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Shovel   Listen
verb
Shovel  v. t.  (past & past part. shoveled or shovelled; pres. part. shoveling or shovelling)  
1.
To take up and throw with a shovel; as, to shovel earth into a heap, or into a cart, or out of a pit.
2.
To gather up as with a shovel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shovel" Quotes from Famous Books



... doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary. Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, Congressional Records, and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whispered or roared or chuckled to me on my ...
— Options • O. Henry

... she had not yet the right dresses to put in. Both Mrs. Peterkin and Elizabeth Eliza would need new dresses for this occasion. The little boys' hoops went in; so did their india-rubber boots, in case it should not rain when they started. They each had a hoe and shovel, and ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle quill; He went bareheaded, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... There was one fellow that couldn't read nor write, but he remembered all the brands, about a dozen, in the pen of steers he bought, and described them one by one. One brand, he said, was like a long-handled shovel. It turned out to be—D. [*] TD—Tom Dawson's, of Mungeree. About a hundred of his were in the mob. They had drawn back for Mungeree, as was nearly all frontage and cold in the winter. He was the worst witness ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... holding Steve's horse. Steve comes from stable leading another horse, with couple of large saddle-bags, pick, and short-handled shovel, on its back. He points to these and mounts his horse. Jess smiles gratefully, then looks grave again. He reaches down and just touches her reassuringly on the shoulder. Then he rides quickly away, leading the second ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... expectin' him to call at eight o'clock an' take her to the minister's place—so it gev' both Rafferty an' me a jar when my dude turns up with the girl an' pipes us for any old address where people could get married. Well, I remembers the number of a shovel hat in 56th Street, an' away we hike, man, girl, an' lady's maid, with never a sign of any Frenchman anywheres. An', by Jove, in they skipped to the parsonage, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... fate, if a' waur dead beside, we'd ha' curran' baws i' the pot every day. What a murrain is it to this hungry maw whether Ned Talbot, or Joe Tempest, or any other knave o' the pack, tumbles into his berth, or is put to bed wi' the shovel, a day sooner or later. He maun budge some time. Faugh! how I hate your whining—your cat-a-whisker'd faces, purring and mewling, while parson Pudsay says grace over the cold carrion; he cares not if it waur hash'd and stew'd i' purgatory, so that he gets ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... wife came with a spider to the fire, to broil some chickens for their supper. She pulled out the coals with a long-handled iron shovel, which she called a slice. She cooked the young travellers ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott

... work to do when Bill finally reached the little cabin. The snow had banked up to the depth of several feet around it and had blown and packed against the door. He took off one of his snowshoes to use as a shovel and stolidly began the work of removing the barricade. There was no opening the door against the pressure of the snow. Besides, the bolt ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... store—and I suddenly found myself deeply interested, in things I had barely noticed heretofore. Why, there was a broom! Sure enough, we would need a broom; also, a rake—that was highly necessary; and a hatchet, and some nails, and a shovel, and a water-pail, and a big galvanized tub, and—by the time the train came it took careful arrangement to fit in the family and the baggage among my purchases. The Pride had to sit on the water-pail, the Joy, aged two, in the galvanized tub, while the Hope, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... 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 gone, and the night was left ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... do a single thing towards rescuing them. Gradually one by one they were hit, and soon their festering carcases, lying swollen in the sun, added a little more to the awful stenches which now surround us. Some men volunteered to go out and bury them, and cautiously creeping out, shovel in hand, just as night fell, once more our Peking dust was requisitioned, and a coverlet of earth ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... a place called Weaverville, on the tenth day of September, 1849. This place consisted of one log cabin with numerous tents on either side. Here was my first mining, but being weary and worn out, I was unable to wield the pick and shovel, and so I left in a few days for Sacramento where I undertook to make a little money by painting, but it was a failure, both as to workmanship and as to financial gain. However, by this time I had gained some strength and left for Beal's Bar at the junction of the ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley

... conditions resulted in easier and more profitable work. It considered the conditions of labor by grading employees. It studied their equipment and noted if tools, benches or machines were best fitted for the people who used them. It saw that a "five-foot" man was not given a "six-foot" shovel, or that a short girl-worker was not sitting on a seat that would be more comfortable for a tall girl. It fitted the equipment to the worker just as a shoe is ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... and waits for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) destroy them? A college tutor, or a nobleman's toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room. An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jockeys ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... known "John Peel" of pleasant memory in song, and of how that worthy hunted. At five, down we go to the Argyll Hotel, and wait dinner. Broth—"nice broth"—fresh herrings, and fowl had been promised. At 5.50, I get the shovel and tongs and drum them at the stair-head till a response comes from below that the nice broth is at hand. I boast of my engineering, and Bough compares me to the Abbot of Arbroath who originated the Inchcape Bell. At last, in comes ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and used for his own purposes, by the superior intellect of man. The unequalled industry of gnawing down trees and cutting twigs, peeling off the tender cuticle of the willow bushes, digging away banks, and carrying on their shovel-shaped tails the earth, together with innumerable foot-prints and sometimes dams, were the items which filled up the catalogue of "signs" on which the trappers' vision was regaled after long and dangerous tramps ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... femme de chambre of the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, with a red beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de l'Ecu d'Or, is here; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in a corner of the yard by himself, with a shovel hat upon his head, and a black gown on his back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure, is open-mouthed and open-eyed, for the opening of the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... witnesses was also sworn in Court: He testified that in Cornhill he saw a mob collected at the pass (Boylstons alley) leading to Murrays barracks—the people were pelting the Soldiers he thot had a fire-shovel—as soon as they knew him, he prevailed on them to go to the bottom of the pass, and with some difficulty he got down—This witness, it seems, must have been later than the others; and Mr. Belknap, perhaps ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... and Mr. McGregor, to bring a wheelbarrow, pick-axe, and large shovel with them, since we should probably need the two latter to dig up the gold, while the wheelbarrow would be handy to carry it home. Everything was provided for in advance, and I felt confident of ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton

... beside the domestic hearth, between the shovel and tongs; it is there that it perpetuates itself, and if it still exists, it is to the family that we owe it. I love pretty nearly all the philanthropists and saviours of mankind; but I only believe in those ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... a flash, the rock fell and the two men standing at Grant's head were crushed like worms. The roof of the passage was working wickedly, and in the flickering light of the lanterns they could see the walls shudder. Then Dick Bowman stepped out. He brought a shovel from a room opening on the passage, and Evan Davis and Tom Williams and Jamey McPherson with shovels began working over Grant, who lay white and frightened, watching the squirming wall above and blowing the dropping dirt from his face as ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... lunch was about over or just ready. Lieutenant E.D. Anderson (10th Cavalry) gave me two and one-half hardtacks from his supply, which he carried in his bosom. I was soon down for a little rest; all desultory firing had ceased; the pick and the shovel were the only things to disturb the quietude of that anxious night. Had been down but a short time when aroused by one of the Rough Riders, who had some rice and meat in an ammunition box which he brought from the captured blockhouse. The meat was undoubtedly mule, as the longer ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... long out of college but the idea of this irregular supper, when he had once formed it, began to have its fascination. He took up the broad fire-shovel, and, by the time the boy had shuffled to and from the pantry beyond the dining-room, Bartley had cleaned the shovel with a piece of newspaper and was already heating it by the embers which he had raked out from under ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... were surprised to observe that a grave was dug close by the foot of the rock with great neatness and regularity, the green turf being laid down upon the one side, and the earth thrown out in a heap upon the other. A mattock and shovel lay by the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... their age and species, had never been granted them before. Their excitement had no bounds. They could talk of nothing but this epoch-making adventure, now. But misfortune overtook Susy on the very morning of the important day. In a sudden outbreak of passion, she corrected Clara—with a shovel, or stick, or something of the sort. At any rate, the offence committed was of a gravity clearly beyond the limit allowed in the nursery. In accordance with the rule and custom of the house, Susy went to her ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... road hasn't been touched by shovel or pick for more than three years, and I don't believe that Col. Gid Ward and his crowd ever intend to hire another day's work on it. Colonel Gid says every operator and sport from Clew to Erie goes across there, and if there's any ro'd-repairin' ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... with a garland of myrtle leaves. Roses are strewn on the white coverlet, and on the ground. Beside the bier are the offerings of food and drink which the Greeks used to burn along with their dead on the funeral pyre. In the left hand corner lies a shovel for digging the grave that is to receive the ashes. Several men and women are gathered round the bier, mostly in a group near the head of Alcestis. They are her friends, and the servants attending her dead ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick

... an inveterate inventor. Although she had seen prosperous days in England, when we knew her, she subsisted largely upon the samples given away at the demonstration counters of the department stores, and on bits of food which she cooked on a coal shovel in the furnace of the apartment house whose basement back room she occupied. Although her inventions were not practicable, various experts to whom they were submitted always pronounced them suggestive and ingenious. I once ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... his boots and socks he waded out into the middle of Big Little River, carrying a shovel and the box. In the soft, sandy soil he made a hole deep enough to hold the box which he put into it. Swiftly he filled it with stones, placed a big, flat rock over it, saw that there was no sign of his work as the sand and mud drifted in to fill ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... papers dating two or three centuries back, in which the style and the manners illustrated gave me considerable entertainment. Among the pieces of furniture on the floor I saw a warming-pan, a kettle, a fire-shovel, a pair of tongs, some old candle-sticks, some earthenware pots, and even a syringe. From this I concluded that some prisoner of distinction had been allowed to make use of these articles. But what interested me most was a straight iron bar as thick as my thumb, and about a foot and a half long. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and again commanded the dog to go and lie down. Job, without, thumped and scratched and howled louder than ever. He had decidedly the best of the duet, and the door was suffering every second. Brown picked up the fire shovel and threw the door ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... cannot defy Scotland Yard with impunity. The forces of the law rallied, and, headed by an intrepid inspector with a fire shovel, eventually tracked down the insect—or should it be animal?—and ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... the two men entered at once upon the plan of gaining their liberty. They agreed that the most feasible scheme was a tunnel, to begin in the rear of the little kitchen-apartment at the southeast corner of Rat Hell. Without more ado they secured a broken shovel and two ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... the basement, of which Goujon had made rather a pet, and the negro would sometimes use this animal as a missile, flinging it at the little Frenchman's head. On one such occasion the tortoise struck the wall so forcibly as to break its shell, and then Goujon seized a shovel and rushed at his tormentor with such blind fury that the latter made a bolt of it. These were but a few of the passages between Rameau and the fuel-porter, but they illustrate the state ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... eight o'clock on Christmas Eve the bells greet "Old Father Christmas" with a merry peal, the children parade the streets with drums, trumpets, bells, or perhaps, in their absence, with the poker and shovel, taken from their humble cottage fire; the yule ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Strong arrived to speak to Roger and Astro, he found them in the tunnel, working as a team of a shoveler and a sweeper. Roger would sweep up a little pile of dirt and Astro would shovel it into a ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell

... accident occurred which increased his grief. It had rained so hard during the preceding days, and the ground was so soft, that a sudden subsidence of soil took place. One of the sextons had to jump into the grave and empty it with his shovel with a slow rhythmical movement. There was no end to the matter, the funeral seemed likely to last for ever amid the impatience of the priest and the interest of the four neighbours who had followed ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... heart,' says he. 'You see, when I was digging for the treasure I was always a-going to find, it kept my heart up; but take out shovel and fill them in—I'd as lieve dine off white of egg on a Sunday.' So for six blessed months the heaps were out in the heat and frost till the end of February, and then when the weather broke the old man takes heart and fills them in, and the village soon ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... purposely violated; we at once have a gas producer. That is all gas producers are, extra bad stoves or furnaces, not always much worse than things which pretend to serve for combustion. Consider how ordinary gas is made. There is a red-hot retort or cylinder plunged in a furnace. Into this tube you shovel a quantity of coal, which flames vigorously as long as the door is open, but when it is full you shut the door, thus cutting off the supply of air and extinguishing the flame. Gas is now simply distilled, and passes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various

... can drive a locomotive will receive larger wages than the man who shovels the earth to form its pathway, because the supply of men competent to drive an engine is small in proportion to the number of men who are wanted for that work, while almost any man can shovel dirt. Let us state, then, for our second principle: The amount of wealth which any man receives should depend on the ratio between the demand which exists for his services and the supply of those able ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... half the fun 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 life than the poor chaps in the tropics do who plow their fields by just ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson

... the wind as His besom to sweep a road clear for His people, the effect produced by ordinary means was extraordinary. No wind that ever blew would blow water in two opposite directions at once, as a man might shovel snow to right and left, and heap it in mounds by the sides of the path that he dug. That was what the text tells us was done. The miracle is none the less a miracle because God employed physical agents, just as Christ's miracles were no less miraculous when He anointed blind eyes with moistened ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... Sandy replied. "Hiyu skookum me." He leaned on his shovel for a moment, stretching his young, sinewy body, grinning at the Indian. The latter dismounted, and, stooping down, touched the young ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... hole sullenly, and slowly scratched his head. Pressley, unlashing a mattock and shovel from his pack, did not ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... the Parson at the window, and set down his tools inside the gate—shovel and pick ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... boys amazingly; and this you will credit when I tell you some things that we saw. The coat and waistcoat worn by Nelson when he was killed, on the Victory, at Trafalgar; models of celebrated ships; original painting of Sir Walter Raleigh; Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who was lost, with all his crew, on the Scilly Islands, in Queen Anne's reign; Admiral Kempenfeldt, lost in the Royal George, 1782; Lord Nelson; Lord Collingwood; and almost all the great naval commanders of Great Britain. Then, too, there are ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various

... to shovel in the earth, and the children cried anew. All except Tess. Her face was dry and pale, as though she regarded herself in the light ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... 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 ...
— 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

... view of the affecting scene. Most of these habitations were emaciated as by famine to the condition of mere skeletons, about which clung unlovely tatters of what might have been skin, but was really canvas. The little valley itself, torn and gashed by pick and shovel, was unhandsome with long, bending lines of decaying flume resting here and there upon the summits of sharp ridges, and stilting awkwardly across the intervals upon unhewn poles. The whole place presented that raw and forbidding aspect of arrested development ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... with contempt or levity. Mr. Snooks could not return that document to Mr. Prigg, so he had to consider. And first he consulted his wife: this consultation led to a domestic brawl and then to his kicking one of his horses in the stomach. Then he threw a shovel at his dog, and next the thought occurred to him that he had better go and see Mr. Locust. This gentleman was a solicitor who practised at petty sessions. He did not practise much, but that was, perhaps, his misfortune rather than his fault. He was a small, fiery haired man, with a close cut tuft ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... "Here, take this child, I'm tired." Yet when we 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 to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... the stump and Leslie thrust her hand into the hole. "There's nothing else in there," she averred, "but perhaps it might be worth while to dig around here and see if there might be some other article buried near it. I'll get a shovel." ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... the snow and building a mound perhaps five feet high. From this elevation, Mr. Hosmer stated, the toboggan, flying down the slide, would shoot upward and forward and land on the far side of the brook. That seemed to me a very desirable thing to do, and, while I finished up the shovel-work, my companion went back to the Hive and brought out ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... men living in 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 ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... is placed on the right of the presidential chair, with his sword hanging on the wall; while on the left of the chief magistrate's seat there is a vacant space; perhaps destined for the name of another emperor. The multitude of priests with their large shovel-hats, and the entrance of the president in full uniform, announced by music and a flourish of trumpets, and attended by his staff, rendered it as anti-republican-looking an assembly as one could wish to see. The utmost decorum and tranquillity prevailed. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... largest mill on earth, and all the rivers roll over their wheel, and into their hopper they put all the men, women, and children they can shovel out of the centuries, and the blood and the bones redden the valley while the mill grinds. That diabolic law of supply and demand will yet have to stand aside, and instead thereof will come the law of love, the law of cooperation, the law ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... he said, returning. 'He begs speech of you, madam—with a face as long as the baker's shovel, and a mouth as wide as ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... sore, sorely. Sang, song. Sark, shirt, chemise. Saul, soul. Saunt, saint. Saut, salt. Scantlins, scarcely. Scoured, ran. Screed, rip, rent. Sede, seed. Semescope, jacket. Sets, patterns. Seventeen-hunder, very fine (linen). Shachled, feeble, shapeless. Shaw, show. Shiel, shelter. Shool, shovel. Shoon, shoes. Shouther, shoulder. Sic, such. Siller, silver, money. Sin', since. Skeigh, skittish. Skellum, good-for-nothing. Skelp, run quickly. Skiffing, moving along lightly. Skirl, squeal, scream. Skriech, screech. Slaes, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... advantage, on the whole, being on the side of the French. Hawke therefore had to blockade a fleet equal to his own, the French ships lying snugly in harbour, the English ships scourged by November gales and rolling in the huge seas of the Bay of Biscay. Sir Cloudesley Shovel, himself a seaman of the highest quality, said that "an admiral would deserve to be broke who kept great ships out after the end of September, and to be shot if after October." Hawke maintained his blockade of Brest for six months. His captains ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... "Avaunt, vulgar toad, telling the men everything. Your coarse, ruddy cheeks are your own, and your little handful of African hair. But who is padded more? Why, you are shaped like a fire-shovel." ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... Mancel and Foison, who was in great agitation, although he tried to hide it, at having to assist at the exhumation of his victim. They started for the cemetery, and the grave-digger did his work. After fifteen minutes the shovel struck the board that covered d'Ache's body, and soon after the corpse was seen. The beard had grown thick and strong. Foison gazed at it. It was indeed the man with whom he had travelled a whole night, chatting ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... sharp thorn cudgel near Laibach, in 1672, pulled it out of his body and flung it back contemptuously. The only certain methods of destroying a vampire appear to be either to consume him by fire, or to chop off his head with a grave-digger's shovel. The Wends say that if a vampire is hit over the back of the head with an implement of that kind, he will squeal like ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... but she turned away and took a long-handled shovel and poked her pies into the hot oven, and then Hatty heard her ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... "Get a shovel and dig here!" he ordered Juan. But the Mexican had fallen into a deep slumber from which it took not a little effort to awaken him. When he was finally roused and made to understand what was required of him, he set to work with a will, however, and ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... season. So the memory of the first President for Pahang will be kept green. A plant rarely seen is V. limbata from the island of Timor—dusky yellow, the tip purple, outlined with white, formed like a shovel. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... ever see such frights as poor Mrs. Feathertop has got?" said Dame Scratchard. "I knew what would come of HER family—all deformed, and with a dreadful sort of madness which makes them love to shovel mud with those ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... thing opens to the view: a short week ago it seemed but a molehill: now it has risen to the height of a man, and hourly increases in size. Two weeks, and now its summit is far above the reach of spade or shovel throw, and crowned by a platform firmly knit and held together by well-spliced timbers. As to its object we are somewhat dubious, but think it the beginning of an earthwork fortress, built high in order that guns ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... he was ordered below to the fireroom, he wrapped his hands in the soft waste again. That helped him for a time, but after the first two hours the waste matted and grew hard with perspiration and blood. He had to throw it away and take the shovel handle against his bare skin. He told himself that it was only a matter of time before calluses would form, but what chance was there for a formation of calluses when the water and suds softened his hands ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... again. Yes, the position was right. If she fell here, a man with a shovel could easily pry down tons of sand from either bank upon her in a few minutes. The burial might be done by himself without any other soul knowing ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... appreciable amount of acetylene is present in the air, no operation should be performed upon any portion of an acetylene plant which involves such processes as scraping or chipping with the aid of a steel tool or shovel. If, for example, the iron or stoneware sludge-pipe is choked, or the interior of the dismantled generator is blocked, and attempts are made to remove the obstruction with a hard steel tool, a spark is very likely to be formed which, granting the existence of sufficient acetylene ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... turned out of the road, followed him down a grass slope and so into a valley. Here gun-pits were in the process of construction. Guns were unhooked and man-handled into their positions, and the teams sent back to the wagon-lines. All day we worked, both officers and men, with pick and shovel. Towards evening we had completed the gun-platforms and made a beginning on the overhead cover. We had had no time to prepare sleeping-quarters, so spread our sleeping-bags and blankets in the caved-in trenches. About seven o'clock, as we were resting, the evening "hate" commenced. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... is also caught 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, and one holds it from floating away ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... Coridon and I have not had an unpleasant day, and yet I have caught but five Trouts; for indeed we went to a good honest Alehouse, and there we plaid at shovel-board half the day; all the time that it rained we were there, and as merry as they that fish'd, and I am glad we are now with a dry house over our heads, for heark how it rains and blows. Come Hostis, give us more Ale, and our Supper with what haste you may, and when we have sup'd, lets have your ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton

... had climbed out of the hole. He looked tired and cross. He rested for a few minutes, and as he rested, he scowled. Then he began to shovel the sand back into the hole. He had reached the bottom and found ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess

... 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." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... 'em! What's all this trash? Shovel 'em out! They'll want to get in with us; they'll queer ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... houses varies from eighty or ninety degrees Fahrenheit, on the bed platform and near the roof, to something below freezing point at the floor level. There is a little air-hole in the center of the roof, but in the happy home of an Eskimo family, in winter, the atmosphere could almost be handled with a shovel. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... carbolic powder—a pink powder with a smell resembling tar, and sold at about 2d. per lb.—is both useful and effective. The air of a bedroom may be pleasantly sweetened by throwing some ground coffee on a fire shovel ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... disinterment; necropsy, autopsy, post mortem examination[Lat]; zoothapsis[obs3]. V. inter, bury; lay in the grave, consign to the grave, lay in the tomb, entomb, in tomb; inhume; lay out, perform a funeral, embalm, mummify; toll the knell; put to bed with a shovel; inurn[obs3]. exhume, disinter, unearth. Adj. burried &c. v.; burial, funereal, funebrial[obs3]; mortuary, sepulchral, cinerary[obs3]; elegiac; necroscopic[obs3]. Adv. in memoriam; post obit, post mortem[Lat]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... up on deck, Aunt Nellie and Aunt Nora, and Ned was reading and us boys wanted him to play shovel-board and he wouldn't; so just for fun, I tried to show the boys—while he was reading, you know—how near I could come to hitting his cap, and not hit it; and I made a mistake and hit it and just then the wind blowed and it went overboard, and the boys laughed and he jumped up and said, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... palaces they were rearing with their loose millions. Society yet retained its cosmopolitan tone, careless, brilliant, and unconventional. There were figures in it that had made it famous—men who began life with a pick and shovel and ended it in an orgy of luxury; women, whose habits of early poverty fell off them like a garment, and who, carried away by their power, displayed the barbaric ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... to do who has found a good pocket is to buy himself into business and keep away from the hills. The logical thing is to set out looking for another one. My friend the Pocket Hunter had been looking twenty years. His working outfit was a shovel, a pick, a gold pan which he kept cleaner than his plate, and a pocket magnifier. When he came to a watercourse he would pan out the gravel of its bed for "colors," and under the glass determine if they had come from far or near, and so spying he would work up the stream until he found where the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... again that these here murderin' thieves intends to bore through the dear old gal's skin. I think they'll be pretty sure to come aft to do it; it'll either be there or down in the fore-peak, where they'd have to shovel away a lot of coal to get at her below the water-line, so I expect they'll make for the run. Now, sir, it's a very good job as I met you just here, because I can show you the lazarette hatch—here it is, under our feet." And he turned back a large mat upon which we were standing, disclosing a ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... that the way to ruin the poor of Ireland would be to educate them, sir. Look at the poor scholars, as they call themselves; and what are they? a parcel of young vagabonds in rags, with a book under their arm instead of a spade or a shovel, sir. And what comes of this? that they grow up the worst-disposed, and the most troublesome seditious rascals in the community. I allow none of them about New-town-Hardcastle—none— banished them all. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... thing on this road," said the man triumphantly to Ella as he stood, shovel in hand, at the door. "The parson's right behind, an' there's a lot more behind him. Gorry! I was afraid I wouldn't git here in time, but the fun'ral ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam shovel. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... 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

... cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, full of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid nitro-glycerine, and earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of cordite, two pieces of tarred cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a crow-bar; the cab came next, containing a considerable quantity of loose coal; and lastly, in the private carriage lay four big cans of common oil. And first, in the Laboratory, I connected a fuse-conductor with a huge tun ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... fulfilled; but the two facts that no one left the churchyard, although the wind blew and the rain fell, until the mound of sheltering earth was heaped high over the dead, and that the hands of many friends assisted with spade and shovel, did much to compensate for the lack ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... which lasted a quarter of an hour, was over, Mr. Shepherd clapped on his shovel-hat and started, with long strides, for his class, Mrs. Shepherd, who had not been quite ready, scuttling along a hundred yards behind him, with quick, fussy ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... Frances, in that expedition, built a pinnace when their vessel struck upon a rock, stock, although they wanted main timber and nails. How they made a mimic forge, and "for the easier making of nails, were forced to break their tongs, gridiron, and fire-shovel, in pieces." How Master Captain Best, in this frail bark, with its imperfect timbers held together by the metamorphosed gridiron and fire-shovel, continued in his duty, and did depart up the straights ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... "I think that av ye offered yersilf chape enough he might give ye a job wid a shovel on the grade. 'Tis mesilf wud be proud to have ye in me gang av rough-necks. Dom' me but I think I cud rejuce yer waist line to more reshpectable ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... for this ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig till ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... that everything may be done in accordance with sound philosophical rules; and that everything may be thoroughly purified in its proper time and place in order to be presented at the wedding-table of the Spouse and the six virgins who hold the mystic shovel, without a common fire, but with an elementary fire, that comes primarily by attraction, and by digestion in the philosophical bed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... and the king expected to see him begin to shovel. But Hercules, after he had called the son of Augeas to witness the agreement, tore the foundations away from one side of the stables; directed to it by means of a canal the streams of Alpheus and Peneus ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... foot on him an' run engine myself. I am Wampus. I understan' engine—all kinds. Brakeman he swear; he swear so bad I put him off train. Conductor must have lump of coal in eye to keep quiet. Fireman he jus' smile an' whistle soft an' say nothing; so we friends. When I say 'shovel in coal,' he shovel. When we pass stations quick like, he whistle with engine loud. So now we ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... as well as to hear her. Parson Tusher and his wife were established at the vicarage, but his wife had brought him no children wherewith Tom might meet his enemies at the gate. Honest Tom took care not to have many such, his great shovel-hat was in his hand for everybody. He was profuse of bows and compliments. He behaved to Esmond as if the Colonel had been a Commander-in-Chief; he dined at the hall that day, being Sunday, and would not partake of pudding except under extreme pressure. He deplored my lord's perversion, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... 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, ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield

... handful of it, rolled it into a ball, patted and flattened it into a biscuit, and dropped it into the oven he had set aside on the hot coals. Swiftly he shaped eight or ten other biscuits and dropped them as the first. Then he put the heavy iron lid on the pot, and with a rude shovel, improvised from a flattened tin can, he shoveled red coals out of the fire, and covered the lid with them. His next move was to pare and slice potatoes, placing these aside in a pan. A small black coffee-pot half full of water, was set on a glowing part of the fire. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... mining experience is sufficiently good history to make detail here unnecessary. Tillou instructed them in prospecting, and in time they located a fairly promising claim. They went to work on it with pick and shovel, then with drill and blasting-powder. Then they ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... grown early old, was bringing the stone jar of yeast to place close by the hearth, that it might not "take a chill" in some sudden change of the night. It was heavy, and she bent in carrying it. Awkward, and perhaps nervous, she brought it sharply against the shovel in ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... Mrs. Horton had told Sunny Boy as he brushed his hair that morning, "you will be going down to the beach with a tin pail and shovel, I expect, to ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White

... Whitmore (as I was fearfully expecting), but a figure unknown to me; an old shovel-hatted man leaning on a stick and buttoned to the chin in a black Inverness cape. I felt his eyes peering at ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of fleshy brown humanity is reared on a pound or two of boiled rice, and a few shreds of fish. To see him eat is to be attacked with a lasting loathing for food. He takes in his rice as though stoking a steamboat. The coal shovel is his ponderous fist, and the extent to which his cheeks are capable of stretching alone regulates the size of his mouthfuls. He is, in every way, coarser-grained than any other Malay. He has much less self-respect; ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... cayenne and nutmeg, and put a morsel of butter on each. Fill up the shells with a little of the oyster liquor thickened with bread crumbs, and set them on a gridiron over coals, browning them afterwards with a red-hot shovel. ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... To see a shovel in a dream, signifies laborious but withal pleasant work will be undertaken. A broken or old one, implies ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... Knight, as they hurried back, 'and I think we two are enough to extricate her. Do you know of a shovel?' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... a citizen, "asked me the other evening to go and call on some friends of his who had lost the head of the family the day previous. He had been an honest old man, a laborer with a pick and shovel. While we were with the family an old man entered who had worked by his side for years. Expressing his sorrow at the loss of his friend, and glancing about the room, he observed a large floral anchor. Scrutinizing it closely, he turned to the ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... who got in their way to town from Bath as far as Marlborough, after strange embarrassments, here met with a ne plus ultra. The ladies fretted, and offered large rewards to labourers if they would shovel them a track to London; but the relentless heaps of snow were too bulky to be removed; and so the 18th passed over, leaving the company in very uncomfortable circumstances at ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... bread for our repasts, rather than give himself the trouble of boiling a pot. Beyond browsing my goats, drawing their milk (the making of butter I quickly renounced), and watering my garden night and morn (which is done by throwing water from the little stream broadcast with a shovel on either side), I did no more than Dawson, but joined him in yawning the day away, for which my sole excuse is the great heat of this region, which doth beget most slothful humours in ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... glows with the intensity—emblem of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to the coals. The heat lessens. The flickering shadows have died along the wall. The fagots drop apart. The household hover over the expiring embers. The last breath of smoke has been lost in the chimney. Fire is out. Shovel ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at L120 a year, pick and shovel men. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... the uncovered wigwams standing about, one a large oblong with three fireplaces in it. Lying near the wigwams were old clothes of a quite civilised fashion, pots, kettles, a wooden tub, paint-cans and brushes, paddles, a wooden shovel, broken bones, piles of hair from the deer skins they had dressed, and a skin stretcher. Some steel traps hung in a tree near, and several iron pounders for breaking bones. On a stage, under two deer-skins, were a little rifle, a shot gun, and a piece of dried deer's meat. A long string of the ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... kitchens possess a proper salamander, but if you make the kitchen shovel red-hot it will be found to answer ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... don't mind, I really don't, Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hurried along the cloister to a room back of the church, which had been deserted and left to itself for many years, and was now almost in ruins. Going into one corner, Father Zalvidea, by the light of his lantern, found a small pick and shovel which, that afternoon, he had left there for this very purpose, and set to work to dig a hole in which to bury his treasure. Although the ground was hard, it required only a few minutes, after the cement floor was broken through, to accomplish this, for the box was small, and ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens, for him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a path ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... baby-fashion in his fist, but much as a pencil is held in writing; only the fingers are placed nearer the "top" than the "point," the thumb and two first fingers are closed around the handle two-thirds of the way up the shank, and the food is taken up shovel-wise on the turned-up prongs. At first his little fingers will hold his fork stiffly, but as he grows older his fingers will become more flexible just as they will in holding his pencil. If he finds it hard work ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... and, after an interview between them, he said it was easy to disprove her story, if it was a lie, by sending her home, in company with an officer, to investigate. The court sent the priest, who was the only one who believed her. On coming to her house, she took her pick and shovel, and going to the place at the top of the hill, she dug out of the clay a quantity of while ozokerite, proved her case, and was at once set at liberty. She performed the same service for me, and I saw ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... without our help," said General Foy to me. M. Royer-Collard, in pointing out some objections to the first of these Essays ('On the Government of France since the Restoration'), added, "Your book is full of truths; we collect them with a shovel." I repeat without hesitation these testimonies of real approbation. When we seriously undertake to advocate political measures, either in speeches or publications, it becomes most essential to attain our object. Praise is doubly valuable when it conveys the certainty of success. This certainty once ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... If French citizens wish to fathom the depth of the "government" into which they have fallen, they have only to ask themselves a few questions. Let us see: magistrate, he tears off your gown, and sends you to prison. What of it? Let us see: Senate, Council of State, Corps Legislatif, he seizes a shovel, and flings you all in a heap in a corner. What of it? Landed proprietor, he confiscates your country house and your town house, with courtyards, stables, gardens, and appurtenances. What of it? Father, he takes your daughter; brother, he takes your sister; citizen, he takes ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... his waist, and so march back to his own abode. The giant had done this for many years, and the coast of Cornwall was greatly hurt by his thefts, when Jack boldly resolved to destroy him. He therefore took a horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, and a dark lantern, and, early in a long winter's evening, he swam to the Mount. There he fell to work at once, and before morning he had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and almost as many ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... five horses—three of them for the saddle, and the other two for carrying our cooking utensils, ammunition, fishing tackle, blankets and buffalo robes, a pick, and a pan, a shovel, an axe, and provisions necessary for a six weeks' trip. We were all well armed with repeating rifles, Colt's six-shooters and sheath-knives, and had besides a double barreled shotgun for small game. We ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... full of coals, or a shovel of coals, held over varnished furniture, will take out white spots. Care should be taken not to hold the coals near enough to scorch; and the place should be rubbed with flannel ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... faster to escape the village; resolving at the first opportunity to change his garments. Ere long, in a secluded place about a mile from the village, he saw an old ditcher tottering beneath the weight of a pick-axe, hoe and shovel, going to his work; the very picture of poverty, toil and distress. His clothes ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... with Duffy, the blacksmith; and after the meal, armed with wooden pegs, a pick, and a shovel, they set out to secure a claim. Acting on the urgent advice of Duffy, they headed for Diamond Gully, nearly two miles off; and here Mike loitered about amongst the claims, chatting with the men on top, keeping his eyes wide open, and gathering ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... instance, the gild of St. Helen at Beverly, in their procession to the church of the Friars Minors on the day of their patron saint, were preceded by an old man carrying a cross; after him a fair young man dressed as St. Helen; then another old man carrying a shovel, these being intended to typify the finding of the cross. Next came the sisters two and two, after them the brethren of the gild, and finally the officers. There were always provisions for solemnities at the funerals ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... the plea that she was otherwise. It was another characteristic thread in the wild web of madness that had spun itself about all the prominent characters of our story. And when Middleton thought of these things, he felt as if it might be his duty (supposing he had the power) to shovel the earth again into the pit that he had been the means of opening; but also felt that, whether duty or not, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Dredge and shovel are laboring hard to guide or check the endless undersea coral growth before bay and channel and lagoon shall all be dry land. The wormlike, lazy, fast-multiplying Anthozoa is fighting passively but with terrific power, to set at naught ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... astir. The snow was first shaken off the blankets, and then Harry, taking a shovel, cleared the floor. Jerry took the largest cooking-pot, and saying to Tom, "You bring that horse-bucket along," pushed his way out through a small gap that had been left in the screen of bushes. The wind had gone down a good deal, though it was still blowing strongly. The snow had drifted ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... that he warded off their curiosity and answered their arguments very adroitly. He was sick of punching cows, he said, and he wasn't hankering for a chance to shovel hay another winter to an ungrateful bunch of bawling calves. He was going to drift, for a change—but he didn't know where. It didn't much matter, so long as he got a change uh scenery. He just merely wanted to knock around and get the alkali dust out of his lungs and see something grow besides ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... erections of earthworks, and the Russians were set to defend the place with pick and mattock more strenuously than by artillery or musketry. The result was a protracted defence. The Russians plied the spade and shovel with astonishing vigour and perseverance, and Todtleben proved himself equal in genius to the exigency. The Russians were reinforced; confidence took the place of despair, and the city was defended with desperate hardihood and energy. Besides the garrison, there was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... labour of 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 ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... said Mr. Carter, "these red-hot coals have been changed a great deal by the heat. They have given up all their gas and tar, and are themselves no longer coal, but coke. We shovel out this coke and use it as fuel in the furnaces down below to help heat up the next lot. Then new coal is put into the retorts, and they are closed up with iron plates, like that one lying ready ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... 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 commonest double-barrelled French gun that was imported. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... so well had Mat and the weather bureau contrived matters. He explained that he was really in need of her assistance, for in the open places where the snow had drifted across the road, it was often necessary to attack the drifts with a snow-shovel. He would then pass the reins to Mamie, who, demurely perched aloft, rosy-cheeked and most bewitching, was a picture ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... indifference to the enemy. The tide was out, and they went down into the harbour and found a large oyster among the piles of the wooden jetty. When they got home, the difficulty was how to open it; but they managed to make it open itself by holding it over the kitchen fire on the shovel. When it began to lift its lid, Beth sent Bernadine for a fork, and while she was getting it Beth ate the oyster. But Bernadine could not see the joke, and her rage was not to be appeased even by the oyster-shell, which Beth said she ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... expanded. When gathered, they are first partially dried in the sun, and then placed on flat iron pans above furnaces in the drying-house. They require frequent shifting and turning. When sufficiently dried, they are removed with a shovel on to a mat or basket to cool, and then to a table to be rolled. This process is repeated, and they are then sifted and sorted. As far as we could learn, both black and green teas are the produce of the same plant, but prepared in ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... duties at once. After lunch he took a shovel into the garden and toyed with the earth a while, and then he went to sleep under a tree. The Rev. Nippit awakened him and talked with him in a firm but kindly spirit on the virtues of honest dealings with one's employer, and the necessity of industry to keep the world wagging, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... shanks, U, of shovel, T, arranged to fit in a socket, V, and bar, S, in combination with standards, G G, and cross-bar, I, as and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... it is customary to take the shovel from the grate, and the key from the door, and to produce therewith a species of music which is supposed to captivate and soothe the winged tribe. If the bees do not settle on any neighbouring tree where they may have the full benefit of the inharmonious music, they are generally assailed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... a half smothered condition, but soon was able to assist in the work of resurrecting the rest. The only casualty that occurred in that incident was innocently caused by myself; as I was digging, my shovel struck the leg of an officer, inflicting such a gash that when resuscitated he had to go ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... 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 rake and hoe, and, after it had become well trodden, it made ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott

... comparison. It is therefore better to get light weight pieces in the smaller standard sizes and cut down long wooden handles for greater convenience. The one exception to be noted is the boy's shovel supplied by the Peter Henderson company. This is in every respect as strong and well made as the regulation sizes and a complete series to the same scale and of the same standard would meet a decided need in children's equipment where light weight is imperative ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt

... is grown in tropical countries, it is there that we must look for the first attempts at manufacturing from it a drink or a foodstuff. The primitive method of preparation was very simple, consisting in roasting the beans in a pot or on a shovel to develop their flavour, winnowing in the wind, and then rubbing the broken shelled beans between stones until quite fine. The curious thing is that on grinding the cacao bean in the heat of a tropical day we ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp

... form, stretching over the pathway, and a flight of steps leading up to the promenade around it. The hospital buildings are constructed around an open quadrangle, and upon the quaint black and white building are some fine antique carvings. The old "Malt-Shovel Inn" is a rather decayed structure in Warwick, with its ancient porch protruding over the street, while some of the buildings, deranged in the lower stories by the acute angles at which the streets cross, have oblique gables above stairs that enabled ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... shovel food into his face. (The author regrets he has at his command no more delicate expression that is literal and illustrative.) Kirkwood watched him, fascinated with suspense; it seemed impossible that the man could continue so to employ his knife without cutting ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... across his forehead, and his action was uncertain, as of a man who finds it difficult to think, and having thought fails to obtain reassurance. He passed out of the hut, and presently returned with a shovel and pick. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... won't,' says I, still layin' close, an' not mindin' his taunt 'bout seein' our backs only. 'You couldn't hit me if I stood up an' marked the place on my chest. Nothin' will save you but them days on the plain in the blizzards when you was more useful with a shovel than you are with a rifle, 'cause to-morrow at sunrise we're goin' to cross this little river and tie all you fellows hand an' foot an' take you away as prisoners ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... shovelling golden 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 against ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... ordered another to lie in the fire he would be obeyed. As an instance of this,—some of the brethren were on one occasion baking bread in an oven when one the monks said to another younger than himself, "The bread is burning: take it out instantly." There was an iron shovel for drawing out the bread but the brother could not find it on the instant. He heeded not the flames which shot out of the oven's mouth but caught the hot bread and shifted it with his hands and suffered no hurt whatever. ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda



Words linked to "Shovel" :   hand shovel, coal shovel, post-hole digger, hand tool, dredge, cut into, scoop shovel, steam shovel, delve, power shovel, spadeful, posthole digger, containerful, shovel in, dig, excavator, shoveler, shovel board, turn over, digger, shovelful, scoop



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