"Shovelful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the machinery. The process is simply this:—A shovelful of earth is taken from the heap and washed in the basins (a shovelful ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... in shovelful after shovelful of the bivalves, the two Racer boys saw approaching the vehicle a youth of about their own age but of entirely different appearance. For, whereas the Racer boys dressed well they made no pretense ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... Mississippi, the spring rains were a perpetual danger. There are men who want the marshes all filled up. They say it will add to us on one side what the great river is taking from us on the other; but myself—I would never throw in a shovelful: God made this world; it is good enough; and when the water rises we can ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the combatants perished after drinking an extraordinary quantity, may be strictly denominated a duel with deadly weapons. In the south of France, it is said, one person sometimes invites another to partake of absinthe by the slang phrase, "Take a shovelful of earth;" as if an American bar-room lounger, recognizing with grim humor the deadly quality of his liquor, should say, "Come and get measured for your coffin." The French expression has certainly, in view of Dr. Magnan's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... handful of pebbles on the stones. Father did not notice it, but at once Strong Ingmar said: 'What, so soon?' Yet he went on eating. Then there was more crackling; this time it was much louder. Now it sounded as if a shovelful of stones had been thrown on the fire. 'Well, well, is it so urgent!' Strong Ingmar exclaimed. Then he went out. 'The charcoal must be afire!' he shouted back. 'Just you sit still, Big Ingmar. I'll attend to this myself.' Father ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... to work, but every time he threw a shovelful out of the window, two shovelfuls came flying in to take its place. At last, tired and discouraged, he sat ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... for the Central Pacific the next year in Sacramento, and Governor Stanford dug up the first shovelful of earth. Then the work went steadily on, but it was hard to raise money. Stanford and his company carried the line forward as fast as possible. More land-grants were given, which doubled the company's holdings, and in '65 the road was fifty-five ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... sat close beside them, an interested spectator, but as they began digging the hole he rushed towards it and pawed violently at each shovelful of sand ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... officiate at the funeral-service. There was a large gathering of people, and a brave parade of all the externals of grief, but it was mostly dry-eyed grief, so far as I could see. At the grave, just as the sun that was sinking in the ocean threw his last rays upon the spot, and the first shovelful of earth fell upon the coffin that had been gently lowered to its resting-place, there was a piercing shriek from one of the carriages, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... growling and choking over the buttons. Dorothy afterwards carried away a whole shovelful of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... hives of busy, hopeful men who believed that untold riches were almost within their grasp. The hardest of work was but a pastime, for if they did not find diamonds to-day, would they not to-morrow? Did not their neighbors find them? The next shovelful of earth might contain a precious gem. They could hardly afford time to eat or sleep. Flashing eyes and elastic steps marked the success of some, while others repressed their feelings and kept their own counsel regarding the extent of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... whole the public proved singularly apathetic; and, especially in America, an astounding wastefulness in the use of fuel is the general custom now as it was a century ago. A French cook will prepare an entire dinner with a splinter of wood, a handful of charcoal, and a half-shovelful of coke, while the same fuel would barely suffice to kindle the fire in an American cook-stove. Even more wonderful is the German stove, with its great bulk of brick and mortar and its glazed tile surface, in which, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... mattered little that George guessed easily enough that most of the five hundred Most Prominent had paid something substantial "to defray the cost of steel engraving, etc."—the Five Hundred had heaved the final shovelful of soot upon that heap of obscurity wherein the Ambersons were lost forever from sight and history. "Quicksilver in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs for seventy miles through the crookedest canyon a Rocky Mountain river ever got lost in. There is more heavy rock work to be done in that canyon than on our entire Pannikin division ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... by the vicinity of the undertaker Bazonge—a wooden partition alone separated their rooms. When he came in at night she could hear him throw down his glazed hat, which fell with a dull thud, like a shovelful of clay, on the table. The black cloak hung against the wall rustled like the wings of some huge bird of prey. She could hear his every movement, and she spent most of her time listening to him with morbid horror, while he—all unconscious—hummed ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... day that young person, whom I had treated as a common "masher," heaped a whole shovelful of hot, hot coals upon my guilty head by writing me a letter less carefully dotted and crossed, somewhat more confused in metaphor than before, but beginning with: "I am afraid you are cruel. I think you must have ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... repulsive in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle, |
