"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the third place, came some tools—an auger, a gimlet, a handsaw, an assortment of nails and brads, a spade, a shovel, a pickaxe, a hatchet, an ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann." Sturlunga ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... "No thoroughfare," "No thoroughfare," on all hands stretched across us; but the cabman threaded his way between, till he came to the brink of a precipice. The horse seemed quite ready, like a Roman, to leap down it, seeing nothing less desirable than his present mode of life, till a man with a pickaxe ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... men took pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... were not, how could you make it tell against Nathan's book?" asked Lousteau. "That is the first manner of demolishing a book, my boy; it is the pickaxe style of criticism. But there are plenty of other ways. Your education will complete itself in time. When you are absolutely obliged to speak of a man whom you do not like, for proprietors and editors are sometimes under compulsion, you bring ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... "Yes; pickaxe, mattocks, and a crowbar; a lantern, and so forth," said the doctor. "You see I am at home in this; the fact is, I have had more than one affair of this kind on my hands before now, and whilst a student I have had more than one adventure ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... genius of the Generals nor the intrepidity of the men could avail without them; and as the scouts are called the eyes, so might the engineers, both regular and volunteer, be termed the hands and feet, of an advancing force. The host sweeps on, and the workers are left with pickaxe and shovel, rifles close at hand, to work at their laborious task loyally and patiently, while deeds of courage and daring are being done and applauded not many miles away from them. This particular Rhenoster bridge was destroyed and rebuilt no less than three ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... unoccupied bedroom in the prison, where he can go in and out as he pleases; best of all, the Ponts et Chaussees are now employing him at three francs a day—a princely income, they tell me—at some agricultural job: pure kindness, inasmuch as he has never handled a spade or pickaxe in his life. He can have a pleasant time in Gafsa; he can marry an heiress if so disposed; then, when the place begins to bore him, the German Consul in Tunis will repatriate him at his Government's expense. 'He's a poor devil,' they say. Why do I tell you ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... this one act of curiosity, forfeited her favor. However, as an equivalent for withdrawing her patronage, she plucked one of the fangs from her jaw, and gave it to them, saying that they might use it as a pickaxe, which would never wear out. She then opened her side and pulled out one of her ribs, which she gave them for a knife, whose edge nothing could blunt. Having done this, she stooped down and tore off the hem of her garment, which she gave ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... that the snake had not made his appearance inside, I stopped up the opening into the drain with a towel, and the convict orderly, who had gone round to the outer end of the drain, began pushing a long bamboo up it. This drove the snake to the upper end. The convict, then, with a pickaxe, loosened a brick from the covering of the drain close to the wall of the house, while I stirred up the bamboo rod. The convict then gently and by degrees removed the brick, and in an instant the snake emerged fully from the drain, raising ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... within view—Salomon and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; and when Julien had finished his famous work, the devastation of the High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and November, 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickaxe, utterly subverted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once more roofed and sending up domestic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or other they raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced myself ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... loose soil about, for the Kaffirs had knocked off working at this very spot a couple of hours before. I took a pick and raked away the clods of earth with it, in the hope of finding the coin; but all in vain. At last in sheer annoyance I struck the sharp end of the pickaxe down into the soil, which was of a very hard nature. To my astonishment it sunk in right up to ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... that they were only going to lay another coffin over mine. And I thought that if it was you, papa, I shouldn't mind how long I lay there, for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Church, who, as the pioneers of religion, have filled the New World with their sufferings, and whose incredible deeds in the service of God afford so many materials for the most interesting of books, had come in advance of the pickaxe of the settler, and had domiciliated themselves among the tribes who lived near the waters of the Mississippi. One of them, Father Montigny, was residing with the Tensas, within the territory of the present parish of Tensas, in the State of Louisiana, and another, Father Davion, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... out as if you were escaping in good earnest. The wall between the two towers is, to my knowledge, at one place not over two feet thick; and on the other side, where there are nothing but bare grounds and the old ramparts, they never put a sentinel. I will get you a crowbar and a pickaxe, and you make a hole in ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... with gunpowder; the force of which detaches pieces from the rock, which are hewn roughly into forms on the spot by a small pickaxe. Granite is also quarried by cutting a deep line some yards long, and placing strong iron wedges at equal distances along this line; these wedges are struck in succession with heavy hammers, till the mass splits ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... but anything that suggested noise and smoke was an abhorrence to him, and thus he disliked the miners. A splendid seam of coal ran beneath his land. This coal could have been easily won; in fact, at the place where the cliffs met the sea, a two-foot seam cropped out, and the people could go with a pickaxe and break off a basketful for themselves whenever they chose; but the Squire would never allow borings to be made. He did not object to the use of coal on abstract grounds, but he was determined that his property should not be disfigured. ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... the coal strike of 1920 was declared, a pickaxe was seen on several occasions in the cups of two persons, both of whom read their tea-leaves regularly. This symbol, as will be seen in the dictionary which follows, stands for "labour trouble and strikes." A spade was also in evidence at intervals, a further sign of "trouble ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... you should build this convent; therefore prepare yourself for the work." "Oh, how shall I be able to do that," answered Cotolai, "I who am so poor, and who live by my daily labor?" "Take courage," said Francis, "take a pickaxe, and go to the spring which is close by; make a hole a little in front of it, and you will find a treasure which will enable you to execute the order of Heaven." Cotolai, relying on the Saint's word, searched as he was ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy |
