"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... judge, then, of the flutter it caused when one day at noon, as the children from their windows opposite were watching the penitents playing in the garden in their blue dresses and white caps, they saw a little man go boldly in their midst and with a shovel begin turning up ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett
... crossed a thickly-wooded knoll, and came to an orchard, in which two young labourers were at work. We asked where the remains of Horace's farm were. 'A pie tui!' answered the nearest of them, in a dialect more like Latin than Italian. So saying, he began with a shovel to uncover a massive floor in very fair preservation; a little farther on was another, crumbling to pieces. Chaupy has luckily saved one all doubt as to the site of the farm, establishing to our minds convincingly that it could scarcely have stood on ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the facade, terminating in a large conservatory. In the walk were three people pacing up and down. Lady Constantine's was the central figure, her brother being on one side of her, and on the other a stately form in a corded shovel-hat of glossy beaver and black breeches. This was the Bishop. Viviette carried over her shoulder a sunshade lined with red, which she twirled idly. They were laughing and chatting gaily, and when the group ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... the camp, he was set to work with a shovel, cleaning up the grounds. It was a sorry day to Philip. He wished he had never been born. He was despised alike by officers and soldiers. The officers made him do their dirty work, while the soldiers, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... century, to which these entries refer. But it was “skilled” labour, and, moreover, hard work, as anyone will understand who remembers the instrument used on the moor forty years ago. It was a large, flat, and broad kind of shovel at the end of a long pole with transverse handle a foot long, which was placed against the workman’s waist or pit of his stomach, and he thus thrust the tool forward through the turf with the whole weight ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... falling in folds to the knee. Over his shoulders hung a short mantle of orange colour with a hood. On his head was a cap with a wide brim that was turned up closely behind, and projected in a pointed shovel shape in front. In his belt was a small dagger. He wore shoes of light yellow leather fastened by bands over the insteps. As he ran down the steps of the palace he came into sharp contact with another page who had just turned the corner ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... with half a dozen kanaka divers and a tin alarm clock for chronometer, all packed like sardines on a commodious, five-ton ketch. Whisper that there's a gold strike at the North Pole, and that same inevitable white-skinned creature will set out at once, armed with pick and shovel, a side of bacon, and the latest patent rocker—and what's more, he'll get there. Tip it off to him that there's diamonds on the red-hot ramparts of hell, and Mr. White Man will storm the ramparts and set old Satan himself to pick-and-shovel work. That's ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... line ran up and merged with the first. Again shovel and small mattock came into play and the volume of fire redoubled. Above the cracking of the rifles the only sounds to be heard were the sharp whistles of the officers. They shrilled in a variety of notes and combinations, yet with an understood ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... and the two youngest Kenway girls trooped into the kitchen, Popocatepetl was chasing a stray feather about the floor and in diving behind the big range for it, she knocked down the shovel, tongs and poker, which were ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... builder's handcart. The little two-wheeled vehicle had evidently been used to convey the appliances which were deposited on the ground near it, and which consisted of a large tub—now filled with water—a shovel, a rake, a sieve, and a portable pump, the latter being fitted with a long delivery hose. There were three men besides the constable, one of whom was working the handle of the pump, while another was glancing at a paper that the constable had just delivered to him. He looked up sharply as ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... embarrassment, she had been so many times in a similar position. Her prayers said, she arose and went about the room, arranging everything as it should be in the presence of death. She removed all traces of the illness, put away the medicine bottles, burnt some sugar upon the fire shovel, and, on a table covered with a white cloth at the head of the bed, placed some lighted candles, a crucifix with holy water, and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... "Military Law" to "Protection when at Rest." This last subject will require revision after the present campaign, it being the writer's opinion that soldiers never rest—not when there is a foot of Allied soil unturned by a shovel, at any rate. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... downright hard work to handle shovel and pick hour after hour under the burning rays of the summer sun; but no fellow cared to show himself indolent after having had such rare good fortune, and we petitioned the commandant to let us continue the labor throughout the night, to ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... if we could get a few out one at a time on moonlight nights, and fill up the blooming holes again, we shouldn't want any blasted machinery for our gold mine, except a pickaxe and a shovel." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the miner, "whenever a man asks you for a candid opinion, that's the time to fill your shovel with guff. It's the only safe proceedin'. So I won't fool around with candid opinions, Dunn, I'll just admit they are jewels. Cut my ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a mood that was partly the resignation of perplexity, partly a sulkiness with fate. With the same blunted mind, perceiving no pain, I watched the Greek diggers, at the end of the service, as they began to shovel the earth on to my friend's body. First they tossed it so that it fell in a little pile on his breast; then they threw it, dust and clods, over his feet, till at last only the head, hooded in its blanket, was uncovered. They turned their attention to that, and the earth fell heavily on Jimmy Doon's ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... unseen and eternal." Wealth and worldliness unspiritualize thousands of professed Christians. The present artificial arrangements of society antagonize devotional meetings and special efforts to promote revivals. On Sabbath mornings many a minister has to shovel out scores of his congregation from under the drifts (not very clean snow either) of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the old school, who worked himself among his men. He was now engaged in packing the pomace into horsehair bags with a rammer, and Gad Weedy, his man, was occupied in shovelling up more from a tub at his side. The shovel shone like silver from the action of the juice, and ever and anon, in its motion to and fro, caught the rays of the declining sun and reflected them in bristling ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that. You plan the future, you lose yourselves in reveries of economical systems derived from what is; whereas what's wanted is a clean sweep and a clear start for a new conception of life. That sort of future will take care of itself if you will only make room for it. Therefore I would shovel my stuff in heaps at the corners of the streets if I had enough for that; and as I haven't, I do my best by perfecting a ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... torrent-like rush to seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they have left their marks. Every gravel- and boulder-bed has been desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and only quartz-mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foot-hills, roughened ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... 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 times up to the date of which ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... on his spade, out of the grave which he is making, two skulls, one crowned, the other covered with a peasant's hat. He grins with savage glee at seeing these remnants of the two extremes of society side by side; and underneath them, on the shovel, is written Idem,—"The Same." In this word is the key to the popularity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... at her—the loud, coarse Josh Craig outburst. "You're stark mad on the subject of class distinctions, aren't you?" said he. "You'll learn some day to look on that sort of thing as you would on an attempt to shovel highways and set up sign-posts in the open sea. Your kind of people are like the children that build forts out of sand at the seashore. Along comes a wave and washes it all away....You'd be willing for me to abandon my ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Walpole, a great lawyer in Sir Edward Coke, great ecclesiastics in Cardinal Wolsey and Archbishop Parker, great artists in Gainsborough, Constable and Crome, and perhaps above all great sailors in Sir Cloudesley Shovel and the ever memorable Lord Nelson. Personally I admire a certain rebel, Kett the Tanner, as much as any ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... the tender-hearted old man that wanted to be "father and mother both," "located" a claim. The flowers were kept fresh by a little stream of waste water from the ditch that girded the brow of the hill above. Here he set a sluice-box and put his three little miners at work with pick, pan and shovel. There he left them and limped back to his own place ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... locked to it with a long chain; and when we hoed corn we'd hoe the chain's length, then the one next the block had it to tote the length of the chain, and so on till we did our day's work. Since we've been here we've seen nine of our masters chained to that same block and made to shovel sand on that fortification yonder. There were forty of us that belonged to our plantation standing in this yard ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... 23, 1914, passed peacefully for the British soldiers, still working on their trenches. But distant boom of guns from the east continued to vibrate to them at intervals. Of its portend they knew nothing. Doubtless as they plied the shovel they again speculated over it, wondering and possibly regretting a chance of their having been deprived of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Nearly everybody went armed, and the party carried with them a small electric searchlight, run by a "pocket" battery, and two oil lanterns. They also took with them some provisions, and a pick, a shovel and a crowbar, for Bahama Bill said there might be some digging to do to get at ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... was assigned to the county chain gang and put to work on the roads. At this time the treatment in the courts was being urged by negroes as a reason for leaving. This negro's case was discussed. He was sent back from the county roads alone for a shovel. He did not return; and his return was ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... it's going to be about the most important thing!" said Paul, surprisingly. "Go get a shovel, will you? Or rather two, for we've got some digging ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... might sit thereon;' the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplice, stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave; the sacristan is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from the clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... ideas of the crowd, men like Thaer, Arkwright, and others of their class, who now provide bread for hundreds of thousands from their studies and laboratories, would then be able, at most, with a rake and shovel, to provide food for three or four. The division of labor, with its infinite amount of productive force, would, for the most part, cease. Nor would the consequence be that the humbler classes would be freed from work of a coarse, mechanical, unintellectual and severe nature; but that the higher classes ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... on with their work the next day, and built the causey up high enough with stones. They then levelled them off, and began to wheel on the gravel. Jonas made each of them a little shovel out of a shingle; and, as the gravel was lying loose under a high bank, they could shovel it up easily, and fill their wheelbarrows. The third day they covered the stones entirely with gravel, and smoothed it all over with a ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... with the black boy, who was still at work at the fire, that he shook so convulsively, and made such a hideous noise with the shovel and tongs? ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... time away gold prospecting. Rode in and asked yonder eloquent autocrat for a contract, but he didn't see it. Said, and he explained it wasn't flattery, I looked too much of a gentleman, and in consequence if I liked I could shovel ballast at one dollar seventy-five daily. Now shoveling ballast grows monotonous, and one gets a confounded back-ache over it, so if you're agreeable I'll fling in a small sum and my services ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... rusty cannon might be worth several bright-barreled muskets in holding him at bay. The Lord punished Israel by the hand of Jehu and Hazael, both wicked men. Slavery was bursting her bounds, coming over on us like the sea on Holland. One very dirty shovel might be worth a hundred silver teaspoons in keeping back the waters, and this Free Soil party could do more to check its advance than a hundred of the little Liberty Party with that pure patriot, Gerrit Smith, at its head. In doing right, take all the help ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Highlandmen who have lived on the mountains are going to dig coal? Do you imagine that these men, who, until a generation or two ago, never handled anything but a claymore, and who even now scorn to do aught but stalk deer or spear salmon, will take a shovel and a pickaxe and labor as coal-miners? There is not a Crawford among them who would do it. I would despise ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... centre, dropping it into its place from the outside, though it is still done by the man within. The people outside are in the meantime occupied in throwing up snow with the pŏoāllĕrāy, or snow-shovel, and in stuffing in little wedges of snow where ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... left he was on hand to receive the money and we had to give it to him. We paid a man a dollar to take us to the station, and saw the train pull out while we were stuck in a snowdrift ten feet deep, with a dozen men trying to shovel a path for us; so we had to come back. In spite of this terrible weather, people drive eight and ten miles ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... sovereigns into a pair of scales with a brass shovel as coolly as if he were a grocer's boy scooping out raw sugar. Having weighed the glittering pile, he threw them carelessly out of the scale into the brass shovel, and shot them at Mrs Gaff, who suddenly thrust her ample bosom ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... wandered away, or had been buried in the sand. Far as eye could reach the desert had marvelously changed; it was now a rippling sea of sand dunes. Away to the north rose the peak that was their only guiding mark. They headed toward it, carrying a shovel ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... a bit of danger of my doing that," she called after him, mockingly. "There isn't a spark of fire, nor likely to be to-day, unless some of your admirers send me a shovel of coal. Mercy knows, I wish ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... "Character of Holland"; at the excluded ocean returning to play at leap- frog over the steeples; at the rise of government and authority in Holland, which belonged of right to the man who could best invent a shovel or a pump, the country ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... length would need to be seventy or eighty feet. Only one man could work in it at a time, and this he had to do while crawling forward with his face downward, and with such tools as pocket-knives, small hatchets, sharp pieces of wood, and a broken fire-shovel. After the opening had made some progress two men could work in it, one digging, the other carrying back the earth, for which work ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... woman, dretful shabby lookin', wuz a standin' by the door of the hut, and the man had a shovel in his hand, and had been a loadin' sand into a awful big wheelbarrow that wuz a standin' by — seemin'ly ready to carry it acrost the fields, to where some man wuz a mixin' some motar, to lay the foundations ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... like popped corn from a shovel, glared over the desk in the nightcap and black apron, leaped down, and flew, all dripping with ink, down the aisle, out of the door, and bouncing downstairs like an ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... fact, a witness could guess that the shell was sinking at a pace only a fraction slower than the burrowers were using to free it. Intrigued by that, Shann went back to the waterline, secured one of the lengths he had been trying to weave into his failures, and returned to use it as a makeshift shovel. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... whole {132} into the form C; and then, pulling up the corners c d, stitch them together with a loose thread so that the points c and d shall be within half an inch of each other; and you will have a kind of triangular scoop, or shovel, with a stem, by which you can sufficiently hold ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... are busy to-day with ropes and axe, pick and shovel. But the task is vast, it is herculean, like unto the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... all over it in his restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" better wheat than others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got wearily up and took a chair by the window. The night was dark, but the stars were shining, and every now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself and toss up the hot ashes the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... no papers of 'is own, 'E 'as n't got no medals nor rewards, So we must certify the skill 'e 's shown In usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords; When 'e 's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush With 'is coffin-headed shield an' shovel-spear, A 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush Will last a ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... said the policeman, as the stoker, who was an obliging man, took up a great shovel and flung open ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to lay out corn ground with a single-shovel plough, and took great pride in marking out a straight furrow across the field. There was one man in the neighborhood who was the champion in this art, and I wondered how he could do it. So I set about watching him to try to learn his art. ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... a vacuum cleaner One scout belt axe One Thanksgiving horn One automobile siren horn. One lantern Two long clothesline supporters A towel-rack that opened like a fan A skein of clothesline A small kitchen-range shovel Two boxes filled with canned goods One box filled with loose ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in great numbers by the second or driving method. Twenty to forty or more men fish together with a large, closely woven, shovel-like trap called ko-yug', and the operation is most interesting to witness. At the river beach the fishermen remove all clothing, and stretch out on their faces in the warm, sun-heated sand. Three men carry the trap to the middle of the swift stream, ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... only to members and never to women, the Institute does not lend itself to the easy intercourse which tired men enjoy at the public-house. Its billiard-table is not for their heavy hands, used to the pick-axe and shovel; its card games interrupt their talk; its newspapers remind them that they cannot read very well, and suggest a mode of life which they are unable ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the strange task that tires us. The horse that is used to the farm wearies if put on the road, while the roadster tires easily when hitched to the plow. The experienced penman works all day at his desk without undue fatigue, while the man more accustomed to the pick and the shovel than to the pen, is exhausted by a half hour's writing at a letter. Those who follow a sedentary and inactive occupation do not tire by much sitting, while children or others used to freedom and action may find ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... had been all that was needed, the last wavering workman flung down his shovel and took to his heels, running like a rabbit and roaring as ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... pieces in the garden, and marked the spot with the young slip of a St. Michael's pear-tree. There stood the old St. Michael's at this day, a dead trunk, having long since ceased to bear either fruit or blossom or leaf; and many a time had Helen persuaded Margaret and Frederick to take hoe and shovel and go with her to dig round the roots of the old St. Michael's. Once, after the first digging, the ancient tree surprised them by bursting into a cloud of blossoms, and bearing a crop of golden, juicy pears; but that was the last sign of life it ever gave, and all the gold they ever found. ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and bringing the pole back with him, and about sending her a pair of slippers, to wear in place of gloves, and asking her to send him a red and blue handkerchief, to keep his head from aching. And he wrote that he didn't think he was cut out for college, that he would rather shovel nuggets in a gold mine—that is just what he wrote—'shovel nuggets in a gold mine!' Oh, such a mixed-up letter you never read! And it made Nellie cry again. Oh, Sam, what ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... have seen his face when he read it. He made a jump for the door, but I got there fust and downstairs in a tumble, and fell in a heap at the foot with everything he could lay his hands on comin' after me—tongs, shovel, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... got something on his shoulder, sir. I think it is a shovel, and he has either a cloak or a sack on ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... may be turned into present and future good. The criminal himself is coming to be treated this way. He is no longer eternally reminded of his crime. He is taken out into the sunshine and air and is given a shovel to dig with. A wonderful thing is that shovel. With it he may bury the past and raise up a happier, better future. We must care so much to expiate our sins that we are willing to neglect them and live righteously. That ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... Archie to the Doctor; "one of these fellows is coming to say that the more they throw on earth the more the wood blazes up.— What is it?" he continued, to the shovel-bearing private, who now joined them, his streaming and blackened face showing plainly in the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... out of life that some of us boys had up on the hillside farms in Vermont. Why, when we'd have to get up winter mornings, with the weather so cold that we'd have to be all the while on the lookout that we didn't freeze our ears or noses, and when we'd have to shovel out the paths through three feet of snow and cut the wood and carry water to the stock, it did seem at times to be a trifle strenuous; but really I think the boys in Vermont get more fun out of ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad. His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade. Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for; a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button, a class button, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... down and cast into the fire. [3:11]I indeed baptize you with water to a change of mind; but he that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not fit to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire; [3:12]whose winnowing shovel is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor, and gather his wheat into the storehouse; but the chaff he will burn with ...
— The New Testament • Various
... but now he had found the papers he must. He, crawled to his knees, and felt around, then turned his light on. This was strange! A heap of coal out in the middle of the floor, almost a foot from the rest! A rusty shovel lay beside it, a chisel and a big stone. Ah! The tapping! He got up forgetting his pain and began to kick away the coal, turning the flash light down. Yes, there was a crack in the cement, a loose piece. He could almost lift it with his ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... is called sure water: this is the proper leaven for the first steeping of the materials. The starch now obtained must be rendered marketable; for which purpose, as much water is poured upon it as will enable it to be pounded and broken up with a shovel, and then the tub is filled up with fair water. Two days after this, the water is laded out from the tub, and the starch appears in the bottom, but covered over with a dark-coloured and inferior kind of starch, which is taken off, and employed for fattening hogs. The remainder ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw off the tub-handles in the cause of culture. However, Mrs. Yellett procured a saw, yet the hand that held it lingered in its descent on the handles. She contemplated the tub as affectionately as Hamlet regarding the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired corners,—and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how came ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... zee wood, an' zee divils they do not see me, an' I pick off un, deux, trois! Dey are dere still, after dey others grow afraid an' run like caribou with zee wolves at dere heels. It ees fine sport, an' I shoot as dey ran, an' presently I am left alone. I shovel snow wit' a snow-shoe on my burning cabin, for I love dat petite cabin like a child, an' den I tink I take a look at you. You not dead, so I pour hot whisky in your mouth an' you return from zee happy-huntin' grounds. Dere you ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... that wafted her, he would have served, farther and farther from the home land. Every additional mile put between that shore and the boat, increased the prince's sense of power. He was working for his excellency and against her. In a revulsion of feeling he leaned on his shovel, whereupon a besooted giant of the lower regions tapped his shoulder. This person—foreman of the gang—pointed significantly to the inactive implement. His brow was low, brutish, and he had a fist like a hammer. Mr. Heatherbloom ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... our coal in the bottom part of the cupboard, and when any was wanted we had to climb over the bed, fill a shovelful, and then crawl back. It was an exciting moment when we reached the middle of the bed. We would hold our breath, fix our eyes upon the shovel, and poise ourselves for the last move. The next instant we, and the coals, and the shovel, and the bed would be all ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Whether the shovel, becoming hot among the live coals, burned the owl that was high in the tree-top outside, according to the countryside superstition, or whether by a singular coincidence, he discovered that he had business elsewhere, he was soon ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... Kate lived. The ascent to the summit of the bluff was by a narrow path that had been found by Kate in one of the many clefts riven in the side of the black-faced cliff, and her father's mates had so improved it with pick and shovel that Aulain could discern it ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls. And wherever he went his ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... that he made the dishpan on the gas stove rattle as loudly as if Bully or Bawly were drumming on it with a wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey. "Let me dig the well," went on the old gentleman frog. "I just love to shovel the dirt, and I can dig a well so deep that no fish will ever get ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... force against the water-carriers and seized every one. Another band dashed for the mangroves; but warning had been given. Sir John and his gentlemen whipped out their swords, and the workers seized pick-axe and shovel. Captain Drake saw the movement in the trees, shouted an alarm, and at once turned his guns on the rustling patch. A couple of terrific charges followed; trees splintered and crashed, and the Indian allies fled in terror, freeing some of the water-carriers, who plunged ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... that "day" and "night" in those regions are very equivocal terms). There are, besides, a cooking-apparatus, of which the fire is made in spirit or tallow lamps, one or two guns, a pick and shovel, instruments for observation, pannikins, spoons, and a little magazine of such necessaries, with the extra clothing of the party. Then the provision, the supply of which measures the length of the expedition, consists of about a pound of bread and a pound of pemmican per man per day, six ounces ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... gone; but they had left an odor behind. We had to keep Palmleaf burning coffee on a shovel all the rest of the evening; and, for more than a month after, we could smell it at times,—a "sweet souvenir of our Husky beauties," as ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... lalapaloosa, lad! Thot's what it is!" enthusiastically exclaimed Tim Sullivan. "Now the black beggars will have some rock to shovel! Come on there, Serato, git yer lazy imps t' work cartin' this stuff away. We've got a man on th' job now in this new powder ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... a few old country mansions; there is one in Longleat, which, the writer has been told, has a small drawer at the end, to hold the copper coins with which the retainers of the Marquis of Bath's ancestors used to play a game of shovel penny. In the Chapter House in Westminster Abbey, there is also one of these plain substantial James I. tables, which is singular in being nearly double the width of those which were made at this time. As the Chapter House was, until comparatively recent years, used as a room for the storage ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why you can carry it up by this string—but, if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel." ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time a merchant's son had too much fun spending money, and the day came when he saw himself ruined; he had nothing to eat, nothing to drink. He took a shovel and went to the market place to see if perchance somebody would ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... here. Out in the smelting works, (the biggest and most improv'd ones, for the precious metals, in the world,) I saw long rows of vats, pans, cover'd by bubbling-boiling water, and fill'd with pure silver, four or five inches thick, many thousand dollars' worth in a pan. The foreman who was showing me shovel'd it carelessly up with a little wooden shovel, as one might toss beans. Then large silver bricks, worth $2000 a brick, dozens of piles, twenty in a pile. In one place in the mountains, at a mining camp, I had a few days before seen rough bullion on the ground in the open air, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... left to watch the open hole, while John and his comrades went to the brook and began to dig a canal, to turn the water into the residence of the woodchuck. This was often a difficult feat of engineering, and a long job. Often it took more than half a day of hard labor with shovel and hoe to dig the canal. But when the canal was finished and the water began to pour into the hole, the excitement began. How long would it take to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it seemed as if the hole was a bottomless pit. But sooner or later the water would rise in it, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... accepting his liberality (supposing me to entertain them) by assuring me his conduct is founded on a sage selfishness. This is diverting enough. I suppose the Commissioners of, Police will next send me a letter of condolence, begging my acceptance of a broom, a shovel, and a scavenger's greatcoat, and assuring me that they had appointed me to all the emoluments of a well-frequented crossing. It would be doing more than they have done of late for the cleanliness of the streets, which, witness my shoes, are in a piteous ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... again raised the copper cover from the brasier, and, picking up the shovel, she buried the live charcoal deep with ashes, and taking two bits of incense of Cambodia fragrant wood, she threw them over them. She then re-covered the brasier, and repairing to the back of the screen, she gave the lamp a thorough trimming to make it throw out more light; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... always were an artist with a shovel," suggested Darry insinuatingly. "Suppose you get out the spade and see what sort of perch bait you can turn up ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... operation. The saddles and bridles were only fit for an old curiosity shop. There were some with faded strips of gold and silver lace adhering here and there; others that resembled the horse in skeleton appearance, which had been strengthened by strips of raw crocodile skin. The unseemly huge shovel-stirrups were rusty; the bits were filthy. Some of the men had swords and pistols; others had short blunderbusses with brass barrels; many had guns of various patterns, from the long old-fashioned Arab to the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... work "most infernal hard" to pan out two dollars' worth of "dust" a day. "I have had to work over all that pile of gravel you see yonder to clean up seventeen dollars' worth of dust," further volunteered the old "greaser," as I picked up a spare shovel and helped him remove a couple of bowlders that he was trying to roll out of his war. I condole with him at the low grade of the gravel he is working, hope he may "strike it rich " one of these ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... in Warwick more modern houses and smart shops than ancient gabled and half-timbered houses, but the relics of the past are still striking: witness the ancient porch of the good old "Malt-Shovel," with its bow-window, in which the Dudley retainers often caroused, and the oblique gables in one of the side streets, which Rimmer, a minute observer of English domestic architecture, thus describes: "An acute-angled street may be made to contain rectangular rooms ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... And, as regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there were three stewards for every Steward's position. Nothing steady could Daughtry procure, while his occasional odd jobs did not balance his various running expenses. Even did he do pick-and-shovel work, for the municipality, for three days, when he had to give way, according to the impartial procedure, to another needy one whom three days' work would ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... nine-cent and red for a seven-cent dinner, the waitress first plunges a huge ladle into the soup pot and empties its contents into the bucket; then passing along the rows of kettles she harpoons a piece of meat with a long two-pronged fork, scoops up a quart of rice with a wooden shovel, and then, adding a portion of potatoes, slams on the cover, and, grabbing a cube of bread, passes it over to the purchaser with a joke or a ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... in a class by themselves, on account of their education and literary ability. Although they wore the rough costume of the miners, it was realized that none of them took mining seriously or made any pretense of real work with pick and shovel." Mr. Neal knew James Gillis intimately and admitted he was a great story-teller. In fact, at the bare mention of his name he broke into a hearty laugh. "Oh, Jim Gillis, he was a great fellow!" he exclaimed. He said unquestionably Mark ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... chain that pulls the bucket conveyers carrying coal. A deep dent in the chain made with blows of a pick or shovel will cause it to part under normal strain. Once a chain breaks, normally or otherwise take your time about reporting the damage; be slow about taking the chain up for repairs and bringing it back ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... the basement and was out and down the street with the wooden shovel over his shoulder before Mrs. Fletcher realized that he had ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely |
