"Spade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night of January 2, 1777, Washington's camp fires burned brightly and the British outposts could hear the sound of voices and of the spade and pickaxe busy in throwing up entrenchments. The fires died down towards morning and the British awoke to find the enemy camp deserted. Washington had carried his whole army by a roundabout route to the Princeton road and now stood between Cornwallis and his base. There was some sharp fighting ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... to all your advantage; for you've been good fellows to me, one and all! I want you now to help me, friend Heinrich, in a sad commission; so, I rely upon your assistance from our old brotherly feelings when together—not because I ask you as your superior. Get a pickaxe and spade from one of the pioneers and come with me. I'm going to bury a poor fellow who has fallen over there, whose fate has attracted my sympathy." Fritz pointed, as he spoke, to the wood where the dead ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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
... Rupert was getting much stronger; he could walk with a stick, and was 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 come off as ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... became clamorous with voices until they arrived at a choice, when some one with a spade quickly squared the rain-washed opening. With lariats looping the coffin round, they brought it and were about to lower it, when Chalkeye, too near the edge, fell in, and one end of the box rested upon him. He could not rise by himself, and they ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... her). 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not grub so energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the ladies of the family to be the practical gardeners, the master of the house caring chiefly for ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the Well crossed to the Isisi, using the canoes of the Akasava headmen, and made a slow progress through territory which gave them no opportunity of exercising their hobby, since water lay less than a spade's length beneath the ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... the world, in solitary congregation, with hair shirt, hard diet, empty flesh pot, and full library, in the deep silence and keen air of the mountains. Here hands that had gripped the sword and the sceptre were turned to the spade and lifted only in prayer. There were not only the allurements of hardship, but also his parents' faith and his own early lessons tugging at his heart strings. He found means to go with his prior into the awful enclosure, and the austere passion seized him. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... 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 ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... busily employed in planting and grafting an apple tree. Some one passing by, rudely accosted him with the inquiry, "Why do you plant trees, who cannot hope to eat the fruit of them?" The old man raised himself up, and leaning on his spade, replied, "Some one planted trees before I was born, and I have eaten the fruit; I now plant for others, that the memorial of my gratitude may exist when I am dead and gone." It is a very narrow, selfish ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... satisfy the idea of God, as ordinary humanity conceives it. It is not in human nature to love a stream of tendency, or worship it, or ask boons of it; or to credit it with powers of design, volition, or creation. A prayer beginning "Stream" would sound as odd as Wordsworth's ode beginning "Spade."[57] ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the tug, the winch rattled, and a big iron bucket, hanging by a wire rope, dropped into the hold. A gang of men climbed across the ledge and began to cut the slimy mass with spades. The surface heaved beneath them like a treacherous bog and the smell was horrible. Now and then a spade made an opening for the gases to escape and the nauseated men were driven back. For all that, they filled the skip and the swinging derrick carried the load across the deck and tilted ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... There was a small house on this landing, and behind it were some twelve negroes digging with spades. The leader of them was an old man sixty years of age. He raised himself to an upright position as we landed, and put his hands up to his eyes. Then he dropped his spade and sprang forward. 'Bress de Lord,' he said, 'dere is de great Messiah! I knowed him as soon as I seed him. He's bin in my heart fo' long yeahs, an' he's cum at las' to free his chillun from deir bondage! Glory, Hallelujah!' And he fell upon his knees before the President ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of going to Hector, whom he had told not to expect him, he got a pickaxe and spade, and proceeded to dig in the trodden heap. At the first blow of the pickaxe he came upon large stones—the job of clearing out which was by no means an easy one—so far from it, indeed, that, after working for half an hour, and only getting out two large and half a dozen smaller ones, he resolved ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... would have been glad to marry him. . . But now they had taken Gerasim to Moscow, bought him boots, had him made a full-skirted coat for summer, a sheepskin for winter, put into his hand a broom and a spade, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... 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 ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... luck as yours," Snaffle observed admiringly. "The way you filled that spade flush on that last hand was a miracle. It is just that sort of luck that runs State street ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... possessors. On glancing around he would perceive the heraldic honours of a most noble and ancient family now extinct—the paltry remains of the splendid helmet, which had decked, perhaps, the proud hero of feudal power, thrown into a degrading hole with the sexton's spade, and the sacred rostrum where the eloquence of the second Rabelais has astonished the village auditors, and perhaps led them to doubt that such intellect was mutable, now filled by another! Our curiosity was attracted, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... (except in very stony ground) to dig out a place wide enough for a man to stand in, as there are tools made expressly for the purpose, by which a trench may be dug six or seven inches wide, and to any required depth. One set of these implements consists of a long narrow spade and a hoe to correspond, such as are ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... was in the disposal of 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 ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... morning Wilbert was on his way to a ravine which lay back of the big chestnut-tree. He carried a spade, and began to dig where the grass was greenest, and slime was gathered upon the stones. At a depth of two feet he saw the hole fill with water, which speedily became clear, as he sat down to rest, and soon trickled down ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 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
... in the intercourse with friends and acquaintance, we have much to make us contented, much, very much, to be thankful for. "To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray,"—these, says John Ruskin, "are the things that make men happy." And these are things that, in some measure at least, are within the ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... it, nor can myself degrade So far, as in my hand to take the spade. This narrow life would suit me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... stood looking through the bars of tall iron gates at long lines of gravestones and dreary hillocks before me. Then I went in, walking straight over the grass towards a gravedigger digging in the sunshine. He looked at me, resting his foot on his spade. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... bits as belonged to Sam Wiggin's grandfather on his mother's side." (I poked my stick as directed.) "That's his tooth you've got now; but I won't swear to it, as things had got a bit mixed, no doubt, afore they put him in. Wait a bit, though. What's under that big lump at the end o' my spade?" (He reached out his spade and touched a clod; I turned it over and revealed the thing it hid: he examined it carefully.) "You see, you can generally tell after a bit o' practice what belongs to what. Putting two and two together—what with them bones coming up so regular, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... to his inability to control without dominating personally—without standing out fully and clearly in the sight of all men? Sometimes he thought so. The humdrum conventional world could not brook his daring, his insouciance, his constant desire to call a spade a spade. His genial sufficiency was a taunt and a mockery to many. The hard implication of his eye was dreaded by the weaker as fire is feared by a burnt child. Dissembling enough, he was ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... sounds well. It is so with men and women too often; and with boys and girls, too, it is to be feared. At any rate, it was so with Mr Mason's gardener, at the time I speak of. He was peevish and fretful, and said some harsh things to Robert, because he accidentally destroyed a fine tulip with his spade. Robert cried, and said he did not mean to do it. Then the old man was sorry, but, probably feeling too proud to confess it, he was silent for a long time. By and by, however, he told Robert that his ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... in prison, of such exquisite Art, that the devil himself is French Lackey to him, and runs bare-headed by his horse-belly (when he has one) whom he will cause with most Irish Dexterity to fetch his chain, tho twere hid under a mine of sea-coal, and ne'er make Spade or Pickaxe his instruments: tell him but this, with farder instructions thou shalt receive from me, and thou shoust ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... digging spuds in that field with a long spade, and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what'll be said then in the papers and the ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... uncounted aeons the mountain has been gathering its forces. Frost and snow and ice and the willing winds have been its sworn retainers. Cold and famine and death it flaunted in the face of the besieger. Man is of a day, and the elements are but slippery allies. A spade and a compass are his meagre weapons; yet man has conquered. The struggle was long, with many a reconnaissance and partial triumph, but at length the victory is complete. Man has placed his hand on the monarch's mane. He has pierced leviathan with a hook. The secrets of the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... and all, if he does not find ten nobles by next Epiphany. But if I could win a ransom or be at the storming of a rich city, then indeed the old man would be proud of me. 'Thy sword must help my spade, Samkin,' said he as he kissed me goodby. Ah! it would indeed be a happy day for him and for all if I could ride back with a saddle-bag full of gold pieces, and please God, I shall dip my hand in somebody's pocket before I ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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; and, in short, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... for discharging sewage. There were no railroads, telegraphs or telephones. Letter postage to New York from Boston was twenty-five cents. None of the modern agricultural machinery then existed, not even good modern plows. Crops were planted by hand and cultivated with the hoe and spade. Vegetables were dug with the hoe, and hay and grain cut with the sickle or scythe. There were no ice-houses. The use of ice for keeping provisions or cooling water ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the handle of a tup That somebody has broked at tea; The shell's a hole in it, you 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 here in 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 what I always say— A hole's the ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the carpenters had used in the construction of the house, and forgotten. We put it carefully by, in order that we might fasten it to a pole, and use it in the moment of our flight as a spear. We found, also, a spade in the court, which we hid, that it too might serve as a weapon. Besides this, the sailors, on the night when we made the attempt, were to arm themselves with some long poles, which had been used in drying ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... pounded in lonely centuries, it seemed, as she prayed fervently for his reappearance. Presently, staggering beneath a burden of suggestive shape, Carter came out and took his way to the dense underbrush behind the cabin. He returned to the hut for a spade and pick and went back to the underbrush. His absence seemed interminable. Then, with blistered hands, he stepped out of the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the dim garden and came under the shadow of the chateau, the clouds were thick and the whole air damp and thundery. Against the last stripe of the green-gold sunset he saw a black human silhouette; a man in a chimney-pot hat, with a big spade over his shoulder. The combination was queerly suggestive of a sexton; but when Brown remembered the deaf servant who dug potatoes, he thought it natural enough. He knew something of the Scotch peasant; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... brown soil observable not far away marked Sullenbode's grave. He had interred her by the light of the moon, with a long, flat stone for a spade. A little lower down, the white steam of a hot spring was curling about in the twilight. From where he sat he was unable to see the pool into which the spring ultimately flowed, but it was in that pool that he had ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... now saw themselves abandoned by their worshipped leader, and turned hopelessly enough homewards. Thus gradually the country relapsed into quiet, and empty garners compelled many to lay aside the bayonet and take up the spade who, having tasted the thrill of battle, had no longer any taste ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... a Refectory for the Brothers and another for the Lay Folk, a kitchen and cellar, and cells for guests, also a sacristy for Divine service between the choir and the Chapter House. And he himself was the first among them that laboured, and would carry the hod of mortar, and dig with the spade and throw the earth into the cart. When he had leisure he was instant in reading holy books, and often worked at writing or illuminating. He caused several books to be written for the choir and the library, and because they were poor he appointed certain Brothers ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... glint which has led so many men to fortune and so many to death. The story of his find came to the ears of an old prospector from Idaho, who, too ill to go inland, was stranded in the military station of Nome. Spade and pan were at once put to work and in twenty days the fortunate invalid found himself ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of geese? They were in broken ranks, not more than fifty feet above the ground, and evidently tired and looking for a feeding place. The sight was too much for the hunting instinct of the Indians, and so every axe, hoe, and spade was instantly dropped, and away they rushed for their guns. The missionary did not see one of them ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... of the house the tilled ground, either ploughed or dug with the spade, came up to the very windows. There was hardly even a particle of grass to be seen. A short way down the hill there were rows of olive trees, standing in prim order and at regular distances, from which hung the vines that made the coopering of the vats necessary. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the little slope of sand and boulders and examined the cliff. It was virgin rock; never a tool mark was to be seen. Already the men were going, when the same strange instinct which had drawn him to the spot caused him to take a spade from one of them and begin to shovel away the sand from the face of the cliff—for here, for some unexplained reason, were no boulders or debris. Seeing their master, to whom they were attached, at work, they began ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... been going on Temple indicated the spot which he thought suitable, and, with a spade which he carried, had commenced excavating a hole sufficiently large ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... Babylonia and Assyria are not the only countries that history required us to explore. Greece and its neighboring states and islands have not even yet been fairly investigated. Much of Asia Minor is still a virgin field. Syria and Palestine have hardly been scratched with the spade. More has been done in Egypt, but more yet is to be done. And when we go into the further east of Persia and Old Elam, not to speak of the yet farther east of Central Asia, now just beginning to yield strange treasures to daring travellers, and ancient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... mountain streamlet. The four who lived there—"Bat and Zilpic, Maunder and Insie, of the Gill"—had nothing to do with, and little to say to, any of the scatterling folk about them, across the blue distance of the moor. They ploughed no land, they kept no cattle, they scarcely put spade in the ground, except for about a fortnight in April, when they broke up a strip of alluvial soil new every season, and abutting on the brook; and there sowed or planted their vegetable crop, and left it to the clemency of heaven. Yet twice every year they were ready with their rent when ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... trade and finance; and America, our lusty young rival, that is gaining so much strength from the war in which Europe is weakening itself industrially and financially, will owe much of the ease of her prospective expansion to spade-work done by the sleepy Britishers. It may almost be said that we and France as the great providers of capital to other countries have made a world-wide trade possible on its present scale. The work we have done for our own benefit has certainly helped others, but it does not, therefore, follow ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... 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 face of his neighbor ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... could do 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 ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... once struck a fav'rite tree, It trembled, shook, and bent its boughs,— The vista is no longer free: Our governor no pause allows. "Bring hither hatchet, axe, and spade, The tree ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... beast had come upon the helpless thing and carried him off. Then a gleam of water coming to her eye, she rushed to the peat-hag whence it was reflected, and would there have drowned herself. But she was intercepted and turned aside by a man who threw down his flauchter-spade, and ran between her and the frightful hole. He thought she was out of her mind, and tried to console her with the assurance that no child left on that moor could be in other than luck's way. He gave her a few half-pence, and directed her to the next town, with a threat of hanging if ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... home wood for night, and eke for fire sought, That we our roots and things seeth might if any home were brought. The rest the wood doth seeke, eke euery bush and tree For berries and such baggage like, which should seeme meate to bee. Our fingers serue in steed, both of pickaxe and spade, To dig and pull vp euery weed, that grew within the shade. Eke diged for rootes the ground, and searcht on euery brier For berries, which if we had found, then streight way to the fire: Where we rost some of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... that my intruding spade, That blocked the foursome and debarred the single, May well have cheeked some statesman yet unmade, Some budding HOGGE, some mute inglorious PRINGLE; And that is why my shovel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... people treated me white. She mammied me er many er day. Ah wuz bred and born right down dar er-round Caledonia. Ah wuz a big gull durin de time uv de centennial snow. Dis snow wuz called dat cause hit wuz de bigges snow dat evah been. Hit wuz ovah yo haid. We had tuh spade our way evah whah we went. Tuh de wood gitting place, tuh de sping, tuh de hoss lot, and evah whah. De anow wuz warm an soft. We piled up so much snow till hit took hit er half er year tuh melt. Dat snow stayed on ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... changed since then. No more in wealth he rolls,—men's fortunes change. I met a lonely hearse, slowly it passed Toward the church-yard. 'T was unattended Save by one old man, and he the sexton. With spade beneath his arm he trudged along, Whistling a homely tune, and stopping not. He seemed to be in haste, for now and then He'd urge to quicker pace his walking beast, With the rough handle of his rusty spade. Him I approached, and eagerly ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... list included 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, a ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... waited in silence. "They have trowels," Julia informed them from time to time. "They have a spade. They've begun to dig, and they are having their own troubles, for the ground is hard. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... done to make him as happy as a child should be, he did not forget what he had seen and heard. He not only walked with his mother, or with Madame de Tourzel, in the garden of the Tuileries, but he had a little garden of his own, railed in, and a little tool-house for his spade and rake. There the rosy, curly-headed boy was seen digging in the winter, and sowing seeds in the spring; and, sometimes, feeding the ducks on the garden ponds with crumbs of bread. Still he did not forget what he had seen and heard. One day, his father saw the boy looking at him very gravely ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... said. He had neither axe nor saw, nor knife nor spade. How could he do it? He had nothing but his hands. He tried to pull it out by the roots, but in ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... 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
... them from growing into the bones of the skull. The goats are long-haired, and are used for eating only, at least I never saw them milked. As for the Amahagger cultivation, it is primitive in the extreme, being all done by means of a spade made of iron, for these people smelt and work iron. This spade is shaped more like a big spear-head than anything else, and has no shoulder to it on which the foot can be set. As a consequence, the labour of digging is very great. It is, however, all done by the ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... offensive front; they were not those architectural triumphs, those homes from home, that grow to perfection upon the less active sections of the great line. They had been first made by men who had run rapidly forward with spade and rifle, stooping as they ran, who had dropped into the craters of big shells, who had organised these chiefly at night and dug the steep ditches sideways to join up into continuous trenches. Now they were pushing forward saps into No Man's Land, linking them across, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... 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
... the cutting-in spade, and as the fish hung still over the side, cut him open from neck to belly with a single movement. Another Chinaman stood by with a long-handled gaff, hooked out the purple-black liver, brought ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... loved going to cover as frantical as the pa'son, so much so that whenever he saw or heard the pack he could no more rule his feelings than if they were the winds of heaven. He might be bedding, or he might be sowing—all was forgot. So he throws down his spade and rushes in to the pa'son, who was by this time as ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... filled with vague apprehensions, and observing the man still leaning upon his spade, and watching his progress with the ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... bailiff, whether certain trees ought or ought not to be taken down; they were arguing the matter as if it concerned their own property. I then saw how much the countess was beloved. I spoke of it to a poor laborer, who, with one foot on his spade and an elbow on its handle, stood listening to the ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... saw his mistake, for, while Thialfi attacked Mokerkialfi with a spade, Thor came with a rush upon the scene and flung his hammer full at his opponent's head. Hrungnir, to ward off the blow, interposed his stone club, which was shivered into pieces that flew all over the earth, supplying all the flint stones thereafter to be found, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... morning in June, 1879, about two weeks after what has been related, May senior left the house immediately after breakfast, taking a spade. He said he was going to make an excavation at a certain spring in a wood about a mile away, so that the cattle could obtain water. John remained in the house for some hours, variously occupied in shaving himself, writing letters and reading a newspaper. His manner was very nearly what it ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... trenches by surprise, remain long enough to make the most of the resulting confusion, and then to return to his own trenches without trying to hold and organize the enemy's position and thus draw upon his head while busy with the spade a ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... not blame a bream because it is not a barbel, or a chub for not being a trout, yet the angler grumbles if he catches the humbler fish when aiming at the noble; we are all agreed that the gardener was not justified in "larning" with a spade the squalid batrachians to be toads; even musical comedies ought not to be criticized with spade strokes, although in connection with them it is a pity that a spade so rarely has been called by its proper name. Moreover, one may have an entirely unreasonable prejudice against the works of the particular ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... last he had a severe fever; and when he fancied himself dying, had a vision. He saw a grating in the floor, close by his bed, and through it the torments of the lost. Two souls he remembered specially; one 'like a singed hog,' the other 'all over black like a charcoal spade.' He looked in fear, and heard a voice cry, 'Behold your sins.' He prayed; promised, if he recovered, to try and do better: and ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... shown in the bending of the small spade; the thick portion retains its crystallized nature, while the thin part has been changed by ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... hoeing in his field of Indian corn. Here comes a huntsman out of the woods, dragging a bear which he has shot, and shouting to the neighbors to lend him a hand. There goes a man to the sea-shore, with a spade and a bucket, to dig a mess of clams, which were a principal article of food with the first settlers. Scattered here and there are two or three dusky figures, clad in mantles of fur, with ornaments of bone hanging from their ears, and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... an amateur]: they then proceeded to another creek about forty or fifty yards farther up, STILL LED BY THE NATIVES, when one of them struck the rod into some marshy ground and called out that "there was something there:" a spade was immediately found, and the place dug, when the first thing that presented itself was the left hand of a man lying on his side, which witness, from a long acquaintance with him, immediately declared to be the hand of Frederick Fisher: the body was decayed a little, particularly ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... been thinking hard about the winter. In Connecticut the wiser settlers used to bank their houses for the cold weather; in the Adirondacks he knew it was far, far colder, and he soon decided to bank the two shanties as deeply as possible with earth. A good spade made of white oak, with its edge hardened by roasting it brown, was his first necessity, and after two days of digging he had the cabin with its annex buried up to "the eyes" ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... origin of which is in reality unknown, are, in the popular traditions, almost constantly attributed to the Danes. If the spade or the plough brings ancient arms and pieces of armour to light, it is rare that the labourer does not suppose them to have belonged to that people. But particularly if bones or joints of unusual size are found, they are at once concluded to be the remains of the gigantic Danes, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... trained In holy rites, deep skill had gained:— "Here guards be stationed, good and sage, Religious men of trusted age. And various workmen send and call, Who frame the door and build the wall— With men of every art and trade, Who read the stars and ply the spade, And mimes and minstrels hither bring, And damsels trained to dance and sing." Then to the learned men he said, In many a page of Scripture read:— "Be yours each rite performed to see According to the King's decree. And stranger Brahmans quickly call To this great ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... assented. Away hurried the man, and soon returned with a spade. He set manfully to work to dig out the fox, and worked till the perspiration streamed down his face. The laird sat stolidly looking on, saying never a word; and as he seemed to be nearing the confines of the hole, the poor digger ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... itself not only motive but impulse, not only law but power to fulfil it. The Master's eye makes diligent servants. How schoolboys bend themselves over their slates and quicken their effort when the teacher is walking behind the benches! And how a gang of idle labourers will buckle to the spade and tax their muscles in an altogether different fashion when the overseer appears upon the field! If we realised, as we should do, the presence in all our little daily life of that great, sovereign Lord, there would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... transferred the last potato to his own plate, stabbing it with his knife for that purpose) was a quaint representation of a mournful-looking couple, clad in singularly ill-fitting aprons of fig-leaves. The man was digging with a spade, while the woman sat at a spinning-wheel placed dangerously near the edge of the deep ditch which her husband had already dug. Round the edge ran an inscription, which, after some study, Hilda made out to be ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... turned 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 ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... particulars. It would seem to be a fixed law of nature, that the progress of society adds almost nothing to the application of machinery to agriculture, but indefinitely to its importance in manufactures. Observe an old man digging his garden with a spade—that is the most productive species of cultivation; it is the last stage of agricultural progress to return to it. No steam engines or steam ploughs will ever rival it. But what is the old weaver toiling with his hands, to the large steam-power mill, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Have a dandy place there. Had architects and landscape-gardeners prowling 'round for the last two weeks, and old man Fay won't allow one of them on the grounds. You'd die laughing to see him chasing them off with a spade or a rake or whatever he has in his hand. His property till July ninth, he says, and he wouldn't let so much as a crow fly over it if it belonged to Hadley B. Hobson. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... afternoon Parson Jones and Tom Chist started off together upon the expedition that made Tom's fortune forever. Tom carried a spade over his shoulder and the reverend gentleman walked along beside ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... the men among them insisted on filling with their own hands, as if "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 ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... undertook the feeding, while Chicken Little went to the tool house for pick and spade. The log pig pen was merely one corner of the big hog corral, fenced off for the benefit of the new litters to protect them from the older hogs. Stones had been securely embedded underneath the lowest rail to keep the pigs from burrowing ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... worship of Mammon is triumphant, and the mischief is that when the great god Pan is driven away he returns no more. When once Money-hunger seizes on a nation, that primitive and wholesome Earth-hunger—old as the primal Eden, where man's life began—is stifled at the birth; the spade and harrow rust, and instead of swords being beaten to ploughshares, ploughshares are beaten into swords for the use of soldiers who are the gladiators of commercial avarice; the wealth of the country runs into the swamp of speculation; the scripture of Nature is ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... [Within.] Call up my Men, the Coachman, Groom, and Butler, the Footmen, Cook, and Gardiner; bid 'em all rise and arm, with long Staff, Spade and Pitchfork, and sally out upon ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade, To bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade. Stinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,— Let them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll die ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... tall, but strong an' with a willin' heart, handy with spade an' shovel, understandin' hosses an' mules, an' able to whistle fur you gay an' lively tunes in the evenin', when you're all tired out from the day's work in the richest mine ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... Cockrell roved far enough to find on the knoll a small pit freshly dug, with a spade and pick beside it. Like excited children, his two comrades ran to inspect the hole which Blackbeard's seamen had dug ready for the treasure chest. Then they scattered to explore the knoll in search of signs to indicate where previous hoards might have been buried. Trimble Rogers scouted ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... for storm and siege. Or ever the Diet had met, many hands had already been at work on these buildings; and in these days every man soul in Nuremberg, from the boys even to the grey-haired men, wielded the spade or the trowel. Every serving-man in every household, whether artisan or patrician—and ours with the rest—was bound to toil at digging, and our fine young masters found themselves compelled to work in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... perfect impunity, I was not sorry to see him, soon after, gardening in the berceau. He approached the glass door; I drew near also. We spoke of some flowers growing round it. By-and-by Monsieur laid down his spade; by-and-by he recommenced conversation, passed to other subjects, and at last ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... morning Nelson went 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 it was impossible to do anything where ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... tell 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 ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Presently his spade struck against something hard; he picked it up and held it to the lantern. It proved to be an ancient spear-head, and near it were some bones, though whether or no they were human he could not at the time determine. This was very interesting, but it was scarcely what he wanted, so ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... Stars and Stripes on the North Pole in 1909. It was a Norwegian who succeeded in reaching the South Pole in 1911. But the spade-work which contributed so largely to the final success had been done so enthusiastically by two Englishmen that the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton must find a place here before we conclude this Book of Discovery with ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... later, Assunta, going to find a spade in the tool-house, for she was transplanting roses, came upon the Signorina's caller of yesterday standing near the tool-house with something in his hand. The peasant woman's face showed neither awe nor fear; only lively curiosity gleamed in ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... do her justice! She calls a spade a spade, but there's no malice in it. You stood up to her, I gather. We've been discussing you this morning, and you may take my word she don't think the worse of you for it. They're sportsmen, these high-born ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Tom got a spade from the pack horse, and Frank got a bar. They attacked the edge of the bank where, half way down, there was a little slope to the wall. The gravelly soil yielded rather easily to their digging, and they soon had the beginning ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... Mrs. Crimm, serving them punctiliously with all that was included in the evening's refreshments. When there was nothing more that he could do I saw him sitting between Gracie Hurd the little shirtwaist girl, and Marion Spade, a waitress at one of the up-town restaurants, eating his supper as they ate theirs, and they were finding him apparently somewhat more ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... "I have noticed this. Nearly all our little controversies begin in one way. Somebody says, 'I call a spade a spade and BONAR LAW (or LLOYD GEORGE) a lying, treacherous scoundrel.' I propose that we form ourselves into the Society for Not Calling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... child in his mother's home in the country. A carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeevich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Pashenka, a thin little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into their company of boys Pashenka is brought and they have to play with her, but it is dull. She is silly, and it ends by their making fun of her and forcing ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... slowly down towards the town. And on the bottom step of the Green Stairs, his arm around Captain Kidd, the boy sat watching them, looking from one to the other as long as they were in sight. The heart of him was pounding deliciously to the music of such phrases as, "Fathoms deep, lonely beach, spade and pickaxe, skull and crossbones, bags of golden doubloons and chests ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had just thrown up on the bank the last spade full of earth that had been dug out, when we heard a loud shout. We got up on the top of the cave, and saw that Jack had brought back a tribe at his heels. The large cart, drawn by the cow and the ass, came on at a slow pace, led by ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... a rice-farmer, went daily with hoe or spade into the fields, working hard from the first croak of the raven until O Tento Sama (as the sun is called) had gone down behind the hills. Every day the dog followed him to work, and kept near by, never once harming ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... will perhaps not be very wrong if they fix on this sandy valley as the Surrey which Bettesworth knew best. Than the Memoirs, I think, no more discerning study of an old labourer's fight to keep on his own legs, out of the workhouse, earning his own money with his spade and hoe, belongs ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was about enough and even ample. I started a hot answer to this letter, saying that if darling Clyde was digging his grave with his teeth it was her own fault because she was providing the spade and the burial plot, and the quickest way to thin her darling down would be for her to quit work. But shucks! Why insult the poor thing? I got back my composure and wrote her a nice letter of sympathy in her hour of great trouble. I didn't say at all that if I had been ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the blacks 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
... ascended to the battery. There lay the spade and the sack of earth. The tool with which the work had been done was still in the mouth of the second cannon and, on pulling it out, the powder cartridge came with it. Then Leigh led them to the next gun, and a man who had a bayonet ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... who did ever the Earths Centre pierce, And felt or sand or gravell with his spade At such a depth? what Histories rehearse That ever wight did dare for to invade Her bowels but one mile in dampish shade? Yet I'll be bold to say that few or none But deem this globe even to the bottome made Of solid earth, and that her nature's one Throughout, though plain experience ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... country occupations, as far as my strength would permit, and conceived a real grief at not being able to manage our garden without help; for I could not take five or six strokes with the spade without being out of breath and overcome with perspiration; when I stooped the beating redoubled, and the blood flew with such violence to my head, that I was instantly obliged to stand upright. Being therefore ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... wolves. The violent shock has been communicated, like that of electricity, through the country to a distance of hundreds of miles. Canals, railroads, and all public works, have been discontinued, and the Irish emigrant leans against his shanty, with his spade idle in his hand, and starves, as his thoughts wander back to his ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Hildyard's 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 how innocuous ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tiny income was beginning to be menaced. The Deacon positively suffered as he looked at that odd corner of earth, not any bigger than his barn floor, and saw what his girls had done with no tools but a spade and a hoe and no help but their own hands. He had no leisure (so he growled) to cultivate and fertilize ground for small fruits, and no money to pay a man to do it, yet here was food grown under his very eye, and it ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... own sense of the casual and fluctuating nature of ghosts by drawing his spectre in shaky lines, as if the model had given the artist the horrors. This simulacrum rises out of the earth like an exhalation, and groups itself into shape above the spade with which all that is corporeal of its late owner has been interred. Please remark the uncomforted and dismal expression of the simulacrum. We must remember that the ghost or "Ka" is not the "soul," which has other destinies in the future world, good or evil, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... 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 we want from ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were a fully convincing sight; But the heart of the Saint Ne'er once turned faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' Said St Cuthman, 'To me it is perfectly clear, If you talk of the devil, he's sure to appear!' 'With my spade and my pick I am come,' said old Nick, 'To prove you've no power o'er a demon like me. I'll show you my power— Ere the first morning hour Thro' the Downs, over Poynings, shall roll in the sea.' 'I'll ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... but in a dead man's skin, When he is gone 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 these ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... grew bitter at the thought. He ought to have hid the rooster. He ought to have got a spade and buried him. He was full of regrets, not for what he had done, but for what he had not done. He would stay here till dark. He would stay here all night. He never would go home any more. He would hide in the woods, and he and Frank would hunt. He would kill what they wanted to eat and cook it over ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... "She had got a spade somewhere from one of the wagons, and, little as she was, she was trying to bury her own dead. She was so busy that she didn't see them ride up, and William Plummer, their leader—he was a young man then—actually shed tears, so they say. Well, these ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... in mind that I wanted many things notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, ink was one; as also a spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that these 'lengthy and rich volumes are a monument of love's labour, but not of literary art or biographical skill,' he adds: 'Of his over eight hundred pages there is not one for which I am not grateful' and every new biographer of Borrow is bound to re-echo that sentiment. Dr. Knapp did the spade work and other biographers have but entered into his inheritance. Dr. Knapp's fine collection of Borrow books and manuscripts was handed over by his widow to the American nation—to the Hispanic Society of New York. Dr. Knapp's biography was ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... impoverished. I gave it a good top-dressing of barnyard manure in the autumn, and plowed it deeply; another top- dressing of fine yard manure and a deep forking in the early spring. Then, raking the surface smooth, I set a line along its length on one side. A man took a spade, sunk its length in the soil, and pushed it forward strongly. This action made an almost perpendicular wedge-shaped aperture just back of the spade. The asparagus plant, with its roots spread out fan-shape, was sunk in this opening to a depth that left the crown of the plant between three ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... Ann, and much stress was laid upon this fact by the unfortunate Bing in his explanation. So much so, in fact, that both the mates got restless; the skipper, who was a plain man, and given to calling a spade a spade, using the word "pimply" with what seemed ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... that each battalion had its fair share of duty and of rest. Even with the best intentions matters did not always pan out straight, for considerations of strength, of comparative excellence, of dangerous and of safe localities, of moral, of comfortable or uncomfortable trenches, of spade-work and of a dozen other things, had to be fitted together like a ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... to gardening—who are repelled, indeed, by its prosaic accompaniments, the dirt, the manure, the formality, the spade, the rake, and all that—love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. The long ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... are growing. The machine has iron prongs which dig under the dirt like giant fingers, turning out the potatoes which are tossed between the rows of dirt so men, who follow, may pick them up. But we'll dig ours by hand. And in digging potatoes you must be careful not to stick your fork, spade or whatever you use, into the potato ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... 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 ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... still a rocky desert, with perhaps here and there a strip of alluvial meadow by the side of a stream, and here and there an insulated patch of rich soil among the hollows of the crags. It might possess a few gardens for the spade, but no fields for the plough. We owe our arable land to that comparatively modern geologic agent, whatever its character, that crushed, as in a mill, the upper parts of the surface-rocks of the kingdom, and then overlaid them with their own debris and rubbish to the depth of from one to forty yards. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... rector, as an archaeologist, did a little excavation on his own on the flat place at the very top of the hill—a place in which there were what looked like rough foundations. He used to take with him a local labourer to do some of the spade-work. One day they dug up a Quern. The labourer asked what it was. The clergyman explained that it was a form of hand-mill used in the olden days for grinding corn. In reply he was met with one of the most amazing ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... bit of bread serves the man himself in a less important way than does the first, inasmuch as it gratifies a want that is less intense; and the last implement of a given kind—the last hatchet or spade or arrow—helps him less in his productive operations than did the first one. On the one hand, we have the law of the diminishing utility of successive units of consumers' goods, and on the other hand, ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... has just spread consternation throughout the Commune of Gaillon, Department of Seine-et-Marne. A son has killed his father with blows from a spade in order to ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola |
