"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while he talked loudly and with much gesticulation, apostrophising himself, scolding himself, uttering little cries of triumph or self-encouragement. He did not allow Lecoq to have a moment's rest. He wanted this or that or the other thing. He demanded paper and a pencil. Then he wanted a spade; and finally he cried out for plaster of Paris, some water ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... had better speak of my father by his right name, and endeavour to behave rather less like an idiot. Here, take a spade, ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... farther. I bade him farewell, cheered him up, told him to rest and then follow in my track, abandoning everything. The camels were lying half-dead with necks stretched out. Kasim alone was fit to accompany me farther. He took a spade and a pail and the paunch of the sheep. I had only my watch, compass, a penknife, a pen, and a scrap of paper, two small tins of lobster and chocolate, a small box, matches and ten cigarettes. But the food gave us little satisfaction, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... in such a way as to preserve essential characters. Even then it is possible, if the ground is not too hard, to dig them out with the fingers, or with a stout knife, but I have often found specimens which could only be taken up with a trowel or spade. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... constant fear and dread And flop and squawk and flight the chickens led! Above the fences, either side, were seen The neighbor-houses, set in plots of green Dooryards and greener gardens, tree and wall Alike whitewashed, and order in it all: The scythe hooked in the tree-fork; and the spade And hoe and rake and shovel all, when laid Aside, were in their places, ready for The hand of either the possessor or Of any neighbor, welcome to the loan Of any tool he might not ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... by this time to over twenty thousand men poorly equipped and fed, though not more than fifteen thousand were available for immediate action. Congress was slow to provide supplies, and everything dragged. Many of the men carried only a spade, shovel or pick-axe. At the call of the country, they responded with shovels in hand, having no guns. They could throw up works, though destitute of arms to repel the foe. It was this destitute condition of our army that led a British officer ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... of us plants, and the other waters, but Jack likes the watering-pot; And then when my turn comes to water he says it's too hot! We sometimes quarrel about the garden, and once Jack hit me with the spade; So we settled to divide it in two by a path up the middle, and that's made. We want some yellow sand now to make the walk pretty, but there's none about here, So we mean to get some in the old carpet-bag, if we go to the seaside this year. ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that the last Emigration-squadron was about to sail in a few minutes; and that, although the number was completed, his broad shoulders and powerful frame had gained him a place. He was presented with a spade, a blanket, and a hard biscuit, and in a quarter of an hour was quitting ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... one of the mischievous school-boys throwed a stone at him yesterday, and broke one of his legs.' And the old shepherd's eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with his shirt-sleeve; then he drove his spade deep in the ground to hide what he felt, for he did not ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... 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 ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... sir," he continued, as he softly rubbed the barrel of his piece to get rid of some of the rust that had encrusted it, "they expected to find us a set of quiet spade-and-hoe-and-wheelbarrow sort of people, quite different to them, as are looked upon as being ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... rule, I call a spade a spade. When I mean The Times, I say The Times, and I condemn the old-fashioned twaddle of talking about "a morning contemporary." But to-day I depart from my rule and content myself with saying that I lately read in an important newspaper a ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... politician did not like artists. Just as the Revolution did not find chemists necessary, he considered that the Republic did not need writers, painters and musicians. These were all useless individuals, and the Republic would give them a little surprise by putting a labourer's spade or a shoemaker's awl into their hands. George Sand considered this idea not only ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... craze creed tribe drone bean shape steep brine stone bead state sleek spire probe beam crape fleet bride shore lean fume smite blame clear mope spume spite flame drear mold fluke quite slate blear tore flume whine spade spear robe dure spine ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... the plate and apple to her father, and went with them into the forest. They walked about and gathered blackberries. All at once they saw a spade lying upon the ground. The wicked sisters killed Little Simpleton with it, and buried ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... secret pools. At each turn of the road, forest, and always more forest, climbing with us as we climbed, and dropped away from us to narrow valleys that converged on slate-blue distances. At one of these turns we overtook a company of soldiers, spade on shoulder and bags of tools across their backs—"trench-workers" swinging up to the heights to which we were bound. Life must be a better thing in this crystal air than in the mud-welter of the Argonne and the fogs of the North; and these men's faces were ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... thrustin' for your life, You must leave 'im very careful where 'e fell; An' may thank your stars an' gaiters if you didn't feel 'is knife That you ain't told off to bury 'im as well. Then the sweatin' Tommies wonder as they spade the beggars under Why lootin' should be entered as a crime; So if my song you'll 'ear, I will learn you plain an' clear 'Ow to pay yourself for fightin' overtime. (Chorus) With ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... and go at six? why, about this much, ma'am," said the gardener, marking off a piece of the border with his spade. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... that in order to believe this fact in external nature, another fact must take place in my mind, a process must be performed upon my ideas; but so it must in every thing else that I do. I can not dig the ground unless I have the idea of the ground, and of a spade, and of all the other things I am operating upon, and unless I put those ideas together.(30) But it would be a very ridiculous description of digging the ground to say that it is putting one idea into another. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... or another before he gets back," said Samson Dee, as he ceased digging, and rested one foot upon the top of his spade, watching his young master contemplatively as he went along the road for a short distance before leaping up the bank, and beginning to tramp among heath, brake, and furze, over the ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... harmless snappers up of unconsidered trifles is the truffle-hunter. At Alton, in Hampshire, one of these men appeared in summer; he carried an implement like a short-handled thistle spud, but with a much longer blade, similar to that of a small spade but narrower; he was accompanied by a frisky little Frenchified dog, unlike any dog one commonly sees, and very alert. The hunting ground was beneath the overhanging branches of beech-trees, growing on a chalky soil; the man encouraged the dog by voice to hunt the surface of the land ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... a glass of grog Before I tell of matches seen And heroes of the mighty slog! While hussies play near mistletoe The game of kiss-me-if-you-dare, I'll dig for you in memory's snow, And where my eager spade shall go Uncover bliss for you to ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... boy answered, readily yielding up the spade, however, and wiping the perspiration from his brow, "it is pretty ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... was plucky and persevering, but he was cold and hard, without a human fiber or a drop of red blood in his make-up. Even as a boy he bragged that he had no enthusiasms, that he believed in common sense, that he called a spade a spade, and would not use two words where one would do. His intelligence was above the average, but he was so anxious to be thought a person of rare sagacity and smartness, unswayed by emotion, that nothing was too heartless for him to do if it ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... see: Nobody knows dat I dot it, I teep it safe here in my pottet. And here's my ball too in my pottet, And here's my pennies, one, two, free, That Aunty Mary dave to me, To-morrow day I'll buy a spade, When I'm out walking with the maid; I tant put that in here my pottet! But I can use it when I've dot it. Here's some more sings in my pottet, Here's my lead, and here's my string; And once I had an iron ring, But through a hole it lost one day, And this is ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... "Miss Grace" could only rest with their administration to her wants; and I was told not one of them left the spot until the place had resumed all the appearance of freshness and verdure which it possessed before the spade had been applied. The same roses, removed with care, were restored to their former beds; and it would not have been easy for a stranger to discover that a new-made grave lay by the side of those of the late Captain Miles Wallingford and ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... long the grass waved softly in the courtyard below—the grass that was so soon to wither, uprooted by the spade; and all night long the Gadfly lay alone in the darkness, ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... told herself that the work was to be done; so she dragged the body away thence, and across the brook, and a little way into the meadow, and then she went back and fetched mattock and spade from the outhouse, where she knew they lay, and so fell to digging a grave for the corpse of her dead terror. But howso hard she might toil, she was not through with the work ere night began to fall on her, and she had no mind to go on with her digging by night. Wherefore she went ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... be not afraid; Look labor boldly in the face; Take up the hammer or the spade, And blush not for ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hope to go to bed on, and you may believe I rose bright and early in the morning, to run with my shingle-spade to the cemetery of all my dead pets. With an anxious heart, I removed the earth, and unfolded the plantain-leaf. Sure enough, there was my pet, "alive and kicking!" He hopped out on to a full-blown dandelion, and looked about him as pert and knowing as ever. I caught ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... perception so 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 hardly ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... himself so heavily in a cabbage patch, that his revolver became unhitched from his belt, and when the halt was over he lurched to his feet and on, without noticing its loss. Careless? Perhaps, but one of his men lost his rifle and never noticed it, because he was carrying a spade! ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking to have come again, and taken it from its prison, but died before the opportunity had arrived, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... and let me go with Billy." Then, breaking off with the unexpected garrulity of children, she continued: "I am getting quite strong now; I was down on the beach this morning, and watched the little boys and girls building mounds. When I am quite well, uncle, won't you buy me a spade and bucket, and mayn't I build sand ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... 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, immediately beneath me, an unknown quantity—the gardener: how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... points within the bastions and exterior defences, and compelled the garrison to shelter themselves behind an inner rampart, constructed during the winter in anticipation of this extremity:—"So that, in effect," says Rycaut, "this most impregnable fort of the world was forced and taken by the spade and shovel, and by a crew of unarmed labourers, who understood nothing more than the plough and harrow." The promised succours, however, were now at hand. On the 22d of June, a French fleet appeared off the port, having on board 7000 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of the same obligation. The multitudes of men who were arrayed in the fields of Baylen, and upon the mountains of the North; the peasants of Asturias, and the students of Salamanca; and many a solitary and untold-of hand, which, quitting for a moment the plough or the spade, has discharged a more pressing debt to the country by levelling with the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;—these have attested the efficacy of the passions which we have been contemplating—that ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... his dispositions were as follows. The bed of the river, which lies nearly east and west, is from fifty to one hundred yards wide and about thirty deep, in soil that lends itself easily to the spade. On both sides, for a mile above and below Wolveskraal Drift, the edges of the banks were trenched, and at either end of these trenches traverses, thrown forward at right angles, served to strengthen against enfilading attack. North of the ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... in my heart all the day long," he writes to his wife, "though I say nothing. I am melancholy for the public and anxious for my family. As for myself a frock and trousers, a hoe and a spade would do for my ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... was raging over the possession of a spade that had been left in the alley by the workmen who were laying a concrete pavement into ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... He stood, spade in hand, contemplating, from one angle and another, what he had done. He was perhaps nine years old; if so, small for his age. He had very thin legs in very short grey knickerbockers, a pale freckled face, and hair ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... rampage, when least expected, to pillage and burn the houses and then massacre the inhabitants. In those days it was impossible to labor singly in the fields. The tillers of the soil were obliged to work in groups, with a gun in one hand, and a scythe or spade in the other, often at the peril of their lives. These intrepid French Catholics had left peaceful, happy homes, and the blessings of a Christian government, for no other purpose than to convert wild Indians, who were absolutely under the dominion of the devil, and to spread abroad the ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... looking at me like that for?" he demanded, without being able to hide a grin. "Haven't I been exercising? Haven't I? What have you got to say about it? Didn't I spade up that old melon-patch and plant sixteen rows of carrots in ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... a mickle treasure o' kale and potatoes, and who so likely to find it as the laird's gardener?" and then he shouldered his spade ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... Because no sense of virtue,—sudden 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, To bless the people with his frightened ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... many reverent, and holy, and divine thoughts and memories clustered round that book, that we didn't love to have 'em disturbed. It wuz like havin' somebody take a spade and dig up the voyalets and lilies on the grave of the nearest and dearest, to try to ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Don't thank me, ma'am; thank the act of parleyment! Rum, fourpence; two penny pieces and a Willi'm-and- Mary tizzy makes a shilling; and a spade half-guinea is eleven and six (RE-ENTER MRS. DRAKE WITH SUPPER, PIPE, ETC.); and a blessed majesty George the First crown-piece makes sixteen and six; and two shilling bits is eighteen and six; and a new half-crown makes - no it don't! O, no! Old Pew's too smart a hand to be bammed with ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... me that I have taken from her the time of one day's work—to give bread to my aged mother and to my homeless sisters, the poor victims of unrelenting tyranny. Returning to Europe, I may find my own little children in a condition that again the father will have to take the spade or the pen into his hand to ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... said a shrill treble voice, and a little curly-headed apparition came running out of the bedroom, flourishing a wooden spade. ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... and grim and grey at the horrible noise I made, And held up its hands in a pious way when I call'd a spade a spade; But I cared no whit for the blame of it, and nothing at all for its praise, And the whole consign'd with a tranquil ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... things around us were precisely such as nature had finished them; the trees were straight and lofty, and appeared as if they had never been obliged to art in their progress to maturity; the streams of water were winding and irregular, and not odiously drawn into a right line by the spade of the ditcher. The soil had never submitted to the ploughshare, and the air that circulated through this domain of nature was replete with that balmy fragrance, which was breathed into the lungs of the long-lived race ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... at his pretty garden. He is a very old man, and is sometimes bewildered nowadays. He calls to Dering, the gardener, who is on a ladder, pruning. Dering, who comes to him, is a rough, capable young fellow with fingers that are already becoming stumpy because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... panting side, let go the crutch, took hold of her head in the way that is unmistakable, and faced her at the barricade. As he did so a countryman sprang up at his right hand and struck furiously at him with a heavy potato spade. The blow was aimed at Dinny Johnny, but the moment was miscalculated, and it fell on "Matchbox" instead. The sharp blade gashed her hind quarter, but with a spring like a frightened deer she rose to the jump. For one supreme moment Dinny Johnny thought she had ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... I keep my spade and hoe and rake. There is a little spade which I used to use, it will just suit you, and we will go and arrange the garden you are to have," she said as ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... what it builds with laws and with that sword which is behind all laws. Non-resistance is for the non-constructive man, for the hermit in the cave and the naked saint in the dust; the builder and maker with the first stroke of his foundation spade uses force and opens war ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... to think much more rapidly than the men with whom Birt was associated, and his briskness in arranging the matter had an incongruous suggestion of the giddiness of youth. He said that he would go home with Birt to fetch the spade, and while there he could settle the terms with the boy's mother, and then they ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... she stood to serve him, but not with the air of a serving-maid; on the contrary, though her face was bronzed by the winds, and her hands calloused by spade and hoe, there was little of the rustic in her action. Her blouse, cut sailor fashion at the throat, displayed a lovely neck (also burned by the sun), and she carried herself with the grace of an athlete. Her trust and confidence ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the pigs, poultry, etc., till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea; from tea till supper, review. So jogs the day, and I am happy.... I raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: we have whatever milk ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... having commendably obscured the lantern beneath his overcoat. The farther side of the hillock had been tunnelled to a depth of perhaps three feet; a lantern suspended somehow in the roof showed the spade which had done the work; it also showed, within the cavity, the two girls who had accompanied the Brigade from Wimbledon, together with two soldiers. The soldiers were rankers, but one of the girls talked with perfect correctness in a very refined voice; ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... 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
... from bands and piers; for a band by a moonlit sea calls you to be very grown-up, and the beach and the crabs —such as are left—call you to be a child; and between the two you can very easily be miserable. I can see myself with a spade and bucket being extraordinarily happy. The other day I met a lucky little boy who had a pile of sand in his garden to play with, and I was fortunate enough to get an order for a tunnel. The tunnel which I constructed for him was a good one, ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... existence in only one way—that is, by consuming less than is produced. If one has a dollar one can spend it either for an article of consumption, say confectionery, or for an article of production, say a spade. He who buys a spade becomes a capitalist to the amount of a dollar—that is, he becomes the owner of tools. The process is precisely the same whether the amount in question is a dollar or a million dollars. [Footnote: T.N. Carver, "How to ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... was a nest of free-lances and adventurers. Abraham Yachiny, the illustrious preacher, an early believer, was inspired to have a tomb opened in the ancient "house of life." He asked the sceptical Rabbis to dig up the earth. They found it exceedingly hard to the spade, but, persevering, presently came upon an earthen pot and therein a parchment which ran thus: "I, Abraham, was shut up for forty years in a cave. I wondered that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then a voice replied to me: 'A son shall be born in the year of the world 5386 and be ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that seems to us the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... barrier between them, lying at their feet. Her ready sympathy brought her near; but while the dog lay there, mangled and bloody, he could think of nothing else. It was Elodie who suggested immediate and decent burial. Why should he not go to the hotel for a workman and a spade? ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... safe under the veranda, panting, laughing, grumbling, or congratulating themselves on having been so close to a place of shelter, Miss Wilson observed, with some uneasiness, a spade—new, like the hasp of the gate—sticking upright in a patch of ground that someone had evidently been digging lately. She was about to comment on this sign of habitation, when the door of the chalet was flung open, and Jane screamed as a man darted out to the spade, which ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... felt; on the left side was my bayonet and scabbard, and entrenching tool handle, this handle strapped to the bayonet scabbard. In the rear was my entrenching tool, carried in a canvas case. This tool was a combination pick and spade. A canvas haversack was strapped to the left side of the belt, while on my back was the pack, also of canvas, held in place by two canvas straps over the shoulders; suspended on the bottom of the pack was my mess tin or canteen in a neat little canvas case. My waterproof sheet, looking like ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... stood up on tip-toe on the edge of the horizon, looked about him, then launched a long yellow ray directly at the crack in the nursery shutter. The ray was sharp: it smote full on Archie's eyelids, as he lay asleep, surrounded by "Robinson Crusoe," two red apples, a piece of gingerbread, and a spade, all of which he had taken to bed with him. When he felt the prick of the sun-ray he opened his eyes wide. "Why, morning's come!" he said, and without more ado raised himself ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... had been let down at the side of the vessel, on which those who had cut off the head were stationed. One of them now made a hole in the blubber with the instrument used for cutting-in, called a spade. A rope was then fastened round the waist of another man, and he descended on the body of the whale, taking the hook I have spoken of in his hand. This hook he fastened into the hole he had cut. ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... out of their mouths. All this, ever, is of the less 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 oracle, listen to its responses ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... these small hamlets through which we passed Ruskin with a gang of his pupils in flannels started roadmaking, and for days and weeks were to be seen at their arduous task of digging and excavation, toiling and moiling with pick, spade, and barrow, while Ruskin stood by, applauding and encouraging them in their task of making and beautifying the roads of these villages which he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... lifetime was the fairest in the world." "'Tis here," said Serapion; and, placing his lantern on the ground, he slipped the crowbar into the chinks of the slab and essayed to lift it. The stone yielded, and he set to work with the spade. As for me, stiller and more gloomy than the night itself, I watched him at work, while he, bending over his ill-omened task, sweated and panted, his forced and heavy breath sounding like the gasps of the dying. The sight was strange, and lookers-on ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... from distant lands know naught, in truth, Of the frontier hardships, of the settler's needs. Can you not inform them in the plainest terms Of the falseness of the accusations made? Stay! myself will write them and boldly refute All their calumnies; set forth details in order, Calling 'spade a spade'—'twill be my ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... Mother pleaded for another trial of it—just one more. She had wonderful faith in the selection, had Mother. She pleaded until the fire burned low, then Dad rose and said: "Well, we'll try it once more with corn, and if nothing comes of it why then we MUST give it up." Then he took the spade and raked the fire together and covered it with ashes—we always covered the fire over before going to bed so as to keep it alight. Some mornings, though, it would be out, when one of us would ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... waited till the grave was filled and the turf laid down, a trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even Posty asked the reason so much as by a look, and Drumtochty, as it passed, made ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... he said, "is the top of his trade; But there's others can give him a start with the spade: Yon dog, he carried the Squire ashore, And a Christian ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... was inclined to demur. A few deft and pointed questions, very clear, such as might naturally occur to Hillyard or Luttrell, or Sir Chichester himself might come in usefully to put the polish, as it were, on Millie's spade work. Harry ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... child 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 ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... talking at the gate, one of them carrying a spade in hands still crusted with the soil of graves. Their very aspect was delightful to me; and I crept nearer to them, thinking to pick up some snatch of sexton gossip, some "talk fit for a charnel,"[35] something, in fine, worthy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 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 ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... that has been long in grass; tholluff bawn being used to signify grass land about to be brought into cultivation; and tholluff breagh, or red land, land which has been recently turned. To redden land is still used to express either to plough land, or, more generally, to turn land with the spade. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... instrument, like a little pickaxe, which they make by splitting the end of a thick piece of wood, that serves for a handle, and putting another piece of wood, sharp pointed at one end into the slit. This instrument serves them instead of a hoe or spade, for ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... Macaranga tanarius. Euphorbia eremophilla (caustic bush). Dodonaea viscosa (hop-bush). Passiflora foetida (stinking passion fruit). Ipomea pes caprae (goat-footed convolvulus). Ionidium suffruticosum, Form A. Ionidium suffruticosum, Form B (spade-flower). Blainvillea latifolia. Gnaphalium luteo-album (flannel-leaf or cud-weed). Vernonia cinerea (erect, fluffy-seeded weed). Remirea maritima (spiky sand-binder). Cyperus decompositus (giant sedge). Erigeron linifolius (cobbler's pegs or ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... extremity of the blade was of increased breadth, and either terminated in a sharp point, or was rounded at the end. The blade was frequently inserted into the handle, and they were bound together, about the centre, with twisted rope. Being the most common tool, answering for hoe, spade, and pick, it is frequently represented in the sculptures, and several, which were found in the tombs of Thebes, are preserved in ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in and out with disturbed looks and murmured inquiries. He refused to answer them, but on one splendid morning, blaring life like a trumpet call, he told them he was better and was going back to work. He got down to the river bank, fumbled over his spade, and then Daddy John had to help him back to the cabin. With gray face and filmed eyes he lay on the bunk while they stood round him, and the children came peeping fearfully through the doorway. They ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... morning Mr Finlayson set forth accompanied by Mrs O'Neil, for her cottage. Shane was watching for them. The widow sent him for a spade, and some minutes were employed in digging, before the promised box was discovered, so deeply down in the earth had she ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... premises to furnish all needful accommodation for 300 children (from their earliest days up to 15 or 10 years old), together with a sufficiently large piece of ground in the neighbourhood of Bristol, for building the premises upon and the remainder for cultivation by the spade, would cost at least Ten Thousand Pounds. I was not discouraged by this, but trusted in the ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... Librum Jobi (for the Rector's right hand was shaken by palsy and the drawings occupied more and more of Johnny Whitelamb's time); she devised new schemes for eking out the family income. She bred poultry. With Johnny's help—he was famous with the spade—she added half an acre to the kitchen garden and planted it. The summer of 1727 proved one of the rainiest within men's memory, and floods covered the face of the country almost to the Parsonage door. "I hope," wrote the Rector to John on June 6th, "I may be able ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dyke remembered the story as clearly as though it had happened but yesterday. "The ice was all of a foot thick in the creek but men cut it with ax and maddock, spade and saw. It had to be a big opening to make room for Deborah Partlow and her chair. Though her children and grandchildren and old Obadiah protested—'It'll kill you!' 'You'll be stone dead before night!'—Granny had her way. Nor would she put on ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... I was thoughtlessly cruel. Neither can we remain here, only long enough to bury those bodies. It would be inhuman not to do that. Sam, there is an old spade leaning against the cabin ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... land costumes and work out-of-doors. Miss Chadwick, whose methods were on the newest lines, taught rhythmic digging, which is far less fatiguing than anyhow exertions, and was very particular about the position of the body and the action of the spade. Miss Todd, looking on with huge satisfaction, felt that she was cultivating girls as well as vegetables, and that her educational experiment promised elements of success. Certain special pupils were allowed ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... a spade, a spade, For,—and a shrouding sheet: O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a guest is meet. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... coast surveys, erection of sea- walls in the Atlantic states—"everything on the margin of the ocean, but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1035.] "Not one stone," he said, "had yet been broken, not one spade of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted as fully the power to construct roads and canals for the benefit of circulation and trade in the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... countless Germans. He dreamt of swift armoured aeroplanes swooping down upon the flying airship, and sending it reeling earthward, the men screaming. He imagined a shattered Zeppelin staggering earthward in the fields behind the Dower House, and how he would himself run out with a spade and smite the Germans down. "Quarter indeed! Kamerad! ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... water will thus sink about them and more moisture be retained. Sour, undrained soils where the water stands should be raised a little above the level of the lawn, if for Asters, so that excess of water may drain off. They like moisture but not stagnant water. Whatever the character of the ground, spade it deep so that it may be mellow, and make it very rich. If the ground is to be spaded a foot deep, a 3-inch layer of rotted manure is about right to dig in. Rotted manure does not mean fresh or lumpy manure. It means that the fertilizing element ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... if a man doesn't work when a woman puts him at it he isn't worth the powder—I won't waste time even in original remarks. I'll promise you there will be double the number of trees out by night. Let me take your father's spade and show you how I can dig. Is this the place? If I don't catch up with Hiram, you may send the tramp back to the city." And before she could remonstrate, his coat was ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems, but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and cool grottoes and umbrageous ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... attentively noting the "run" of the strata. Glancing about him, he saw a small broken branch lying on the ground at no great distance; and securing it he cut away with his knife the sides of the larger end so as to produce a flat surface, making of the branch a very narrow-bladed wooden spade, in fact. Reaching as far forward as he could, he plunged the blade of his extemporised spade into the sandy bottom of the pool, pressing it gently down into the sand until he could get it no deeper, when he "prized" it upward, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... it was finished before night, and in condition to receive all the shot of Tilly's great battery, and effectually covered his bridge. While this was doing the king on his side lays over his bridge. Both sides wrought hard all day and night, as if the spade, not the sword, had been to decide the controversy, and that he had got the victory whose trenches and batteries were first ready. In the meanwhile the cannon and musket bullets flew like hail, and made the service so hot that both sides had enough to ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... listening; he had fallen into a brown study, turning the piece of metal in his skilful, wonted, knotty fingers, with their spade tips. ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... going straight to their point, careless of elegances and proprieties. They are God's pioneers, rough backwoodsmen, hewing their way with the axe through the wilderness. After them shall come the peaceful farmer, with plough and spade, to turn the land into wheat fields, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the house languished a wretched, abortive garden, running over with weeds and sage-brush, and here a man pottered with the purposeless energy of old age, working with an ear cocked in the direction of the house, as he turned a spade of earth again and again in hopeless, pusillanimous industry. But when his strained attention was presently rewarded by a shouted summons to supper, and he stood erect but for the slouching droop of shoulders ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Robinsons' it is different. Suppose I make a call of one spade and the elder hand two hearts, and my partner (let us suppose he is Robinson) passes, and I say "Two spades," and the elder hand says "Three hearts," and Robinson bellows "No," I at once realise that it would be extremely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... assembled at a funeral, before the grave was dug. The coffin, with the corpse in it, was placed on the ground, while the people alternately assisted in making a grave. One man, at a little distance, was busy cutting a long turf for it, with the crooked spade which is used in Sky; a very aukward instrument. The iron part of it is like a plough-coulter. It has a rude tree for a handle, in which a wooden pin is placed for the foot to press upon. A traveller might, without further ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... comrade, however, still located at the diggings, I heard by letter that a party of Americans had made a great discovery of gold among some rocks in a creek of the Sacramento, and that they had found, sticking fast in a crevice close by, a small spade marked with the name of Bill Williams, which the poor fellow had cut on the handle, as I well remembered, in one of his many idle hours. This explained to me Bill's long absence when he went to look for the Indians, his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... till noon; he trimming, lifting and placing the logs—and elephants have never swung teak more splendidly—while I, with our jointed camp spade, filled in the sand. The use of an axe could not possibly betray our position as Efaw Kotee had been betrayed, because the breeze continued from him to us, and also for the equally good reason that the bite of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... was late, the boy dressed hurriedly, casting glances from time to time at the birds which sailed over from the sea, and at old Dunning, the gardener, who was busy digging a deep trench for celery, and treating the soft earth when he drove in the spade in so slow and tender a way that it seemed as if he was afraid ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... among them is another lady's literary effort to make a garden. Judith it is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... at the top of their speed towards the ship. On to the ice I jumped, and off I went, broke through, stumbled, fell, and up again. The bear in the meantime had done sniffing, and had probably determined that an iron spade, an ice-staff, an axe, some tent-pegs, and a canvas tent were too indigestible food even for a bear's stomach. Anyhow, it was following with mighty strides in the track of the fugitives. It caught sight of me and stopped, astonished, as if it were thinking, 'What sort of ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... my mind I felt as if buried alive, but I could breathe, and although unable to rise, I could move. Then I heard cries, and I replied; but my strength was gone, and I think no one heard me. Then I prayed, and then, I think, I slept, but am not sure. At last I heard a spade striking the earth above me. Soon an opening was made, and I was dragged rudely out. The ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... got some kittens in the barn; They're way up in the loft: I like to hold them in my lap, They feel so warm and soft. Joe broke my little spade one day, Digging the earth for bait: Does your big brother call you names, And pull ...
— The Nursery, April 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... by land, some rode on horseback or drove in a wagon, others went on foot all the way, carrying with them nothing but a spade or shovel. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... So in Maj. Nik. xxi. a man who proposes to excavate comes Kuddalapitakam adaya, "With spade and basket."] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Of course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... joyous understanding. Here was a fellow-soul, "funny" like herself, Beryl described her; Beryl, for whom black was always and invariably black, and a spade ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... arable lands are situated on a slope or declivity, and are laboured by spade, the tenant shall, when labouring, delve the riggs lengthwise, or along the side of the rigg, each feal or fur extending from the top to the bottom of the rigg, and the delving to begin one season at the right side, and the next ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... in 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, such associations will always ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... that, and the town carts could carry it away and burn it. The town would give us the street sweepings all spring and summer and some of the people who have stables would contribute fertilizer. Once that was turned under with the spade and topped off by some commercial fertilizer with a dash of lime to sweeten matters, the children could do ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... wonderfully good times out of doors with a spade, a cart, and the sandpile. Boys most thoroughly enjoy a track with its engine and cars, switches, etc. They build sham fortifications, truly works of art, with their blocks, while the girls are happiest with dolls and household sets. However, occasionally we meet a mother who has ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... several hours more, he discovered, to his great joy, the bottom of the foundation. Again he plied the spade, and, by almost superhuman exertions, he succeeded in excavating a hole under the stones, which, below the surface of the ground, were not laid in mortar. After loosening all the small stones around a larger one, he found that ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... with a grin. Fortunately the professor did not hear him; but the boys could hardly keep from laughing outright as they set to work with the spade. A few minutes of brisk digging set the professor at liberty and he was able to stand upright and triumphantly exhibit a small black rock which looked in no way remarkable, but which, it was evident, he ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... the attention of our readers to the subject of ploughing, but we feel we have not pressed upon them with the force it deserves, the necessity of what the Bible calls "breaking up the fallow ground." What the plough and spade do for the land we must have done for the minds of those who sit in Methodist pews. Unsaved men and women must be compelled to look the truth in the face. Farmers know that so long as the land is hard and cloddy, the seed has no chance to get ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... harbour has somewhat the shape of a bent bow or the spade on a playing-card, the shaft of the arrow being the entrance in; the passage is very deep, but not more than 100 yards wide, and it goes in nearly S.W.; inside it is deep and quite secure, and protected from all winds. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... other men for doing it, and many farmers were grown weary of manners without discourse to them, and all cried out to one another how unfair it was that owning such a fertile valley young men would not spade or plough by reason of noble lineage—then the young Doones growing up took things they ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Pole, arrived on the little meadow which then surrounded the apse of the church of the Capuchins. There he found Philippe and his seconds, with Benjamin, waiting for him. Potel and Mignonnet paced off twenty-four feet; at each extremity, the two attendants drew a line on the earth with a spade: the combatants were not allowed to retreat beyond that line, on pain of being thought cowardly. Each was to stand at his own line, and advance as he pleased when ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... had, however, a determining influence upon the methods of those who first broke ground in this No Man's Land between morphology proper and physiology. But it is significant that it was a morphologist and not a physiologist that did the first spade-work. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell |
