for much with Montcalm. De Levis, held back by the vacillating Vaudreuil, had not yet come from Montreal, and the swiftest of the Canadian paddlers was sent down Lake Ticonderoga in a canoe to hurry him on. Then the entire battalion of Berry went to work at once with spade and pick and ax to prepare a breastwork and abattis, stretching a line of defense in front of the fort, and not using ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and cold. 15. How 'fraid are some of dead men's beds, And others of their bones; They neither care to see their heads, Nor yet to hear their groans. 16. Now all these things are but the shade And badges of his coat;[3] The glass that runs, the scythe and spade, Though weapons more remote: 17. Yet such as make poor mortals shrink And fear, when they are told, These things are signs that they must drink With death; O then how cold. 18. It strikes them to the heart! how do They study it to shun! Indeed who can bear up, and who Can from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... have by the addition of little dairies and other alterations been made suitable for the tenants. From facts collected on the spot we have come to the conclusion that on the small holdings a good tenant makes an average profit of about L. 4 an acre, but on an allotment cultivated by means of the spade it would probably be at the rate of over L. 6 an acre. Lord Carrington was also successful in establishing small holdings on the Humberston estate in North Lincolnshire and on his Buckinghamshire estate, near ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my youth in idle parades, and hunting the bear and buffalo. The estate you have inherited is not binding on you. You can realise it, and begin by taking over two or three hundred picked Irish and English—have both races capable of handling spade and musket; purchasing some thousands of acres to establish a legal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cabinet-maker, might knock together a little box for us, to put the amber in, wherefore I sent the maid to him in the afternoon. Meanwhile we ourselves went up the Streckelberg, where I cut a young fir-tree with my pocket knife, which I had saved from the enemy, and shaped it like a spade, so that I might be better able to dig deep therewith. First, however, we looked about us well on the mountain, and seeing nobody, my daughter walked on to the place, which she straightway found again. Great God! ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... critics and their English disciples that there were no patriarchs and no Patriarchal Age? And yet, the critics notwithstanding, the Patriarchal Age has actually existed. While criticism, so-called, has been busy in demolishing the records of the Pentateuch, archaeology, by the spade of the excavator and the patient skill of the decipherer, has been equally busy in restoring their credit. And the monuments of the past are a more solid argument than the guesses and prepossessions of the modern theorist. The clay tablet ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... dig them out with a spade, but without any great success; for either we could not get to the bottom of the hole, which often terminated under a great stone; or else in breaking up the ground we inadvertently squeezed the poor insect to death. Out of one so bruised we took a multitude of eggs, which ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... child," said the field-mouse. "Under this hedge you will grow in peace. Neither scythe nor spade ever comes here. But you won't be seen, and you won't see the world ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... splendid freezing as truly most pleasing To those who the Sugar-Bush love; This morn's indications' need no explanations, As the day will abundantly prove! Then haste, comrade, and bring your spade; To clear away the snow, That our wood-fire may soon acquire A ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... but it must not be forgotten that the civilisation which the new-comers have enriched by virtue of their new found freedom from home conservatism has not been of their making; they may have added thereto but they did not beget it; the spade-work, which is the hardest part, had ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... whom he then shot. To Sandeau and Gautier the novelist explained, with such eloquence and precision, his scheme for obtaining the interred wealth that they were wrought up to the point of declaring themselves ready to set out, armed with pick-axe and spade, and to put into action Edgar Allen Poe's yarn of the Gold Bug. When money was the theme, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... young man flooring the barley. As he turned and re-turned it with his spade he wept so copiously above it that he was frequently obliged to pause and wipe away his tears with his arm, for he could no longer see the barley he was spreading. When the maltster had interrupted himself thus for the third occasion, Martin Pippin concluded that ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Stormy died, I dug his grave— I dug his grave with a silver spade; I hove him up with an iron crane, And lowered him down with ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... calling, almost out of breath]. I wanted to catch you before you went down. [Enters.] There was nobody else at home to bring the spade, so I offered to ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... poet's use of vulgar slang upbraid, But, when I'm speaking by the card, I call a spade a spade; And I, who have been touched of that same mania, myself, Am well aware that, when it comes to parting with his pelf, The curio collector is so blindly lost in sin That he doesn't spend his money—he simply blows ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... to witness the criminal's reward. He is taken out beyond the lines to a spot where the sun shines in all its unprotected fierceness. He is led to an ant-hill full of busy, wicked, little crawlers; the top of the ant-hill is cut off with a spade, leaving a honeycombed surface for the sleepy one to stand upon (not much fear of him sleeping whilst he is there). He is ordered to mount the hill and stand with feet close together. His rifle is placed in his hands, the butt resting between his toes, the muzzle clasped ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... older ones shook their heads and wondered what old Colonel Selden Phelps would say if he could say anything. And the spirit of progress and improvement reached even to the grounds. Zenas Third toiled with spade and pruning-knife and bundles of shrubs and plants came from Boston and were set out with lavish prodigality. In the matter of alterations to the house Eve was consulted on every possible occasion, while garden improvements ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... yard, pushed open the gate of the split-board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... Carmichael was compelled to devote herself to him, a somewhat monotonous task, in spite of his garrulous egotism. Timotheus, by the Squire's orders, harnessed the horses to the waggonette, and deposited therein a pickaxe and a spade. Mr. Bigglethorpe brought out his fishing tackle, joyous over the prospect of a day's fishing, and Mr. Terry lugged along a huge basket, prepared by his daughter in the kitchen, with all manner of eatables and drinkables for the picnic. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... man inured to labor, though of the rudest sort, who steps on shore in America from Europe, is worth a dollar per day, and can readily command it. Though he only knows how to wield such rude, clumsy implements as the pick and spade, there are dozens of places where his services are in request at a dollar per day the year through, and he can even be transported hence to the place where his services are wanted, on the strength of his contract to work and the credit of his future earnings. We do not say this is the case ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... given, hard work is required; those must also be disappointed who expect to live in style from off the produce of a small Canadian farm, and those whose imaginary dignity revolts from plough, and spade, and hoe, and those who invest borrowed capital in farming operations. The fields of the slothful in Canada bring forth thorns and thistles, as his fields brought them forth in England. Idleness is absolute ruin, and drunkenness carries with it worse ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... means of a native guide discovered a European camp, one mile north on west side of flat. At, or near this camp, traces of horses, camels, and whites were found. Hair, apparently belonging to Mr. Wills, Charles Gray, Yr. Burke, or King, was picked from the surface of a grave dug by a spade, and from the skull of a European buried by the natives. Other less important traces-such as a pannikin, oil can, saddle stuffing, &c., have been found. Beware of the natives, on whom we have had to fire. We do not intend to return to Adelaide, but proceed to west of north. From information, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... shrink back and are sore afraid At the furrows five that rib the glade, And the voodoo work of the master's spade. ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... their affairs? He perceived that it was only by turning his back and running that he would escape from his adventure with any portion of his self-possession. Truly, this fair-seeming and wonderful civilisation was like the floor of a charnel-house or a field of battle; anywhere one drove a spade beneath its surface, he uncovered horrors, sights for the eyes and stenches for the nostrils that caused him ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... strength combined with the utmost gentleness, and an uncommon regularity of nature. Occasionally he returns for a day or two to resume his place among scholars and idle people, as, for instance, the present week, when he has thrown aside his spade and hoe to attend the Commencement at Cambridge. He is a rare man,—a perfect original, yet without any one salient point; a character to be felt and understood, but almost impossible to describe: for, should you seize ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shore I put up some wine, a large lump of wax, a saw, an axe, a spade, some rope, and all sorts of things that might be of use to us. I knew where the Turk's case of wine was, and I put that in the boat while the man was on shore. By one more trick I got all that I had need of. I said to the boy, "the Turk's guns are in ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... home an' your own contree! Strike for your native lan'! Kip workin' away wit' de spade an' hoe, Den jump w'en you hear de bugle blow, For danger 's aroun', above, below, But de bugle will tell if it 's ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... to the King as one of the chief factors in its evolution. Mr. W. R. Cremer, M.P., the well-known Radical, made the following comment in the Daily News as to this victory for Arbitration: "It has been the privilege and joy of others to do the spade work in this beneficent movement, but to King Edward the opportunity was, at the psychological moment, presented to complete the work of thirty years. How well and how nobly His Majesty performed his part the history of the past nine months clearly shows. Indeed, the King seems likely ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... no idea of remaining inactive, and insisted upon taking a part in the management of the craft, and so Dick made him the "Bosun," and set him to work rowing with his little wooden spade. ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... reader remained to see the grave partly filled in, and to try to persuade Bobby to go away with him. But the little dog resisted with such piteous struggles that the man put him down again. The grave digger leaned on his spade for a bit of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... received, in that it shows to what a considerable extent waste lands may, without any very heavy expenditure of money, be brought into profitable cultivation, and at the same time, under a well-regulated system of spade husbandry, yield abundant employment to agricultural labourers and their families. The following is the substance of the document referred to:—His lordship, who has large estates in Dorsetshire, found that a tract of land, called Shepherd's Corner, about 200 acres in extent, was wholly ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... rivers in the Land of Mo, one of which flows milk of a very rich quality. Some of the islands in Milk River are made of excellent cheese, and the people are welcome to spade up this cheese whenever they wish to eat it. In the little pools near the bank, where the current does not flow swiftly, delicious cream rises to the top of the milk, and instead of water-lilies great strawberry leaves grow upon the surface, and the ripe, red berries lie dipping their noses ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... better feeding area for growing roots, permits greater water storage, forwards growth of trees and brings them into bearing earlier than trees set in spade-dug holes. Write for FREE BOOKLET about how to blast tree holes with Red ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... coal on the ground. Then the coal-man drew his horse and cart away, and set to work with a spade ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... oldest of them was committed to writing before the second century A. D. They are curious specimens of the translator's work, combining text and commentary in a remarkable manner. Additions and changes are freely made; the simple sentences of the old record are greatly expanded; not only is a spade generally called a useful ligneous and ferruginous agricultural implement, but many things are said concerning the aforesaid spade which Moses or David or Isaiah ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... we can exhaust them with our machines or divert them from their course. Here we have not to work at an artesian well, narrow and dark, where all the boring implements have to work in the dark. No; we can work under the open sky, with spade and pickaxe, and, by the help of blasting, our work ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... here are the venerable musket and the respectable wig. Even they have seen too much hard service to be able fully to appreciate the feelings of a gentleman who has been brought up as I have. The degradation the musket especially endured, in being used as a spade by such a very common sort of person as Judah Loring—a degradation of which, far from being ashamed, he seems actually proud; all this, I say, my friends, makes a wide separation between us never to ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... woodsmen of the mountain side! Ho! dwellers in the vales! Ho! ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre,[3] leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade; Let desk, and case, and counter rot, And burn your books ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... down her spade, and came in laughing and glowing, her hair tumbled, her collar awry, her dress soiled, her hands not over clean, but looking, oh! so indescribably fresh, and fair, and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... to cowardice nor fear of death. The mad bull with the spade stands near by. Look into this strange cup of figures and graves. Some recent death and gloom has somehow filled your mind with renewed horror. You have also felt that you are about to die. Not a comfortable thought, madam, to be snuffed out of all earthly hopes! Abandon ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... been unduly censured for the coarseness of his language upon Certain topics; but very little of this appears in his earlier poems, and what there is, was in accordance with the taste of the period, which never hesitated to call a spade a spade, due in part to the reaction from the Puritanism of the preceding age, and in part to the outspeaking frankness which disdained hypocrisy. It is shown in Dryden, Pope, Prior, of the last of whom Johnson said that no lady objected to have his poems in her library; still more in the dramatists ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a spade, pick and shovel, an ax, a hatchet, two large pails, a barn lantern, a can of kerosene, a dozen candles, a cocoa box filled with matches, a pair of scissors, needles, buttons, pins and safety pins, ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... instant, in execution so prompt, so silent in action, so punctual in destruction? The vestry keeps, as it were, a tryst with the grass. The "sunny spots of greenery" are given just time enough to grow and be conspicuous, and the barrow is there, true to time, and the spade. (To call that spade a spade ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... out her spade and bucket for Kitty to see. "Look, look," said little Barbara, "Daddy gave them me to build castles in the sand." Barbara spoke so fast that she panted, and laughed in a ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another word. Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's presence beside him. From the nature of their employment, in which he handled the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he got good exercise and she got none. But she was an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she would not complain while he was disposed to continue work. But ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... fashion of sheltering me were already partly fallen; and I was thus not only perilously exposed myself, but enabled to command some part of the garden walks and (under an evergreen arch) the front lawn and windows of the cottage. For long nothing stirred except my friend with the spade; then I heard the opening of a sash; and presently after saw Miss Flora appear in a morning wrapper and come strolling hitherward between the borders, pausing and visiting her flowers—herself as fair. THERE was a friend; HERE, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which, most probably, the carpenters had used in the construction of the house, and forgotten. We put it carefully by, in order that we might fasten it to a pole, and use it in the moment of our flight as a spear. We found, also, a spade in the court, which we hid, that it too might serve as a weapon. Besides this, the sailors, on the night when we made the attempt, were to arm themselves with some long poles, which had been ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... in front of each of which was stationed a sentry. Once, from the hills behind, a great white-winged aeroplane glided over his head on its way to make a reconnaissance. Queerest sight of all, here and there were peasants at work in the fields. One old man leaned upon his spade and watched as the car passed. Not a dozen yards from him was a great hole in the ground where a shell had burst, and a little further away a barn in ruins. The car was forced to stop here to let a cavalcade of ammunition waggons pass by. Surgeon-Major Thomson leaned from his seat and spoke ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and she has layer upon layer of seeds in the soil for this purpose, and the wonder is that each kind lies dormant until it is wanted. If I uncover the earth in any of my fields, ragweed and pigweed spring up; if these are destroyed, harvest grass, or quack grass, or purslane appears. The spade or plow that turns these under is sure to turn up some other variety, as chickweed, sheep-sorrel, or goose-foot. The soil is a storehouse ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... their "curtlaxes" (cutlasses) to dig the frozen ground to get at the Indians' corn, "having forgotten to bring spade or mattock." "Daggers" are mentioned as used in their celebrated duel by Dotey and Leister, servants of Stephen Hopkins. Bradford narrates that on one of their exploring tours on the Cape the length of guard duty performed at night by each ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... Christian instruction for the people should ever be two-fold, by speech and by print: neither the Preacher without the Press nor the Press without the Preacher. He was heard to say that in reading Montalembert's Monks of the West he had been struck with the author's eloquent apostrophe to the spade, the instrument of civilization and Christianity for the wild hordes of the early middle ages. Much rather, he said, should we worship the Press as the medium of the light of God to all mankind. He felt that the Apostolate of the Press might well absorb ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... a little street with the remains of an old temple, now stood a convent; a grave was dug in the garden, for a young nun had died, and she was to be lowered in the earth at this early hour of the morning. The spade struck against a stone which appeared of a dazzling whiteness—the white marble came forth—it rounded into a shoulder;—they used the spade with care, and a female head became visible—butterfly wings. They raised from ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... interest, as being calculated to decide the great question, and all the principal geologists were on the spot several hours before operations commenced, for the purpose of inspecting the surface of the ground before it was disturbed by the spade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... victim of his royal rage. 60 Ev'n mighty Pam, that Kings and Queens o'erthrew And mow'd down armies in the fights of Lu, Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid, Falls undistinguish'd by the victor spade! ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... restored tranquillity that he showed his true capacity. He employed the natives as labourers in making roads, useful both for war and peace. They found wages better than warfare. As navvies, they were paid half a crown a day, and were reported to do more work as spade-men than an equal number of soldiers would. At no time did the Maoris seem to make such material progress as during the twelve peaceful years ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... our quarry, Glendinning," said Claverhouse, drawing rein as they approached a small cottage, near to which a man was seen at work with a spade. ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne |
