"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "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 of a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... partners. It was not much; "the country was getting played out with fresh arrivals and greenhorns." All this falling carelessly from the unshaven lips of a dusty, roughly dressed man, with a long-handled shovel and pickaxe strapped on his back, and a frying-pan depending from his saddle. But no panoplied or armed knight ever seemed so heroic or independent a figure to Clarence. What could be finer than the noble scorn conveyed in his critical survey of the train, with its comfortable covered wagons and appliances ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... afternoon, instead 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 ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... wrong: the old foundations rock; One scorns at him of old who gazed unshod; One striking with a pickaxe thinks the shock Shall move the seat ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... describes how, when Nero wished to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, blood spurted up in front of those who first touched the earth, groans and cries were heard, and a number of ghosts appeared. Not till Nero took a pickaxe and began to work himself, to encourage the men, was any ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... Gortnaclough, he came upon one of those gangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earning their pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. In some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their day's work, did at any rate pass their day with some sort ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... her daughter Clarissa as guide and assistant, and gave glowing accounts of the treasures to be found. The offer was gladly accepted; and Clarissa, a merry little romp, about twelve years old, soon made her appearance, armed with a pickaxe, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which the greedy insects ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... 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 which ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they might have disposed of some of the unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two. But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe, and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... watch, and borrowed for her ten more of two of his friends. She engaged to meet him at midnight in a certain place a mile from the town where he lived, and that he there should dig up out of the ground a silver pot full of gold covered with a clean napkin. He went with his pickaxe and shovel at the appointed time to the supposed lucky spot, having his confidence strengthened by a dream he happened to have about money, which he considered a favourable omen of the wealth he ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... said the smith, examining a pickaxe, which he was getting up to that delicate point of heat which is requisite to give it ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... had vanished from sight. Somewhere in a grave close at hand a digger, whom they could not see, was wielding his pickaxe ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself almost anything that he will. It ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... preparatory to dashing in and saving the heroine. He dashes in. "Hands up, you scoundrels," he cries. And then his glasses get all misty, and there he is, temporarily blind, with a full-size desperado backing away and measuring the distance in order to hand him one with a pickaxe. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... passed to and fro, pausing now and then to gravely watch the operations of some stalwart fellow hewing out a timber with his adze, driving home a bolt with his heavy maul, or digging into the stubborn rock with his pickaxe, and not infrequently asking questions which the puzzled seamen strove in ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... prepared the mine, Ayrault brought out a pickaxe, two shovels, and the battery and wires with which to ignite the explosive. They made their preparations within one hundred feet of the Callisto, or much nearer than an equivalent amount of gunpowder could have ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the animals should lose their hardihood. I do not think antelopes could possibly get at water for several months together, as every drop of water in the country is guarded by the Somali. We were now in "the land of honey," and the Somali nomads constantly came to me to borrow my English pickaxe for digging it out of the ground; for the bees of this country, instead of settling in the boughs of trees, as they do in England, work holes in the ground like wasps, or take advantage more generally of chinks or fissures ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... 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 times up to the date of which I ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... bright steel pickaxe working all alone. It was so hard and sharp that when it struck a rock it went into it ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... 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 down. ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... the elucidation of past times might be expected—viz. researches beneath the surface of the earth, and researches among older works and manuscripts. By the former he meant the careful and systematised examinations in which the spade and pickaxe are so important, and have done such service in late years, and from which Sir James expected much more; and by the latter the exploring and turning to account the many stores of written records of early ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... all perceptible to you, above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to bottom by ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was the first who went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or representative of the East India Company ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... science. At the age of twenty-one, he left college to descend into the heart of the Saarbruck Mountains as an engineer of mines, where, according to custom, he had to commence with the lowest grade of labour, and for months drag a heavy wheel-barrow, and wield the pickaxe. Yet here, in reality, dawned his mission as the apostle of popular music: he relieved the tedium of those interminable nights of toil—for days there were none—by composing and teaching choruses, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... it, I must follow him; we're from the same village, I've eaten his bread, I'm fond of him, I'm grateful, he gave me his ass-colts, and above all I'm faithful; so it's quite impossible for anything to separate us, except the pickaxe and shovel. And if your highness does not like to give me the government you promised, God made me without it, and maybe your not giving it to me will be all the better for my conscience, for fool as I am I know the proverb 'to her hurt the ant got wings,' ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... blood through his veins, and obeyed. Roldan sprang to his feet. "We are above the tunnel of the Mission," he said. "And we have a pickaxe. All we have to ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... 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 drive the ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... understanding, Staines and Falcon were equipped with rifles, pickaxe, shovels, waterproofs, and full saddle-bags, and started, with many shakings of the hand, and many tears from Phoebe, for ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... man, in spite of this general aspect of severity, betrayed the weakness and timidity which indigence imparts to all unfortunates. These two emotions seemed to have made crevices in that solidly constructed face which the pickaxe of poverty was daily enlarging. The mouth was eloquent and grave; in that feature Don Quixote was complicated ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... and value of our thoughts determine a man's value to society. No investments bring so high a rate of interest as investments of brain. Hand work earns little, but head work much. In a Western camp one miner put his lower brain into the pickaxe and earned $2.00 a day; another miner put his higher brain into the stamp-mill and soon was receiving a score of dollars daily for his work; a third youth, toiling in the same mine, put his genius into an electric ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... his pick, and delivered a horizontal blow at the clay on that side of the shaft Bartley had told him to attack. His pickaxe stuck in it, and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... pioneer, territorial, Anamite or Senegalese had ever seen. And from the stations, field hospitals, dugouts, depots, parks and cantonments, while the setting sun lingered in the sky on this May evening, whoever handled a shovel, a pickaxe or a rifle, whoever laid down rails, unloaded trucks, piled up cases, or broke stones on the road, whoever dressed wounds, gave medicine or carried dead men, whoever worked, rested, ate or drank—whoever was alive, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... to Borth. We slipped at once and easily into the groove of last term's routine, filling our old quarters and several additional houses. Some building operations needed for the winter's sojourn have been mentioned by anticipation. Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of "Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and making all right. At his instance, the proprietor ran out an extended culvert into the sea beyond low-water mark, a grand engineering ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the full moon, when everybody else was asleep, Hans crept quietly out of the house with a pickaxe, wrenched out the stone with much difficulty, and actually found the hole with the money, just as the dwarf had described it to him. Next Sunday he divided the third part among the poor of the parish, and gave notice to the parson that he was about to quit his service, and as he asked no ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... active Kafir workmen, cleaving the "hard blue" with pickaxes, piling it up on barrows, and carrying it off to the wide fields; where it is left exposed to the sun, and, during three months, to the rain. Having been thus subjected to a natural decomposition, it is the more readily brought by the pickaxe into smaller fragments before being sent to the mills, where it is crushed, pulverized, and finally washed to get at the stones. Nowhere in the world does the hidden wealth of the soil and the element of chance in its discovery strike ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... quite clearly underneath the ground below him the dull shock of a pickaxe. The noise came almost from beneath his feet; so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. The strokes fell with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the sound changed in character. The muffled thud ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... all the learning he had was obtained from assiduous study of a grocer's window. But for one brief day he had things his own way in the town, or, speaking strictly, on the top of it. With a spade, a broom, and a pickaxe, which sat lightly on his broad shoulders (he was not even back-bent, and that showed him no respectable weaver), Henders delved his way to the nearest house, which formed one of a row, and addressed the inmates down the chimney. They had already been clearing it at the other end, or his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... he would listen attentively, with his ear in the dust, and, rising, place the pan on the spot. At last he has it. Like the beating of a pulse, the still water in the pan vibrates in harmony with the stroke of the pickaxe far underneath, and the old miner rises exultant.' A counter-mine was hurriedly made, and through a tiny opening it was seen that barrels of gunpowder and pitch and piles of faggots were heaped beneath the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... many beautiful homes on this lofty hilltop, but they were all for sale at bargains, for their occupants have grown weary of the cloud bursts of the long dreary rainy season, then of the parching heats of the equally dreary dry season, when a pickaxe and crowbar are required to dig a potato unless you keep water running from the hose day and night. These people long to return to their old homes in New England where the varying ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 1860. Some of the men were hanged, and many transported to our penal settlements in the Straits of Malacca. Dacoity was in some parts of India akin to Thuggee, for the leaders carried with them in the same way a sacred implement, which was devoted to Bhawani. In the case of the Thugs this was a pickaxe, but with the Dacoits it was an axe with ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... Somehow 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
... promise to remember it 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 ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 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 ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... was horrible! The storm drove the snow and rain into the face of the solitary man and whipped the black hair around his temples; but he paid no attention to this—he dug into the hard, rocky soil with pickaxe and spade. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... rolls of paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; an upholsterer's wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at work together, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong. Friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's—not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine—none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich—more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. And then it was he began to cock his comb at me ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... calculated so as to produce the desired effect at the right height when seen from below. The district lying between Tanis and Bubastis is thickly studded with monuments built or embellished by the Amenemhaits and Usirtasens: wherever the pickaxe is applied, whether at Fakus or Tell-Nebesheh, remains of them are brought to light—statues, stelae, tables of offerings, and fragments of dedicatory or historical inscriptions. While carrying on works in the temple of Phtah at Memphis, the attention of these Pharaohs was attracted ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... saw at El-Baya; one of the funnels formed in the middle of the dunes contains wells from two metres to two and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone, soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind; for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp occasioned ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... constitution. Not a man, woman, or child remained an idle spectator. On this occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along the several links of an extensive chain, so patriotism seemed ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... no independent thought, and even the learned keep to themselves the conclusions they draw from their studies. As long as this goes on the task of the revolutionary is useless in this country; they may change the apparent nature of the soil, but when the pickaxe strikes they come at once on the stones of ages, solid and compact. The national character though it has lost its religious faith is unchanged. Faith is dead, but the corpse still remains with the appearance ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... made that fellow holding up his hands to receive the bodies. You should have made him digging a hole for them. How awfully grand; with a pickaxe, digging, dump, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the head of the Pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meuniers, there was the Chalelet, no longer a Roman tower, as under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thirteenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could not break away so much as the thickness of the fist in a space of three hours; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles all frothing with carvings, already admirable, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... 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
... beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the man who lives by his wits, is subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than the aching ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... digging a very deep canal, some workman struck his pickaxe against timbers that were black with age, and nearly as hard as stone. These, on being brought up, showed that they were the ribs of an ancient boat. Learned men say that there was once a river here, which long since dried up. All the pieces of the boat were recovered, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... is taken from a mere hole,' replied Mr. Mortimer: 'from that dirty little patch of water by the side of yonder hedge—do you see? It is very shallow, and is therefore soon encrusted: but even before it was cut by the pickaxe, it would not have been smooth enough to have slidden upon, and now you see it is all in pieces, and you might as well try to slide ...
— Christmas, A Happy Time - A Tale, Calculated for the Amusement and Instruction of Young Persons • Miss Mant
... pick-axes, gathered round their comrade, and there was reason to apprehend serious mischief would occur; one of them hit the Porter with his spade, and several others were prepared to follow his example; while a second, who seem'd a little more blood-thirsty than the rest, raised his pickaxe in a menacing attitude; upon perceiving which, Dashall jump'd over the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... all about, anyway, that's set Marsden crazy? Why, one man come to see me, was tellin' of searchin'-parties ransackin' our woods, prospectin', or somethin'. D'ye ever hear such impudence? Why, if I was constable, I'd arrest every man-jack of 'em that's dared to put pickaxe or spade in our ground! I'd have the law on 'em, neighbor or no neighbor. Well, they won't find a thing. 'Cept maybe a few chestnuts or such. As for gold—Hm-m! But somethin' ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... something if he could be made to work. I long to give him a pickaxe, and set him on upon the roads. Then he would see the beauty of them! I hate to hear him maunder on about imagination, while he leaves his tenantry to take their chance. HE knows what eyes Percy and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this pickaxe, and see how you like it. Jump into the hole without a word, or I'll help you with my heavy hand!" ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a month before the opportunity for his escape occurred. For a month he had been hewing stone in Portland, black despair at his heart. Then, like lightning, he saw his chance and took it. The warders were off guard for a moment. Hastily lifting his pickaxe—— ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... best of that. Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. Pity they ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the salutary truths which he inculcates are making their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which Falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor Truth has had a hard work of it, with her little pickaxe. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... away and, helping himself with his hands, holding on to the branches of a tree, he climbed up the first layers of rock that formed the grotto on the right. Here he knelt down. There was a small pickaxe lying beside him. He took it and gave three blows to the nearest heap of stones. They came tumbling down in front of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Austin recently became possessed of what they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thursday night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and shovel with great diligence for about ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... came through a small lancet window, opening, not to the outside, but into the tower, itself dusky with an enduring twilight. And there were some broken old headstones, and the kindly spade and pickaxe—but I have really nothing to do with these now, for I am, as it were, in the pulpit, whence one ought to look beyond such ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... met her, half-way. She was coming along in the dull glow of the dying fire, the pickaxe over her shoulder. She looked different to him; perhaps his eyes were distorted, perhaps the fire-glow making leaping shadows caused the difference; but she walked heavily, wearily, without the thrilling, young spring of swift movements that made her ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... after all attempts to obtain his extradition had failed, gave an example of the same kind of courage. Another detective, in a case where the body of a murdered man had been hidden, did not hesitate to arrest the murderer on the flimsy charge of "being in unlawful possession of a pickaxe" to prevent flight while he continued his search. In each case these men deliberately adopted risks to attain their ends which nothing but success ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely related force, as it darts ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... kernel of dry corn, he flew with it to a small branch, placed it between his feet (the latter of course being close together), and, holding it thus, drew back his head and delivered a blow with that pickaxe beak of his that would have broken a toe if he had missed by the shadow of an inch the grain for which it was intended. I was always nervous when I saw him do it, for I expected an accident, but none ever happened that I know of. When the babies grew clamorous ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... shovel, and pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. Then ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... churchyard, where a goodly yew-tree Spread her large root in ground: under that yew, As I sat sadly leaning on a grave, Chequer'd with cross-sticks, there came stealing in Your duchess and my husband; one of them A pickaxe bore, th' other a rusty spade, And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... so small a portion of the surface is unfit for tillage. The moisture rises to the surface just as it is required; and a tolerable crop is got by a poor man who cannot afford to keep a plough, and merely burns down the grass and digs the surface with his spade, or pickaxe, before he sows the seed. Generally, however, the tillage, in the portion cultivated, is very good. The surface is ploughed and cross-ploughed from six to twenty, or even thirty, times in the season; and the harrow and roller are often applied till ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... the noise of spitting on the hands, the sound of the heavy tool began again. It had a ring in it like steel on stone. I think they had been chopping something with a pickaxe and had got through. For now the clink was quite different, though that again might be ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... In the choruses, of course, we can sing at the sides; and in the market-scene we can walk about in cloaks and things. When the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on one side and out on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he can. The effect will be electrical; it will look exactly as if there were an immense number of 'em. And in the eruption-scene we must burn the red fire, and upset the tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises—and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... me 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 ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... feet high, perfectly square, and a person may ride up to the top on horseback, having a gradual ascent, and seven chambers one above the other: the cement with which it is made is so hardened that no pickaxe can destroy it. It was represented to the sultan Muhamed that the apartments in this tower were the haunts of vice and immorality, and the sultan ordered the floor or terras, by which visitors ascend, to be broken; it was found, however, impossible to destroy it, wherefore the workmen were ordered ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the inner slip A' (Blake's stopper). Stern, stream and kedge anchors are usually stowed with special davits. A portable anchor suitable for small yachts is the invention of Mr Louis Moore; the shank passes through the crown of the anchor like the handle of a pickaxe and the stock over the head of the shank. At the end of the stock are loose pawls. There are no keys or bolts, and the only fastening is for the cable. The anchor takes to pieces readily and stows snugly. In 1890 Colonel ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Arni Magnusson. The 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 Saga, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... greater security for the State, it appeared to them that it would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the Death- watch, which was in the place of St. John, because it had its walls built with such a grip in them that the stones could not be stirred with the pickaxe, and also because it was of the loftiest; whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to be cut, at the foot of it, all the length of one of its sides; and closing up the cut, as he made it, with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard long, and setting fire to them, when the props ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... object, we immediately mounted our horses, Uncle Denis and the Dominie each carrying a spade, and the two men a pickaxe a-piece, while Boxer and Toby followed at our heels. As we galloped over the ground, we were not long in reaching the scene of the massacre. Dio, who had the sharpest eyes amongst us, was stationed to keep a look-out, while we, securing our horses, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... on St Thomas's eve, as he was walking in his garden just after sunset, it threatened him so effectually that in the morning he went to a magistrate and revealed the whole thing. The place was examined; the body and the pickaxe found; and a warrant was granted against Walker and Sharp. They were, however, admitted to bail; but in August, 1681, their trial came on before Judge Davenport at Durham. Meanwhile the whole circumstances were known over ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... which the old Romans used, admire their well-turned arches, and see the paint and plaster upon the walls of their apartments. The "Old Wall," so long a sphinx by the roadside, suggesting enigmas to passers-by, has found an interpreter in revelations which the spade and pickaxe have made within its shadow. From the time when its walls first fell down, it has furnished plunder to the country round. The old monks, finding it easier to take down its stones than to quarry now ones, built their churches with its spoil, whilst the "old wall" left standing served as an ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... showed something more, for about a couple of hundred yards from the outworks, a horse, saddled and bridled, lay upon its side, quite dead; for the terrible stroke the miller's man had delivered with his pickaxe had struck into ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... down, down! and creep through the hole, Keep the revolver in hand! You can hear him—the murderous mole. Quiet! ah! quiet—wait till the point of the pickaxe be through! Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before— Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more; And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... opinion, of the same system of syntax that blew up the Maine. Yes, 'twas that country I sailed against, single-handed, and endeavoured to liberate it from a tyrannical government with a single-barreled pickaxe, unloaded at that. Ye don't understand, of course. 'Tis a statement demandin' elucidation ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... an almost vertical surface; this foothold is strengthened by the tail which, being stiff, acts as a third leg. In a surprisingly short time a cavity large enough to conceal the bird completely is formed. The bee-eater utilises the bill as pickaxe and the feet as ejectors. The little clouds of sand that issue at short intervals from each cavity afford evidence of the efficacy of these implements and the industry of ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... indissoluble Concurrence. For instance, a man might examine a "spade" in all its parts and might even make one after a model, and not even know what "dig" means. The mention of "dig" is as likely to make us think of pickaxe as of spade. "Spade" does not mean "dig," nor does "dig" mean spade. "Dig" merely means the action of the "spade," or the use to which it is put. Hence this pair of words does not furnish an example ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... Father," answered the youth.—"Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... man, built of iron, broad, thick, and short, who looked as if frost, snow, and heat were all the same to him, had something go wrong in his lung: one twelvemonth, and there was an end. This was a very unhappy affair. The pickaxe and the spade have made almost a full round to every door; I do not want to think any more about this. Family changes and the pressure of these hard times have driven out most of the rest; some seem to have quite gone out of sight; some have crossed the sea; some have abandoned ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... better with a pickaxe in his hand, and more useful to his country," returned the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... There's too much for me to do in the world! I'll be a great engineer. I'll make her proud. I vowed it when we looked out over the waves and I wanted to take her in my arms. See here!" and suddenly seizing a pickaxe from the ground beside him, he swung it around his head and sent it whizzing past Pilchard's ear, out through the opening of the shanty. "I've got my muscle and I've got my brain and I'll keep my life. I ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... suffered, for in this upturned earth, where every blow from the pickaxe would disinter a body, one can prepare but slowly the deep shelters which ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... prayer. At that moment might be witnessed an interesting spectacle upon the plain adjoining the dwelling of Don Mariano de Silva. The Indian labourers, who never work a moment beyond the prescribed time, at the first sound of the bell had all suddenly stopped as if struck by paralysis. The pickaxe raised aloft, the spade half buried in the earth, the goad lifted to prick forward the ox, fell simultaneously from their hands; while the oxen themselves, accustomed to imitate their drivers, came at once to a stand, ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and a long light crowbar, for hard soils, trenches may be dug much more cheaply than with the common spade and pickaxe. Where there are large boulders in the soil, these draining tools may dig under them so that they will not have to ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... open window, and saw the figure of Elisha Braggs suddenly revealed in the moonlight as he crossed the path behind the chapel. He was closely followed by two peons, whom she recognized as his servants at the Mission, and they each carried a pickaxe. From their manner it was evident that they had no suspicion of her presence in the chapel. But they had stopped and were listening. Her heart beat quickly; with a sudden instinct she ran and bolted the door. But it was evidently ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... been in and driven a pickaxe into each of the boilers," cried Joe. "They'll blow up ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and sacrifice a multitude of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route propitious to the disciples of the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to have fires to force the cabbages. But what about the striking coal porters? If you do their job, won't they picket you or pickaxe you or something?" ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne |
